Your links were about social media, which is known to be the place where all kinds of unpleasantness seems to congregate and proliferate. This isn't social media, this is a forum, about audio science and...reviews and stuff. The same can be said of 90% of audiophile hangouts.
Oh my goodness, I don't know what to say, I feel like a broken record (Sal will be pleased, we know how much he hates vinyl!) - is it happening here? I am not omnipotent, I can't patrol the entire internet looking for infractions. You say it happens everywhere, but I don't see it here, is it happening here?
Perhaps it isn't happening everywhere...perhaps other audio forums are more similar to this one, than they are different - isn't that a possibility?
Relating to what I mentioned before:
I have been a member of, or reader of, tons of different audiophile forums. Even now, a look at my audiophile forum bookmarks, shows at least 20 different forums that I peruse or participate in. I just haven't seen what I would recognize as a trend of anti-women or misogynistic behaviour.
Again...I could be somewhat blind to this. But the issue of female audiophiles, as well as "WAF," often comes up and if there is ever an opportunity for male chauvinism or stereotypes, it seems most likely to occur in those specific threads. Do you get some occasional jokes or quips involved? Of course. The subject of Male vs Female characteristics has been the meat of comedy forever! But getting too worked up about that doesn't seem helpful, and there is usually plenty of people putting some thought in to the subject as well. Go to any reddit thread in which women are asked similar male vs female characteristics questions and you'll see a similar tenor from female replies - everything from quips, jokes, generalizations, honest attempts at insight etc. Nobody truly passes The Purity Test on this.
So on a level of realistic expectations....
For anyone worried about people making "generalizations"....what could one expect, realistically? The whole subject invites it. We KNOW that there IS a generalization to be observed: vastly fewer women in the audio hobby and industry. It is natural, and understandable, to think about what possible generalizations would explain THAT generalization? What trend in human nature might explain that trend? After all, it wouldn't seem to be explicable on the level of just individual preferences. The exceptions don't explain the rule (the observation of the trend). If you find a few women in an audio group, it doesn't explain why there are so few of them, which is what you are trying to explain!
And note that in trying to explain why so few women participate or seem interested, some have invoked data on....men's behaviour toward women! That is... invoking GENERALIZATIONS...GENERAL TRENDS among men - sexist behaviour! - that purportedly help explain why women are put off male dominated hobbies, like audio. So you don't get away without generalizations in any case! You've just produced your own set of generalizations about men!
Which is perfectly fine. Invoke generalizations to explain general trends. So long as there is evidence, fair play. But let's not shame people for bringing up generalizations...which they and we understand to be such, admitting of course of exceptions...in attempts to try to understand the trend we see in the lack of female audiophiles.
As to what could put females off about audio forums, anyone can of course decide what annoys them too much. But I do wonder about portraying women as withering
flowers who can't take any humour, or the occasional instances of some men being somewhat clumsy in trying to understand the scenario. Is that really an insurmountable barrier, like a woman can't just speak up and say "Hi folks, female audiophile here...this is why I'm in to it" (I actually saw a recent thread just like that asking about any female prog rock fans. Plenty of women responded, while admitting they were in a minority). You can see all over the internet, on other forums, on twitter, social media, that women can give as well as they can take, and aren't just withering flowers who can't prevail over some level of male naivete/clumsiness. (As I said, I don't see any strong tenor of outright misogyny on audio forums).
So I am at least suspicious that the "boys club" aspect of audio plays that big a role in turning off females from being interested in the hobby. I'm not saying women can't be turned off from a boys club scenario or conversation in of itself, and likewise for men who may not feel immediately comfortable budging in to a largely female dominated conversation. We often end up segregated to some degree even on topics both sexes enjoy. BUT....in terms of expaining the female deficit, if in fact many females were anything like as open to the hobby as men, I'd think we'd more likely see this expressed in something like women's-audiophile groups, or some empirical indication that women DO really like audio gear, like guys do. They'd find a way, I'd think, to pursue that passion and wouldn't be so invisible. So...at least for me...the mystery remains as to the exact explanation why they don't seem to be there.
And if any of the above is just some clumsy, naive male reasoning, I'm certainly open to that and I hope people can approach it with some charity, rather than virtue signalling and eye rolling.
