Before I joined Reddit, I never thought of myself as a masochist. The great thing about Reddit is that you can subscribe to particular subreddits that represent your interests – in my case, that might be skepticism, atheism, feminism, science, and pictures of baby animals – and ignore the subreddits that make you angry, like Men’s Rights, Beating Women, Space Dicks, and [Choose Prefix] Jailbait. The problem is that Reddit is infested with shitty, racist, sexist, bigoted people, to the point where it’s nearly guaranteed that some of those people will post in your special interest subreddit. The larger the subreddit, the better the chance that this will happen.*
And so it is with r/atheism. R/atheism is very large, and so it is jam packed with assholes. And yet! I continue to read it every day. I read it even though I usually learn nothing new from it and it only serves to create and foster inside me an intense hatred of my fellow atheists.
Two days ago, 15-year old Redditor Lunam posted a thread called “What My Super Religious Mother Got Me For Christmas“, in which she linked to a photo of herself holding Carl Sagan’s Demon-haunted World:
What a cool thing to happen! A touching tale of religious tolerance. I’m sure the comments will be appropriately celebratory and, seeing as she’s 15, nonsexual. LOL.
“The jeans I’m wearing right now are older than her. But then again, they’re full of holes.”
“Aaaaaand so is she…”
“I was trying not to, but it needed to be said.”
Look you guys, it needed to be said! Obviously someone had to make it clear that this 15-year old girl has various orifices that these grown men could stick their penises into. Swimmerhair is just the man who took the fall. He’s just saying what everyone’s thinking, as made clear by the 167 upvotes he got [the numbers to the right of usernames are net points, then the breakdown of upvotes in orange and downvotes in blue. That breakdown is not necessarily perfectly accurate but it is close].
But hey, you know, in some countries it’s totally legal for a grown man to have sex with a 15-year old. So let’s add abduction and rape to the mix:
There are about 900 more comments to get through. Get comfortable.
“Relax your anus, it hurts less that way.” (+1715, -648)
“Blood is mother nature’s lubricant.” (+570, -175)
“BITE THE PILLOW, IM GOIN’ IN DRY!”
“Tears, natures lubricant”
I won’t show all of these, but there were several dozen “clever” scientific double entendres about having sex with the 15-year old in question, all of which were heavily upvoted:
But hey, at least some of the Redditors in the thread were the right age** to be sexualizing a 15-year old girl who had the temerity to post a picture of her face on the Internet:
If it’s not enough that the 15-year old girl is getting a nonstop flood of rape offers from grown men, there are also plenty of posts trying to make her feel bad for being such a stupid fucking female:
SinghNYC has been holding onto that image for WEEKS just waiting for some dumb fucking female to post a picture. POW, take that, female! These examples showing otherwise mean nothing. Nothing! Also, I’m sure this is not a guy but is actually a stupid female:
And this guy, too:
And this guy:
CMETRIQ took it to the next level and linked to PROOF that only stupid females include their stupid faces in their pictures:
Which linked to this:
See? Ignory_is_bliss doesn’t show his face! He even used a throwaway account to post that picture and he doesn’t even give away whether he’s a man or a woman in any of his posts with that account. Because that’s what a man does! Like a man.
These examples only came from the top voted comments on the thread – there are more than 700 that I haven’t even looked at. There are also several threads that were started to mock the original, like:
That’s 21-year old motivational speaker Lizzie Velasquez, who has a debilitating syndrome so rare it doesn’t even have a name. HA HA.
Don’t worry, though. I’m sure that none of this had any negative impact on Lunam, the 15-year old girl who posted her picture on an atheist site in the hopes of enjoying a conversation with her fellow atheists:
“Dat feel when you’ll never be taken seriously in the atheist/scientific/political/whatever community because you’re a girl. :c”
“well, if you will say things like “dat feel”…”
Oh right. It’s her fault for writing like a 15-year old. Not for having all those holes for men to stick their dicks in or for being a girl who took a chance to join an online discussion. Fuck you, r/atheism.
*Every subreddit has moderators, and there are some subreddits where the moderators actually moderate discussion and keep it from turning shitty. r/atheism is not one of those subreddits.
**J/K, there is no right age to be that shitty.
EDIT: I feel like I should once again mention that r/shitredditsays makes Reddit worthwhile.
EDIT 2 (1:43pm ET): On Facebook, Boozer Brödy linked me to this thread, in which another hilarious jokester posted a parody with porn star Sasha Grey. Awesome.
I’ll also add a quick note for those of you (not yet in the comments below, but elsewhere) who cry, “So what! Terrible people are everywhere! It’s the Internet!” You? You are awful, too. R/atheism is a huge community of atheists, and here is an example of a young woman attempting to join it, to get more involved, who is sexualized and mocked for being a girl. Why would she ever want to be a part of any atheist community, if that’s how she’s treated? The next time you look around your atheist events and wonder where all the women are, think of this and know that there are at least some of us who aren’t willing to just accept this culture without trying to change it.
Oh, Reddit :(
Instead of making you hate atheists, it would make more sense to hate the assholes and their upvoters which you cite in the article… and the non-moderator at reddit who allowed this crap to flourish. (I applaud Beleth for providing a (lightly but still moderated) sub-forum at SGU forums for stuff that might offend the more sensitive among us and putting it in a somewhat isolated “sandbox”).
Meanwhile, it is definitely worthwhile to expose this shit for what it is. Lunam should be contacted by a Skepchick to point her to the many excellent forums which are appropriately moderated.
Not to excuse this crap in any way, let’s keep it in perspective. There are about 2,000,000,000 internet users worldwide. Maybe half of these are capable of posting in some at least semi-intelligible attempt at English. Of these, maybe a couple of thousand do in fact post such crap and/or approve those messages. Any unmoderated forums have attracted these kinds of creepy posts since the dawn of the internet in the mid-1980s when ISPs still provided their own proprietary message boards. It isn’t any different than the crap that gets scrawled on (mostly men’s) toilet walls and the motivation is probably similar. In the case of men’s toilet walls, it is generally not as specifically misogynist, but is more about ensuring that homosexuals know how the creeps feel about them. I suspect that walls of unisex toilets would have similar content to that under discussion here. The point is that the overwhelming majority of humans are neither condoning, nor are they responsible for this outrage. Most are “mouse potatoes”, consuming content without creating any, and of those who do create “content” (you have to have an unjustifiably broad definitions of “content” to include the above mentioned crap) — a tiny fraction are responsible for the entire seemingly overwhelming mountain of shit the internet produces.
Not in any way to belittle the problem, but let’s not let it warp our perceptions of our fellow humans too much. Let’s not forget that the folks who responded as most did here to this latest outrage reflect the thoughts of the actual moral majority… and let’s also not forget that those who make the most noise, get to set the tone of public discourse and policy.
I use reddit quite a bit and still find it to be a valuable site. However, I spend quite a large time down-voting rape and sexist “jokes” (which are not unique to r/atheism). It doesn’t frustrate me too much that such crap gets posted (after all, assholes exist in this world, and some of them have keyboards). What frustrates me is that threads like some of what you have shown end up as the top-voted threads.
There is no excuse for that. Reasonable people need to get off their asses and bury this crap in down-votes. We need to badly outnumber the neanderthals and drive their karma scores through the floor. We probably *do* outnumber them, but we need to get hard-core about having zero tolerance for sexism (even if it initially made you laugh).
Let’s train ourselves, and fix the reddit community along the way. Don’t leave, come back, gird up, and down vote the shit until “Hur-hur, you have a vagina!” is relegated to a handful of novelty accounts.
Yeah, that’s why I stuck to the top-rated comments – to show that it’s not just one or two assholes. It’s a whole community of people who congratulate one another for being awful.
The only thing that struck me about this interaction (it’s no surprise to me that there are people who will jump at the opportunity to say creepy and inappropriate things behind the veil of anonymity) was that the OP expressed her displeasure at not being able to partake in meaningful conversation as a member of the community.
Anonymity works both ways. It emboldens people who have the urge to speak with malice and it provides everyone with the opportunity to be judged only by what they say without consideration of race, creed, age, gender or orientation.
By providing her own image in a post meant to highlight a book she received as a gift, she sacrificed her account’s access to anonymity and to participation based on her words alone.
Yes, it’s sad that people jumped at the opportunity to make light of raping a 15 year old girl and yes, it would be nice if her post would’ve fizzled with a few upvotes and the “isn’t that nice” responses it warranted, but nothing is really lost here. She can, and should, still participate in the discussions she believes she has lost the privilege of participating in, and /r/atheism — despite its flaws — provides a venue for her to do so in the future using a different name and with no one being the wiser because of this incident.
I approved this comment so that you’d be able to reread it and think about it and maybe realize how awful and point-missing it is. You’re saying that it’s okay because women can join in on the discussions on Reddit so long as they never reveal that they’re women and so long as they’re okay discussing topics with a bunch of asshole misogynists.
Don’t ask, don’t tell, right? Just let everyone assume you’re a guy. That’s the default, anyway, right? Straight, male, white. Diversity can go fuck itself. Great solution.
I think you’re assuming that in order to partake in a meaningful discussion we must first state our gender and age.
Quote the part where I said what happened was okay, if you don’t mind contextualizing the words you’re putting into my mouth.
/r/atheism cannot help if what OP is looking for is universal acceptance based on her gender. There are, however, a lot of level-headed and well-intentioned men and women there who would be happy to engage a young mind in skeptical thought. An image post to the front page is not the best way to reach this audience.
No one is saying that one “must” reveal your sex or gender, but rather that if you do, it shouldn’t matter, and you shouldn’t be targeted just because you are a woman.
The thing is, the default online is “man”. So, people generally assume that the poster is a man, unless something indicates otherwise (and that indication might not even be true). As soon as the asshole men start figuring out (rightly or not) that the poster isn’t a dude, then the insults and misogyny come flying.
That’s not right. She should be able to post and she shouldn’t have to hide the fact that she’s a woman (so therefore most people would assume she’s a man) to avoid being harassed.
I post on reddit often. I usually don’t mention my gender. Sometimes I will mention my family and it will be clear I’m male. Once or twice I posted a picture and I was in it, outing me as a white guy. I’ve never not been taken seriously as a result. Never had to worry about it. Actually – I never thought about worrying about it.
Shouldn’t EVERYONE who posts on r/atheist (or other informational subreddits) have the same privilege? I just used the word “privilege” – should that even BE considered a “privilege”?
kylev misses the point too. I refuse to try to correct assholes from being what they are, I am not their mom and dad, and disapproval actually may fuel their coarseness, I just refuse to join them, and will find another site and perhaps create one more open and moderated, YES, I said moderated one(as this one we’re on), is it that Reddit moderators are afraid of losing hits to the site?(I actually read that argument at r/atheist from someone saying Becca W wrote what she did about this to get hits to her blog). So be it, hits be damned, tell them to get the F**K out, we don’t want you here anyway. The only way to combat sexism, misogyny, and disrespect for women is to shut them down, disallow their freedom of speech, they’ll find a place that allows that kind of stuff. Pushback against them as hard as they puchback against women who are trying to raise the civility. It is like the entire discourse in this country is one in which anything goes, as in my opinion is equal to anyone else’s, no matter how misinformed. I am not entitled to my opinion simply cuz’ I have one, but I am entitled to my “informed” opinion and I should not waste anyone’s time spouting vitriol that has no regard for the facts(or nonsense regarding sexism, misogyny, or disreapect). If my “informed” opinion is right or wrong, then I be should expect to catch hell for it either way and open and willing to be challenged. This will work only if we have all agreed not to spout ill-informed nonsense, with the stipulation that our facts may be challnged. As it is, without requiring being “informed,” our opinion becomes entitled, however wrong it is. Of course, the same idea can be construed in voting as a citizen as when an informed voter has the same vote as someone who is colossally uninformed, so, the move is to raise the level of discourse through some requirements. Basic civics, or knowledge of current events, I dunno, I don’t pretend it’ll be easy. The same can be done with normal discourse between people.
fontaine missed the whole thing, I was surprised you let it go, too, seems he’s wanting the 15 yr old’s exposure through her picture and the response by others to be her fault, when really as long as she is anonymous and no one knows she is a woman, then they can think she is a man and talk as we are all men here, fact is her picture is irrelevant, but due to her openness and honesty she felt no distrust as any atheists would enjoy knowing their religious relatives had given a book that they may think has to do with atheists due to the words Demon-Haunted or perhaps due to Carl Sagan the author being an atheist, whatever, she should not have to guard her gender, her femininity, her physical picture, or even her atheism, or her anonymity being exposed, under no circumstances should she have been attacked and made a joke of no how, no way, period. I have refused in my life to laugh at hurtful ethnic humor, or racist humor(yes, I cringed listening to Richard Pryor, but if he was nearby, I would have called him out to just stop it), or jokes about disability, none of it. When folks are self deprecating, maybe I can understand or be amused by that as we are all able to laugh at ourselves from time to time and joining others as they laugh at themselves is not the same as telling a joke about someone else that they do not and cannot join in the laughter about), but not when someone else is telling jokes about others that are hurtful and antagonistic or hostile.
My bias of women is seeing them in their roles as nurses, mothers/homemakers, secretaries, sales clerks, teachers at all levels, relatives(I know, not an occupation) but that changed as I saw the possibility of other roles, with more opportunities for women, Gloria Steinem’s, and Betty Freidan’s message comes to mind. I also saw the pushback by men not wanting things to change, comfortable as women being their mothers or wives(often as only sex objects?)
If the 15 year old had been a man, there would not have been any of the uproar that occurred here. I feel bad for her, and want to tell her to look for other forums, they do exist and just run don’t walk away from this r/atheist site. Yeah, Yeah, I’m a Feminist.
So … basically … we women should never reveal that we are women, and if we do, well, geez, it’s our fault! We asked for it!
So, basically, what you’re saying is that just by being women, and by revealing to the world that we are women, we are asking for and deserve this sort of harassment?
Just … wow.
E-burkas for all of us! That’ll solve the problem!
Women should be seen and not heard. Or was it heard but not seen? No, neither … that’s it. You don’t want to tempt these weak minded, horny guys. They are not in control of themselves …
It’s all very logical you see!
[Hmm, I seem to have misplaced my sarcasm sign … well, most of you can figure it out …]
Just, whoa. My mouth is so full with the words you’re adding to what I said!
I’m just not sure where you are seeing the part where I defend or dismiss the abhorrent comments that were made to the OP.
It’s possible that you don’t know how reddit works, as I’m guessing you don’t frequent that cesspool. When you post to the front page, EVERYONE sees it. Pedophiles, convicted rapists, adulterers, pastors, liars; there is no filter. They are all invited to comment on a post they see, and they all do. Am I saying that by revealing to the world that you are a woman you are asking for people who hate women or who prey on women to comment? Yes. That will happen. There is no filter, although I wish there was.
I am not excusing this behavior, nor did I say that I was.
” provides a venue for her to do so in the future using a different name and with no one being the wiser because of this incident.”
That is a quote. From you. You said she should hide her identity as a woman to avoid being harassed. That’s what you said. Word for fucking word. I put nothing in your mouth; you said it.
Basically: If you’re a woman and post on Reddit, you’ll get harassed. So just remain anonymous and don’t reveal your gender.
Instead of focusing on the disgusting harassers, you put the blame squarely on the victim. Good job!
And if she doesn’t wnat to stay in a place that would harass her just because she’s a woman, and where people are telling her to change her name and hide her gender if she does want to continue without harassment, I don’t blame her at all, and I’d be surprised if she decided to stick around. I certainly wouldn’t want to stick around, and this isn’t really helping my opinion of Reddit as a hole. I still have no desire or plan to participate or really read any of the threads, because it’s really not a comfy place for women.