Even in real life, I've noticed that when the proportion of men is high enough and one person present in a conversation starts throwing in casual sexism/racism (normally masquerading as jokes) it tends to suck everyone else in. The conversation quickly collapses to fairly uninteresting lowest-common-denominator nonsense. Some people are essentially poison to group conversations because for whatever reason they're unable to stop themselves constantly making crass comments.
It's actually quite remarkable. Recent changes in my life have meant that I've often found myself in a pub with one of these people. Suddenly conversations that I thought I'd grown out of when I was 16 rear their heads again, and every single social event devolves into a pile of misogyny.
Given that Reddit is in many ways a very large conversation with a high proportion of men, the likelyhood of one of them being conversation-poison is much higher.
What we can all do, whether in real life or online, is stand up to it. The best online communities are those that are obscure or very aggressively moderated. If you make it clear that behaviour isn't acceptable, it tends to die out.
> Even in real life, I've noticed that when the proportion of men is high enough[...]
Whoa there, why do you think this behavior is exclusive to men? This can happen in almost any social group targeting an underrepresented/absent demographic.
Everything else you've said I can agree with, but "men in groups by themselves devolve into misogynists" is painting with too fine of a brush.
Giving it further consideration, I'm sure you're right. My comment was really based on my experiences, in particular with misogyny (racism and to a lesser extent homophobia are definitely more taboo where I live). Generally, (but not always) misogyny requires men.
The thrust of my comment though is really that the entire group conversation is often dictated by the lowest common denominator. Generally that person is someone that's realised that saying something offensive will get them more attention from everyone than actually trying to engage in interesting discussion would.
>My comment was really based on my experiences, in particular with misogyny (racism and to a lesser extent homophobia are definitely more taboo where I live)
Of course if you classify everything under the sun as misogyny than it will seem more common. Misogyny has an actual definition, which is the hatred of women. When it is used in cases where there is clearly no such hatred, it devalues the word and makes it meaningless. Thus you can't point out actual misogyny any more, like the boy who cried wolf.
It's actually quite remarkable. Recent changes in my life have meant that I've often found myself in a pub with one of these people. Suddenly conversations that I thought I'd grown out of when I was 16 rear their heads again, and every single social event devolves into a pile of misogyny.
Given that Reddit is in many ways a very large conversation with a high proportion of men, the likelyhood of one of them being conversation-poison is much higher.
What we can all do, whether in real life or online, is stand up to it. The best online communities are those that are obscure or very aggressively moderated. If you make it clear that behaviour isn't acceptable, it tends to die out.