[JMN]

I applaud Goober5000. As Orwell said: "In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
Anyone read SF classic William Tenn's (Philip Klass) - "Down Among The Dead" novel?

You know, it's not a good idea to suddenly jump to the defense of an indefensible position after it has already been completely defeated.

If quantity of interlocutors agreeing with your POV is a way to measure "winning" or "losing" a discussion, then maybe so.
Still, you got to spill what you really believe in, no matter if this time people don't agree with you.

[The E]

Okay, then. Post a complete reasoning as to why you think Goober is right and everyone else is wrong, preferably backed up by scientific data.

[JMN]

I said what i had to say in this topic and I shall not speak on this matter anymore.

[Woolie Wool]

Oh, so you're taking the route of baseless controversial statement completely unsupported by anything resembling evidence. Don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

EDIT: Has anyone considered the social consequences of throwing males at the enemy until they are almost completely annihilated? Not only do wars cripple or kill people, they also drive them insane, especially meat-grinder wars (which is what happens when you create huge numbers of unskilled, undertrained personnel and just throw them at the enemy). So now 80% of your men are dead and another 10% are disabled or driven mad by PTSD or other mental illnesses. An entire generation of women have been deprived of any significant education or job skills for the purpose of turning them into baby factories. So now you have hardly any skilled people left, a society with a huge number of children that will probably never get an education and essentially have no future, and a deep misogyny introduced into the culture that will probably remain for a long time because such things tend to develop a momentum of their own. The result will be social chaos (expect a lot of those kids to become criminals), economic collapse (because you killed half the skilled workers and turned the other half into walking uteri), and probably the end of a space-faring Terran civilization for decades at least.

You know, things that didn't happen in the actual FS timeline because they didn't turn all their women into baby factories and obsess over numbers instead of quality of personnel.

[General Battuta]

It's a political statement. He thinks something in this thread involves political correctness sohe's just going to lash out at it without thought.

Anyway, I'm still not sure what to do about this. I want to reduce my chances of being entangled in one of these incidents again. And for better or worse the entire website is colored by Goob's opinions, whether or not he's just one person.

[Woolie Wool]

Well, to be frank, his opinions are progressive and enlightened compared to what ShadowGorrath has said to me.

[General Battuta]

That's certainly fair. In both cases, however, the opinions are forcing us to reconsider our relationship with said individual.

[Spoon]

Sooo drama over?
Lock or move to general discussion instead of general freespace discussion? 

[Mongoose]

This thread is still bugging the hell out of me for any number of reasons, most of which I doubt I'll be able to verbalize.  Battuta, I never meant to suggest by my previous post (which was borne mostly out of utter frustration at seeing what this thread had become) that I could dictate what reactions you should or shouldn't be having at any particular time; I hope you'll give me enough credit to recognize that I don't view myself as the Arbiter of All Human Emotions.  However, my lack of understanding about what spurred all of this on in the first place still remains, and I don't think it's something I could clear up on my own.  Hell, for all I know, listening to some degree of explanation might not do anything useful either, as it may be tied to completely-different personal mindsets.

(And while I agree that one can split one's concern between different issues, I do feel like keeping the relative severity and immediacy of each in mind can only be a good thing.  I also have to wonder about just how far one can spread one's attention before too much focus is lost on a particular issue, but maybe that's a YMMV situation.)

The other thing that's niggling at me is your reaction to Goober's comment about his feelings regarding Rian's last post.  Color me confused, but I don't follow how Goober's use of what may be construed as a "buzzword" necessitates some over-arching commentary on Rian's gender, or why it would engender a response of "sympathy."  To be perfectly honest, her post left me with somewhat of a raised eyebrow as well, but it certainly had nothing to do with whether or not she was female.  (Hell, from where I sit at my desk, she may as well be a member of the mysterious Fifth Internet Gender for all I know.)  I mean...this is the Internet, and if you've been here long enough, you know how it generally works.  You will get insulted, you will get belittled, and you will have get in someone get in your face about something inane.  Pretty much the only choices you have are to either throw in the towel and head off, or else give as good as you get where you can and shrug your shoulders at the rest.  And maybe it's just me, but the first option doesn't seem to net you much, since you're letting a few people's idiocy dictate the loss of what is potentially a large amount of personal enjoyment.

Like I said at the start, Battuta, I think much of my problem with all of this stems from ideological differences, differences that even a significant amount of dialogue might not do much to bridge.  It's fairly clear that both you and Rian place a great deal of value on certain sociological concepts and apply them in your daily lives.  In contrast, even when I do think about said concepts (which is very rarely), I place little stock in them, and I feel no worse off for having done so.  What you may view as a significant issue to be addressed I'll probably wind up overlooking entirely.  Where that leaves everyone in the end, I don't know.  What I do know is that I sincerely hope that you don't allow one string of posts by one person in one thread negatively color years of involvement with a community.  No one gains anything by throwing that all away, but we all lose a great deal.

(And just to throw it out there, I'd have no qualms about seeing this locked, but I'll defer to you to determine if there's any merit left in keeping it open.)

[General Battuta]

You place no stock in them because you don't have to. You don't work in a profession where a significant percentage of your workload is burned off by the need to combat sexism. Women in graduate physics have been studied extensively, and we have data demonstrating that they do more work but receive less recognition than their male counterparts. On a broader social level, you do not understand what it is like to be a woman on the Internet, where your worth is characterized by certain very specific features which are not those by which men are evaluated.

Sexism doesn't matter to you because it doesn't affect you. You don't have to give a ****.

Rian, on the other hand, either has to ignore it or remove it. Given how massively busy she is (political science, physics, and creative writing programs simultaneously, not to mention her athletics and the litmag she runs) she has zero time to waste fighting assholes on the Internet.

Yet her time on HLP has been characterized by something you do not understand: this is a corrosive, misogynistic environment, in the way that most all-male environments are. You cannot recognize that in the way she can. At some point she has to make a choice as to whether the minimal benefits of her time here are worth the constant sidelong attacks.

(You've seen the cluster****s in GenDisc when, for example, America or religion are targeted by backhanded criticism. Now imagine something far more constant, pervasive, and accepted, and with far fewer people who give a **** about stopping it.)

If she chooses not to tolerate it any longer, that's her prerogative. You have no reason to accuse her of emotionality or irrationality about it. I was there when she made her decision, and it was carefully considered and not remotely hysterical.

You don't get it, but what's more troubling is that you don't get that you don't get it. You think you can be neutral on the topic, but 'neutrality' is a position of its own, and when that neutrality regards a problematic status quo, then that neutrality is problematic.

So yeah, I would gain something by leaving, the same thing Rian did: a reprieve from the need to attempt to fix what is essentially an unfixable problem, and from the need to put up with problematic behavior from people who do not understand why it is problematic.

Remember, I am a scientist and I work in this field. My opinions on the topic are rooted in data and research. You can find all the politically motivated critiques you want, but in the end, what matters to me is data.

[Snail]

Intolerance sucks!

[General Battuta]

And, again, it's not like Rian gives a crap. She didn't ragequit. She shrugged, made her parting shot, and left. This is hardly a big deal to her. The costs of participating in this community just outweighed the benefits, and the reason for that was because she felt the community leadership was not one she could comfortably work with.

When you put up with this crap for long enough you get used to it, and you know when you're not going to get anything but grief out of it. That's not a lesson that I've learned as well.

[Snail]

What's happened to HLP? Seriously?

[Spoon]

I'm always suprised at how much Mongoose and I seem to think alike.
When Mongoose posts something, I just don't have too anymore 

[Snail]

HLP has gone downhill recently. Someone's definitely been putting something in the water. Or everyone's just been eating some really bad sushi.

[General Battuta]

I'm going to split this useless **** out if it does not stop.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do.

I recently had a reasonable, rational conversation on the topic of gender with TrashMan. Meanwhile I'm going to have to beat off the MS+ individuals here with a stick. I feel like everything has undergone a bizarre inversion.

[Sushi]

HLP has gone downhill recently. Someone's definitely been putting something in the water. Or everyone's just been eating some really bad sushi.

Wait, what?

This thread needs lightening up.

[Snail]

I'm going to split this useless **** out if it does not stop.

I'm still trying to figure out what to do.

I recently had a reasonable, rational conversation on the topic of gender with TrashMan. Meanwhile I'm going to have to beat off the MS+ individuals here with a stick. I feel like everything has undergone a bizarre inversion.

Hey I didn't say anything!

[Mongoose]

This is getting flat-out ridiculous.

Do you even see what you're doing, Battuta?  Really see it?  Someone makes an even-handed, in-good-faith post to try to figure out where to go from here...and you **** all over them.  I don't really appreciate that. Not at all.  If this is your idea of engendering sympathy or understanding, you've got another thing coming.

I "don't get that I don't get it"?  What the ****?  How does dishing out that level of inanity help me, or anyone for that matter?  It seems like you've done little but stand on a pedestal and pontificate about all of this instead of engaging in an honest-to-God back-and-forth.  We're all normal human beings in here; let's discuss it as such.  And if we can't do that, to hell with discussion.

You want some real, grounded advice?  You're never going to change the hearts and minds of the masses.  It doesn't work like that, least of all around here.  Either you stick it out until society starts swinging toward whatever end it is you want, or you go hole up in a cabin in the woods somewhere.  I really don't care either way.  But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and have **** flung in my pace for...actually, I don't even know what the **** it's for.  For daring to be born male?

Oh, and here's a general word toward you, or Rian, or whoever.  I'm part of a group of online friends that's split about 50/50 between males and females, if the females don't have the flat-out majority.  The females in this group are "women on the Internet"...and you know what?  They do just fine.  They can more than hold their own when things get sexually-charged; hell, a few of them can dish it out far better than any of us males can.  They're a very diverse group of people, and yet they manage just fine without wailing or gnashing of teeth.  So what makes Rian's case so unique?  Why can these other people hack it in this sort of environment when she can't?  

I know women on the Internet.  I had good female friends at school in the hard sciences.  I've talked to both at length for years.  So don't speak down to me and treat me like I'm a member of the ignorant head-up-my-ass caste who has no concept of struggle or ingrained prejudice or whatever-the-hell.

Bottom line?  The world is a ****ing awful place, and we all take different types and degrees of **** from it.  But you know what most of us do?  We deal with it.  So really, your wringing of hands is lost on me.

Yes, I am pissed.  And you want to know why?  Because I greatly respect you as an individual, and right now, I have someone I respect giving me **** when there wasn't an ounce of negative intent behind what I said.  So just tell me: what is it you want to hear me say?  Because I apparently sure as hell can't figure it out on my own.

[General Battuta]

Thank you, Mongoose, you've helped me clarify my position. Apparently my earlier concern that I was simply disruptive is correct. It is clear that I cannot express myself clearly enough to avoid reactions like yours. I am disappointed in myself for being unable to present my case in a way that you could understand or that avoided personal affront.

I am hurt by the fact that this turned into an emotional discussion about general ideological issues. I wish I had presented my points better so that you would have been able to understand them instead of being threatened by them.

Please refer to this post for a summary of my concerns,  some of which you actually echoed.

I will contact an administrator about removing my moderator status. I will make a decision on whether to complete my obligations to Blue Planet in the near future.