Making Women Feel More Comfortable Here (Women's Only Poll)

[ajoknoblauch]

Some forums have a "No critic" zone where you are not allowed to criticize and where newbies are encouraged to ask "stupid questions".

There may be no such thing as a stupid question, but there are some pretty stupid answers.

 

[PhilipDT]

My guesstimate on coffee chat attendees of how many are not Board Members (per Rich One's comment), it's about 1/3 of the people I've met in the past 4 months. Those that rarely post but are members, I'd say most people at coffee chats don't...maybe 2/3 of the remaining attendees.

This always caught my notice when seeing the recaps of these coffee chats posted on here. With the exemption of Rich One and occasionally a few others I was always thinking "Who are these people?"

BaExpats is huge, 16000 members and probably many many more unregistered users. Yet the majority of those users have never posted, and the majority of those who have have done so less than 10 times. Of those with more than 10 posts, the overwhelming majority has less than 100. So for as large as the forum is, to me the community has always felt pretty small. It's kind of like having thanksgiving dinner in a room made entirely of one way mirrors in the middle of time square.

I think you get a lot of lurkers and low activity members at the coffee chats because they're held at 4pm on weekdays. That's a somewhat complicated time for most of us long term expats (or really most people who aren't retired/on vacation/on a gap year/working remotely).

 

[citygirl]

Pretty easy to utilize the ignore feature if certain posters offend. But for me personally, I don't find the general tone to be particularly sexist.

And yes, most long term expats are generally at work or picking up kids at school, etc at the coffee chat time which explains a rather low attendance I would imagine.

 

[Rich One]

My guesstimate on coffee chat attendees of how many are not Board Members (per Rich One's comment), it's about 1/3 of the people I've met in the past 4 months. Those that rarely post but are members, I'd say most people at coffee chats don't...maybe 2/3 of the remaining attendees.

Many of those that rarely post say they rarely post due to antagonistic responses, men/women. I feel like it's a waste of energy to post if you are looking for only serious responses. It did frustrate me several times early on. Now, I read what interests me, skip the rest (especially the bait comments), easy breezy. Mostly, the forum is entertainment for me, aside from the weekly coffee chat posts.

Women's forum is not a big deal to me. I prefer face-to-face discussion over posting my questions online that pertain to women.

Believe you also mentioned that some attendees don¡t want to be "identified" by face , rather stay in the background. B)

 

[AngelinBA]

I guess I'm one of the target group for this poll, and my vote is that I don't feel uncomfortable by the content or the crass jokes. I do get bored of the pissing contests but just skip them. If a male is brave enough to open and read a post titled Tampons with applicators then I think he deserves the right to comment on it too, although I can understand how some females might not agree.
I don't post very often because I do find the board a bit US centric and my advice often doesn't seem to 'fit' but I'm happy to chime in when I feel the need to.

 

[Joe]

It's kind of like having thanksgiving dinner in a room made entirely of one way mirrors in the middle of time square.

nice imagery :lol:

 

[DontMindMe]

I think if women truly felt uncomfortable, they wouldn't be here. The forum in general is not sexist. I have seen the dumb jokes guys will make in girlfriends meetup threads, and I agree that it's juvenile and can see why the girls in those threads want it to stop. Just think before posting, maybe, which is a good rule in general. Or like, if you want to bitch about how horrible women are from your home country, maybe think about the point of doing it on a forum where there are a lot of women from those countries? Also maybe consider therapy to get over your exes? I'm left scratching my head around here way more often than I feel uncomfortable.

The one time a post actually did made me feel uncomfortable in my four plus years of hanging around here on and off was when a male poster said he understood why Elliot Rodger felt the way he did about women and went on some spiel about how he'd like to take an Argentine woman to parade around Belgium to shove in the faces of the women there. That verged on disturbing, and yes, I felt slightly uncomfortable upon reading it, to know that a member of this community shared such views. But I responded to that poster. It sure hasn't kept me from coming back.

If you're wondering why women don't post more in general, I think it's as simple as those particular members who happen to be women just don't read the forum as much, or simply choose not to post as much. I definitely don't think we should ban men from the women's forum or anything like that. As far as internet forums go, this one is ultimately pretty mild. I've seen much uglier and blatantly sexist content on the immigration forum I frequent.

I'm interested in what people are saying about the forum being U.S.-centric. There was a thread asking what people didn't miss about home, and I kept waiting for posters from other countries, but I don't think we ever got any. And I did wonder why at the time. Joe, that would be an interesting poll/thread.

 

[Rich One]

I guess I'm one of the target group for this poll, and my vote is that I don't feel uncomfortable by the content or the crass jokes. I do get bored of the pissing contests but just skip them. If a male is brave enough to open and read a post titled Tampons with applicators then I think he deserves the right to comment on it too, although I can understand how some females might not agree.
I don't post very often because I do find the board a bit US centric and my advice often doesn't seem to 'fit' but I'm happy to chime in when I feel the need to.

Thanks Angelina , would like to rescue the US (ego) centrist issue. I would like to hear more about German Merkel scandals, Grillo and Berlusconi affairs in Italy or Hollande's faux-pas, Le Pen racist comments, etc, We never hear about NZ or Aussie concerns? Canadian issues?
Comments from other LATAM countries? Wonder why?.

 

[PhilipDT]

The one time a post actually did made me feel uncomfortable in my four plus years of hanging around here on and off was when a male poster said he understood why Elliot Rodger felt the way he did about women and went on some spiel about how he'd like to take an Argentine woman to parade around Belgium to shove in the faces of the women there. That verged on disturbing, and yes, I felt slightly uncomfortable upon reading it, to know that a member of this community shared such views. But I responded to that poster. It sure hasn't kept me from coming back.

I wouldn't say that your reaction had anything to do with your sex. I remember that post and also clearly remember having similar response.

Either way I think this poll's sample is biased, and the reactions in the thread are going to be even more so. If someone is here and posting, they're already part of the subset of the population who accepts and is accustomed to the juvenile content allowed and even encouraged by the free semi-anonymous sharing of information.

 

[Girino]

Thanks Angelina , would like to rescue the US (ego) centrist issue. I would like to hear more about German Merkel scandals, Grillo and Berlusconi affairs in Italy or Hollande's faux-pas, Le Pen racist comments, etc, We never hear about NZ or Aussie concerns? Canadian issues?
Comments from other LATAM countries? Wonder why?.

First, you are a jerk.

Second, what do we mean by US-centric is not referred to a contest "let's see who's the best of the World".
I will make an example, so that you can't give your jerk-attitude a rest.
Just a simple question like "Why aren't credit cards just like in the US?" is a little narrow-minded, because it is crystal-clear that the poster i) is from the US ii) never wondered if elsewhere in the world things are different iii) never asked himself if there are things which are better outside the US.

AFAIK, most of credit card systems are unlike the US credit card system. The comments following on that thread were on the tone "oh, in the US they give credit cards to anybody, they literally throw it in your mail", which totally ignored the credit score and credit history issue, like if it was non-existent. Indeed, it might be non-existent to US citizen with an employment and a certain earning, but it is extremely relevant for new immigrant to the US, people who maybe have a bad credit history, or unemployed. But, of course, the US citizen posting here are all WASP, so they have never been touched by "the others" and their issues.

Back to the credit card thread - On those premises, anybody from elsewhere than the US feels like that thread is not about them. Because all of the posters will be likely from the US, having assumed that is the best credit card system in the world. I noticed that US-Americans have no interest whatsoever in other countries, never ask for opinions from people from a different culture/country, just assume that anywhere outside the US everything is worse, except maybe the climate.

This is an example of US-centrism.

Funny that you had to relegate the issue to politics and someone else's behaviours (i.e. politicians).