YLYL Thread Sexism Discussion (split from Gay Teen thread).

[photon]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Re: misogyny. Might I direct you to the entire "you love, you lose" thread?

Off topic for this thread I guess, I don't know know if it warrants a whole new thread, but that's a question I ask myself all the time, and I honestly don't know.

I don't think appreciating attractive women is in itself objectification any more than appreciating smart women is. And I don't think that a woman being sexual is the bad thing that society sometimes makes it out to be (a girl seeking sex is seen different than a boy seeking sex).

OTOH some of the comments in the thread make me cringe a bit inside, but it's really difficult for me to judge where the line is. It's not like having a bikini babe poster in a workplace since it's only visible if one chooses. EDIT: But I also agree that in general women are far too often treated as objects rather than subjects in media and advertising and that's a serious problem. And no doubt some of the pictures in it were created as objectification.

Is having the thread itself misogynistic?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Arya Stark

Oh, give me a break. Misogyny is not liking girls in bikinis.

Also ironic considering your avatar.

Pretty sure the avatar is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek response to all of the similar avatars depicting women.

Originally Posted by photon

OTOH some of the comments in the thread make me cringe a bit inside, but it's really difficult for me to judge where the line is. It's not like having a bikini babe poster in a workplace since it's only visible if one chooses.

Is having the thread itself misogynistic?

That's a fair question. I guess the concept of the thread itself isn't misogynistic, but if some of the comments are making you a cringe a bit, then I think that does speak to some of the misogyny some of the women on this site have been uncomfortable with (for the record I haven't really been in that thread). I'm not advocating for the removal of the thread, because in a sense you're right about it not being like a poster in a workplace. At the same time, would you be comfortable having a "Racist jokes" thread and using the same "it's only visible if one chooses" argument?

In addition, is the thread structured in such a way that people could post pictures of women who don't conform to traditional or Western standards of beauty and not be ridiculed? Further to this, if there are women on this forum who are attracted to other women, is the thread safe for them to enter and not feel shamed about their appearances by some of the comments from other members?

I don't think appreciating attractive women is in itself objectification any more than appreciating smart women is. And I don't think that a woman being sexual is the bad thing that society sometimes makes it out to be (a girl seeking sex is seen different than a boy seeking sex).

Couldn't intelligence be seen as one factor of attractiveness, or is the thread exclusively dedicated to physical attractiveness? And yeah, appreciation is certainly different than objectification, but I think the tone of the thread and the comments you've alluded could make it hard to discern between the two. Agreed on the second point. If a woman is proud of her body and wants to show it off, then I'm not going to tell her not to.

[photon]

Originally Posted by rubecube

would you be comfortable having a "Racist jokes" thread and using the same "it's only visible if one chooses" argument?

Maybe, or at least I see comedians say things that would be considered racist (or sexist or otherwise offensive) and still see them as funny without actually being racist.. though I guess that's different maybe, as the comedian is usually playing on the stereotype itself rather than the subject of the stereotype.

Originally Posted by rubecube

In addition, is the thread structured in such a way that people could post pictures of women who don't conform to traditional or Western standards of beauty and not be ridiculed?

People basically post what they like, and the times when someone's objected to something being posted because it didn't meet some standard the response usually equates to STFU, but maybe that's just my rose coloured memory. I'd want that to be the case.

Originally Posted by rubecube

Further to this, if there are women on this forum who are attracted to other women, is the thread safe for them to enter and not feel shamed about their appearances by some of the comments from other members?

I hope so, but I'm not sure. I certainly have seen posts outside of that thread that shame pictures of women based on their appearance though.

Originally Posted by rubecube

Couldn't intelligence be seen as one factor of attractiveness, or is the thread exclusively dedicated to physical attractiveness?

People post what they find physically attractive for the most part in that thread, sometimes other abilities are a factor

I guess in a way I see it like posting musicians in a my favourite artist type thread; evaluating someone based only on their musical prowess. One can objectify based on anything, and that's not necessarily bad as long as it's subject most of the time object sometimes. It's just that we live in a society where objectification of women is an actual systemic problem. If we were trying to advertise CP by using women jumping topless on a trampoline that'd be different.. or at least it feels different.

[Chill Cosby]

Re: You love you lose thread.

I don't think it's misogynistic in it's existence, but it certainly gives those who ARE a place to stretch the boundary a little bit.

It'd be better suited, IMO, to include attractive males, and perhaps people who are attractive for other reasons other than strictly their body. I'm not sure if that's explicitly against topic of that thread, but it certainly never comes up.

Just my two cents.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by photon

Maybe, or at least I see comedians say things that would be considered racist (or sexist or otherwise offensive) and still see them as funny without actually being racist.. though I guess that's different maybe, as the comedian is usually playing on the stereotype itself rather than the subject of the stereotype.

Yeah, I think there's a difference between satire and jokes that blatantly demean an entire race. I guess going back to the poster at work analogy, would you be comfortable with having those posters at work as the long as there were clear warnings indicating which areas to avoid if one didn't want to see said posters? To me, it would still seem to make the place a little less welcoming to women.

People basically post what they like, and the times when someone's objected to something being posted because it didn't meet some standard the response usually equates to STFU, but maybe that's just my rose coloured memory. I'd want that to be the case.

And obviously that's cool if it is in fact the case.

I hope so, but I'm not sure. I certainly have seen posts outside of that thread that shame pictures of women based on their appearance though.

People post what they find physically attractive for the most part in that thread, sometimes other abilities are a factor

Yeah, and I guess that's why I had the questions I did. There have been incidents on this board that certainly would make some people skeptical of the intentions of the thread.

I guess in a way I see it like posting musicians in a my favourite artist type thread; evaluating someone based only on their musical prowess. One can objectify based on anything, and that's not necessarily bad as long as it's subject most of the time object sometimes.

In some ways it's similar, and certainly the negative side of objectifying musicians shows up when they make political statements and the response is "I don't give a crap what you think. I just want to hear the music." It still feels different to me because in most instances it should be their body of work that is being objectified and not necessarily who they are as a person, but that might be splitting hairs. I guess another similar argument is the way we objectify professional athletes to the point that we don't really care when they're injured on a personal level. They're just simply objects for our entertainment.

It's just that we live in a society where objectification of women is an actual systemic problem. If we were trying to advertise CP by using women jumping topless on a trampoline that'd be different.. or at least it feels different.

Well that and the fact that so much of a woman's worth seems to judged on physical attractiveness. I'd imagine one of the other reasons some of the women on here might be annoyed with it is because it's just another bombardment of the same crap they have to witness multiple times, every day. And I guess that maybe while the thread's intention isn't to reduce women to mere sexual objects, the thread probably does provide a space for those who have reduced women in such a way to continue to do so, which I could also see as frustrating to some people because the internet is already littered with such spaces.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

Re: You love you lose thread.

I don't think it's misogynistic in it's existence, but it certainly gives those who ARE a place to stretch the boundary a little bit.

It'd be better suited, IMO, to include attractive males, and perhaps people who are attractive for other reasons other than strictly their body. I'm not sure if that's explicitly against topic of that thread, but it certainly never comes up.

Just my two cents.

It's probably one of those situations where other threads of its ilk, and not necessarily on CP, have sort of set a bad precedent so people are a little less likely to give it the benefit of doubt.

[jayswin]

Yeah, I'm pretty much with photon on that thread. I'll glance in there every once and awhile, and the pics are pics, but some of the lame commentary makes me cringe. The worst was when StrykerSteve posted pics of his wife and some of those guys started talking about how they shouldn't be in there because of the standards of the thread.

The standards? You're a bunch of guys looking at pics of women on a hockey message board, who (no offense) wouldn't give most of you a second look in real life, and you're going to start telling a guy that his wife isn't up to your standards of the thread?

The thread is what is until those guys start typing out words instead of just posting pics. It's the words that need to be banned from there. It sounds like when you pass by the nerd table back in high school and they're all talking about which attractive girls are actually attractive and which aren't good enough, lol.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Chill Cosby

Re: You love you lose thread.

I don't think it's misogynistic in it's existence, but it certainly gives those who ARE a place to stretch the boundary a little bit.

It'd be better suited, IMO, to include attractive males, and perhaps people who are attractive for other reasons other than strictly their body. I'm not sure if that's explicitly against topic of that thread, but it certainly never comes up.

Just my two cents.

Haha, that would never work for those guys, they lose their minds when any girl under an 8 is posted. One of my favourite things on CP is the couple of times people came in and started posting hot guys and unattractive women, and seeing the absolute rage out of some of those guys, lol.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by flameswin

The thread is what is until those guys start typing out words instead of just posting pics.

I think it's fair to say that the thread is sexist in a bad way. Typing out the words does not really change anything, other than people being able to see the words and respond to them.

(And I say this as someone who does go to that thread. What can I say, I do stupid crap too.)

It's the words that need to be banned from there. It sounds like when you pass by the nerd table back in high school and they're all talking about which attractive girls are actually attractive and which aren't good enough, lol.

Banning the words would IMO be just whitewashing the issue.

Besides, the worst stuff is, or at least used to be, in the Funny pics thread. I think if you wanted to study changes in attitudes over the years, that thread (and it's predecessor) would be the place to go.

[Arya Stark]

Originally Posted by Itse

I think it's fair to say that the thread is sexist in a bad way. Typing out the words does not really change anything, other than people being able to see the words and respond to them.

(And I say this as someone who does go to that thread. What can I say, I do stupid crap too.)



Banning the words would IMO be just whitewashing the issue.

Besides, the worst stuff is, or at least used to be, in the Funny pics thread. I think if you wanted to study changes in attitudes over the years, that thread (and it's predecessor) would be the place to go.

Honest question, what is sexist about that thread?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Arya Stark

Honest question, what is sexist about that thread?

Well the obvious thing is that it's very existence normalizes the idea of sexualizing and objectifying women. After all, it's simply taken for granted that a supposedly gender neutral hockey forum has a massive girlie pic thread.

Second, it's mostly just very heavily photoshopped pics. Some of the photoshops are so grotesque that I honestly think only people who have not seen a lot of naked women in real life could find the pictures attractive. At least for me it's uncanny valley galore.

This seriously distorts the ideas of beauty, and the thread is only about women, so again, sexist. This if course is not a CP thing, it's just the world.

Third is of course the types of pictures in those threads. It's the part where it gets complicated, which is why I'm going to skip the more radical feminist views (which I'm aware of, but it really is a complicated topic) and just point out some stuff which I think is more blatantly problematic.

It's not a CP thing as such, if anything that thread is actually pretty wholesome as far as threads like that go. It's just the way that our culture thinks a sexy woman should look and pose, which a lot of the time is very subservient or pretty much like a piece of meat.

And then there's pics where there's a decent chance the girl in the picture did not mean for the pics to start making the rounds in the internet. And of course just random pics of celebs doing everyday stuff. Admiration, sure, but also support of an extremely disturbing paparazzi culture around women celebrities.

Links are recent examples from that thread, and pictures which made me seriously cringe. That thread is not the place for that discussion however. But when there's a thread about this stuff where you're supposed to accept things as they are, it does perpetuate a problematic culture.

All that said, I don't think it's a major issue. It's just CP being the way the world is. Yes, you have to change the world one piece at a time if you want to get it done, but the hot women thread of CP is not a hill I'm ready to die on.

Maybe some day I'll start an actual topic about whether or not it should be removed, and I would honestly be happy if it did.

(I could also go on about the problem with presenting so many women so subserviently, but I think it would just be derailing.)

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by flameswin

The worst was when StrykerSteve posted pics of his wife and some of those guys started talking about how they shouldn't be in there because of the standards of the thread.

If I remember correctly, it was one guy who everyone group shamed out of the thread. He posted over and over again, making it seem like it was a lot of people.

Overall, I don't find it too objectionable, but there's no doubt that those photos are created in the first place to objectify those women…for the most part. Do you blame the photographer, the model, or those who find it appealing? Hard to say who to blame more for that one. Is it Supply followed by Demand, or a Demand that creates a Supply? Tough to say (although usually the demand creates the supply).

Oh, and if Peanut's avatar is a sly social commentary on the amount of sexualized women in poster's avatars, then I have to say it's not very useful, because I can only think of 1 or 2 posters that use anything like that. I just assumed it was a picture that Peanut liked, and I really have no problem with that. If it passes by the mods I'm fine with it. We're all adults here.

Edit: I just realized that there are some youngins on this site as well. Soooo…maybe have to be a bit more careful with that kind of stuff? NVM, the internet has billions of things that are worse for kids to see. Keep those filters on parents!

I must be objectifying Nick Offerman's beautiful mustache with my avatar…sheesh, people assume way too much.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Itse

It's not a CP thing as such, if anything that thread is actually pretty wholesome as far as threads like that go.

Ignoring the discussion about porn itself, I find most "mainstream" porn somewhere between disgusting and abhorrent, your points about subservient are spot on IMO. It's horrifying to me that that represents what the majority of people that consume porn want, what that says about us.

Originally Posted by Itse

Maybe some day I'll start an actual topic about whether or not it should be removed, and I would honestly be happy if it did.

It's worth discussing IMO. I'm to blame for derailing this thread (check my mod privilege) but at some point it'd be a worthwhile thread, though probably a nightmare to read lol.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by photon

Ignoring the discussion about porn itself, I find most "mainstream" porn somewhere between disgusting and abhorrent, your points about subservient are spot on IMO. It's horrifying to me that that represents what the majority of people that consume porn want, what that says about us.



It's worth discussing IMO. I'm to blame for derailing this thread (check my mod privilege) but at some point it'd be a worthwhile thread, though probably a nightmare to read lol.

Let's just do it and see where it goes? Why don't we (and by "we" I mean you, because we don't have the damn powers!) just start by splitting these posts out and starting the discussion.

I'd be interested.

[photon]

Ugh, I don't know if I have the energy for a dedicated thread about it lol. I mostly wanted Peanut's view. But if enough ppl want the posts split off to their own thread to discuss I can do it.

[JiriHrdina]

It would be interesting to get the POV from all our female posters on that thread

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by photon

Ugh, I don't know if I have the energy for a dedicated thread about it lol. I mostly wanted Peanut's view. But if enough ppl want the posts split off to their own thread to discuss I can do it.

K here's the deal photon, and this is for real. Split the thread, make me a mod and I'll moderate that thread and only that thread. Deal? I've been here awhile, I know how to be moderator, let's do this.

Edit: and I promise I won't click on the plethora of " oh look flameswin's being a dumbass again" threads in the mod forum.

[Itse]

As for objectifying btw, I think people should remember that it's not one group or view saying that objectification is one thing. It's lots of people saying lots of things, and some of them have better points than others.

I don't want to go into it that deeply, but I don't think you have to be a feminist at all to think that there is something disturbing about pictures where women are presented effectively as trophies, decorations or even just furniture.

[DownhillGoat]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

It would be interesting to get the POV from all our female posters

Phrasing!

[jayswin]

I'm trying to figure out if photon's thanks means I'm getting temporary mod powers. Deep down I think he knows id be a pretty awesome mod , and with only one thread to moderate how badly could it go?

Edit: the answer is of course "very badly", but still, for once in your life listen to your heart and not the other mods saying "flameswin is literally the worst poster on here and we'd quit the site if you do what he's asking".

Just say. "Listen ken, I'm photon and I'm going with my gut and no one can stop me!"