Are you somehow surprised by the fact that young men use the anonymous space of the internet to let out their inner jackass?

Pretty much everybody has either chronic or acute cranial-rectal inversion syndrome. Only most women have the good sense to keep it to themselves.

I hate that this behaviour still happens and that this is even an issue in 2008. Is it the Diggnation demographic? Unfortunately, it usually only takes one comment like this to start the avalanche.

Yes, this behavior does happen across the internet, but Digg users are notoriously known as a bunch of geeks and nerds who all still live in their mother's basements. I would hardly consider Digg a representative sample of the common internet user. I am an IT developer and I know loads of Digg users; they are all immature and socially under-developed boys. They all have an air about them as a self-prescribed lords of bloggers and masters of internet opinion.

The two best possible reactions to sexist behavior like this?

Men: Please keep publicly scorning it! As soon as it's no longer "cool" to behave like a caveman, people will think twice before jumping on the sexist bandwagon...

Women: As they say, the best revenge is living well, so don't let the cavemen get under your skin, just give them a brief pitying laugh and then knock 'em dead with your success!

I think some of this is actually driven by some of the women in the business. I cringed at the idea of your list thinking at least some of them would be on it, but they weren't. I think quite a few other women contribute to the problem by accepting and befriending these girls, which is fine but women can't do this and then be upset that nobody gives them respect. I didn't have any trouble getting on VC radar, attracting angels and have never experienced sexism. Once in a while, guys will hit on me but again, I think it's all about how you carry yourself and conduct your work in the market.

I almost hate to bring this up, because I am a fan of the show, but I was expecting you to tie the responses you got to the not too veiled sexism of Diggnation itself. Is it possible that the tenor of the show colors the comments on the site (or at least partially self-selects the participants who will reply?

Are you serious when you wrote this : "Racism may be off the map for now, but the US, just like everywhere else in the world has a long way to go. For one thing, the country is still rife with sexism." It's mindboggling that you'd believe that electing Obama somehow ended racism in this country? On the contrary bigotry is becoming more calcified along the die-hards.

I whole-heartedly agree with your assessment and frustrations here. I produce a podcast on men's issues and we are exploring the core issues that make men who they are. I believe the anonymity of internet communities is providing a venue for these guys to act out on latent and unresolved issues from their early childhood. Issues that have become obstacles to their further development as adults or young-adults.

It is not that these men are sexist because of some intellectual decision they made about their own superiority. They are expressing sexism as projection of feelings of inadequacy and perceived unmet desire.

My work is dedicated to helping these men dig down through this pain and discover who they really are. From that place, sexism and many other pathologies dissolves in favor of genuine, authentic relating with other humans.

Here is a link to an episode we did with a leader in Rite-of-passage work, on of the key omissions that can lead to this type of behavior. http://is.gd/72fN

Thank you for calling attention to this publicly. Awareness is the first step towards solution.

casey

Saabira, the phenomenon you're describing is disgusting, really, and sad, and the fact that it's commonplace is a reason to talk about it, not to pretend it doesn't exist, as some have suggested.

I don't know that there's an "answer," but I'm glad you are encouraging the conversation.

Thanks for posting this Saabira. I like the idea of quoting and sourcing and "outing" the guys who make those comments. It is also really helpful to pay attention to and support other women in tech. I really appreciated your article!

To the commenters who think that it will fix things to dismiss Digg users as specially immature, I have to disagree. They aren't, they're all around and work with us and we have to deal with that mindset. I think it's often meant as showing off for an audience of other men.

I enjoyed your article and thought it was well done. You must also consider that the demographics of Digg users. About 500 actually digged the article, and I would assume that there are many more that read this article from Digg.com but never dugg the article. The number of sexist comments looks to be about 30 or less. So comparing the number of bad comments to people who dugg and read the article the ratio looks small. This article gives the impression that most digg users are sexist. It will be always be a challenge to change the way men think, but with determination that ratio of good comments can always be improved.

First off, I'd like to express how honored I am to be on this list and thank Saabira and Fast Company for putting this post together. Many of the women included are personal heroes and role models of mine. I imagine this is true for many other men and women as well.

There are other influential women I would love to see honored in this way, but I figure there will be more lists and at some point they will all be profiled. Women represent a large portion of the online consumer world and having a female perspective will only help to create better products for this segment of the market. In my opinion, anything we can do to encourage women to join the tech sector is positive for the industry and for consumers.

As for the comments on Digg, thank you for bringing this up as a discussion. Digg, like many other sites, supports anonymity and unfortunately some people enjoy making anonymous comments that are hurtful. The problem I frequently see is that people with a positive view point are less motivated to comment. The best thing to do is what you have done - raise awareness. This caused me to go on Digg and bury some comments and make some of my own.

If I am attracted to a girl, does that make me a sexist? If I am *really* attracted to a girl, does that make me a sexist? What if I reveal the true nature of my attraction? In polite society, this wouldn't fly. But the internet is anonymous. Which would you rather do: castrate male desires, or enforce polite society everywhere?

>Men offline would never dare claim ownership to the ludicrous statements they so freely spout on the Web.

Yes they would, if they were chatting with their friends.

Also, keep in mind that turning invisible shitting in the middle of a tuxedo party is *fun* (at least for guys like me). It's like streaking, except you can't get caught.

* * *

It seems possible to me that women don't actually have a harder time than men in attracting VCs. It may be that when they fail, they just attribute the cause of their failure differently. To make a convincing argument, you'd have to compare similar scenarios where the only difference was the gender of the founder. For example, do lone-wolf male founders have trouble getting funding? Betcha they do.

Anyway, if I was a VC, I'd probably be slightly *more* likely to fund women, just because they're determined enough to be there. In the long run, non-sexist VCs will do better, assuming women really are as good as their male counterparts and there are enough women entrepreneurs out there.

I submit that newlines should be allowed inside of comments.

I think - or I hope - that these comments are a mix of true sexism and people with an absurd sense of humor.
For a lot of us sexism is – just like homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism – completely unthinkable. It is something to make fun of, and comments like these can be dropped just to get a "reaction". The problem is that the fine nuances often are lost in written form…

I find the tone of this article very sexist, and there are other generalizations on here that are downright ignorant. Where to begin?

"Where are all these people in real life? Do they just never leave their holes, I mean homes?"

I have been a Digg user for a few years. I use it as a place to find many articles from many different sources in one central location. I rarely comment unless an article really impressed me. I'm not some basement dwelling troll and I do not like the association.

"The comfortable anonymity offered by the Web allows people, in this case men, to say whatever it is they actually think deep down."

You're assuming its men. You don't know the posters of any of those comments as anything other than a screen name. They could be women making jokes, punk kids (boys, not men) running at the mouths, or maybe even just trolls sitting in their basements trying to stir crap up. And don't kid yourself, there are pleanty of women trolls out there, and this article plays into exactly what trolls try to accomplish.

"Men offline would never dare claim ownership to the ludicrous statements they so freely spout on the Web."

I wouldn't claim ownership? Really? You don't know me personally, so how can you even dare to say that I, let alone all men would not claim ownership to what we 'spout' on the Web?

Before you go accusing all the men on the Internet, or at least the ones over at Digg, of being sexist, you might want to look in the mirror. But that's right, you can't be sexist because you're a woman. See, I keep forgetting the rules. You can only be sexist if you're male, racist if you're white, and a biggot if you're Christian.

On a completely different note, good list by the way. I don't agree with all your choices, but no list can be perfect for everyone that reads it.

I always find articles like this interesting for various reasons. I would like to ask, why did you guys not do the "The Most Influential People in Web 2.0". Why was it necessary to exclude men from this list? I submit that your article is sexist, by choosing to recognize women and not men. I believe you are seeing peoples reactions to that. It's kind of hypocritical is it not?

Saabira I'd like to address the concerns you laid out in the first few paragraphs of this article. I'd like to first mention that I understand the topic of my post does not actually address the core issue your article addresses, however many of your commenting readers have brought it up. Unless I blearily glossed over a point or comment (it's 3:45 AM) I don't think that anyone has brought up the issue of forum trolls. The New York Times ran in interesting, in depth, article on what it is that drives this type of person. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&pagewant...) For anyone unfamiliar with "trolls", or uninterested in reading a pretty lengthy article on their motives, I'll try to provide a brief explanation. A forum troll makes it his/her mission to seek out whatever it is that makes you tick and do what they can to screw with it. Whatever it is that you present yourself as being secure about, they make it their job to make you feel insecure. So as far as digg responses go there are two possible things at play here, other than outright sexism The first being the issue of trolls, and the second being one of the parts of the online culture that is a haven for trolls. In many posting forums people might post a topic and many of the responses will be a pop culture reference. How offensive the comment may be on any level is irrelevant to the poster. It's funny on some level to themselves and their target audience, so it gets posted. I believe that these two issues a far more likely to be the driving force behind aforementioned posts then outright sexism would be. I'm not making excuses for offensive internet behavior. I'm just hoping to add another dimension to the discussion. If you've made it this far thank you for your time.

Before you wrote this, you should familiarize yourself with John Gabriel and his theory. It really explains the reaction you saw quite well: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Digg.com is for locker-room talk. People joke about sex more freely than in same sex company. I've heard things in sewing circles that would make Mae West blush. There are many battles worth fighting in gender relations but getting worked up over toilet wall scrawl is ridiculous and sensationalist. People of delicate sensibility should best not look through the toilet wall.

Digg is sort of a collection of guys all sitting at one massive table in a pub. We're all having a beer, watching the girls as the come in, and making comments. Some of those comments are flattering, but a lot of them aren't. This is what guys do all over the world. Women enjoy gossip and we enjoy deciding if we'd do you or not, and letting our other cavemen know.

So, we're all sitting having our electronic "beers" in our electronic pub and in walks a lady like yourself that wants to talk about a topic that's A) not amusing or particularly well done, B) definitely out of context for the venue you've entered to discuss it, and C) overly critical of the young men who didn't walk into the bar to hear it. You don't walk into a frat party in college to discuss the finer points of water polo, then blame the lack of a positive response on sexism. This site originally was mainly about technology articles if I'm not mistaken. It's only recently become a one stop place for everything under the sun.

Now I'm sure digg has some people who are somewhere between slightly and overtly masochistic, but a lot of that stems from them never having sex. So they take it out on the target of their frustrations to make themselves feel better about their situation. But don't confuse the comment, "I'd hit it," with any form of sexism. It's not sexist for a collection of young, sex-hungry men to collectively comment on how nice your ass, breasts, or figure is.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Baby, I've seen your picture and you ain't no dog. Woof, woof!!!

I really don't think you should take Digg comments anything like as seriously as you just have. Comments on Digg are NOT representative of anything other than a handful of geeks poking fun. You need to consider the context, you REALLY need to consider the context here. As others above have said it's little more than laddish behaviour, and as such you will probably find people WOULD say that kind of thing to your face, it's just gentle humour. If you think it's something more serious then you are delibberately looking for sexism, and you will always find it with that mind set.

Every kind of ism is a subject regularly used for its comedy value, saying things you shouldn't, every comedian that ever lived has used that technique. I dare say plenty of Digg comments are also made purely to get people to Digg their comments, so people will say whatever they think will get them the most positive votes regardless of whether they believe it or not.

Digg aside, I love how because America voted in a black president (half cast really) it means racism is off the agenda. Go go gadget logic.

I am offended by the fact that the writer seems to be basing their opinion of males solely from the comments of one website. That's sexist too.

It's a win lose situation. You criticize digg users for making remarks on this article yet you rely and love them for giving you articles to read on the internet. "They're immature and sexist but I'll read everything they post". "I can't believe this level of sexism still exists today". I'd hate to break this to you but you should look at the content of Sex in the City, Lipstick Jungle, Entourage, or Desperate Housewives. All of the above are responsible for sexism. It's life.

Oh, I get it... you write a sexist article and then get upset when commenters follow suit. I can easily see why you'd get upset.

Now, of course when you write your companion piece "Most Influential Men in Web 2.0", maybe then you'll have something to say. till then your just a hypocrite who singles out a gender. Making you just as sexist as anyone.

No hiding behind a nickname here.

Do you understand humor?

http://www.darkandpink.com/comics/20080325.gif

As a long-time female member of the Digg community, I think that it takes a member of the community to understand where the comments of this sort come from. I know from experience that many of the comments that come off as sexist are either pop-culture references or made in an attempt at humor.

There are no women on the internet. There are no women on Digg. There are no women who are gamers. These are common sentiments, but they are also known as being far from the truth. In many cases, they should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are not belittling to women who are on the internet, on Digg, who game, etc. They are in fact a reinforcement that female stereotypes on the internet, in the technology industries and in various other traditionally male-dominated arenas are being torn down.

I'm sure that there are some who feel threatened by women in highly-visible positions, but I do not believe that they are the majority. Digg has always been a male-dominated website because of the initial focus on technology and the women who participate there have become familiar with the sexist remarks.

This is not to excuse the behavior, but it happens across the board. Very little is off-limits when it comes to the comments section. Non-Americans are mocked for stereotypical behavior (even when they're not exhibiting it), there are offensive and disgusting comments that are racist or anti-semitic or anti-Muslim or sexist and not all of them are reported. Digg is, truly, an equal opportunity offender.

The tricky part is navigating the waters. As exhibited by the comments in this article, many people, when accused of being some form of bigot will make the case that the accuser is bigoted for making the statement in the first place. This leads to a certain level of comfort among those making bigoted remarks. You accuse Digg of being sexist, Digg replies that having focused on women is sexist in itself and therefore sexist comments are justified. This happens in every case of bigotry on Digg. It's almost a given.

All that said, I must make the point that the men on Digg say the same level of disgusting things to EACH OTHER on a regular basis. It's not specific to gender or race or religion. There is a measure of derision against almost everyone, sometimes for no clear reason at all. The old Digg meme that "Digg users don't have girlfriends" is still found as a reply to almost every comment that contains "my girlfriend".

Welcome to the internet, where women are assumed not to exist.

Sounds like somebody has a little sand in her vagina...

I feel so strongly about this article that I actually went through the trouble to create a fake account and fire up my speech recognition software (I'm disabled and it's a huge hassle to use) so that I can reply.

The sad thing is, your entire post about Digg's sexism is full of sexism. Sexism is not just a one-way thing; for instance, there's been a trend in advertising for years that's sexist against men: completely stupid men being shepherded around by smart women. Oh, those men, where would they be without us? If a single commercial in that vein was released with the roles swapped, a hell storm would descend.

That hell storm should descend. In both cases. Not just for the women.

You've made a number of assumptions about the gender of the commenters based solely upon their comments. You have heard of people with different sexual orientations than straight, haven't you? And also, not that I'm defending that style of humor, but I've known a few females who would say things like that. Attributing negative comments only to men with no evidence is just about as sexist as "do her, do her, etc."

Sexism does exist and is a problem. It is a greater problem for women. However, possessing female genitals doesn't entitle you to be sexist against men anymore than the reverse.

And to all the commenters... about how Digg users are notorious geeks who never left their mom's basement... etc. I rank your comments at about the same level as the ones cited from Digg. Not only are they sexist but they are also classist and stereotyping. I hardly see how making comments like that helps to solve anything. Perhaps you commenters may be women who are frustrated with your treatment by men -- that doesn't excuse you. Nothing does. Especially since I am a male "Digg user" and seem to have a much more thorough education about gender issues than pretty much anyone else here.

As I said above, sexism is a problem, but posts and comments like this only contribute to it. There are bigger problems, like glass ceilings and domestic violence (which, while more commonly committed by men against women, is also committed against men a great deal too, and sexism is only one component of the topic).

So, when you're all done being ignorant, sexist and elitist, maybe you can do something to actually help, like writing that article about women in Web 2.0, or helping out at a local women's shelter, or educating your coworkers, or doing pretty much anything other than making negative, pointless comments.

get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich
if theres anything that can fuel sexism, its a self-righteous feminist.

Sexism Sexism sexism. PLEASE!!!

The fact is that digg is a predominantly male dominated social bookmarking site because this is the only place they are allowed a measure of control of their own lives.

If you wrote about any 20 successful people, unless they have "geek cred" they're getting ROASTED! It's what we geeks do to feel better about ourself.

I'm sure you didn't think YOU were sexist when you wrote about the top 20 WOMEN in Net 2.0, but you did purposefully go out of your way to exclude any male influence.

Whining about what goes on in Digg Comments is about as sensible as making fun of the women from your native country because they DIDN'T escape their persecution.

You're not to the top 20 Women of Net 2.0's peers on Digg. You're talking to their underlings. Show me a single place outside Apple where underlings cheer for the success of the people over them.

We're just pissed because the majority of us don't have a crutch like "You're discriminating against me because I'm a (women), or (black), or, (gay), or (fat)!"

Trying being a journalist and looking at the situation impartially, instead of a being a feminist and looking to prove how "bad" men are.

We know were bad. A truly independent, and strong woman would just chuckle at our immaturity and move on.

By whining that you didn't get the response to your article that you want... you just lowered yourself down to our level as one of the few powerless dork "chicks" in an infinite see of powerless dork "sausage".

First of all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your knee-jerk "journalistic" response to Digg.com user comments.

Second I would ask that any journalist research something before they write a knee-jerk response. Ms. Chaudhuri, what you read on Digg obviously hurt you and for that I empathize with you. However the internet does not tolerate ignorance on any level within any community, especially ignorance towards net-humor.

Eventually everyone gets called out, now its your turn.

http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

You waste our time. Many of the jokes seen and written on the internet allude or reference ridiculous stunts pulled by corporations, politicians and other noteworthy organizations and individuals. Many sites like Digg become famous for their satirical allusions to real world every day monotonous bullshit. Some jokes take on a life and meaning of their own within the net.

Before lashing out with a knee jerk joke of a journalistic piece maybe a journalist should research the issue -- the world does not fit neatly into nice categorical squares and circles -- I apologize for the torrent of cliché but the world exists in shades of grey.

Maybe before attacking net users for being closet misogynists you should first ask yourself how many openly misogynistic slags call this world home? That might act as a good starting point for your next piece on Sexism and the Globalizing Economy. Until the real world stops committing acts of utter malarky internet humor will always live an eclectic, eccentric and dynamic lifestyle which most people will never fully understand -- nor should they.

~ John Doe

pseudonym: Noun
a fictitious name, esp. one used by an author. Often used to avoid unnecessary immature knee jerk reactions to literary pieces.

how bout most influentia "people" in Web 2.0. But then there probably wouldn't be any women in that list. But somehow it's our fault that they wouldn't be

@Vag Rat: Unless one of them could invent an internet sandwich.

While I don't dispute that the comments were juvenile, I would consider them sexual not sexist. Plus, most of them were an attempt at humor, not an intentional attempt to put women down.

I think there is a big difference between the two. You could have avoided about half of those "sexist" comments by simply omitting the photos of the people you were talking about.

It's completely natural for a guy (or girl) to size up a potential mate within a few seconds of seeing them. By including photos you automatically invited many digg members to do just that. Plus, women do the exact same thing, it's just that culturally they are far less likely to spout their opinion publicly (in the women's lockerroom is another story, many of my female friends have confirmed that women are as foul mouthed if not more so when only in the company of women.)

The only comment pointed out in your article that I would possibly concede as sexist is the one from smallchaz. However even in that case, I'm inclined to believe that it was just a failed attempt at humor.

Finally, simply making a list that only focuses on women and not both women and men is sexist. i.e.

"10 most influential women in web 2.0" = sexist
"10 most influential people in web 2.0" = not sexist
"5 most influential women and 5 most influential men in web 2.0" = marginally sexist

PS Go look up the acronym DFTT

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that your upset about sexist comments when one of your members of your list runs a site like "Hot-or-not"? I hate to point it out but it does not get more sexist than that. Add to this fact that she gets people to pay and you can just imagine the "girls-gone-wild" crowd that site has as members.

Honestly, I think everyone here needs to lighten up. While I agree that these views are harmful if true, 3 of those comments were from a "family guy" episode. A few others were references to other pop culture. People on Digg are just looking to top each other with a funnier or more vulgar comment...we're talking 18-30ish males here people. Lastly, if you don't like the comments, DONT READ THEM!!! I'm on websites all the time that talk about Obama being a Muslim or Mccain being a nazi. I choose to read the articles and not the comments. If comments like those bother you, I suggest you do the same.

Eric Cartman, Amen to that! I guess women are too "smart" to realize we just think it's funny, not that we really are discriminating them. You can't tell me that women to talk trash and make fun of men. they just don't all go post their comments on the internet

Man your web-page is SLOW!!

Secondly, I love the irony, that in an article about sexism, you list the quotes that deserved your ire (perhaps justifiably so) while attributing them all to men! I just registered, and gender wasn't even asked, so how do you justify the assumption that all the users making "sexist" responses were men?

When you said, "The comfortable anonymity offered by the Web allows people, in this case men, to say whatever it is they actually think deep down." I guess you were including yourself as well...