Ever Get irritated with being mistaken for male online?

[Ms_Angel_D]

I have had this happen to more times then I can count, I'll be posting in a forum and what not, and it seems to never fail, someone always ends up referring to me as a guy in some manner or another, am I alone in this or does it happen to other woman as well?

Is it because I'm a bit knowledgeable in computers and enjoy using them, or possibly because I like games (even the occasional FPS, BF2 Anyone?) I just get irritated with it sometimes.

Opinions, thoughts?

Angel

[SpiffyBalak]

Male is just the default gender online.

I don't really mind it, because I get into lots of funny situations like this:

Salt: I mean, awesome you're the super king with all the great power and great responsibility.
Salt: I have women and money.
SpiffyBalak: what if you prefer men?
Salt: Well, SpiffyBalak.
Salt: That's something you have to come to terms with.
Salt: I dont know if the shoddy battle chat is the right place, though.
SpiffyBalak: I'm a girl
Salt: Oh.
shanx: <_<
shanx: ...

[elizabeth]

Opinions, thoughts?

One of my favorite articles about this subject is here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...teh-Intarweb-1

Brilliant

I've also blogged about encountering the issue in tech channels, which is always fun for stirring up lively comment discussion:

http://princessleia2.livejournal.com/316456.html

...and proves I have a lot of wicked cool, supportive friends.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Thanks for the links Elizabeth I enjoyed reading both.

Stuff like this always reminds me of that scene from GI Jane where the black guy is telling her a story and the white dude is like I'm glad we've come a long way from that and the black dude is like "have we really?" I mean why do people have such a hard time believing that chick can be good at and enjoy techy stuff to..it's quite sad really.....

found this http://xkcd.com/322/ check it out..lol

[elizabeth]

found this http://xkcd.com/322/ check it out..lol

In the #ubuntu-women IRC channel on irc.freenode.net (info about IRC here) we call that comic "Rule #322"

[diwas]

beauty doesnt have brains...but i guess this post umm disobeys the new-tonnes of laws.

hehe.

[cprofitt]

I have run several clans in games (World of Warcraft and Guild Wars are the most recent) and I have never seen the &quot;you must show us a picture&quot; question... but my groups always tend to be mature married folks who are not hunting for mates. I think part of the issue, for a male perspective, is that they want to 'hit' on the female (gamer guys are not notorious for being suave in real live) and do not want to later be burned that the 'girl' was really a dude. Silly, but most guys under the age of 18 are... well... um silly when it comes to girls. Interesting conversation though... sorry to hear you girls go through this all. As a father of two girls (one boy as well) I will have to help guide my daughters through this. The oldest (eight) has been on-line for four years. She has an email account and a blog.

[polkadotteapot]

I'm glad this is actually being discussed. It has been well documented that outspoken female bloggers tend to get substantially more abuse than their male counterparts. And even trying to discuss the fact seemt to warrant more abuse. I'll tey and dig out the examples but I remember some particularly strong vitriol from the Guardian comments section regarding this.

This forum appears to be exemplary so far but on many others, especially non technical ones, when I talk about things I know the reaction does differ depending in my moniker and whether the assumption is I am male or female.

Most of my life I've had the 'Isn't that a man's job?' thrown at me for beer, engineering, and physics. You'll find a 'Why?' in response and a few technical musings nip that in the bud.

Sometimes, sadly, I don't mind the male assumption as often the female assumption is derogatory, and hard to change unless they listen to you because of the former.

[Nixie Pixel]

I'm glad this is actually being discussed. It has been well documented that outspoken female bloggers tend to get substantially more abuse than their male counterparts. And even trying to discuss the fact seemt to warrant more abuse. I'll tey and dig out the examples but I remember some particularly strong vitriol from the Guardian comments section regarding this.

Tell me about it. My blog posts seem to do reasonably well (probably because I have most of the worst swear words flagged via anti-spam), but on Youtube it is a different story. For instance, I tried to open a discussion about a game called "Rapelay," that had recently been banned by Amazon, and some of the mildest comments were calling for me to be raped. Sometimes the children online can be pretty cruel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azK9PJB5rxk

[cprofitt]

You gals must 'hate' girls like the one that works with AtheneWins (Tania).

Do you make your videos with Ubuntu Nixie Pixel?