@trogdor oh, no need to worry. I enjoy making fake cards when I find an interesting topic.

yeah I just wanted to thank you again

seeing as you were there to thank XD

@trogdor well, currently I either stay here or I join the "discussion" about "gender discrimination" that is currently ongoing on the meta.SE main chat room.

please, notice the quotes.

yes

I can definitely see that getting heated and full of trolls in a hurry

You're welcome here.

@trogdor well, to be fair there is a little confusion in there, so for once I can understand some of the users replies.

ah

@doppelgreener I don't think that was the point?

No, but, just feel like saying Derpy's welcome to chill out here as long as they want. :)

Away spaces are good.

You see, seems that all was started by some "rants" on twitter from a female SO users, claiming that SO is a "toxic discriminating environment" and relating that gender discrimination.

Point is, to my personal experience / knowledge, most of the times I see toxic behavior on SO gender discrimination isn't the main element. More probably, a sort of "elitism / I am better than you" approach is.

I don't generally go to Stack Overflow sooo

I have no idea

and anyway I wouldn't be running into that stuff unless someone assumed because my avatar is a pony that I was a female gendered individual rather than otherwise

@Derpy could also be both. 🤔 And a lot of sexism encountered in arenas like this looks like the elitism you'd see, "you don't know what you're talking about" etc.

Given some of the cultures operating on SO, it could be women cop a disproportionate amount of that.

yeah

I mean, I am no authority on it, but from what I understand women (or anyone else who expereinces any discrimination for anything including gender and otherwise) who experience a lot of discrimination for any and all reasons that they do, would be more likely to see that discrimination inside of toxic behaviours

and I assume that sometimes they would be right about that and other times maybe not

but the repeated experience of that type of thing is bound to cause you to see it more often regardless

@trogdor ^ see my linked message above :P You basically wrote the same thing, but as expected your version is by far more readable than mine ^_^'

lol

I don't know about that, I just used more words

but anyway,... even from my own limited personal experience,..... experiencing discrimination can change the way you think about,.... toxic behavior of any kind

so I sorta understand that

a little

@trogdor congratulation, you basically guessed my next message too.

That's not a mutually exclusive argument.

oh, I know. As I said, I was just somehow confused on how the room reacted to that twitter post. It sounds like a rant, that's granted.. but it also points out some problems we probably really have.

I've definitely seen some folks on various Stacks be condescending to/about women, and being generally unpleasant doesn't preclude unpleasantry about women in particular.

Instead, it has just been dismissed as a rant.

@BESW mm and I was not trying to say that either, just for the record

I just meant that,.... sometimes it isn't what is happening,.... not that that actually makes it better

Aye.

Just be careful of whataboutism, and dismissing womens' reports with claims that they don't understand what happens to them.

I certainly didn't mean it that way

course, it could possibly be understandably interpreted that way so fair enough

Of course.

@BESW Bingo. And btw what I meant with the above linked message is that even in the possibility she really didn't understand the root cause of the rude behavior she experienced... the rude behavior still need to be addressed, so dismissing it just because she didn't ask the "right" question isn't exactly a good idea.

Yeah.

In my experience, people whose circumstances mean they're regularly exposed to harassment or condescension, quickly develop a pretty finely tuned barometer for what kind of nonsense they're having to put up with and why.

the only thing I was trying to say was, that if a mistake was made,... which I did not assume on an individual basis, it would likely have had an entirely understandable reason

I stress again that I didn't assume anyone was actually wrong about it

though I did use a hypothetical that could have been interpreted that way, possibly

so my bad there

(and I am sorry if anyone saw it that way for any reason)

No worries. More heading things off at the pass than responding to things already said.

yeah

fair

@trogdor Don't worry. To be fair, if I was just basing my reasoning on some incidents I was in other rooms I too would be far more inclined in assuming the perceived discrimination she is reporting is indeed real.

Since users were pretty quick to dismiss her as a "rant", I was somehow playing "devil advocate", pointing out that since many of those same users acknowledge that the community often has problems following the "Be Nice" policy... then maybe that post was just a further notice that rude behavior should be fixed and that dismissing it just because "it is just another weakling rants / cry" isn't desirable.

it certainly isn't cool to dismiss someone for not being ok with toxic behaviour in any instance

Basically, even if they don't trust her specific claims, if they acknowledge those problems exist then something should be done about them.

Handling toxic behavior should be done regardless, even if they chose to dismiss this specific case as a rant.

And, I repeat, I am not sure that could be considered "just a rant" in the first place.

Mmm. And frankly a lot of people who dismiss complaints as rants (and thus invalid because of the form they take, rather than their content) tend to be the same people who dismiss micro-aggressions, gatekeeping, and triggers as not actual things with clear sociological definitions.

So it's possible they don't register the other kinds of Not Niceness as genuine problems either.

@Derpy yes

@BESW also yes

BTW, I was reading the chain of twitter posts that started the discussion - or at least trying to. If anyone is interested, this seems a good entry point to try to observe the various chains of comments. Just be aware that the discussion is pretty rough, and both sides are somehow crossing the be nice line with some posts.

@Derpy thanks for linking that. it was interesting to start reading about this.

we see that even on here: someone who's extremely well-versed in D&D 5e bumps into a question from a newcomer to the hobby. the expert can piece together the answer from what they know in seconds, and may conclude it's obvious and a dumb question. the newbie doesn't know how to do that, doesn't know enough about the game to even begin doing that, and doesn't know yet how they should be reading and understanding the game materials. the expert doesn't see that, and criticises them.

we work hard to have that not happen here though.

@doppelgreener good point, and I can easily imagine that such problem probably is more evident on tech-related sites than on some of the others.

Yeah. Someone in that thread cites asking a newbie question about arrays and getting bullied off the site. That shouldn't be OK, and shouldn't happen.