smokingunne wrote:I live by a high standard of morals, those posts are to display how a gender icon would give one an idea how to treat the person on the other side. I like to speak to a lady in the way a lady should be spoken to.
I think the point of many of us would be that we dont want to be spoken to on the basis of our gender. We want you to react to our words, not to who you think might be behind them.
Of course this quickly becomes untenable, as all of us will 'betray' whether we're a guy or a gal (etc) quickly enough through the stories we tell about ourselves. So once you get to know us, you'll know that, too. But there's no reason to know it sooner than that, though, I think.
When I post on Politics, I want people to judge my arguments on the basis of their worth, un-burdened in any way by what or who they think I am. Every info on whether you're young, old, male, female, higher or lower educated, from town or city just tends to cloud the issue, provoking modes of reaction that are tailored to assumptions related to all of that.
I catch myself at it, too, conjuring up mental images of fellow-posters and then catching myself at reacting more mildly, more sharply, more sympathetic or curious or impatient than I would have had if my "mental image" were different. Yeh - 's like with the avatars - <digs up old post> -
nimh wrote:I am avatar-less because I dont want people to relate the views or arguments I express with what they can glean about me from an avatar. Dont want that kind of cross-influence.
Thats cause I find myself greatly, if mostly subliminally, affected by others' avatars. No matter how irrational or unfair that is, and no matter how much I resolve to not do it, I find myself simply reading things differently if I know (b/c of the avatar) that someone is old, young, white, female, silly, romantic, self-important. A post that would have seemed surprisingly thoughtful next to the winking pigeon to its left, suddenly seems annoyingly pompous in juxtaposition with the all-seeing hawk the poster has chosen as self-portrait.
I actually have to correct myself for such instinctive 'contextualisations' all the time, and I dont like that. Hence choosing to want to be judged exclusively on what I write.
Of course the same kind of interference comes up, anyway, when people start relating your carefully wrought post on identity and totalitarianism in Xinjiang with the nonsense you posted in a chat thread on the advantages of juggling puppies rather than bananas ... so back in the day I even had two screennames, to keep those two dimensions apart, as well. But I kept mixing them up ;-).
All thats probably pathetically idealistic - cause its unavoidable, of course, this subconscious tailoring of your tone and message to the "properties" of the other poster. You do it in real life
all the damn time. But thats exactly what is so attractive about virtual communities - that you have that a lot less.
In real life I might not as easily joke with a teenager, argue with an older man, share personal experiences with 50-year olds or, in general, find that I share experiences, opinions or problems with people of a wholly different age group, class/profession, etc. Thats whats so cool about boards - to discover affinities that are not formatted by preset conceptions of oh - thats a professor / teenager / woman - better talk this/that way to him/her, then.
Thanks Eva, Letty and Montana and any others who openly supported me, I appreciate that.
and the only one that I could find that looked as close to what I look life in real life.
