Are Flutherites becoming more aggressive?

WHAT?! MORE AGGRESSIVE?! how DARE you call us that!!

haha, just kidding with you. :)

I think things seem more aggressive because of the election. It was HUGE for everyone. Politics can bring out fiery tempers in everyone, regardless of who you are rooting for. Since politics is def playing more of a role in people’s lives right now (Obama’s still new in office, the bailout, economy worries) then yes, people are going to be debating about it on fluther and elsewhere.

I think it’s cool though. I love Fluther discussions. :) Even when I’m totally wrong.

Yes, very much so. I’m glad someone else noticed it too.

I feel that I’m somewhat hostile at times, but I don’t have a temper. I’m not going to waste my time being angry at something someone says on the Internet.

I don’t know if it would be considered aggressive, but I have noticed a lot of Jellies are less tolerant of other peoples opinions.

@TaoSan Considering that the overwhelming majority of Fluther appears to consist of non-Republicans, I am not sure that I am feeling the same vibe.

I would actually like to see more balance on here and less “me too” comments….w/out acrimony, of course.

@Snoopy

True, most people here are non-Republicans.

however, I’m a Republican, and I still feel like I’m able to express myself, even if people don’t agree always. I just need to support my thoughts.

@seekingwolf I am a Republican as well. I feel that I am able to express my views too….

I would just like to see a wider variety of political viewpoints from other jellies.

@all

but that’s exactly what I mean. Despite a non- or even anti-Republican majority, even hardcore republicans were given the chance to express their opinion some months ago.

Answers would start like, I respect your opinion, but….....

Nowadays even likeminded folks display open hostility in trivial threads.

Forget that I mentioned “Republican” that was just to illustrate the trend.

@Snoopy

Yeah I agree…that would be nice.
I wish I could get some of the college republicans to join fluther and even things out…they are hardcore! haha.

Unfortunately, none of them are really into computers…or online communities. Oh well, their loss.

@omfgTALIjustIMDu

a) I’m glad I’m not the only one noticing it

b) Your username just made me realize how glad I am they implemented the @XYZ scroll-down menu :)

I wasn’t part of the fluther collective <sad face> before this week so I can’t say very much on the change in aggression over time. However, I can speak for myself: I personally see no reason to be hostile when speaking to people over the internet. Sometimes I am quite sarcastic, but I never intend it to come across as hostile.

@TaoSan, :)

@Baloo72, welcome!

It comes and goes.

@tinyfaery

It shall then henceforth be known as the Fluther PMS cycle :)

@omfgTALIjustIMDu Thanks!

@Baloo72

Yeah, welcome. don’t take us too serious, we’re PMSing :)

I have noticed some very personal attacks flying here and there lately. There have been some heated debates, but I didn’t feel that people were necessarily being hostile. I think the increased tension might just be related to rising stress levels with the whole economy being in an alarming state and with so many people out of work or worrying about their livelihoods.

I agree with tinyfaery. This has seemed to occur in cycles during my time on Fluther, which is only ten months.

In the interest of dampening aggression, I am ignoring the PMS comments. Anyone for lunar cycles? Bicycles? Motorcycles? Or since the medium is aquatic, how about El Ninos?

Tsunamis?

It is cyclical. I’ve been on an even shorter time than Marina, and I’ve seen it come and go at least three times. Don’t stress too much about it…this too shall pass.

In the spirit of the post I’ll retract the PMS then ;o)

…they’re wAvEs Of HoStiLiTy…

One thing we might want to bear in mind is that sometimes when people who know each other pretty well josh around and tease one another, it can sound like sniping or quarreling to others. Especially when the joshing is coupled with in-joke references, which are really fun for those who are in but can be both bewildering and excluding to others, some folks can easily misunderstand what’s being said.

A second is that sarcasm can sound mean and biting even when it isn’t meant to be. Sometimes not even cheery little emoticons can smile away the sting.

A third thought is that in an environment like this, where people address one another across every kind of cultural, societal, educational, and age boundary you can imagine, something that sounds fine in one context is downright antagonistic in another. If we don’t know whether we have common ground with others, we ought to be a bit careful. Also the maturity level of some members means that they just don’t govern their impulses well, nor do they have very good judgment about the sensibilities of others. In fact, some don’t even seem to be aware that others are sentient beings like themselves.

Despite all this, I don’t happen to think that there is an especially elevated level of hostility at present. It all still seems very cordial to me, the occasional mistimed wisecrack or goad notwithstanding.

@Jeruba
“If we don’t know whether we have common ground with others, we ought to be a bit careful.”

You’re saying that, but I don’t see why. The worst that can happen is that the person whose sensibilities are offended is put off.

My notion of Fluther is that it’s a place for open discussion, not a place to let sensibilities get in the way of things.

@Jeruba

nah, I didn’t really mean subtleties up to interpretation, but outright condescending responses or very obvious frustration-motivated passive aggression.

Believe me, I’m rather blunt, so if I notice it as such, it really is something to that effect.

Yeah what’s with the PMS comments, pretty passive/agressive AND sexist.

@galileogirl

Why? Is PMS not a recognized medical condition?

Ah! I should have used PMDD!!!

@Vinifera7, thanks for your point. Let me restate that as an interest in being careful about assumptions. I never used the word “offended,” a complaint that I find offensive more often than not because it is so commonly used for socially and politically coercive or extortionist purposes.

I don’t have any problem with differences of opinion or outspoken language. But one may still care about being understood and not misunderstood. That’s where the context and the common ground are important. Some of us don’t bother about it, but others may want to be conscious of how different assumptions affect communication. Also, some may not mind abrading others’ sensibilities, but they want to know when they’re doing it and not do it unwittingly and without cause.

@TaoSan, “outright condescending responses or very obvious frustration-motivated passive aggression,” yes, I agree, we do see that. And I don’t think they come and go. In my observation they seem to be fairly steady. So I would still say no to your question. I don’t see members becoming more aggressive. I see about the same level I’ve seen since I joined. That’s only a three-month history, but I’ve been here every day.

@Jeruba
nicely put

@Vinifera7

My notion of Fluther is that it’s a place for open discussion, not a place to let sensibilities get in the way of things.

I’m not talking about sensibilities, I’m talking about responding as if someone was an idiot because they still offer a different opinion after a third or fourth post. As I mentioned before, I’m not talking subtleties here, but “hostility”

Medical “condition”-what does that have to do with being aggressive any more than a naturally higher testostarone level?

There’s definitely an attitude on the part of some that could be stated as “How can they be intelligent and not agree with me?” and “If I explain it (and hammer it) enough times and they still disagree, they must be really stupid.” I would have to say, though, that that is an attitude abroad in the world and by no means peculiar to Fluther.

@galileogirl

We can agree though that it is a cyclical phase of heightened irritability, aggression and/or emotional instability, yes? I’d gladly have used a male equivalent for PCs sake, but unfortunately all our hormonal outrages lack the essential “cycle”, and would therefore have been “off-thread”.

I just fail to see where my analogy had any aspect of passive aggression or even sexism. That’s like calling someone a racist for making an analogy to sickle cell disease.

@Jeruba and @TaoSan
Points well taken.

@TaoSan and @galileogirl
It’s not passive aggressive or sexist if it’s a valid analogy. It’s not as if TaoSan said that the perceivably increased aggressivity of Flutherites is like being in a room full of women. That wouldn’t make sense as TaoSan was trying to construct an analogy to a cyclic period, and it would be rather sexist as well.

Finally I feel understood :) GRIN!

The problem is that PMS may be a condition experienced by a minority of women but it is used by many to dismiss women’s ability to have strong opinions by implying hormones instead of intelligence, a strong sense of right and wrong or ethics are responsible for the expression of beliefs. It is also a way of saying we can’t be responsible for our behavior and are therefore not as responsible as men.

This stereotype should be as offensive to women as any racial stereotype.

PMS has a negative connotation, sickle cell anemia does not. Most women I know and have known do not feel as if they experience PMS, and if they did, their intellectual capacity to recognize the condition would preclude their acting out negatively based upon it. So, to blame aggressive or irritability and most offensive of all, emotional instability on it certainly seems sexist.

I think the aggression is born of more people speaking in absolutes and insisting their take on a situation is only way to go.

@galileogirl and @rooeytoo

So, to blame aggressive or irritability and most offensive of all, emotional instability on it certainly seems sexist

So I guess all the doctors that have come to define the “syndrome” as such were all sexists then.

Thank you for proving my point made in the OQ

Sorry, I don’t work with connotations, they are entirely subjective. I’m straight dictionary here. If someone wants to interpret anything into that, I can’t help that.

TaoSan fires up iTunes and scrolls to “Why can’t we be friends?” by War

PS
I was actually thinking about really painful cramps that make you really really cranky, if you read anything about “belief-systems being overturned and responsible thinking….whatever….whatever” then you’re really over-interpreting.

100 times more women are irritable because they are dismissed as having a ‘syndrome’ or are thought to be unable to control themselves because of hormones than actually feel the effects of PMS.

The only point you have is the one under your hat.

Based on the big deal you make of the fact that I have dared to mention the unspeakable recurring cramps, one could really be under the impression you have a history with the term ;)

Listen kiddo, every woman hears that putdown all their lives. If you want to get personal, I am 62 so that should tell you something about any possibility of my having PMS lol

Touche!

Lurve to that :)

And you weren’t talking about cramps you were talking about aggressiveness

Look, since I’ve been driven up the wall a couple of times I do my research before I post.

Irritability, aggressiveness, emotional instability, are listed as possible symptoms in Routledge’s medical dictionary. Pair that with a cyclical recurrence and it perfectly offered itself as an analogy to the quip “it comes and goes”. Yes I was talking aggressiveness, you wouldn’t want to be around me when I have cramps, they make me very aggressive.
If that is still offensive to some, then take it out on the guys that made it a “syndrom”.

Ya’ll really really interpreted way too much into it.

And last but not least, I was raised in Europe, we don’t do the whole PMS this, PMS that thing, we don’t even have a “syndrome” for it.

Appeased?

“Ya’ll really really interpreted way too much into it.” That pretty much encapsulates the entire attitude. You use it as a throw-away line, a meaningless light-hearted quip, but it is the stuff that women have to battle against all their lives. Hillary didn’t make it into the White House and I would wager that part of the reason why is the PMS theory. Also let us remember as you quote a medical source that at one time medical science used leeches and other methods which are now considered quite passe. So it’s in the dictionary this year but not necessarily next.

This whole discussion is making me aggressive and emotionally unstable and I don’t even have PMS, what could that possibly mean????? Maybe that women just like men can get annoyed for reasons that have nothing to do with their reproductive systems or hormones.

This comment is not combative in any way. I just want to clarify some reasons why your nonchalant equating of a Fluther aggressive streak with the occurence of a woman shedding her uterus lining is seen as problematic. As you are not a woman but I am, I figure you might benefit from this insight of mine.

First off, cramps aren’t necessarily why women become aggressive. The symptoms you listed are caused more by the rapid change in hormones (which is how the brain tells the uterus to start shedding the lining) that goes on than by the pain of the cramping itself; although cramp pain should never be discredited as a source of these symptoms because damn, it hurts like a beech sometimes, and if we’re in pain, we’re more likely to be dicks to each other, regardless of how we got the pain.

Menstruation in general has been an issue of contention and oppression over time. Many religions have clauses that forbid having sex while a woman is having her period. Women were often seen as unclean and a contaminant while menstruating, and were sometimes treated like lepers. Even in today’s times, an herbalist friend of my parents’ claimed that we couldn’t harvest clover while having our periods for some reason having to do with “the mood of the plant”. To be clear, none of this has any basis in science whatsoever.

Nowadays, menstruation doesn’t have as much of a negative connotation. Instead, PMS takes the place. Many women have been needlessly discredited simply because “it’s that time of the month”. As a woman, I find it very offensive when someone tries to deduce that my behaviour is a cause of my uterus lining being shed, especially considering that by my own choices and actions I have a period once each three months, thus I am only truly exhibiting symptoms of PMS for a very small window. Simply put, it’s sexist by definition, as men cannot exhibit PMS as they do not have a uterus and ovaries and and whatever other parts are needed. And I do not appreciate being treated in a sexist manner, nor do many other women. This is why we speak up when people nonchalantly use PMS as a be-all-end-all reason or justification – it’s completely bullshit and such discrimination needs to be put to a stop, immediately.

And once more, this is not an attack on you. I’m not an idiot, I know you didn’t say it with such loaded meaning, nor did you discriminate against me or were meaningfully sexist in any way. But just because you didn’t say it with such a loaded meaning, does not mean the loaded meaning isn’t there – which is why many women take great offense when PMS is brought up in a non-medical manner, such as you did.

Ya’ll really really interpreted way too much into it.

I sincerely hope that you read my comment and understand that no, we do not read way too much into it at all, and that furthermore, such a dismissive comment is seen as offensive, as rooeytoo has expressed.

Look at it this way, TaoSan. What it every time you made any comment just a bit off color or just a bit sexual and your coworkers and anyone around you said publicly “Oh, he’s thinking with the little head”.

Now imagine that this happens year after year after year, with people that you don’t even know making an assumption about you and commenting publicly because you have a penis. And what if your comment was entirely accurate and based on something you strongly believe, but is denigrated because “you’re thinking with the little head”? And when you vehemently support your comment, you get “There, see, I told you he was thinking with the little head. Look how emotional he is.” (Clearly, I’m stretching the correlation here, but I’m trying to make a point.)

Can you concede that over time, you would resent having your intellect, you opinions, and your comments negated because “you have a penis”?

Thanks syz. I’m going to try that.

@TaoSan Accepting what you said about your intent when you made the PMS refererence, you are probably blown away by the intensity of the response that my sisters have so eloquently expressed.

As they have explained, for modern women because of the prejudicial way it is thrown around: in relationships (What woman among us has not heard from some troglodyte, “You must be on the rag, huh?”) or, even worse, in the workplace or other public setting as an explanation for why a woman has expressed a particular opinion or emotion, women find this false and prejudicial presumption offensive. Sadly, as the women in this thread have said, it is too often when it is a strong opinion or unpopular opinion, which is demeaned and discounted because of this ersatz ‘cause.’

You said that you “do your research” so I am counting on the fact that you may be surprised at the response you have gotten, but you will be willing as an intelligent guy to be open to the idea that there is more here than you knew.

At one point, you made a reference to the medical profession: “So I guess all the doctors that have come to define the “syndrome” as such were all sexists then.”

In point of fact, as most women are all too sadly aware, throughout history and lingering even in today’s medical establishment, women have been dismissed and regarded with prejudice by what, historically, was a largely male-dominated field.

I will provide a reference (within this article are links to many scholarly tomes on this subject) and a few excerpts in hopes that you can see that the reaction you received here has been with cause.

Early History
“The medical establishment’s opinion of women throughout Western history has been particularly wanting. . .Reproductive ability proved mysterious and threatening to early doctors, who thought it a source of evil. . . .Albertus Magnus, in his Middle Age work Secrets of Women, claimed that ‘women are venomous during the time of their flowers [periods] and so very dangerous that they poison beasts with their glance and little children in their cots, sully and stain mirrors, and on some occasions those men who lie with them in carnal intercourse are made leprous.’”

Then we move along to the quaint notion of “hysteria.”
“Unfortunately for the doctors, they also considered the maternal organ to be so potent in affecting behavior that women might be carried away in any number of passions. So while it was understood that sexual feelings were “unwomanly” or “pathological”, women were still subject to the overwhelming control of their uteri, and occasionally had their free wills usurped by the fertile tissues. To check for this “problem”, doctors would fondle the privies, watching carefully for a reaction yet ready to defend themselves lest they awaken the wild, passionate, uncontrollable succubus within (it was important to determine if the uterus was influencing behavior, but it might take several assistants to pry a lust-crazed patient off you). Physician Robert Brudenell Carter wrote in his 1853 tome On the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria,

… no one who has realized the amount of moral evil wrought in girls… whose prurient desires have been increased by Indian hemp and partially gratified by medical manipulations can deny that the remedy is worse than the disease. I have… seen young unmarried women… asking every medical practitioner… to institute an examination of the sexual organs.

That a sizeable proportion of Dr. Carter’s patients got stoned and were so hard up that they begged for pelvic exams strikes this author as improbable. Perhaps being a randy 25 years old and giddy with the recent distinction of being called “doctor”, he might have been indulging in a flight of fancy.

Suggested ‘treatment’?

“Meanwhile, despite these skeptical reports in the journals, most doctors felt that it was necessary to treat hysteria rather than accommodate women’s emotional needs. The historian Carrol Smith-Rosenberg, as quoted by Ehrenreich and English, says “doctors recommended suffocating hysterical women until their fits stopped, beating them across the face and body with wet towels, and embarrassing them in front of family and friends.”

Late 19th and 20th Century
Enter Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who decided that hysteria really was a mental problem and spent a lot of his time convincing these same plighted women to just suck it up and accept their joyless roles in Western middle-class society. This paved the way for extensive abuse of valium by similarly subjugated women in the 1950s, and was only recently corrected by day care centers which allowed them to go out and have careers. The next challenge is to stop children from going hysterical. Ritalin?

So we and you, I hope, can see why we come by our offense honestly. Peace.

Menstruation is serious business. Cramps for me can get really bad. :(

Unless a guy has been shot/stabbed in the lower abdomen in his life, he really doesn’t understand female cramps and shouldn’t say anything about the matter.

I swear I will never in my life mention those three letters again :o

Thank you for taking the time to write such insightful posts, I feel very humbled.

@TaoSan It was our pleasure. LOL

@galileogirl

I figured ;)

@TaoSan – for a second there, I thought you might have needed the Fluther Relocation Program. Glad to see you survived!

@cak

TaoSan doesn’t dare to answer

@TaoSan – smart man!

He must be thinking with the big head.

WHY YOU LITTLE————!!!!
Kidding. I pulled a lame joke like @seekingwolf .
I think that when I started out, it was fine. Then, a big savage month, now it is in the middle.

I think several people have been enlightened and Tao gave us that opportunity. He should be let off the hook.

You’re right, @galileogirl, I should have resisted that wisecrack. He sounds genuinely contrite. I wish some other folks would take their brute-force enlightenment so graciously.

@TaoSan, my apologies.

Excellent work, ladies!

@TaoSan Good job on your part as well :)

I try ^^ :)

@Jeruba

Thx ^^

Wow, the testosterone really seemed to be flowing in this thread!! Ha ha!! I love Fluther and the ebb and flow cycles. It’s the spice of life!!

Hmm, I wonder if the word testy is a derivative of testosterone?

I have to admit, I get a kick out of watching a guy tuck tail and run when he mentions PMS and the girls get their claws out. This was very entertaining!!

@scamp What is it exactly are you trying to stir up for your entertainment? WE are not amused by s#%t-kickers, or do you need a lesson in ‘tail-tucking’

@galileogirl exactly what lesson do you think you can teach me? It certainly would not be one of tolerance or etiquette. I’m laughing even harder now.

@galileogirl: She wasn’t trying to stir anything up. She only pointed out that it’s an entertaining read when someone says something controversial and is verbally beaten.

Which, incidentally, I thought was a little much, since he clearly explained what he meant. I don’t think that the verbal beating was warranted. This is why I really don’t like feminism, no matter what end of the spectrum it’s on. I think every woman who’s been with a man (and probably a lot who haven’t) has said “He’s thinking with the little head” and not had at least two people write dissertations with medical references from ages past to explain why men think about sex so much and why they shouldn’t joke about a man “thinking with the little head” because they’re hardwired to reproduce, yadda yadda yadda. Not that anybody needs to know about my cycles, but I’ll tell you something… if I’m being really bitchy and aggressive, my boyfriend will sometimes ask me if it’s that time again. I’ll yell at him for being a jerk. And then you know what happens? Within 24 hours, without fail, 100% of the time, I will discover that lo and behold, it is that time of the month. Yeesh.

Wow, a group of intelligent, well spoken women explain to a young male how insulting it is to be generalized and categorized into a stereotypical caricature of a female, and then one female comes along and dismisses the entire discussion because she 100% of the time gets bitchy before her time of the month. Makes me sad. Also for me personally, my feelings have nothing to do with feminism, I am an equalist not a feminist, I do not want special treatment such as maternity pay, or to play 3 sets of tennis instead of 5 in grand slams, I want equal pay for equal work and I want equal opportunities period. No quotas, if I can do the job, I want an equal chance to get it.

And @galileogirl – I can decide what amuses me, WE does not have to do it for me.

how insulting it is to be generalized and categorized into a stereotypical caricature of a female

And who did that, if you please?

I feel a lot of repressed anger and aggression there, which in turn again, answers my original question.

The thing is this, if there is a plight, and there is some exchange about it that will come to some sort of amenable resolution, but despite that solution it just keeps getting pushed and pushed and exaggerated and exaggerated, there is certainly a risk that one might think there is no pleasing there. Thus, the one “feeling offended” may very well fuel that which he/she so scorns.

Three letters had you go through excursions spanning overturned belief-systems, medieval medicine up to the present-day White House. I don’t know, but you may not be aware of the “comic” turn this has taken.

And may I mention, by “generalizing me into the caricature of a man” that runs around spurting blahblah PMS here, blurch no humping PMS there, waaaah you stupid PMS duh for acknowledging the mere existence of the unspeakable, puts you right into the drawer you want to put me in.

I think it’s time to pull the mirror out, sexism goes both ways, you know.

And lastly, I had my wife read over this thread, just to cross-check me for gender-PC. I can guarantee you, you do not want to hear what she had to say.

And the next time you see a man going through a “male-specific” situation, say something territorial in the work space, and you feel the need to make one of them “generalizing” testosterone piss contest comments I always have to hear from every oh-so-supressed-for-decades-poor-misunderstood-underappreciated being trolling my office, think twice. It all goes both ways.

This is the year 2009, where I’m from, getting paid less than others means you didn’t negotiate right. If you want equality, then drop the big ace card of constantly pulling the “being discriminated and belittled”. Have a sitdown with my last boss. She’d eat us all alive and made 500k last year.

Yeesh

You just had to top it off….

Tao San must be thinking with his little head.

s***t

I forgot to add the @rooeytoo whom this was exclusively addressed to, sorry

If you want exclusive try the PM feature.

@tinyfaery

Who let you out?

@rooeytoo: All I’m saying is that I don’t think it was necessary for every female within “earshot” to come out of the woodwork to verbally beat TaoSan about what he said. Sure, it’s true for me, and that’s why the comment didn’t bother me. BUT, I also challenge each and every one of the women who joined in to deny, with full honesty, that they’ve never made a comment about a man thinking with his nether regions or something similar. I’d be absolutely shocked if any one of them could say something of that nature has never once escaped their lips. That is what makes it feminism, and not “equalism”.

Edit: I also have to add, that what I think is sad, is that my opinion is considered “sad” because I don’t agree with all the well-spoken women. Do only well-spoken women’s opinions get to be heard? Or do the rest of us actually gulp get to exercise our free speech?

@TaoSan – you apparently haven’t learned anything from the dialogue because you are still attributing anger and aggression with PMS

@poofandmook – I don’t think any female verbally abused him, I think they responded based on discrimination they have experienced due to this sort of sexist and narrow minded thinking. I personally never heard the phrase little head so I have never used it. Besides the characteristics attributed to testosterone in males are all considered desirable whereas the same characteristics when applied to females are derogatory. An aggressive woman is bitchy, a man ambitious, etc. etc. etc. And there can never be equality as long as this type of thinking is perpetuated. That is what is sad.

@rooeytoo: No single female did. It was a group effort.

Whatever. I’ll be the first to admit that I often think in terms of a male rather than a female, which I am. Still, I don’t understand what the hubbub is about.

@rooeytoo

I’m sorry, but I take real-life examples over a hypothesized thread that in a placative manner decries a wrong-doing I honestly haven’t even witnessed in my lifetime. I don’t know, maybe I pick my surroundings well, I simple don’t frequent circles where sexism could even be an issue.

I would like to make you aware of the lack of perspective you display.

- My wife gets it badly, gets very angry and aggressive
– My sister gets it badly, gets angry and aggressive
– My aforementioned tough boss used to get it badly and would even announce it loudly in a “I’m PMSing, my reports and my low-fat latte better be ready!” (no kidding)

Your line of arguing starts to appear to me as if nothing but the complete and full denial of the existence of PMS as a medical syndrom would suffice to appease you. That is called radical feminism (which has pretty much died out because even the most militant ones noticed it is more harming to the cause than anything).

That mindset has been there before, and it doesn’t matter if it is male/female, white/colored or Arian/Jew, the demand to deny the existence of that which is, is highly questionable.

Hey, I’m a man, I think with my goods every now and then, I can deal with that. Isn’t it time woman would just live with it and be woman? So what, someone feels cranky a couple days out of the month, some plumber makes a stupid joke of it in a bar, that’s life.

Of the aforementioned 3 women, I admire my former boss the most. Why? Because she knew who she is, she was secure about herself and had no quarrels about being herself. So maybe (in your particular line of argumentation) insecurity is the real trouble here. (Speculating of course).

I am a very pragmatic person, and yes, I have learned a lesson in this thread thanks to some adamant ladies that knew how to reason even in a temper flare. What you are putting out though, is that nothing is learned if the existence of the unspeakable isn’t utterly denied.

That’s certainly going to help the cause of real gender-equality, don’t you think?

@TaoSan -Well goodness gracious, who am I to argue with your personal experience with three women! I guess that proves it for sure, all women get the vapors and become difficult to deal with when they are approaching menses. Yep you are right, I will just have to live with it and men such as you who continue to make cute little comments about it.
Now I have noticed that you usually like to have the last word, so go ahead with your next treatise. I am finished. Cheers.

sure a last word, I love it

There were two women in this thread alone that did not subscribe to your worldview, so it’s five, not three

Lets put that under the carpet as well

Thank you for providing sexists like me with the ammo we need ;)

I must be PMSing. That’s the ONLY thing that could explain it.

Who let the troll loose…..again?

@tinyfaery
Oh my godd…

Wow! Way to go ladies for proving a theory! Anyone who thinks women are bitchy should read this thread. It would serve as proof that we are not…or will it??

I am bitchy, when I feel the need to be, but that in no way implies that all women are bitchy. And therein lies the problem, women and men have no inherent qualities; there is no phrase that begins with “women are” or “men are” that is factual.

Some flutherite once asked the question “What is Your Soapbox?” Well, this is mine. There are many aspects of “typical female behavior I abhor, and I would ever want anyone to lump me into such categories. I would think that men would have the same reaction.

I guess someone fed the troll.

@tinyfaery

Dang’it!

I thought the “Don’t Feed The Troll” signs were big enough ;)