Comment by jacobtracey
11 years ago
IRC is gender neutral.
You made a foolish assumption. Not everyone does that, or even cares in the slightest what a users gender/age/cultural background/disability/whatever is.
All you have done is reveal your own past personal prejudice. Congratulations on getting over that.
> IRC is gender neutral.
So you read about someone's experience proving otherwise (I have had similar experiences on IRC, getting treated shitty for being a woman) and you stated something else in an authoritarian fashion, without feeling the slightest need to prove your point. How... interesting.
Saying his personal experience proves anything about IRC as a medium is a stretch.
No requirement exists to give your gender or a name that may reveal a gender. That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'.
If someone makes assumptions about other people it's their own issue, it has nothing to do with what is essentially an anonymous medium. I really didn't think it needed 'proving'.
Of course you didn't think that. I think your confusion stems from the fact that, when speaking about IRC, one speaks also about the community that uses IRC -- without the people using IRC, it would be useless, since its aim is to make communication possible. I'm a bit surprised this wasn't taken into account.
> That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'.
No, because women receive shit and most users are considered male by default.
> Saying his personal experience proves anything about IRC as a medium is a stretch.
His experiences are not the only ones that exist. At least a couple female IRC users I know carefully chose handles that do not reveal their gender, because they wanted to spare themselves all the negative comments they received before the handle change.
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(Yes, of course, I'm not claiming that this is a flaw of IRC, or anybody's fault but mine.)