Guest post: With my personhood totally stripped from me
Originally a comment by iknlast on Preserving the sanctity of the big tent.
Make a new twitter account using a man’s name. Choose a picture not of a person but one with masculine bent. Use that account at least a week, but longer is better.
My son actually tried this experiment in reverse. He gamed as a woman. And as a man in the same setting at a different time. His results were predictable, and eye-opening, even to someone like my son who was already fairly enlightened about the issue. The amount of hate he got was intense – and he wasn’t even talking about feminism or the rights of women, he was just playing a game as a woman.
If people really want to know when I feel like a woman, it is when being met with blistering contempt, bored indifference, or violent hostility toward some activity I am performing or some argument I am making. I feel it in my classroom when I have my students draw a picture of a typical scientist, and they all draw men (beards are required to be a scientist, apparently), even though there is a woman standing in front of them, a trained scientist who has published scientific research, and is in the process of teaching them about science. At those times, I actually do feel like a woman, with my personhood totally stripped from me.
I have had a similar experience. A few years ago I needed some technical details on a particular open source software package, so I connected to the IRC channel (Internet Relay Chat, for those who don’t recognize it) that served as its online discussion forum. On IRC, one must choose a nickname to interact with other chatters. Sort of like twitter, only interactive. Without thinking too much about it, I chose a nickname that I realized only later was readily assumed to be female. When I began asking my questions, the responses were initially neutral, but turned surprisingly aggressive and condescending when I disagreed with several answers (it was apparent that I knew more about the software package and its workings than the people there). It wasn’t long before I started getting private direct messages from several chatters full of female-oriented vitriol (“bitch”/”whore”/etc.) on the one hand, and lewd comments on the other. That’s when I figured out what was happening. The entire time, moreover, I was not rude or impolite–just direct, to the point, and unapologetic when I was making a statement about the software that I knew to be correct.
I’ve been thinking about this and wondering how to disguise my obviously female user id. I think I’ll just add a whole new account.
On the other hand, three of my young, male gamer friends (13-15) all decided to create female characters last month, and none lasted longer than a week before returning to male characters. They stated two reasons. First was the relentless fending off of advances. Second, and one that I didn’t realize was a female-centric problem (because I wrap myself in naiveté to navigate this heartless world), was that they couldn’t step out of their houses without being killed. I had always thought that everyone got killed walking out their doors. At least it explains my abysmal .40 Kill/Death ratio even though I am an adept killer myself.