"TMP = Misogynists R Us?" Topic

TMP member nazrat recently posted:

TMP = Misogynists R Us!

Do you think TMP has a misogyny problem?

No. There is a quiet respectful majority of brothers of sisters, husbands, fathers of daughters, and granddad's with princesses here.

A few who never had strong women in their lives don't define TMP.

Are you kidding me? NO. There are some immature people who have little idea of how to interact or approach the opposite sex here though.

You should have cross-posted this to the Nude or Semi-nude NSFW board . . .

Did I miss a complaint about the new Ghostbusters somewhere?

Why yes,actually :

TMP link

Darn! Now I have not missed it anymore.

How can TMP be misogynistic when it is seemingly populated by a bunch of whiny, 12-year old girls? Every day there is some freaking drama going on where someone either hurt someone else's feelings or a "drama queen pedant" throws a tantrum about the wrong color of buttons, etc….. It is just exhausting to see over and over.

Yes.

There are many people in this world who diligently search for an opportunity to be offended.

Who are these missing gynocologists anyway?

People throw that word around so loosely it's lost all meaning, in my opinion, like many other hot-button words.

Shouldn't this question be asked to the women on the board?

What women on the board?

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Misogyny, misandry, sexism, homophobia, racism, religious intolerance, discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry are all problems for some posters here on TMP (myself included). If one were to mentally map it out, TMP would appear like a multi-circled Venn diagram carving up some of the population on this forum. This image is further complicated by these folks expressing differing degrees of discrimination here. It has been my experience that there are some strong misogynists posting here but they are few in number, albeit quite vocal and strident. There is a wider group who seem to imply misogynistic tendencies in their posted views but who do not explicitly state such views. Next, there is a wider slice of the membership who seem to tolerate misogyny on the forum without indulging in it themselves. Finally, there are certain boards here which seem to attract misogynistic posts by their very nature. Thus, what we have here is a cultural problem, not a problem of enforcement. The targeting of individuals likely will not work to change the more pervasive cultural zeitgeist which enables such discrimination and hostility to persist in the face of shifting social mores and a changing sexual ethos. It is up to each member here to try to break with the past and to speak out against such views in a firm but respectful way, if they are offended by such utterances. If they are not offended, then it is up to the rest of us to let them know that the open expression of such views is no longer acceptable and that they will be challenged, hounded and shamed if they voice such views publicly. If enough of us begin to change our willingness to speak out against and to challenge such expressions, then the culture will change. If we just lock-up or lock-out offenders then nothing will change as they will just return behind new aliases and continue their ways as before. The change must come from the membership and not the editors. It is a bottom-up change not a top-down change which is called for here.

If, as I suspect, this thread is in response to criticisms leveled by posters on another forum, then two things must be pointed out. One, if we are changing because of external pressure we will likely fail. The change must come from within our community and not in response to external demands. It is all of our membership's responsibility to clean up our own house rather than to listen to the shrill shrieks of our raucous and disorderly neighbours who demand that we mend our ways. While that angry bunch may be correct in their criticism of our behaviour here, their motives for such criticism are highly suspect and thus their influence upon us is weak. If we are to root out misogyny and other forms of malignant discrimination here, the desire to do so must come from within ourselves; not from the protests of hypocritical naysayers who declaim us as misogynists while habitually using a hateful word for a woman's genitalia as their most ferocious battle-cry and most wide-spread insult. While we need to change, we need to change for real and we must not just pay lip-service to such change while acting like vulgar, but oh-so-evolved guttersnipes. The second point is to underline what a shame it would be if we here were to try and change only to devolve to such a delusional and fallen state as the folks across the way, in an effort to redress our very real vices and trespasses against women and many others. It is up to us to make the moral and ethical trek to be a more welcoming and inclusive forum and our impulse to do so must not be from the diatribes of others nor from the dictates of editors. Only we can push ourselves to walk along this road which we must eventually travel.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Why not run a poll?

Why not forget about it and stop pandering to ?

Meiczyslaw – all the women left.

And IanKhemm – the logical conclusion from your statement is that misogyny is some artificial construct from ? That isn't what you meant to say is it?

Khusrau – Your "logical conclusion" is the result of your own decision to read into my statement something that you wish to assume. Thus creating your own assessment from your own logic to reach your own conclusion.

I just read it as in breach of the new rules – bullying of the left wing – and also the no politics rule.

Yes

And here we go on another ride

huh?

Wasn't that solved when the Needs More Boobies board was renamed?

If I were female, I would not feel welcome here.
But if I were female, I wouldnt come here anyways.

If I was female and knew what guys and male gamers can be like, and if I just happened to be into miniature gaming, I'd probably give TMP a chance. I'd expect to sometimes read some goofy things, but would enjoy the more worthwhile things at the same time, just like us guys.

I come here for Wargames. I grant idiots, leftists, neo-Nazis/Communists (the different flavors of the same poison) and some Europeans who want to remake TMP into another (unnamed) Euro-forum that I visit and -sometimes – enjoy have issues.

Let us fix it from within. The problems may not be entirely here but those that are here belong to us to fix.

Can't do that? Take your presence elsewhere. My opinion and no apologies are forth coming. I love many European posters here (Hi, Dom!) but some of you perhaps should stay sheltered on your continents.

Bill, yeah, I am addressing you. Most of the complaints are crap IMO but you are truly failing in some respects. As a mixed blood man with two daughters from India and married to a "Presbyterian ex-Roman Catholic" who makes me look Liberal there are posters and subjects here that are not war game related (and I do not frequent the Plus boards so go figure) that bother me. You can not fix stupid but you can reprimand and discipline behaviors that demean. I would not want my daughters or wife to be referred to in some terms used here by some uncounseled twits.

Let me pick a very weak example – "Surrender Monkeys" – even Napoleon refused to let his people disparage the Austrians after 1809. Why should we let this slur of the French soldier pass without comment.

I prefer it here to the other forums (even John/Winston) but there are limits that need not be suppressed but publicly admonished. If you can't do that you need editors that will do that in your name.

I will now drop this thread and if anyone wants to continue you can PM me and I might actually read them. I probably will not reply but I will read at the least the first one and, assuming you are not a PC Clone, maybe any others.

I think society has a misogyny problem that stems from neither liberal or conservative political philosophies and spans male and female members of both. Occasionally it manifests itself here, as in any other social forum, and is fairly reasonably dealt with.

Putting on my conspiracy theorist hat, I have to believe that The Misogynist Illuminati(TM) are tenting their fingers in evil glee and softly chuckling as people cast the discussion of misogyny in terms of things that are not relevant.

I don't really believe in The Misogynist Illuminati(TM) (but I still respect their trademark, so don't sue me), but as a wargamer I do know that if you're engaging on the wrong front, no matter how much ground you gain, you will never secure your objective.

No. I have never (personally) seen it here. TMP is large: to expect 'everyone' to behave at all times is ridiculous.

If 'you' have a problem then hit the complaint button.

There are a few who ate, but refuse to admit it.
Ironically, or maybe not ironically, they are the first to bleat how much they like The Ladies, and how much The Ladies love them. "Appreciate the beauty of the female form", or rubbish like that.
If you want to deal with them, misogyny problem solved. But they will never admit it, and will plead persecution. They always do.

It's not that many, but they are prolific posters.

I name no names, but one declared just this week that he hates ALL female sports. Not just individuals but all. Kind of textbook, don't you think?

I've beenon here for 14 years and I can honestly say: Absolutely not.

More over the top political correctness running amok, I see.

I suspect I'm with Ian on this, but it's hard to tell for sure, since his posting's been snipped, in the interests of political correctness, no doubt.

Do we have any old men we can ask?

I'm an old man.

Misogyny? TMP? How dare you suggest it.

Obviously PC is THE major threat to the republic, more so than the sputtering economy or terrorism (either the suicidal foreign or the fanatic home-grown variety), or the collapse of the mid-east, or any other looming crises.

Bad spelling and grammar is next!

I don't see how not catering to a certain group means that we hate them. Where are the blatant, obvious, unmistakable, sexist content on this site?

We don't have a lot of Pro-Dutch content on these boards but that doesn't mean that we hate them. We even have a few token Dutch members and several others with Dutch ancestry, and they have suffered the same horrific indifference as the female members.

Yes, there is that Nude Dutchmen board,always hated that.

So the portrayal of Celtic males on these boards is sexist and misandric? [URL=http://s96.photobucket.com/user/weesparky/media/heman.jpeg.html]

Poll suggestion:

What would you do if you woke up next to a racist, homophobic, misogynist?

It is the editor's forum, so he has every legal right to do as he wishes. BUT, I personally am not in favor of censorship in any form and I am sick to death of political correctness, which is unmistakably . In the United States, at least, the constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It does not guarantee anyone a right of never being offended or ridiculed.

Quite a few posts have appeared recently which seem very worried about a perception problem both for the wargaming hobby and TMP specifically. What I think is that the general public has always thought wargamers are weird, and that absolutely nothing is going to change that. You really have to try wargaming to understand it, and the only people likely to try it are those who have an unusual degree of interest in things military in the broadest sense to begin with. I think that implies a certain toughness of attitude which is unlikely to be put off by any of our supposed "problems." So, I conclude that you might as well let people say what they want – and receive replies in kind.

Poll suggestion:

What would you do if you woke up next to a racist, homophobic, misogynist?

+1!

Believers in the first amendment would surely defend the right of response, no?

So ridiculing bigots is protected, correct?

Under US law, yes.

There are responsibilities that go along with the several rights that protect the right to ridicule anyone, including bigots, in public. Those responsibilities include not harassing and committing slander. Along with the right to be free from harassment and slander comes the responsibility to accept satire as legitimate expression.

All four of those rights, to ridicule (as free speech), freedom from harassment, freedom from slander, and to satire have grown-up standards associated with them that include human judgment and the reasonable man standard.

Under those same standards, TMP is not public (specifically, a "place of public accommodation") and to be legal within the United States does not have to conform to those standards, except where they are considered "inalienable" rights.

I agree with Mute,

A major part of the problem, I feel, comes from too many broads that really don't deal with war gaming. They lead to a wide range of comments that get the site into trouble at times. Getting rid of the boards that do not relate to war gaming would like cut down out the above mentioned problems.
For example, do we really need a nude/semi-nude board?

There is definitely an old man "get off my lawn" quality to a lot of the content on the boards. That can come off as anti a lot of things.

For example, do we really need a nude/semi-nude board?

The nude board was created so that the possibly offensive pictures of miniatures were held in one location so that the protected class would not be exposed to them and be triggered.

"protected class" being people browsing TMP at work and "triggered" meaning "reprimanded by HR"

Inkpaduta--I am absolutely certain that "broads" was a typo.

Well,pretty absolutely certain. . .

Do you think TMP has a misogyny problem?

My daughters asked me that just the other day. I told them not to worry their pretty little heads about such matters.

Seriously, I think we have a bigger problem with people seeing misogyny or racism where none exists, and not just on TMP but in society as a whole.

I am equal oportunity in my hates. Don't care about their gender, race, religion, political affiliation or sports team preferences.