Life In 19x19

we should have gender in our profile.
i am curious how many female member in the forum.

I disagree. There is enough pressure on the few women go players already, and it's not like they're hiding, anyway. You can always start a poll for gender in this thread, if you want.

Magicwand wrote:we should have gender in our profile.
i am curious how many female member in the forum.

There is nothing stopping you from putting it in your profile.

DrStraw wrote:There is nothing stopping you from putting it in your profile.

LOL!

Magicwand wrote:we should have gender in our profile.
i am curious how many female member in the forum.

Why? Does it matter? On KGS sometimes, it's really weird if someone says they're a female, and tons of people start saying, "really? you're a girl?" as if they'd never met girls or women before.

There are a few here, but there's no need for them to have a gold star in their profile.

Magicwand wrote:i am curious how many female member in the forum.

0

Araban wrote:

Magicwand wrote:i am curious how many female member in the forum.

0

This is not funny on several levels.

First, it is close enough to true to be pretty sad, not funny

Second, it ignores real contributions from the few female members we do have - I feel like maybe I should not call them out, but we did have four pretty active female contributors on GoDiscussions and I think three of them have made the transition here.

Third...well, we will leave it at two.

This is the iNterNeTZ, what do you expect

HKA wrote:

Araban wrote:

Magicwand wrote:i am curious how many female member in the forum.

0

This is not funny on several levels.

...

Third...

That was the funny one.

HKA wrote:

Araban wrote:

Magicwand wrote:i am curious how many female member in the forum.

0

This is not funny on several levels.

First, it is close enough to true to be pretty sad, not funny

Second, it ignores real contributions from the few female members we do have - I feel like maybe I should not call them out, but we did have four pretty active female contributors on GoDiscussions and I think three of them have made the transition here.

Third...well, we will leave it at two.

As usual, HKA does feminism right. (Calling him a feminist may make him growl; it has in the past. Tough: Yes, you are. I trust - at risk of being political inappropriately - that everyone else on the forum is too.)

On the one hand, I'm sure that Magicwand is asking for the "right" reasons - I think it's important for us to know how few women there are among us, and to think about it, and to try to work out why it is and how we can change it. But on the other hand, sometimes the amount of attention it results in is hard to cope with, and unfortunately sometimes the nature of that attention is really, really counter-productive, so I have a lot of sympathy for those women players who prefer to not draw attention to their gender. (I first started using Simpkin as a nick for exactly that reason; I've "come out" as myself, since, but for a while, not making it clear I was female made life a lot easier.)

I keep a record of assorted facts about BGA tournaments, including the gender ratios at them. The proportion of women at tournaments, on average, has risen from around 10% a decade ago to 12%-14% now. I wish I knew why any of the data I collect is so, so that I could work out how to change things ...

Amazing how typing the message out without seeing each others face makes these discussions awkward so easily, isn't it? Enough reason for me to just pretend that people are gender neutral on the interwebs - this kind of conversation only "works" in real life

HKA wrote:

Araban wrote:

Magicwand wrote:i am curious how many female member in the forum.

0

This is not funny on several levels.

First, it is close enough to true to be pretty sad, not funny

Second, it ignores real contributions from the few female members we do have - I feel like maybe I should not call them out, but we did have four pretty active female contributors on GoDiscussions and I think three of them have made the transition here.

Third...well, we will leave it at two.

Hehe, it seems this is twice now my sense of humor missed the mark . However, I don't feel there is a need for me to clarify to anyone who read my last post that there is, in fact, more than 0 female members on this board.

simpkin wrote:... I think it's important for us to know how few women there are among us, and to think about it, and to try to work out why it is and how we can change it...

Why should we have a goal of categorizing people? There are two categories of people that we should care about: those who play go and those who do not.

Otherwise, if we continue down this path, what's next?

"I think it's important for us to know how few Afro-americans there are among us, and to think about it, and to try to work out why it is and how we can change it."

"I think it's important for us to know how few Finns there are among us, and to think about it, and to try to work out why it is and how we can change it."

I propose that the ratio be made more equitable by having every female member create 50 different accounts.

I think what she means is, if women feel unwelcome to play the game, maybe there is something we and others are doing that makes them feel unwelcome. Certainly, we should make everyone want to play go. But in response to what you said, Joaz, I think we should make sure everyone feels equally welcome.

And of course the (almost absurd) extension of your argument is "I think it's important for us to know how few Westerners there are playing go, and to think about it, and to try to work out why it is and how we can change it."

I hate the 'lolgurl' internet thing, and insofar as it creates a hostile environment for female go players, think it affects our game's community adversely. I don't know how to help it however, as part of it is just twelve-year-old boys being stupid (Seemingly one of the great constants in life).

There's no reason for people to have to show their gender, because anonymity is a reasonable way to avoid that potential unpleasantness. I mean, we all know I'm a dinosaur, so I speak from a serious minority. However, I see nothing wrong in someone (particularly a woman) saying 'Man, statistically few women play the game. Is there a reason?'