Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women (fivethirtyeight.com)

FiveThirtyEight has an interesting article today which accuses men of sabotaging the online reviews of TV shows aimed at women. The publication cites an example of "Sex and the City", a show which apparently won plenty of awards and ran for many years on TV, getting hammered by males on IMDb. Compared to women, who amounted to 60% of the people who rated the show with an average of 8.1, men gave it a 5.8 rating. It's not an isolated case, FiveThirtyEight says, citing several other instances where the male audience has downvoted shows aimed at women audience. From the article: The shows with the largest proportion of male raters are mostly sports, video game web series, science fiction and cartoons. The programs with the highest proportion of female voters are -- at least the American ones -- mostly from The CW and Freeform, the new name of the network previously called ABC Family. This list is pretty hilarious. Beyond the top 25, shown in the table above, male-dominated shows of note include: "Blue Mountain State" (92 percent male), "Batman: Beyond" (91 percent), "Batman: The Animated Series" (90 percent), "The Shield" (90 percent), "Ballers" (90 percent), "Justice League" (90 percent), and "The League" (88 percent). "Star Trek: Enterprise" is the most male-heavy of the various official live-action Trek enterprises, while "Battlestar Galactica" still managed to grab 15 percent of its ratings from women, which is somewhat shocking. For women, other skewed programming includes "Private Practice" (71 percent female), "Gossip Girl" and "Gilmore Girls" (67 percent each), "Grey's Anatomy" (60 percent), "Scandal" (60 percent), and "One Tree Hill" (59 percent).

Comments

Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[omnichad]

Just because someone's not your intended audience, doesn't mean a review from them isn't fair or valuable. If it was better TV, it might have favorable ratings across the board. And most, if not all TV programming is very pandery and not very quality.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Still - women don't seem to feel the need to go trash-talk shows that are designed to appeal to men. (See the figure entitled: "Men are more likely to give the crappiest rating").

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Sure, as long as you define "universal appeal" as "things that appeal to men."

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tburkhol]

The interesting question is why men seem to go out of their way to review "chick shows" like Sex in the City, but women fail to go out of their way to review "guy shows" like Batman.

Do the number of reviews reflect who controls the remote? Do guys who accidentally watch a chick flick get more angry than women who accidentally watch a guy flick? Are women more susceptible to "If you can't say something nice..."?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[WarJolt]

I agree. First of all online reviews of TV shows are bullshit because it's not a fair sampling of the total audience. Online reviews are also faked all the time. You should be sampling all TV viewers and correlating demographics intelligently with particular shows because you get viewers by filling a niche at the right time. If any real decisions are made by the industry using these numbers I'd be shocked. It's a fluff piece.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ravenscar]

Probably because most men couldn't care less if their significant other watches "The Shield" or "Star Trek" with them. In fact, many would prefer to watch it alone. As such, fewer women are exposed to male targeted shows. On the other hand (and this is, for sure, just an anecdote) it seems like every straight guy in my office is forced to watch "The Bachelor" with their S.O. every week as part of their "quality time" together. Since they're exposed, it seems reasonable that they might also rate the show.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

My girlfriend introduced me to The Shield, you insensitive clod.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[nyet]

Women call in to local news stations to complain about what women more attractive than them are wearing instead.

Demographics.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tom229]

I think you're making wild conclusions with your data. How many women are forced to cuddle on the couch while her husband watches Southpark? I'd be willing to bet not many. I've spent countless hours of my life watching terrible shows like sex and the city to meet imposed requirements of "quality time", and I know I'm not alone. When you already have an idea in your head it's easy to find causes for it isn't it? There's no conspiracy. No one's out to sabotage women's television.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[omnichad]

When deciding to watch a show, I don't see a warning that says "The following program contains content intended for women. Viewer discretion is advised." I decide to watch a show on its own merit. Whether I do or don't like it, I probably wouldn't review it. But for the people that do, a review is just a review. Who is doing the reviewing is almost as telling as what the review says. Aggregating those scores to get a "number" that's supposed to be meaningful is the big mistake.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tomhath]

Why ask for reviews, then question why men are reviewing women's shows? How would you expect to get the opinion of the audience if you exclude half the viewers?

The more interesting question is why more women don't review shows aimed at men.

An even more interesting question is why anyone would bother watching the crap that fills the gaps between commercials anyway?

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

Your girlfriend introduced me to your bed, you oblivious sod.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Pyramid]

Because they're goaded into watching pabulum like, "Sex in the City" whereas most men wouldn't dream of complaining their significant other doesn't watch "Star Trek" with them.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[johnsmithperson123]

And if you get forced to watch it, you give it a poor review. QED.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ShanghaiBill]

The interesting question is why men seem to go out of their way to review "chick shows" like Sex in the City, but women fail to go out of their way to review "guy shows" like Batman.

Because men don't force women to sit and watch guy shows.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why so few shows cater to their preferences.

If women spoke up for what they want more often we'd have less male dominated media.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Cruciform]

Wait, this is Slashdot. Does that mean you imagined watching The Shield? :P

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

The more interesting question is why more women don't review shows aimed at men.

Because people don't review shows they aren't watching. A lot of men say they are sexually blackmailed into watching women's shows. This is the result of sexual blackmail.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ichthus]

Maybe you missed it the first time. He said, "Name a 'show for men' that women wouldn't want to watch too." So, can you?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[HiThere]

FWIW, my wife doesn't like any show with violence in it. So the answer, in her case, is just about any. But she just doesn't watch them, she doesn't review them.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Kartu]

I think the point was that if someone is watching a show she/he doesn't like, he/she is most likely a men.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ProfBooty]

TV viewing skews heavily female. Check out TV by the numbers some time for gender skews for popular shows. Unless its sports, or fox's sunday nite lineup, men don't watch much tv at all.

The following link from 2010 has a breakdown and its pretty sobering.

http://whiskeys-place.blogspot...

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ProfBooty]

TV is female centric. Check out viewing numbers. Men only watch sports and fox's sunday night lineup, just about everything else on network tv heavily skews female by a wide margin.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[jeffmflanagan]

Men don't trash shows meant for women either. Why would we care that some shows are not targeted to us? This is something that reactionary, little-boys with issues do. There's a weird online misogyny movement that constantly freaks out when anything isn't made with them in mind. None of these nuts are men, though some are very old males who never matured into men.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Tablizer]

In short, we are pussy-whipped into watching.

Pussy-whipped males are therefore part of the audience, for good or bad. Deal.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[t1oracle]

Daredevil, Top Shot, American Ninja Warrior, Monster Garage, ESPN 30 for 30 series.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[LWATCDR]

Funny but my wife is a big fan of Justice Leauge and Star Trek, STNG, and DS9.
Of the other shows that men are supposed to like I am not a big fan of cop shows so most of the other shows on the mans list are ones I do not watch. My wife also likes West Wing and CSI. Of the shows that I like that my wife does not it is usually war movies like Midway and documentaries.

When it comes to reviews the simple truth is you get two kinds of people that make the effort to review a show.
1. Those that love the show.
2. Those that hate the show.

It could just be that the shows that most men watch happen to be shows that women don't hate while the shows that a lot of women love are shows that men do hate.
It could also be the age groups involved. Most of the guys sound like younger men while a lot of the women seem to be a good bit older.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[david_thornley]

TFS listed several shows that have a 90% male audience, and none that had a 90% female audience. I wouldn't expect anyone to RTFA, but I thought it was reasonable to RTFS.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Man Show"?

If you ever talk to folks in the business, they will tell you that the largest percentage of TV-viewing audiences at any given time are female, for pretty much any show, and that informs their advertising.

The single biggest exception is The Super Bowl. That's one reason the ads are so expensive there. It isn't necessarily a larger viewing audience, it's a larger [b]MALE[/b] viewing audience, and we're simple souls. It's fairly easy to get us to run out and impulse buy, so Super Bowl ads are a premium.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[gurps_npc]

Uhm, yes they do. They do it all the time. Go on a date and tell a girl that your favorite TV show is Batman Beyond. The article said it skewed heavy to men, and it is a great example.

The difference is that women do it openly and reject men as dating companions for it, while men do it secretly because we don't want to piss off the 'dating goddesses'.

This is not sabotage, it is a simple example of the failure of rating systems.

A single number is useless for most rating systems. A graph is what we need - one that would distantly show multiple peaks. Then you would know that while most dislike a show, those that like it really LOVE it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ceoyoyo]

Doesn't matter. Characterizing one demographic choosing to review a particular set of TV shows as "sabotage" is clickbait sensationalism at best. This is an opportunity for sites like IMDB to detect a gender based split and report it:

"'Sex and the City' received an overall 3.8 stars, but female reviewers rated it 4.7 stars."

Or you could get even more useful: "General Hospital received an overall 1.0 stars but the distribution of ratings is non-normal, suggesting that while most viewers thought it was a waste of airwaves, a small demographic really enjoys the program."

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ceoyoyo]

An even more interesting question is how does does IMDB and/or 538 know the gender of reviewers? The account setup doesn't seem to ask for that information. Maybe they demand it later?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

So, then, it's not that men are more likely to give a crappy review, it's that women (like men) don't review things they don't watch.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[murdocj]

Parent is rated "insightful"???

Does anyone really think enraged men are bothering to downrate "Sex and the City"? Seriously?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tattood]

Aggregating those scores to get a "number" that's supposed to be meaningful is the big mistake.

The problem is that without these numbers, they would not know why a particular show was being rated poorly. If the majority of the shows that cater to women are getting poor reviews, it may be because a large number of men are bringing down the score. Similarly, if fewer women are (poorly) rating "men's" shows, then those shows would have higher ratings (presuming that men are rating them high).

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[omnichad]

Seeing a lot of negative individual scores would tell you that. The fact that it brings down the average for the aggregate number tells you almost nothing at all. That number doesn't factor the value of a review into its weighting.

And what I get from this is that men are responding to the advertising for the show and tuning in. Which is possibly a failure in advertising, if they are attracting people who won't like the show.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

You know, the entire Gamergate movement was predicated on the notion that feminists had no business reviewing games that were geared towards men. "Let them make their own games" was the rallying cry.

You didn't understand gamergate. It started with the exposing of corrupt and biased favorable gaming reviews.

The message you're misstating is actually not that feminists had no business reviewing games, but they had no business trying to enforce their values on game developers as a whole. See the overblown Overwatch "scandal" about Tracer's victory pose.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Idk, you sound pretty upset to me.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Not really; a lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows, while men don't play the same game. That means men get stuck watching crap they don't like while women do not. Men, then, vent by reviewing the crap they have to watch, hoping that their voices will be heard and the experience will improve for them. Women, not being forced into watching men's shows, don't do this.

And yes, if you are going to force me into something, I am going to throw my weight around to make the situation more favorable for me.

Fortunately, my wife and i enjoy the same shows, pretty much across the board, and respect each other enough to not force each other to watch what we don't like, so we don't have that issue. My wife is not most women, though, and I am not most men, so I'm not speaking from personal experience, but simply relaying experiences shared with me by my other married friends. And if you don't want to take my word for it, fine, don't; read the rest of the discussion on this topic for a couple hundred other examples.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[rickb928]

"women don't seem to feel the need to go trash-talk shows that are designed to appeal to men"

Citation please.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Jhon]

Very 'this'. My wife watches TV and she want's me there. I watch TV and she's around maybe yes/maybe no -- not a big deal for me.

Real Housewives of %SOMETOWN% was my squeal point. She's learned to enjoy her quite time in front of the TV alone watching stuff that would make me want to gouge out my eyes.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BCGlorfindel]

You know, the entire Gamergate movement was predicated on the notion that feminists had no business reviewing games that were geared towards men. "Let them make their own games" was the rallying cry.

The whole gamergate thing was predicated on an effort to stop the production of 'male oriented' games. Nobody really cares if reviews are poorly done, that's not exactly gonna be a new thing for entertainment media. The special affront for gamergate was nothing about reviews as you and the article claim, but instead
about SJW's trying to dictate what kind of games should be made.

You just have to look at the outpouring of rage from whiny-ass MRA manbabies regarding the re-boot of Ghostbusters with an all-female cast to see how this mechanism plays out. If it's targeted at men, then men believe they should be the ones to review. If it's targeted at women, then men believe they should be the ones the review. And god forbid a woman should offer an opinion because, "IT'S NOT MEANT FOR YOU". Hell, these embarrassing needledicks have been overwhelming the reviews of Ghostbuster and it hasn't even come out yet.

Fuck these losers. If they got out and met a few human girls in person, they might not be so skeevy that they have time to carpet bomb any show or movie that has women in it. Remember the outrage over the latest Star Wars? How the MRAs were going to boycott? They degrade all of masculinity with their incessant whining.

Sob, sob, other people have different opinions of games and movies than I do and they are expressing those opinions. Stop caring about what other people think and just watch what you enjoy, problem solved. You don't need to go enforcing things on others to get over this first world problem.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[jedidiah]

> You just described the gamer-gate movement. They absolutely go out of their way to review stuff that was not targeted at them.

Or they would show clear bias in their review. They would only consider one type of victim in a violent game and ignore the generally violent nature of the entire game. They apply double standards and take things out of context.

The anti-tv-violence movement in the 80s was the same way.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CaptainLard]

I've spent countless hours of my life watching terrible shows like sex and the city to meet imposed requirements of "quality time", and I know I'm not alone.

And it never occurred to you to come up with an alternative?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Jeeeez, you need to chill out, hun.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Right, we all know that A) women don't watch porn and B) Pornhub is dominated by comments of women saying "this porn is awful!"

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

Well, you can check out TFA for a start.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[torkus]

They don't? I've seen plenty of hate spew from women about TV programming aimed at men.

Frankly this reads like 'invented' news to me. Take something obvious and put a gender spin on it (next week: same story but race!)

I.e. Group X doesn't find something targeted at Group Y appealing. As in...yeah, I could have told you that.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if someone watches a show (forced or otherwise) and reviews it poorly it is now "sabotage"? The hyperbole is astronomical. Can't be just their opinion on the matter... It has to be a contrived conspiracy of "sabotage" of female media?

Just... wow.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[spazzmo]

Must... maintain... delusion...

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Carewolf]

If you don't like those shows why not just communicate that to your partner? If she cares about you she won't force you to do things you hate doing, and will find something mutually enjoyable for "quality time". If she doesn't care and insists on torturing you, maybe it's time to reconsider your relationship.

Sex in the city still rated around 6 among men, so they did like it, just not as much as women. Yet still the headline was that men sabotaged the votes.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[murdocj]

Maybe these men need to find women who enjoy having sex with them? Just a thought.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[UnknownSoldier]

> it seems like every straight guy in my office is forced to watch "The Bachelor" with their S.O. every week as part of their "quality time" together.

I guess they have no balls to stand up for themselves if they feel the need to watch unreality crap like that.

Here is a women's perspective:

1. It Prevents You from Dealing With Your Own Unhealed Emotions.
2. It Makes You Think That Only The Best âoeGet Picked.â
3. It Tells You Itâ(TM)s Up to Someone Else to See Your True Worth.
4. Portrays Love as an Experience of Lack & Scarcity.
5. It Turns Beauty into an Ugly Competitive Sport.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

...imposed requirements of "quality time"

Can you not see how pathetic that is? You are trading your dignity and freedom for feigned affection and sex.

I will never accept the new deal, the legal risks and general indignity of intimate relationships with women today is completely unacceptable to any man with a grain of self respect.

Just say fucking no to this shit. You are better off without a woman in your life today. Guran-fucking-teed.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PIBM]

But then you don`t force your wife to watch those movies / shows, do you ? My wife likes all the series I watch and enjoy watching them truthfully. I don't like some of those that she likes, but she wants to watch them with me anyway. I am certainly not refusing her, but if some people are discussing the show and saying it's good, I'm certainly not preventing myself from trashing their illusions. At least I'm not reviewing shows/movies online, but I can see how that goes for many people.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PIBM]

Why are you expecting us not to tell our other half ? Lets look at an example; we started watching Walking dead a while ago. I did enjoy it initially, but soon grew tired of it. She, on the other hand quite liked it. I told her, but she asked me to still watch it with her since she favors that. I kept going until the end of the fourth season, but could not stand it anymore. So I didn`t join her on the 6th. She did resent me on it even though she understand, and that I had given her about 3.5 extra seasons after mentioning I did no longer want to watch it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tbannist]

Right, "No True Scotsman" = "Insightful" here on slashdot.

If that's what you think Jeff wrote, you have failed to actually understand him.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tnk1]

I don't think it is direct sexual blackmail. It is more like to have sex some females have to be in a certain emotionally close state which a certain ritual like watching her favorite show with her man allows her to get into.

Yeah, it can be a pain in the ass because as men, we generally don't have such a requirement. As long as we're feeling okay, and not completely tired out, things will progress along quickly. Women have emotional and instinctive behaviors which are meant to impede being more direct because they can end up on the short end of the stick with a pregnancy and they will have a higher chance of needing a certain level of security.

So, it probably doesn't help to think of it as blackmail, even though it feels that way. However, if you understand what makes her feel more secure, you may be able to substitute that annoying TV ritual with some other, more acceptable option.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Anonymous Coward]

Given you entirely miss-characterize Gamergate is hardly surprising the rest of your comment is nothing but an uneducated screed.

Seriously, if someone, anyone wants to have an opinion on a move, book, game etc. that is relevant to the proper aspect of that media than nobody will say a damn word about your gender. But if you're complaint is 'this game is sexist because it has scantily clad buxom women in it' than yeah, guess what 'keep your fucking opinion to yourself'. On the other hand if some woman complained that there aren't enough 'scantily clad, ripped men in this game, and I want more of those' than what the hell, I doubt any man would have any problem with this.

The complaints for something like Star Wars, Ghostbusters etc. aren't about putting a woman in a role that was/is considered 'traditionally male' but rather making that woman play the part as IF they were a male, with absolutely no hint of anything that makes women and men different...and you know why? That's because all these types of attempts at 'equality' aren't about 'equality' but 'sameness' and push comes to shove men & women are NOT 'the same', that doesn't mean they aren't 'equal' for things relevant to 'equality'.

Here's one for ya, please explain why the distances of the golf courses in the LPGA are significantly less than courses played in the PGA? It's not like the men & women are competing with each other, why than make the LPGA courses shorter/easier than the exact same course when played by men? If equality for equalities sake was a virtue in and of itself than this difference makes no sense. BUT we KNOW men & women are different and not just in physical strength but emotionally & in their 'character' as well and the latter are NOT due to 'societal pressures' alone.

The point being that if a woman is in a role where they are 'acting like men' in all ways, shape & form than WHY THE FUCK HAVE A WOMAN IN THE ROLE! I have 0 problem with a 'strong woman' (e.g. having the 'force', being a Ghostbuster) but I don't want to see a woman 'playing a man' I want to see a woman playing a 'strong woman'...end of story.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Rockoon]

Men are probably more likely to be coerced into _watching_ things that they dont like, such as Sex in the City.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[UncleTogie]

Probably because most men couldn't care less if their significant other watches "The Shield" or "Star Trek" with them. In fact, many would prefer to watch it alone

Bite your tongue, sirrah. The wife and I watch a lot of Trek together.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CaptnCrud]

......the issue with the new ghostbusters is it looks like poop, and not just normal reboot poop, real 100% USDA diarrhea.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

I think we have a workable theory for this phenomenon. Good grief am I glad I have no need for a cisfemale in my life. I have no idea how you folks put up with cisfemales.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[lymond01]

5: Funny, maybe. But insightful?

Supernatural, SHIELD, Supergirl, anything MMA, that crazy show by Cold Stone Steve Austin where people wrestle over rope, American Ninja Warrior, Game of Thrones(!), Ash vs the Evil Dead...pretty much anything on the SyFy channel...

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Fucking Batman the Animated Series and Justice League the Fucking Animated Series.

Fucking forest for the trees, dude. Hint: They aren't so geeked (double hint, that word) to go see Star Wars as you might think.

The last superhero movie that should, in theory, have appealed to women was Superman Returns which was essentially a Christopher Reeve Superman movie wrapped up in a chick flick, complete with dueling love interests for Lois, and a whole subplot of will Superman figure out and care for his own child? Plus he dies (chick flick requirement) and comes back to life sweetly to give a soliloquy to his sleeping child!

  It probably flopped more for male assholery in word of mouth than female. And as a reward, gents, you got a new movie where Superman learns he must kill sometimes. Sigh.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Right, that's a different, but complimentary, point.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

Maybe these men need to find women who enjoy having sex with them? Just a thought.

Maybe they should - I pointed this out elsethread.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Rockoon]

"If you loved me you would watch Sex and the City with me"

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ncc74656]

Not really; a lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows, while men don't play the same game.

"Watch" often has a rather loose meaning. If you're in the same room with your head buried in an ebook (or even posting to /.) while she's watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians or whatever drek she prefers, that's often good enough. It was for me, at least. :-)

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

I'm looking forward to watching it, but I don't think watching it is worth a $10 ticket and a $5 bag of popcorn. I was annoyed that the token black woman seemed to be nothing more than a walking stereotype in the trailers. Yeah, there are black women like that, but it doesn't take a lot of effort to see that there are also very intelligent black women out there. Even if she was supposed to be a stand-in for Winston Zeddemore, I mean, good gravy! Winston was at least an intelligent and practical man! Why couldn't we have an intelligent and practical woman?!

The other characters, meh, who knows. I also like that they swapped the gender of the receptionist as well. Ought to be interesting, at least if the male receptionist projects the same... er... want to say strength, maybe bitchiness? that Janine did. (I was always intrigued by the budding relationship between Janine and Egon.) If he's just a limp-wristed cuckold mangina it just won't have the same effect.

Yet, here we are! If I don't like it *poof!* There goes my cisfemale privilege! (yet again, grr) Popped like a flimsy soap bubble! No longer an individual! Now I'm an all men oppressor and a bathroom invader!

people like [parent] always tend to rant about the small cocks or similar perceived failings of men you disagree with

Haha, I've noticed the same thing as well. I think it's because they haven't accepted that what they truly desire is to suck a nice big dick. It's even worse than "she's on her period." It's like suggesting that a woman's body isn't the right shape or that she doesn't have the right body weight. It's sexual objectification at its finest.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

You just have to look at the outpouring of rage from whiny-ass MRA manbabies

Hey, you brought your conspiracy theorist back :-) Slashdot's been missing your conspiracy theories.

Let's face it, without people who believe in hoax moon-landings, 911-was-an-inside-job, MRAs-are-babies and a flat earth, there'd be no one for the rest of us to laugh at.

Go on, Mr internet tough-guy - tell us about how those MRAs are hurting your precious feels.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

Actually, I think you don't understand Gamergate because it started with a jilted and angry ex-boyfriend's complaints about his game designer girlfriend's cheating ways. There was an accusation of sex traded for reviews, but there was never any evidence to support the accusation, not even superficially, since there was no such review.

Yep, absolutely no evidence at all.

In practice, that seems to be the same thing, in that most of the GameGaters that I've seen go ballistic over anyone saying anything even the slightest bit negative about their favourite games.

There are extremists in everything unfortunately. I personally don't give a shit how someone reviews a game, as long as it's factual and simply opinion. Trying to make an entire community conform to whiny, lying, bitches however is where I draw the line.

Lets not forget that Depression Quest was barely even a game.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Fwipp]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/N...

Men are the ones doing this. We are talking about what men do. To say "Oh, well, they're not REALLY men because REAL MEN don't do this" is just a transparent attempt by Jeff to distance himself from these men, and serves to distract from the larger point (the behavior of men vs women).

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

Still - women don't seem to feel the need to go trash-talk shows that are designed to appeal to men.

Nope. They only trash-talk games that are designed to appeal to men.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Actually, I'm in the room watching the same show because, as I said:

Fortunately, my wife and i enjoy the same shows, pretty much across the board, and respect each other enough to not force each other to watch what we don't like, so we don't have that issue.

But, again, if I have to endure it, I'm giving my input before, during, and after.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

The complaints for something like Star Wars, Ghostbusters etc. aren't about putting a woman in a role that was/is considered 'traditionally male' but rather making that woman play the part as IF they were a male, with absolutely no hint of anything that makes women and men different...and you know why? That's because all these types of attempts at 'equality' aren't about 'equality' but 'sameness' and push comes to shove men & women are NOT 'the same', that doesn't mean they aren't 'equal' for things relevant to 'equality'.

Yes, fucking thank you. One thing I enjoyed greatly about Xena: Warrior Princess is that Xena wasn't just Hercules with breasts. I don't give a shit whether cisfemale hunnies like it or not. I'm sure that there are plenty of white knights who will insist that Xena is a woman written by men and therefore is invalid. I mean, what the fuck. They can masturbate to the Bechdel test and whatever until their nuts fall off for all I care.

BUT we KNOW men & women are different and not just in physical strength but emotionally & in their 'character' as well and the latter are NOT due to 'societal pressures' alone.

In fact, every now and then I read about the science piling up. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it's not just the hormones. Sure, the hormones have differences of their own (including ease/difficulty at muscle building) that slightly change the perceptions and emotions. There really is a male/female spectrum in the brain independent of hormones (actually I think the last paper I read determined there are 2 axes going on), and people farther to the male side really are different from people farther to the female side.

Men and women are different. It seems like so many people try to say men and women are the same when that position is convenient and that women are special little flowers when that position is convenient.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Uh, I think you replied to the wrong post...

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

What the hell is a cisfemale? It sounds like something that belongs in the female hygiene section of the store.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

Maybe. See ya!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CronoCloud]

If he's just a limp-wristed cuckold mangina it just won't have the same effect.

For a MTF transperson, you're really quite the misogynist. Maybe misogyny is not the right word...perhaps chauvinist is better.

Either way, the way you talk about women sometimes reminds me of some male chauvinists.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

But the reboot of Ghostbusters is a bust. If that trailer represents anything the movie will be it's going to be a train wreck from back to back. Not because of the women or despite of the women but because the effects are stale, the acting is wooden and the only black character is a racist stereotype from hell.

It's not funny, it's not witty, the characters are stale and one dimensional (and the wrong formula on the blackboard is just the icing on the cake), one really has to wonder whether they deliberately made the movie bad so there would at least be some controversy around it and some people would go see it to spite the others.

That's also a way to get people into the cinema, by tricking them into thinking they "make a point", but somehow I'd say that's not how it should be done.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

No thanks on the kisses. I've just simply had it. I don't know where I might more find feminists like you. I keep reading about all the reasons I'm a horrible person because I was assigned the male gender at birth. Not even one fucking chance to get an argument in edgewise that perhaps that wasn't the correct thing to do. Nope, even if I'm as well behaved as a girl, I still get shit on and have things taken away from me because of that damned letter on my paperwork. After all, it wouldn't be fair to the other boys if being as well behaved as a girl earned one the same privileges as a girl.

And yeah, I wouldn't mind a fight to the death with a TERF right now. There is nothing more for me in this life.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

If I don't like it *poof!*

The operative word here is "If", because unlike the pitiful shitstains who are planning the massive boycott of MGTOWs, you'll see the fucking movie before deciding whether or not you like it.

And by the way, it's the same crying manbabies who held the massive boycott of Star Wars, which led to it becoming the biggest money maker of all time.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[sciengin]

The evidence is in the credits of that "game" called depression quest.
There Zoe Quinn explicitly thanks that journalist/lover.

The problem was that he never even published his connection to her when he wrote his article.

Of course that is all besides the point because when that came out, Gamergate did not exist yet. It was only some times later that this hashtag appeared for the first time, around the time where the secret Games Journo Mailing list was exposed by Breitbart, shortly after - on the same day- 14 articles on different gaming news sites were published who all "coincidentally" called gamer culture dead and dying. Only a conspiracy nut would suspect anything but pure honesty at work here, I guess.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

The fact these "guys" reviewed sex in the city at all ills me they were likely to "Snap in a Z formation" and say they "Hated it!" because there were girls and not guys in it..

Entourage is Sex in the City for men.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Or Slashdot's nesting is messed up and I thought you were replying to me. I see now that you were not.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Mhm. That's kind of what I was saying. Women aren't reviewing stuff they aren't watching (and neither are men), while men are reviewing stuff they are watching (and when they don't want to be watching it, they leave a poor review as a result).

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Well fuck crying manbabies then. Was that the same one guy who wanted to boycott Fury Road because *gasp* it had a female protagonist?

Just don't call me fucking sexist because I didn't see it in the theater. I think the last movie I saw in the theater, just because I'm such a big fucking sexist who doesn't watch Sex and the City, was Star Trek into Darkness. Carol Marcus about made me lose my lunch. Probably the only time in my life I'll agree with feminists about something.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PaulRivers10]

Still - women don't seem to feel the need to go trash-talk shows that are designed to appeal to men. (See the figure entitled: "Men are more likely to give the crappiest rating").

Please, you can't go a month without some new article trash talking that woman weren't "depicted" in a way that please the person complaining, or that there weren't enough women, or that it's a "bad" show because it doesn't appeal to women's interests.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PaulRivers10]

The whole gamergate thing was predicated on an effort to stop the production of 'male oriented' games.

Nope. It was started by a man (a misogynist man, at that). A man started making a huge stink because he was dumped by his girlfriend, and accused her of sleeping with everyone to get good reviews for her woman-aimed games. The MRA misogynists all hopped on the band wagon, siding with the lying ex, and woman came to rally for the game designer who was slandered. Are you sure we are talking about the same gamergate?

That's funny, the Gamergate I remember is where a bunch of manipulative dominating feminists tried to tell gamers that game developers weren't supposed to be allowed to do anything in their games that feminists didn't approved of. They created a bunch of absurdly wrong videos, and started a whole group based on lying and manipulating. Gamergate in response was a guy accusing his ex-girlfriend who had clearly cheated on him and lied to him of sleeping with game reviewers for good reviews. Which got a lot of support from people tired of the feminist controlling dominating b.s., some of whom also went on to create their own lying manipulating b.s. in response against feminists. That's the Gamergate I remember, at best it was one lying manipulating group of feminists against a lying manipulating group of men - but those men only showed up in response to attacks by feminists, they didn't start it off.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PaulRivers10]

Let's look at the chart. 1. Do I disagree with the poster? If yes, continue 2. Accuse them of being a "misogynist" 3. Expect to win argument "misogynist" is just a way to call a man a bitch. It's not in any way a better word.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Can you not see how pathetic that is? You are trading your dignity and freedom for feigned affection and sex.

I will never accept the new deal, the legal risks and general indignity of intimate relationships with women today is completely unacceptable to any man with a grain of self respect.

Just say fucking no to this shit. You are better off without a woman in your life today. Guran-fucking-teed.

This is truth! Do not be a sexual object to the cisfemale hunnies. Don't wait on them hand and foot. You'll get screwed in the end with child support or else a rape accusation. And yes, she is lying about being on the pill among many other scams that I've seen cisfemale hunnies pull.

It's such fucking bullshit. My "internet boyfriend" (more like irc penpal) keeps telling me I'll never understand the appeal of a cisfemale hunny because I'm not a man. Maybe that's true. I can accept that. What integrity is left if men and trans women can't stand and tell the cisfemale hunnies and their white knights that we're just fucking sick of it all?

No, I'm not going to suck feminism's cock like my womanhood is on the line. Fuck feminism. I'm a woman whether or not feminism permits or allows me to be one. Fuck them for even supposing that I'd be willing to compromise who I am just to get a modicum of conditional acceptance. Remember the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival always.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Just because someone's not your intended audience, doesn't mean a review from them isn't fair or valuable.

Anytime something produced/directed primarily by women is voted down or given poor ratings it's immediately labeled as "misogyny" or a deliberate slamming of women.

BULLSHIT. Sometimes whatever it is just sucks and it's got NOTHING to do with gender.

However, when something produced/directed primarily by men is voted down or given poor ratings it's "because it's crap". No double standard there, oh no.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Yeah, it's almost as if we should look to a rape manual like Newton's Principia Mathematica and invent new ways to quantify the numbers. No! We fucking won't! No rape manuals! It's all the fault of those evil oppressor men and those invader bathroom rapist trans women! How dare they not like Sex and the City!!!!

I mean, for fuck's sake, why shouldn't IMDB fucking restrict cisfemale hunnies to only see reviews from other cisfemale hunnies? I think that's a good fucking idea actually. I'd love to see cisfemales reporting to a medical center somewhere to receive a transvaginal ultrasound to verify they're fucking cisfemale! Forceably inject them with testosterone if they don't pass the test! If cisfemale hunnies can't stand the fact that some of us might just not fucking like Sex and the City, the fuck them!

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[sexconker]

You don't need to stretch when the numbers already fit.

Complaint: Men are rating down "women's" shows!!!
Response: Men rate shows they don't like poorly, and rate shows they like highly. What's the problem?

Complaint: But men are rating down OUR shows!!!
Response: Men and women can watch and rate the same shows.

Complaint: But women aren't watching "men's" shows and rating them poorly!!!
Response: Maybe that's because they aren't watching them, and don't care to rate them.

Complaint: But men ARE watching "women's" shows and rating them poorly!
Response: You keep talking about "women's" shows, but you can't list any that have a 90% female viewership share to establish that they are "women's" shows. All the while you are comparing these shows, and the demographics of those who rate them, to your self-defined "men's" shows which DO have 90% male viewership.

Complaint: UR RLY STRETCHING!!!
Response: QQ

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Darinbob]

Right, so women writing reviews up claiming that video games are too violent or sexist will meet with welcome approval by male gamers?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Darinbob]

The Three Stooges?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Darinbob]

Name a show for women that men wouldn't want to watch? Then you can debate whether "women" and "men" mean "all" or "zero"

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Yes, it is willful blindness at this point. The point is that the rest of us who don't behave poorly will be held accountable for their actions. NO MORE.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ArmoredDragon]

I think it's one of those scissor things women use to trim those hairs that cause itching down there.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CronoCloud]

You know why trans* folks get so much "but they're mentally ill so don't listen to them about being trans8" backlash? Shit like this.

On a trans message board I frequent, people like vel-ex-tech are referred to as "batshit internet trannies"

Cut it out. I'm beginning to wish you'd have another runin with a TERF and one or both of you end up dead.

Nobody deserves to have to deal with TERFs

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Right, the way that the rape culture presentation in college wasn't targeted at me, despite the fact I was forced to attend because of my fucking gender on paper. The way none of those times I spent with my head on my desk---while my (cisfemale) friend were out playing on the playground--simply because of my gender on fucking paper were targeted at me.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[skegg]

On the other hand (and this is, for sure, just an anecdote) it seems like every straight guy in my office is forced to watch "The Bachelor" with their S.O. every week as part of their "quality time" together.

I know of two couples for which this exact thing takes place. Suckers!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CronoCloud]

Vel-ex-tech isn't male, why did you think she was....because she goes around talking about "hunnies" and how women should stay away from computers and how "cisfemales" meaning "straight non-transgendered quote unquote normal women" should be shunned and starved in the streets?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[omnichad]

It's just a review. You can read it and decide for yourself if it has any value. There's no harm in it being posted.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

The old term was womyn-born-womyn.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vel-ex-tech]

Hey, if that's what make you feel better, whatever. I do commend you for gathering the subtext I had hoped to imply with "cisgendered hunnies," particularly the heterosexual requirement.

How many cisfemales have you mentored in programming? I'll bet my "score" there is bigger than yours!

How many times have you been accused of sexism as payment for your efforts?

Oh, and by the fucking way, it was a cisgendered hunny who informed me that I didn't want women to be programmers. Could have fucking fooled me! I had no fucking idea before she informed me of that!

Cisgendered hunnies deserve to starve in the street or be whipped until their backs are bloody because they don't have the initiative to run through a Linux from Scratch before they go "I wanna be a programmer" and then eventually "You sexist!" It's not about learning programming. It's about cisfemale hegemony. Same as this bullshit about cisfemale hunnies not having the fucking guts to vote down series they don't like.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Darinbob]

Sure, but there is irony in that men becoming enraged over women playing/reviewing video games, while wondering what's so wrong with reviewing TV shows they don't watch.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CTU]

I was thinking the same thing. You can't just discredit someones review because they were not the target demographic, you ether make a good show or not and none of this crap when you get bad review scores.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CTU]

>You know, the entire Gamergate movement was predicated on the notion that feminists had no business reviewing games that were geared towards men. "Let them make their own games" was the rallying cry.

That is so far from the truth that even a map would not help.

Gamergate as said by another was corruption in game reviews. It was discovered that someone reviewing a game had a personal relationship with said woman which was not disclosed. It got even worse when game "journalists" banded together to twist the truth and outright lie about what was going on, treating the people who would be into games or read their reviews like trash.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[CTU]

I thought the point was if you don't like the show you must be a stupid man and you should not review it because you should not have the right to an opinion

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

Sorry, I'm not taking any article that says this seriously:

The video-gaming business was a bastion of old-fashioned sexism long before Gjoni came along. As the industry grew into a $100 billion behemothâ"rivaling Hollywood, bigger than pop musicâ"it maintained the atmosphere of a teenage boyâ(TM)s basement den, and stayed hostile to women.

Not to mention that the article only focuses on Gjoni and Quinn's relationship and doesn't really go into GamerGate at all. Yeah, guy was pissed his girlfriend was fucking around, nobody gives a shit about that except those two. The reason why it ended up being a big thing is because of the exposed corruption in gaming journalism, and the women involved trying to make the entirety of gaming out to be sexist.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

Gamergate as said by another was corruption in game reviews.

Nah. It started because some cuck was upset that his girlfriend liked someone else better and it set off a collective howl of protest from a group of young men who've never touched a woman.

In August 2014, Eron Gjoni, Quinn's former boyfriend, published the "Zoe Post", a 9,425-word blog post that quoted from personal chat logs, emails, and text messages to describe their relationship. The post, described as "a rambling online essay" in The New York Times,[7] complained, among other things, that Quinn entered a romantic relationship with Nathan Grayson, a journalist for the Gawker Media video game website Kotaku.[8][9][10] According to Zachary Jason of Boston magazine, Gjoni deliberately crafted the post to resonate with members of the gaming community he "knew were passionately predisposed to attacking women in the industry".[11] The post was linked on 4chan, where some erroneously claimed the relationship had induced Grayson to publish a favorable review of Depression Quest. Grayson had never reviewed Quinn's games and Grayson's only article for Kotaku mentioning her was published before their relationship began.[12][13][14][15]

But that's ancient history. The GamerGate movement ended over a year ago, and its membership has been scattered to MRA websites and the Donald Trump campaign.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Ol Olsoc]

Still - women don't seem to feel the need to go trash-talk shows that are designed to appeal to men. (See the figure entitled: "Men are more likely to give the crappiest rating").

So what is your solution? Decide what is a gender appropriate show, and then pass a law that men are not allowed to review it? The example given - "Sex and the City, in my opinion does suck

As well, why on earth would anyone care who rated a show as whatever online? I know pop culture is weird, but do these people get bonus points when more people review a show they like, and they agree with them?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Ol Olsoc]

reaxxion.com

The prosecution rests.

Dafuq did I just read when I went there? Was that from actual thinking hoomins?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Ol Olsoc]

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...

Reading the story, the Pope was being kind. That whole thing reads like an adult version of 13 year old drama llamas.

People who write like that need a lot of work just to get minimum veracity.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[bingoUV]

Not sabotage, it is called constructive criticism.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

Um, sorry, but I was there, and yes it was. It wasn't rampagingly misogynistic, but it was definitely a male-dominated industry, market, and culture. The number of well-known female game designers could be counted on your fingers. And while there's no intrinsic reason why a woman can't enjoy a game about blasting the crap out of aliens/demons/terrorists, as a group, that's not a genre they have tended to gravitate toward.

Your first statement is not backed up by the rest of the paragraph. Pro-male is not anti-female. Gaming culture is as anti-female as the fashion industry and culture is anti-male, that is to say, not very. There are entire genres of games targeting women, and many female protagonists (from Samus to Femshep). Nobody is actively keeping women away, as you said, it's not something they tend to gravitate toward. None of this makes the gaming industry sexist.

Why would it? Gjoni made up the whole thing as part of a vicious character assassination. Yes, there's quid-pro-quo corruption in games journalism, but that happens at the managerial level, as Jeff Gerstmann will readily attest, long before Gjoni oozed on to the scene.

I have already shown proof to the contrary in other comments.

So you're just taking Gjoni's word for it?

I never just take someones word for it.

The statistics conclude otherwise. Sorry, but that fig leaf of plausible deniability dried up and crumbled to dust ages ago

I'm not reading through a 10 page long article by someone who is already proven to be a liar. If you would be so kind as to summarize your evidence I would consider it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[rtb61]

I mean shit, dude or dudette, it's all in the averages. Yeah, statistic produce results exactly like this. Yeah like, surprise, fucking surprise, surprise, content targeted at men is down rated by the average women and content targeted at women is down rated by the average man. You know what this story is really all about, at this specific time, not by fucking accident, not at all. It's those bloody main stream media Hillary Rodham Clinton trolls fucking playing again - for fuck sake 'Bernie Bros'.

O fucking look, men liking stuff that men like is a fucking conspiracy by men. Of course women liking the stuff women like is not (well in reality it actually is, call it a marketing reality). Seriously what the fuck and NO, abso-fucking-lutely not, will you get me to shave my fucking legs or armpits or genitals (truth be told wont even shave my face and pity the poor women who has to, thanks to advertising), fuck off and that ain't no conspiracy. That women have to, well, then they are bloody idiots for getting sucked into that by advertising. Nor will I wear a pretty sun dress or a frilly floppy hat, nor will I spend thousands on makeup and try to put that shit on every morning, nor will I tolerate being considered undesirable just because I am no longer youthful (although I admit I might possibly be wrong about the sun dress, perhaps it is comfortable).

If women get sucked in by that bullshit and content that promotes that bullshit, well, 'SUCKED IN'. Ain't up to men to change, it is up to women to fight back against that manipulative money grubbing advertising in what ever format it turns up in, whether advertisements or an entire TV fucking series.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vlad30]

From the article "Overall, there is a lot of agreement between the sexes" an looking at there table for good shows yes many in both columns are watched by my wife so I agree but a show like SATC is a girls show unless a guy wants a girls perspective or a little eye candy. this show tended to paint guys as useless and stupid not something as a male we want to see. As for awards There were a lot of good shows that never got awards or got cancelled yes on the list is Firefly in both male and females high rated columns

However yes women tend not to rate something bad unless it is really bad or its another women

Question how many men have been forced to sit through a show like SATC any then as revenge went online and rated it. How many women are forced to watch a male show? none we would rather watch it on our own and enjoy the experience without the resulting uncontrollable background chatter

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[vlad30]

I agree and said very similar in another comment what I would like to know having looked at the article is the age of the voters Many of the shows that have male female separation appear to be for a younger audience.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Culture20]

It probably flopped more for male assholery in word of mouth than female.

It flopped because Superman lifted a continent made of Kryptonite, a mineral that saps his power. A quick intelligent fix showing him scanning the coast for a lead factory and covering himself in molten lead would have done wonders for that one terrible scene. It's like Batman picking up a machine gun and turning into the Punisher; didn't stick to source material.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Pseudonym]

Not really; a lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows, while men don't play the same game.

If you're saying that (some) men are in crappy relationships and choose to act out in the form of online reviews, I would say that that still counts as "men sabotaging online reviews of TV shows aimed at women".

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

I view it as men voicing their opinion on something they're forced to endure under duress. Maybe they hold some hope that their voices will be heard and the show will incorporate some element to appeal to them since they're stuck watching it. Women want themselves included in men's activities, why is it wrong for us to expect the same?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[roman_mir]

You know, you probably need to get her acquainted with the back of your hand but instead you are getting whipped like a little pussy.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

Go on, Mr internet tough-guy - tell us about how those MRAs are hurting your precious feels.

Every so often, I spend a little of my seemingly endless karma so I can allow the whiny ass titty-baby MRAs and gamergaters to provide proof of my opinion of them because I feel the response is instructive as to their nature.

It never fails. Make an assertion about the shittiness of these groups and their own reactions will inevitably confirm those assertions.

Oh, you poor thing. I know, right - the MRAs are everywhere, right? I hear you brother...

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Pseudonym]

I view it as men voicing their opinion on something they're forced to endure under duress.

Assuming that's true, it just goes to show that women do not have a monopoly on passive-aggression.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[e432776]

You may be right- could be that men more often find themselves watching a program that is more appealing to women. What might also be true is that men more often (than women) think that others will care about their opinion of said programs, and so spend time rating them.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Macman408]

If you don't like those shows why not just communicate that to your partner? If she cares about you she won't force you to do things you hate doing, and will find something mutually enjoyable for "quality time". If she doesn't care and insists on torturing you, maybe it's time to reconsider your relationship.

My wife doesn't insist that I watch any particular show with her, but I usually join her anyway. And sometimes, we really agree on liking a show, which is great. But if I'm watching a show she doesn't like, she's sometimes quite vocal about it - often understandably so. If you're not interested in a TV show but all you can hear is the sound of skulls getting bashed together, I can understand how that would be disturbing, annoying, and/or distracting. On the other hand, if she's watching a show I don't like, I'm rarely so offended by it that I raise a stink. (There's no "Dear, there is too much empathy on the TV, can you turn it off?" or "I can't stand the predictable jokes and laugh track!" – on the other hand, if she thinks there's too much violence or sex or whatever, I'm likely to hear about it.) When I want to watch my TV, I wait until she's asleep or away from home.

The net effect is that I end up watching more of what she wants than she does of what I want. Most of the time, I watch her shows anyway, even if I'm not a fan (i.e. I'd give them middling ratings); she does not do the same on my shows. So, if the average man is like me, I could understand how the data would skew that way. Although I'm pretty sure the average man isn't like me, and there are some vindictive pricks out there too who just like crapping on other people's nice things. So I can *still* understand how the data would skew that way.

I think the conclusions at the end of the article are right on point:

Distilling any work into a single number strips out a substantial amount of meaning. ... To understand the whole picture, you need to dive into the data.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Macman408]

Sex in the city still rated around 6 among men, so they did like it, just not as much as women. Yet still the headline was that men sabotaged the votes.

It occurred to me that there is a relevant quote in the article regarding this:

Distilling any work into a single number strips out a substantial amount of meaning. ... To understand the whole picture, you need to dive into the data.

Except I would word it thus:
Distilling any work into a single headline strips out a substantial amount of meaning. ... To understand the whole picture, you need to dive into the text.

Yeah, the headline is a bit inflammatory. Welcome to 2016. The point is really that, whether intentionally (as the word 'sabotage' would imply) or not, men drag down ratings of certain shows that are more liked by women.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Zxern]

Cookie link to your amazon account?

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

I have no idea how you folks put up with cisfemales.

Well, you're a colossal bigot it seems. Next up: why you have no idea how folks put up with black people.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

I view it as men voicing their opinion on something they're forced to endure under duress.

Wow, those guys really need to grow a pair and sort their shit out, frankly. If you're actually being forced to watch a show you hate, then something is fucked in your relationship.

Women want themselves included in men's activities, why is it wrong for us to expect the same?

WTF does that even mean? What's a "man's activity"? What's a "woman's activity" for that matter?

And what does either of those have to do with guys in crappy relationships acting out online?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

The whole gamergate thing was predicated on an effort to stop the production of 'male oriented' games.

No it wasn't. It was predicated on trying (with a hilarious lack of success) to shout down Anita Sarkeesian for daring to have the wrong opinions and shitting all over Zoe Quinn based on a bunch of lies about reviews that didn't exist.

Sob, sob, other people have different opinions of games and movies than I do and they are expressing those opinions.

Quite, now if only gaters actually applied their principles consistently then there would have been nothing at all.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

That doesn't make any more sense, ya know?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[michelcolman]

If they know the scores given by men and women separately, why don't they just post both? Problem solved.

Possibly make a graphical representation with a blue and pink bar?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[AmiMoJo]

That's a bizarre interpretation. If a woman you go on a date with dislikes your choice of TV programme so much that she will dump you, maybe you don't want to be dating her anyway. It sounds like one of those sitcoms where the guy keeps trying to hide things he thinks she will hate until it escalates and he's living a double life.

Dating is not about tricking the other person into thinking you are the perfect guy, so that by the time she realizes you suck it will be too late... And frankly, choice of TV show is such a trivial, unimportant thing if she can't look past it and understand that the perfect Prince Charming doesn't exist, you don't want to date her anyway.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[AmiMoJo]

All it exposed is the lack of ethics in GamerGate. The alleged review doesn't exist, there is zero evidence that their relationship resulted in any favourable coverage at all. The only time he even mentioned her game was before they got together, when it was on a list of 49 other indie games.

Maybe it's time to start GamerGateGate, a movement for ethics in GamerGate.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[AmiMoJo]

That's funny, the Gamergate I remember is where a bunch of manipulative dominating feminists tried to tell gamers that game developers weren't supposed to be allowed to do anything in their games that feminists didn't approved of.

Do you have any evidence of this? Everything I've seen is criticising certain aspects of games, not demanding they not be made in the first place. For example, Sarkeesian starts ever video by stating clearly that it is possible to critical of games while still enjoying them, and at no point says "these games should be banned". In fact, her clearly stated aim is to influence design, not ban.

In fact, the only time I think we came close to a ban when when they decided not to release the latest iteration of DOA in the west, because the stink created by GamerGate has make the environment so toxic people are afraid to go near it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

Yep, absolutely no evidence at all.

Nope.

How about you post a link to the actual review, or an archive copy of it? No need to go to secondary or tertiary sources here. I've been asking this question since gamergate broke and no one has pointed me to a review of the game.

At this point, I have concluded that the review does not exist and the whole thing is a lie.

Lets not forget that Depression Quest was barely even a game.

So not only was there no review, the non existent review wasn't even about a proper game. That makes it doubly stupid.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Z00L00K]

Some sports events seems to attract mostly men.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

Me, I didn't like the original Ghostbusters, so I give a fuck

That's pretty much the point here.

Everyone of us has some kind of movie, show, series, whatever, that has a special place in our heart, because it was so important to us in our childhood. For some of us this may be the show with Mr Rogers, for some this may be E.T., for some this may be Star Wars. And for some this is Ghostbusters. A movie that we love and cherish. Yes, it's kinda cheesy by today's standards, but hey, that was the 80s. And let's face it, Star Wars is cheesy by today's standards. And I'm even neither talking about those 3 crappy movies about some little rugrat and how he turned into an insufferable special snowflake, nor about the butchering the original trilogy got in the meantime. Even the original trilogy in its original version is cheesy and corny when you look at it. The story is formulaic, the special effects are nothing special today and most of the actors are simply horrible.

But it was our childhood, it was what we played as kids, we ran around and had light saber duels (and despite all our parents' warnings nobody ever lost an eye due to it), and the same applies to Ghostbusters.

Remaking such a movie means that you tinker with the childhood of many people. And they will voice their displeasure if it displeases them.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Raenex]

You just described the gamer-gate movement. They absolutely go out of their way to review stuff that was not targeted at them.

You just described the social justice warriors posing as games journalists. Now let's have a laugh as Polygon "shreds some demons".

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[wvmarle]

Missed the total numbers of men and women that give ratings.

Having heard before that there are more women watching TV (partly due to housewives watching daytime TV as their husbands are working) I would expect overall more ratings from women than from men. With the men's shows more skewed towards male ratings than women's shows, it seems there are many more men rating shows than women.

This may also skew ratings.

Furthermore, I missed listings of how women rate Star Trek for example, compared to men. Do they rate it worse, or better?

And how about total ratings: is the average rating given by all women across all shows the same as the average rating given by men?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

Aw poor little gamer thinks all women are out to get him.

Give it a rest, bro. That ship has sailed. Go join the the Trump campaign or something.

That wit of yours strikes again! What a persuasive argument you make - your parents must be very proud.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

A lot of men say they are sexually blackmailed into watching women's shows. This is the result of sexual blackmail.

And so instead of sorting their shit out so they're not being sexually blackmailed, they go online and whine about the shows. Makes perfect sense!

Also a lot, really? I don't think I know any personally. Perhaps I don't know many whiny wet blankets with incredibly poor boundaries.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Raenex]

How about you post a link to the actual review, or an archive copy of it? No need to go to secondary or tertiary sources here. I've been asking this question since gamergate broke and no one has pointed me to a review of the game.

At this point, I have concluded that the review does not exist and the whole thing is a lie.

If you've been asking this question since the beginning, then you should know the true answer. While people often make a technical mistake of saying there was a "review", the game received glowing coverage that any game developer would covet. As the article puts it, and you can verify yourself:

"Before GamerGate was even a glimmer in our eyes, Grayson wrote about Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest, a glorified choose-your-own-adventure meant to make you feel sorry about not having a mental disorder. Grayson gave this snooze-worthy wankfest top billing on an article for RPS about games which had recently been greenlit on Steam. Out of fifty games featured, Depression Quest not only comprised the first mentioned and most praised game there, but got the header image slot as well. It's a text-based game! Grayson even made the article title a play on the X-Quest theme, pulling out every stop to make sure this particular game would get noticed."

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

A lot of men say they are sexually blackmailed into watching women's shows. This is the result of sexual blackmail.

And so instead of sorting their shit out so they're not being sexually blackmailed, they go online and whine about the shows./quote>

No, they honestly review a show they have watched. Didn't you read the first part where I wrote:

people don't review shows they aren't watching.

And I'm genuinely curious - do you really think that when someone is being blackmailed, it's their own fault for being blackmailable or are you merely attempting to align your morals with your ideology?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Stuarticus]

6 is a very bad rating, you don't have to read the article to comment but it helps to at least have a passing knowledge of the subject under discussion.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[GeekWithAKnife]

Let's not forget that if you are forced to watch shows she loves and you hate, you're the bitch.

What is this pathetic pandering to someone else's will because they might hold it against you?! -are these men and women or boys and girls?

...but let's face it, some are like Howard Wolowitz. For you the solution is to simply try to have sex when that show that you hate is on. You will find you are asked to leave OR not. win/win.

If you cannot find the right person then hack the right behaviours out of them whilst you're still single. -Shit works. True story.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

The alleged review doesn't exist, there is zero evidence that their relationship resulted in any favourable coverage at all. The only time he even mentioned her game was before they got together, when it was on a list of 49 other indie games.

Totally no favourable coverage at all, oh, except that time where he named an article after it, gave it top billing, and posted its screenshot over 50 other games. He certainly didn't have a relationship with Zoe then, right? They must not have known each other at all, right? Then why is he in Depression Quest's credits? No conflict of interest at all.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

, then you should know the true answer.

Yes, the answer is there is no review. Yet again I have another gater insisting I'm wrong het refusing to provide actual evidence.

Grayson gave this snooze-worthy wankfest top billing

Two things:

1. That's not a review.
2. That's from before anyone has alleged they were in a relationship.

It's a text-based game

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Shoten]

So, if someone watches a show (forced or otherwise) and reviews it poorly it is now "sabotage"? The hyperbole is astronomical. Can't be just their opinion on the matter... It has to be a contrived conspiracy of "sabotage" of female media?

Just... wow.

Haven't you heard? This is the new way of things.

When a woman is being snide and patronizing, she's "Strong." When a man is doing it, he's "mainsplaining." (I think it's just someone being snide and patronizing.)

When women band together to fight for their rights, it's "feminism." When men do it, it's a "patriarchy." (I think both sides should be able to state their concerns and complaints.)

When women look at men as sexual objects, they're "owning their sexuality." When men do it to women, it's "rape culture." (Look, we all get horny, and some people are just fucking HOT.)

And yes, when women give bad ratings to bro-media, it's "fighting the media's misogynist bias." But when men give bad ratings to chick-media, it's "sabotage." (Anyone who's studied marketing or communications knows that media is like food...not all cuisines appeal to all groups.)

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

your parents must be very proud

That would be pretty tricky in one case.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

your parents must be very proud

That would be pretty tricky in one case.

Judging by your previous reply, I would have to agree.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

Remaking such a movie means that you tinker with the childhood of many people.

No, it doesn't. Because those people are grown now and their childhoods have passed and if somebody remaking a movie they liked as a kid somehow threatens their gestalt, then there's a problem that has nothing to do with movies.

Please, what are we talking about here? Your "childhood" really hinges so much on a tv show that you would create a host of sockpuppets and carpet bomb a review site with negative reviews even though you haven't seen the remake and don't plan on seeing the remake?

If you're a shitty person, and want to do shitty things for shitty reasons ("they put gurls in my childhood TV show!"), then you don't get to use that excuse.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

Judging by your previous reply, I would have to agree.

Crikey you're dense.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

Judging by your previous reply, I would have to agree.

Crikey you're dense.

Woosh :-)

I'm sure most parents would find it tricky to be proud of their kids when their kids wit never extends past insults.

(Yeah, it's too late for you to salvage anything; stick with the "I made a comment so smart you didn't understand it" - Well Done)

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[goose-incarnated]

the MRAs are everywhere, right?

Just because they're few doesn't mean they don't deserve our ridicule and condemnation.

Be sure to let us all know when you start condemning and ridiculing them. Until then you may continue with your conspiracy theories.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[AmiMoJo]

Glad to see you have finally admitted that the claim there was a revive l review is a lie. Now you have moved the goal posts, are you really saying this message harassment campaign is justified by this list? Over a free game, too.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

Woosh

Out of interest, just how small is your Schrartzchild radius?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Mr. Shotgun]

You just have to look at the outpouring of rage from whiny-ass MRA manbabies regarding the re-boot of Ghostbusters with an all-female cast to see how this mechanism plays out.

Funny, most of the MRA groups I know of are more concerned with social issues like disparate child custody decisions, prison sentencing and other inequalities in the justice system biased against men. The only group I have heard make statements on the Ghostbusters movie was the Red Pillers at Return of kings. Was that what you were referring to?

Remember the outrage over the latest Star Wars? How the MRAs were going to boycott? They degrade all of masculinity with their incessant whining.

Again not familiar with MRA's weighing in on popular movies, Return of kings did though and you should rightfully ignore them, they embarrass everyone including MRA's so please do not conflate the two.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

Again not familiar with MRA's weighing in on popular movies, Return of kings did though and you should rightfully ignore them, they embarrass everyone including MRA's so please do not conflate the two.

I didn't realize that Return of Kings was not a true scotsman. Thank you for your expert clarification.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Gr8Apes]

Fortunately, my wife and i enjoy the same shows, pretty much across the board, and respect each other enough to not force each other to watch what we don't like, so we don't have that issue. My wife is not most women, though, and I am not most men, so I'm not speaking from personal experience, but simply relaying experiences shared with me by my other married friends.

You are not alone (not a snowflake;) People are different, and any couple will (hopefully) share likes but will also have some differences. Some things we'll watch together to have shared experiences because one or the other likes it a lot, some other things we do on our own. You should be secure enough to be able to do so in any relationship. For a truly healthy relationship, that extends beyond TV watching habits.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[jeremyp]

Why blame your inadequacy in your relationship on the TV show though?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[twokay]

They do already: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...

Males: 27641 5.8/10

Females: 39419 8.1/10

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Bigbutt]

About a year after my ex bailed several years back, I realized I hadn't even turned on the TV for months. Busy reading, learning guitar, going on snowshoe hikes, bicycling, woodworking, etc, that I just couldn't make time to sit down to watch TV.

She'd watch Oprah, Dr Phil, Dr Oz, Gilmore Girls, Sex In The City, and others. I'd sit with her and semi-watch it but it was in an effort to participate in things she wanted to do.

[John]

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

And I'm genuinely curious - do you really think that when someone is being blackmailed,

Nice subtle moving of the goalposts. Noted.

are you merely attempting to align your morals with your ideology

I'd love to know what you believe my ideology is. I think, given your mental processes that it would be amusing to know.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[EdZep]

Most of these guys probably watched the shows under duress -- because it was the wife's turn to pick, or as quid pro quo. Watching does not equal liking. Submitting negative reviews may have helped ease the "shame" of watching the shows.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[bluefoxlucid]

The solution is to admit a social dichotomy between men and women and separate reviews by gender.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[cayenne8]

Name a show for women that men wouldn't want to watch?

Sex and the City

Oprah

The View

Ellen DeGeneres (sp?)

Ok...most any daytime female talks show.....

and the list goes on...these are just right off the top of my head.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

I don't know about your childhood, but some people had a pleasant one. They enjoy remembering when things were a lot easier and they didn't have to make decisions that puts the jobs of people at risk but the biggest and most taxing decision was whether the dollar they had should go towards an ice cream sandwich or that pastry. And the biggest catastrophe possible was that the sandwich fell to the ground and you stood there for 10 minutes weeping over it.

Remembering those times gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling. They like that. And part of that time, that memories and that feeling are, at least for people who're under 70, TV shows and maybe movies. It could well be that Ghostbusters was the first movie they ever went, with their parents, and that they hid next to them when the scary scenes happened. And yes, even that can be nice memories!

Such memories are pretty powerful. And it's even not unlikely that they were actually looking forward to the movie being redone. And that they even didn't mind the idea of women taking over as the lead roles. Why not? I thought the idea is great, to be honest. A completely new angle, that could really be something cool. I mean, it did work for Star Trek, didn't it? Janeway was an awesome captain, way tougher than that Piccard was, droning on and talking everything to death, she was way more "damn the torpedos, Paris, hit it!" Great stuff. That could've worked out for the Ghostbusters too. Hell, they could even have used the same formula with the characters since there would even have been a new angle if they had the ivory-tower-nerd that was Egon, the in-for-the-chance-of-loads-of-money Peter was and the childish-naive-lovable character that Ray was. And Winston as the only straight-down-to-earth character that served as the identification figure. That formula worked! And the effects were awesome too, for their time.

But what they turned that into is horrible. The FX look like something you'd expect for straight-to-TV movies, the characters are wooden and one dimensional without any redeeming features and to make matters even over the top bad, the few scenes that we've seen so far are racist and sexist.

Yes, sexist.

Women scientists seem to care about how hard it is to wash ghost puke out of their stuff, and the only halfway funny joke was about clothing. Really? That's what busting is about now? And the token black character is not, as it was in the original, the only SANE one of the quartet, and the identification figure for the audience because he pretty much had the same level of information the audience had, no, the token black ghostbuster is a loudmouthed ghetto mama bitch that really does NOT leave out a SINGLE possible negative stereotype.

Please tell me what redeeming feature you see in this movie. Please do.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

How is that passive aggressive? If I have to watch it, I'm gonna do what I can to make the situation better for myself. It's not about complaining for the sake of complaining, it's about using the only channel available to attenpt to improve one's situation. Tha alternative, for those affected men, is to talk to their wives about it, be told "no Sex and the City, no sex" and either deal with that or divorce the bitch (and yes, anyone who plays those games is a bitch) and pay alimony for the foreseeable future. Or should we men just sit down, shut up, and take whatever women dish out?

Passive aggressive? How's holding sex over a man's head to get what you want (and then "having a headache" and not holding up your end) not passive aggressive? So even if you're right, even if the men writing these reviews are doing so out of passive aggression, why do women not expect that in response to their own passive aggression, and why are they not adult enough to accept it as the result of their actions?

Here's a hint: most do expect such a measured response (equal to the infraction the man is responding to) and accept it as fair. There are a very tiny and very vocal minority of women who view anything men do for themselves, or in response to the actions of a woman, as unfair; these women are bitches and should be ignored as such, not spoonfed positive reinforcement for the conflict they create. Don't get me wrong, the small but vocal minority of men who do the same shit (assholes) deserve plenty of credit for their contribution to the problem, but let's do the right thing, treat men and women as equals, and let the women (specifically bitches) have their share of the blame.

When we quit rewarding aggression (and a defensive response such as writing a review of something you know you are going to have to watch again in the hope that your voice is heard is certainly a defensive move) from either gender and treating aggressors like royalty, bowing down to them and kissing their asses, maybe we'll see some improvement in our society. It comes down to respect: my wife and I don't have these issues because we respect each other enough not to play stupid games. Sure, we joke, but that's all it is, just jokes; if I ever actually forced her ro perform a sex act in exchange for something she wanted me to do or buy for her, well, I'd be an asshole (and I'm not, at least by that measure). And if she ever actually withheld sex because I didn't watch a tv show with her, well, she'd be a bitch (which she is not).

Ask yourself, and answer honestly because this is for your own good (not just the poster I'm replying to; everyone who reads this): are you a bitch/asshole? Every time you demand something of someone, consider whether you are threatening punishment for noncompliance or if you are offering (or have already done or given) something equal in return. If the former, well, I hate to break it to you...

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

1. That's not a review.

It's extremely positive press coverage, call it whatever you want.

2. That's from before anyone has alleged they were in a relationship.

He's mentioned in the credits of the "game". They had a relationship, I don't give a shit if it was romantic or not, it should have been disclosed.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

Please tell me what redeeming feature you see in this movie. Please do.

None whatever. But it does not affect my past one little bit. My childhood is still my childhood.

I'm not about to mount a campaign of negative reviews because Daniel Craig plays James Bond instead of Sean Connery. If they made a new X-Files with a black, gay couple, it would not make me want to blow up the world.

There are a lot of shitty movies out there, and a lot of shitty trailers. There's a reason that Ghostbusters has gotten the manbabies upset, and it's because women are suddenly in the clubhouse as something besides delivery systems for tiddies.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ichthus]

I have no idea how you folks put up with cisfemales.

Not knowing what a "cisfemale" is, or even giving a rat's ass enough to look it up (because it sounds fucking idiotic), I wouldn't know either.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

That's the Gamergate I remember, at best it was one lying manipulating group of feminists against a lying manipulating group of men - but those men only showed up in response to attacks by feminists, they didn't start it off.

Thanks for the synopsis. Gamergate has always confused me, and this seems to be the most unbiased synopsis of it that I've seen. I guess it confused me because both sides in it seem to be a bunch of jerks, so I didn't know who to believe. If both sides are lying, manipulative jerks, that explains it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

How on earth is Star Trek (the TV show) "male targeted"? "The Shield", sure, I'll agree with that, but not Star Trek. Star Trek is a fairly intellectual show that explores social themes with sci-fi; it's perfect for both women and men. Obviously, the 60s show is a product of its time with the miniskirts, but the 80s-90s TNG did away with that and did even better with both exploring social themes and also having a bunch of episodes that were nothing more than character development and drama. Just look at any episode with Lwaxana Troi (ugh).

Honestly, Star Trek was a great show for men and women to watch together because it had elements for both. Of course, it required that a woman be intelligent, and not a vapid moron who wants to watch "The Bachelor" or worse "The Bachelorette".

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

So, by grow a pair, do you mean tell her you're not watching the show, then end the relationship if she's going to still demand it and hold sex over your head if you don't comply? Some of these women are smart, you know, and wait until marriage (read: alimony) to start those games; the man gets punished either way for not complying with the woman's wishes. But yes, we men have all the power, so we're always the aggressors, right?

Maybe these women (a small minority, mind you) should grow a pair themselves and realize that there are consequences to trying to manipulate someone, especially if they've caught on and start fighting back. Some of these women aren't so lucky as to only have a negative review written about their favorite show, a lot of physical abuse is the direct result of these games. That's not to defend those men, they should show some restraint and not beat a woman over a tv show or some sex, but the woman (in those specific instances) could have avoided the whole ordeal by not playing stupid games.

And I say this as a victim of abuse. I dated a girl for a while who was... very opinionated. If I didn't agree with her it was a huge ordeal, screaming, yelling, throwing things, and if that didn't work she'd take a swing at me. Without fail I'd avoid her punch and she'd hit a wall, table, door, whatever else, and hurt herself, ending the argument. If it was minor, a bruise on her knuckle or something, I'd laugh at her for it; a few times she sprained, fractured, or broke something and that was less funny. I always said if she ever actually managed to hit me it would be over, I'd be gone, but it never got that far; she came at me with a knife one time and that was it. I got the knife away from her, started walking to the kitchen to put it away, and she ran up behind me and grabbed the blade (duh, what? why?) because (her words) "I thought you were going to stab me with it". Well, for starters, she'd have deserved it... after all, isnt that what she just tried to do to me? But I was walking away from her, in no way threatening, just relieved that nobody got hurt this time. Then BAM! She grabs the blade and, well, there goes that... trip to th ER, several stitches, and I get to look like an abusive asshole. That was it, I left after that.

But yeah, men have all the power, men are always the aggressors, right? Fuck off with that.

As for what's a "man's" or "woman's" activity: to those who actually recognize a difference (read: those who have these problems), anything the other gender expects them to do that they don't want to do. There are women out there who believe sex is a man's activity, for example, while men writing negative reviews of Sex and the City after being forced to watch it might think watching it is a woman's activity.

And as crappy as those relationships might be, if a man is faced with the choice between paying alimony (he doesn't have to watch his wife's shows anymore, but also no sex, so double-punishment when you stack it on top of alimony) and writing a review that might be read by the show's producer and lead to changes that might make the show more interesting to him, well... one of those can have a positive outcome for the man. You call it acting out, I call it making the best of a bad situation and trying in the limited way possible to improve things. Admittedly, Sex and the City is a bad example bexause the series has ended so, no, it isn't going to get better; but, then it's also a bad example of men sabotaging women's TV since the series already ended before the reviews were written. So, I guess I'll counter your questuon with one of my own: what does a review of a show that has already ended have to do with sabotaging women's TV shows?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

He probably did, and all his alternatives were shot down, no matter how good they would have been.

Honestly, this doesn't surprise me. American women these days have to have everything their way or the highway. There's a reason east coast cities are chock full of 40-something women who have never been married and are still looking.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

You are not alone (not a snowflake;)

Never said I was. I'm going to assume you didn't mean to come across as condescending and just let you know that you did.

You should be secure enough to be able to do so in any relationship.

There's that condescension again.

For a truly healthy relationship, that extends beyond TV watching habits.

And for the purpose of this discussion, which is about TV viewing habits, it, necessarily, does not. That said, yes, a relationship centered around liking the same TV shows would suck pretty damn hard. No, the reality is that my wife and I enjoy a lot of the same activities, and we do those activities together; and we introduce each other to new experiences, but we also don't push past the point where one of us decides we don't like something; that activity then becomes an "alone" activity, or something done with friends. And we're both secure enough to not worry about who those friends are. I'd say that's a pretty healthy relationship.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

Of the shows that I like that my wife does not it is usually war movies like Midway and documentaries.

Yeah, I wish I could find a girlfriend who liked watching documentaries, especially ones about science, space, and nature. Women seem to really hate those for some reason. There's even a question on OKCupid about it, and lots of women answer it in the negative.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

I don't do that, because I don't have this problem, so I can't really answer that. But what the hell, I'll try: perhaps it's not the man's inadequacy, perhaps it's the woman's demanding and manipulative personality. Especially if they're married. I mean, what's he gonna do, divorce her over the stupid passive aggressive games she's playing? Yeah, then it's not sex and no money while he's paying her alimony. Easier to just watch the show and write a scathing review.

And no, not marrying such a bitch is not an option, unless you want to imply that women aren't smart enough to hold off on playing these games until they've secured a defensible position (as in being owed alimony and half the household property). Give women some credit, here; even the most vicious of the lot aren't stupid.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

If there were a large market of such women, then we probably wouldn't be seeing so many men complaining about having to settle for women who badger them into watching crappy shows like The Bachelor. Men would just dump these women and find ones that liked having sex with them and watching shows the men liked.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

What's weird, though, is that after many years of not finding a guy to settle down with who meets her expectations, when a woman hits 40 these days and is still never-married, she'll go out and get fertility treatments and a sperm donation from a clinic so she can be pregnant and then put up with raising the kid all by herself even though it's a huge hassle without a partner. I see it all the time; the number of never-married women at ~40 years old in these east coast cities is simply astounding.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

But Daniel Craig is a halfway decent James Bond. Also, the target audience of James Bond isn't quite the 6-18 year old demographic, I'm pretty sure...

Strong female characters in action movies are not the problem. Hell, the quintessential action-horror movie had pretty much a single hero character and that character was female: Alien. Let's face it, everyone on that ship except for Ripley were pussies.

Come to think of it, Weaver also played in Ghostbusters...

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tnk1]

At that point, though, if she's a career woman at 40, she now probably has the means to raise a kid and is probably a lot more secure with maintaining herself by herself. She's probably always wanted a child and now feels she doesn't need a man around to do it. Most women do not want to actually choose between a child and a career. They want both, but that can impact their ability to find and keep a mate.

I don't personally recommend that, because having two parents is always going to be better, and in a lot of communities, particularly the African American community, there has been a trend towards single mothers because there is a higher possibility of the father figure either not staying or having issues. The mothers do their best, but having another parent, especially a good male role model for boys, is important.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

So you're saying that all men do this? Is that an absolute? Because here I am, a man, and I don't do those things. In fact, other men I know don't do those things. I know a lot of women who do, though, and I'm sure there are men who do, because, well, it's human nature. Some of us are civilized enough to keep our negativity to ourselves, and to our small groups; I dare say most of us are, regardless of gender. There is a small minority of both genders who voice their opinion openly to the widest possible audience and degrade anything and everything they do not like; do not confuse the males who do this with men (they're boys, at best) and I won't confuse the females who do this with women (as they're girls, at best).

So why are you getting defensive?

You as why, I ask where. Perhaps, in this post, because I am being attacked.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

So, by grow a pair, do you mean tell her you're not watching the show, then end the relationship if she's going to still demand it and hold sex over your head if you don't comply?

Frankly, yes. In fairness saying "grow a pair" may be too harsh. It depends if the person in question is just a bit of an asshole or actually abusive. If the former, then yes, grow a pair, develop some strong boundaries and get the fuck out. If the latter, then somehow fix your life and get out from under your abuser and get the fuck out. Harder than it sounds, but still needs to be done.

But somehow the conversation has drifted to abusiveness, probably because there's a continium. Back to the original topic:

If your partner is withholding sex to coerce you into watching TV shows you don't like, then you need to get some strong boundaries and not give in. If that ends the relationship then your partner is a raging asshole and it's for the best. If not, problem solved.

Some of these women are smart, you know, and wait until marriage (read: alimony) to start those games;

You only have one life. It's not worth throwing away the best years of it over it by sticking out a borderline abusive or at least deeply dysfunctional relationship because of alimony.

the man gets punished either way for not complying with the woman's wishes.

Alimony isn't punishment, and it shows a rather extreme form of bias to make such a claim.

But yes, we men have all the power, so we're always the aggressors, right?

Bye bye Mr Strawman, we hardly knew ye. I shall shed a tear for your untimely departure :'(

Maybe these women (a small minority, mind you) should grow a pair themselves and realize that there are consequences to trying to manipulate someone

Apart from the fact that that's not usually what "grow a pair" refers to, then yes, they ought to realise that they're being asshats. Some people however are irredemable and it's best to leave the relationship.

That's not to defend those men, they should show some restraint and not beat a woman over a tv show or some sex, but the woman (in those specific instances) could have avoided the whole ordeal by not playing stupid games.

Assholes are going to asshole. They'll take an excuse but they don't need one. Also, WTF. If you don't like the stupid games then leave, don't go and beat your partner. That makes you a despicable sack of shit, frankly.

I left after that.

Good! I mean seriously.

But yeah, men have all the power, men are always the aggressors, right? Fuck off with that.

Shed a tear for poor Mr Strawman's brother who has met the same untimely fate :'( :'(

As for what's a "man's" or "woman's" activity: to those who actually recognize a difference (read: those who have these problems), anything the other gender expects them to do that they don't want to do.

Where to activities that both partners expect the other to do and neither want to do, such as cleaning...

There are women out there who believe sex is a man's activity

About a billion column inches have been written on the importance of sexual compatibility. TL;DR if you don't have it and can't reach some accomodation then end the relationship because it will make both of you miserable.

And as crappy as those relationships might be, if a man is faced with the choice between paying alimony (he doesn't have to watch his wife's shows anymore, but also no sex, so double-punishment when you stack it on top of alimony) and writing a review that might be read by the show's producer and lead to changes that might make the show more interesting to him, well... one of those can have a positive outcome for the man.

The principle behind alimony is entirely fair, and it's dinengenuous to present it as some sort of anti-male punishment. No, not all court cases reach fair outcomes with resp

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

It's extremely positive press coverage, call it whatever you want.

Ah yes the 1 line, which got blown up into a whole review.

It seems that if even the most diehard of gaters can't provide the famed review then it really did not exist.

Thanks for clearing that up!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Grishnakh]

I'll go farther than that: I think it's a terrible idea. Especially for the reasons you stated (lack of male role model for boys, and also girls to show them how a good father is supposed to be). I was raised by a single mother, and it was not a good experience, mainly because of loneliness. With only a single parent, who works, a child is going to end up being alone for a huge amount of time, and I don't see how anyone can think that's a good way to grow up. It's better than suffering through abuse I guess, but it's definitely not even close to an ideal family situation. So personally, I'm completely against the idea of career women having kids by themselves; I think they're being totally selfish and not thinking of the child.

And with the African-American communities you mention, I think it's pretty obvious that it isn't working out too well there either.

Personally, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we adopted polyamorous lifestyles, with groups of 3-6 adults raising kids communally. It'd be a lot more like the way we used to live before we invented monogamy. Having more responsible adults around to provide resources for the group and the help raise the kids can only be a good thing.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PRMan]

Nice to know that the whole Sci-Fi Hugo Awards debacle is simply certain groups being "passive aggressive".

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

The principle behind alimony is entirely fair, and it's dinengenuous to present it as some sort of anti-male punishment.

Yes, the principle behind it is entirely fair and I never claimed otherwise. If I'm married to a woman and I simply decide I don't want to be with her anymore, but I've gotten her accustomed to a certain lifestyle, it's only fair that I (for a short time) continue to provide that lifestyle, to a degree. However, if she's being a bitch and using sex (or anything else, for that matter) as a weapon, the very same kinds of activities it's apparently ok for women to call oppression when it's a man doing it, well, that's abuse and no alimony for that bitch. Unfortunately, the courts quite often don't recognize abuse when the victim is male, so yes, at that point, it becomes punitive; either put up with the abuse or pay your oppressor for the privilege of no longer being oppressed. Except that, well, you're still being oppressed by having to pay. But, again, that viewpoint is limited to those specific situations; I wasn't talking about alimony in all cases, I was talking about alimony in these cases and, yes, it is wrong.

Which question are you countering?

You asked two, I directly answered one. I'm sure you can figure it out.

And the answer is that this entire article and topic is rather silly, but it's revealed that some people here are in or have expectations of really dysfunctional relationships, that they really ought to fix.

Agreed.

And, as for my supposed strawman, it's simply not. If it were, you'd have actually burned it down rather than dismissing it. Here's the thing: that exact argument is stated time and again by supposed women's rights activists. And you know what? It's completely fucking false; I think that's why you dismissed it and, if so, then at least we're on the same page. Men and women are, and should be, equals; of course, that means society accepting that some women abuse men just as some men abuse women, so those men can have the same protections afforded to women. You know, equality. Hell, I couldn't even get a restraining order against my ex when she was making threats against me and my family and her own mother gave a statement affirming that I was an abuse victim because the courts do not generally recognize that men can even be in that position. But yes, equality.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Sad Puppies is not only very much an actively aggressive movement, they're also not forced to read the books they're rallying against. Completely unrelated to the topic at hand, but nice bait.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Raenex]

Yes, the answer is there is no review. Yet again I have another gater insisting I'm wrong het refusing to provide actual evidence.

Yet again you have another gater showing you the actual truth, acknowledging where a technical mistake by others has been made, and you ignore what actually happened so you can keep on chirping about the "non-review".

It's a text-based game

It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

You wish it was even at this level of being a game, though even that wouldn't be fucking newsorthy in the modern era and you damn well know it. No, it was a "choose your own adventure" story with hyperlinks. Wow, like, so amazing. So progressive. Because it was a whiny bitchfest about how tough life is when you don't want to go to work. And this crap deserves top-billing in a story about 50 new games hitting Greenlight?

That's from before anyone has alleged they were in a relationship.

As has already mentioned, he was chummy enough with her to be playing an early copy of the game and being listed in the credits. And it didn't stop there, because he was also covering her as the centerpiece of a story on the failed game jam, right around the time of their sexual relationship. Also somewhere in between he's hanging out with her on a bed along with some others at GDC.

As a games "journalist", he crossed the line, no matter how you slice it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Darinbob]

Read the second sentence. Are you saying that zero men would ever watch those programs? And in the context of the earlier post, that all women would want to watch men's shows?

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[alexandru_preoteasa]

I dunno, those whiny, nasal fucking voices... "OH MY GAWWWWWD COURRRRTNEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY" every .317 seconds. With the upward inflection? on? the? end? FUCK. THAT. I personally go put on my over-the-ear headphones in another room, with the door closed.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Actually, I do RTFA]

a lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows, while men don't play the same game.

Maybe if those men performed better in bed, it would be seen as mutually beneficial, not payment for services rendered?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[beastofburdon]

How exactly are they behaving poorly? They are rating a damn TV show which they very likely watched. That is not behaving poorly, it is expressing an opinion about a show.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Gr8Apes]

You are not alone (not a snowflake;)

Never said I was. I'm going to assume you didn't mean to come across as condescending and just let you know that you did.

I pondered whether to attempt to make the joke, and apparently failed..

You should be secure enough to be able to do so in any relationship.

There's that condescension again.

Once tainted, preconception will drive perception. "You" wasn't specifically you, but the general you. I could have used "one" but was in a hurry, so didn't abstract out to that level. I apologize for the unintended slight.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Maybe, if those men aren't "performing", the woman should better her situation by finding a more compatible mate, rather than suffering and making the man suffer. What's the definition of "whore" again? Someone who trades sex for profit? Right.

Again, I'm so glad I don't have that problem.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

I'm a diehard gater? That's news to me.

Listen, a review, a blurb, a blog post, I don't give a twittling-tweet what you call it. He was giving extremely positive press for a game he was personally involved in and didn't disclose the relationship, and he's done it multiple times.

You think that is ethical behaviour? That there's absolutely nothing wrong with that?

You are getting hung up on the little details and not seeing the big picture. Who gives a shit if it's a review or not when the ethical infraction is the same?

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

That's why I assumed you didn't intend to condescend. You and I might not always agree on things, but I've never seen you be uncivil. And, if there was a joke in there somewhere, I completely missed it; now I'm curious what the joke was.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[PopeRatzo]

Strong female characters in action movies are not the problem. Hell, the quintessential action-horror movie had pretty much a single hero character and that character was female: Alien.

If they made a remake of Alien with a male lead, do you think men would be storming the review sites to complain about the trailer? Do you think there would be any remake of any movie ever that would somehow make women band together and try to sabotage review sites?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[tbannist]

Men are the ones doing this. We are talking about what men do.

Would it help you, if I explicitly wrote "Woosh"?

To say "Oh, well, they're not REALLY men because REAL MEN don't do this" is just a transparent attempt by Jeff to distance himself from these men, and serves to distract from the larger point (the behavior of men vs women).

Except that's not what Jeff was doing, just look at the last sentence of his post:

None of these nuts are men, though some are very old males who never matured into men.

That underscores that he's not actually pulling a no-true-scotsman. He explicitly acklowedges that they are "very old males" (ie. men). Therefore Jeff is not actually pretending that it's not men doing those things, rather he's crafting an elaborate, and in my opinion humourous, insult and claiming this type of behaviour is childish. Frankly, he's doing the opposite of what you claim he's doing, mostly because you don't seem to even understand what he's doing.

Now, hopefully the reason that you didn't get the higher level meaning from that post was because English is your second or third language. If that's not the case, then you really should try to slow down and appreciate that things are not always what they appear to be at first glance.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[gurps_npc]

That's a bizarre interpretation of what I said. What makes you think I was talking about dating? I was talking about how women act and used dating as a method to prove it. Your comments about dating are WAY off topic.

I refer you to my sig - read what I actually write, not what's in your own head.

I repeat my point - women are just as judgmental as men are. Anyone that says otherwise is bigoted.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Cederic]

Nonsense. Women excessively boost the scores of shows that men watch but don't find as good as others.

Why are women encouraging this continued supply of subpar TV shows? Do they hate men?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[athenaprime]

A cultural default assumption in this culture is that mens' opinions are desired and valued for everything, including stuff that isn't targeted to them (or conversations of which they are not a part). Women do not share this same assumption.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[hucker75]

Yes they do, women downrate Top Gear.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Gr8Apes]

"you are not alone" - nothing more than more people are in your position, including myself. The joke was "not a snowflake", a passing reference to the snowflake millennials where everyone gets a trophy, no one fails, every one is special.... It was funnier in my head at the time I guess.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Ah, now that I see where you were going with it, I did get a chuckle out of it. I don't know whether to blame my missing the joke on your execution or my migraine.

What really kills me about "participation trophies", dear special snowflakes, is that snowflakes are unique, unlike that trophy that was handed out to everyone in your entire class.

Class of 2000. Threw out every participation trophy I was "awarded" and only kept the ones I earned. Most of my generation is braindead and most of the younger generations are worse, IMO, and I'm pretty sure the "you're special no matter what" message is a huge contributing factor.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Pubstar]

Still sucking down the media narrative and believing what is told to you without actually researching? Oh how I wish I could live such a simple life.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Gr8Apes]

the "you're special no matter what" message is a huge contributing factor.

But they are "special no matter what".... "here's the pig sty and shovel, especially for you" is what I'm always thinking when they get all whiney. ;)

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Hahahahahaha... I have nothing to add here but... hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I'm losing my breath laughing. I love it.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

Glad to see you have finally admitted that the claim there was a revive l review is a lie. Now you have moved the goal posts

I'm sick of repeating myself, read this comment.

are you really saying this message harassment campaign is justified by this list?

Congratulations! You have just committed a logical fallacy.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Opportunist]

If it's bland, formulaic, the male lead was a one dimensional stereotype and the special effects aren't even good enough for late night TV then yeah, I know that I at least would give that trailer the finger.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ichthus]

Ha. I believe that if you're born with a penis you're and male, and if you're born with a vagina you're a female. And, I'm ignorant. Right. What a fucking joke the younger generation has become.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[L. J. Beauregard]

SJW's

DRINK!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[L. J. Beauregard]

You didn't understand gamergate. It started with the exposing of corrupt and biased favorable gaming reviews.

The moderation system needs a "score: -1, total bullshit" setting.

Gamergate started when Anita Sarkeesian dumped her boyfriend, who then proceeded to demonstrate to literally the whole world that she was very wise to do so. Doxing, harassment and death threats are never OK and are never justified. It does not matter what the "SJWs" did, and engaging in such behavior only makes the "SJWs'" point for them.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[serviscope_minor]

Yes I agree! Rewriting the history of gamergate it literally the most ethical thing ever! Go ethics!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[iCEBaLM]

Congratulations! You have committed a logical fallacy.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[whocares2]

lot of men are forced (under penalty of no sex) to watch their wife's shows.

what the fuck man
whaaaaaat the fuuuuuuck

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[BronsCon]

Ask your married friends, they'll tell ya. I got lucky and don't have to deal with that crap from my wife, but a lot of married men do.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[chipschap]

I have no idea how you folks put up with cisfemales.

Not knowing what a "cisfemale" is, or even giving a rat's ass enough to look it up (because it sounds fucking idiotic), I wouldn't know either.

A cisfemale is a female who --- oh, the horror! --- dares to self-identify as a female.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[ichthus]

A cisfemale is a female

Ok, gotcha. Thanks.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

I was wondering how FiveThirtyEight was able to tell the sex of the reviewers with any kind of accuracy. Did they do DNA testing to determine, or are they just assuming that the people labeling themselves men in their account's sex field are all men? Or, even better, why is it that these could not be legitimate reviews from men who didn't like the show when their wives made them watch it?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

Wow, you are even more psychic than FiveThirtyEight, you even know what kind of men they are, and not just that they are men who are "sabotaging the online reviews of TV shows aimed at women", without any kind of interaction with them to even determine that they are actually men, and that they aren't just giving their honest opinions of the show.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

Wow, just wow, now we need to censor content that is entirely non sexual because it sexualizes the character? WTF!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

What proof is given that anyone is behaving poorly? Is it known that none of these supposed men watched and did not enjoy these shows? Is it 100% for sure these people posting poor reviews are even men? Do we know for a fact that any of them are out to sabotage anything and not just giving their personal opinion of the show from their experience watching it?

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

Most likely a man that is being forced by his wife...not that I have any experience with that for the past 10 years...freedom is great!

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

Really? Where?

Also, last I checked, the gamergate movement was about favorable coverage given to a woman who was sleeping with a journalist, but I guess it is your job to report on every action taken by a group of people you don't know, and just assume you know everything about.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[Coren22]

A single number is useless for most rating systems. A graph is what we need - one that would distantly show multiple peaks. Then you would know that while most dislike a show, those that like it really LOVE it.

That sounds like exactly what Neilson ratings are. They break it out into age groups, sex, and good or bad ratings.

Re:Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[hyades1]

"I don't think I know any personally."

I also doubt you know any women personally.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a woman

[hyades1]

I'll add my voice to yours on this. My long-time girlfriend sounds a lot like your lady...mostly, we enjoy the same kind of entertainment. However, she doesn't watch any sports at all, and I don't watch the "chick flicks" she enjoys. We're both fine with this situation.

Several of her girlfriends have either hinted or stated outright that I should be "encouraged" to watch female-oriented movies, usually "so I can understand her better", "so I can be more in touch with my emotions", "so I can appreciate a woman's perspective on the world", etc.

Name a simple-minded, Oprah-style pop-psych meme, and these women have bought into it. Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I have been together for years, while her friends could best be described as "serial monogamists". They're always on their way into or out of a relationship, never happy alone, and even less happy when they aren't trying to warp their current squeeze into some Harlequin Romance version of the perfect guy.

Suprise

[farble1670]

Men don't like shows focused at women. More news at 11.

Re:Suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's the point. What's happening is men are going out of their way to even bother rating shows aimed at women.

Re:Suprise

[smelch]

Maybe it's because women make their men watch their TV shows with them, but if I'm going to watch batman I'm not going to drag the girlfriend in to it.

Re:Suprise

[OhPlz]

There's no proof that they're "going out of their way". They may be watching the shows but still not value them highly. One thought is they're watching stuff out of boredom.

Re:Suprise

[lgw]

Misogyny is alive and well on the internet.

Without a single doubt. Now that "misogyny" has been clearly defined as "disagreeing with any woman on any topic", there will always be misogyny to feel good about bashing. For example, TFA: men disagree with women on the ratings for a show. Misogyny by definition.

Re:Suprise

[Archangel Michael]

TV show ratings now = Misogyny

Perhaps THAT is the problem going on here. Its like the crap my wife says when I watch MMA or Car Shows or whatever, and the derogatory comments she makes about them, but should I say something about sex in the city I'm a fucking pig* .

*Not really, making stuff up that I've seen in other couples do.

Re:Suprise

[farble1670]

I don't think that's the point. What's happening is men are going out of their way to even bother rating shows aimed at women.

Pretty sure it's okay for men to rate any show they want.

I read this,

The publication cites an example of "Sex and the City", a show which apparently won plenty of awards and ran for many years on TV, getting hammered by males on IMDb. Compared to women, who amounted to 60% of the people who rated the show with an average of 8.1, men gave it a 5.8 rating.

There's nothing there to indicate men are "sabotaging" the vote. In fact it's rather the opposite, an large percent of the total reviewers are women, and men are only rating 20% lower than women on average.

Re:Suprise

[thegarbz]

No the news here is that it's Sabotage. SABOTAGE I TELL YOU! This is a concerted effort by men to demean women. We must rise up against the crap TV show hating males who think they have some god given RIGHT to let the world know how they feel. This is just another form of harassment women everywhere must endure by the chauvinists who dare to comment on something that is rightfully reserved for females. We demand equality. We must ban men from IMDB in the name of equalit *head explodes*

Re:Suprise

[Punko]

Nope. Its because some men feel that watching tv with their women counts as quality time. My wife and I occasionally watch the same TV. She doesn't like hockey & baseball and I don't watch whatever it is she watches. When we do watch the same stuff, we're both watching because we're both interested. I don't make her watch what she doesn't want to and I don't watch what I don't want to. Maybe we're just comfortable enough with our own lives, that we don't need to be in each others' company all the time ??

Quality time with my wife doesn't include a TV.

Re:Suprise

[im_thatoneguy]

Or "male shows" like Battlestar Galactica is objectively better television than Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

I think this just reveals how sexist pressures apparently are keep women from watching amazing television like BSG.

Re:Suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a man to understand the true struggle of women.

Re:Suprise

[rickb928]

I watch a lot of Cupcake Wars, Chopped, and a seemingly infinite stream of Lifetime Movies filmed in either Vancouver or Toronto. With my wife.

She complains about my before-she-wakes-Saturday-EPL-watching-addiction.

Men and women are different.

I, for instance, can watch nearly any movie, so ling as I have a reason other than paying for it or being alone to watch it. So if I am watching movies with my wife I can be sufficiently interested to watch chick flicks, tearjerkers, and formulaic men/women behaving badly. We don't watch swimming pool movies together, I no longer do at all. But she's all in for Battlestar/Star Trek/Star Wars/Marvel/DC anything, as well as Bond/Bourne/anything with Liam Neeson.

I go to the movie theater for the popcorn, and to be entertained. Ratings mean less when the action is more.

But on TV, I see plenty of drivel on LMN, etc, and of course Netflix etc. that is rated so low it's presumed to bore my recliner, and surprise, it's at least as entertaining as the highly thought of crap that poses as mainstream.

Ratings mean very very little and for Sex and the City even less, because, well, SATC is so OLD it is well understood, and anyone wanting to know if it's 'any good' will get lots of opinions, and probably invest in one episode.

Full disclosure; I watched EVERY episode of SATC, first because it aired right after The Sopranos, and later because it was good enough to finish my evenings with.

Re:Suprise

[AmiMoJo]

Plenty of guys try to get their girlfriends to like male oriented shows.

Re:Suprise

[PoopMonkey]

Shhhh! Feels, not reals! We'll have no facts here! Stop your mansplaining! Waaaaaaah!

Re:Suprise

[Kinematics]

TV show ratings now = Misogyny

No, TV show ratings show evidence that misogyny exists. Maybe. (Correlation is not causation, etc) Claiming that they are equivalent, though, it not what's being asserted, and is generally a false representation of the argument being presented.

I think the most relevant graphic in the article was the one about how often men and women give 1 ratings to shows, relative to the percentage of men vs women rating the show overall.

Women also skew upwards in giving 1s to highly male-dominated shows. If at least 20% of the ratings are given by women, the percentage of 1s is pretty constant, at a little over 2%, but below 20% women, the percentage of 1s increases dramatically, to about 8% at the far edge.

Men, on the other hand, have a different trend line. Up to around 30%, maybe 40%, of women rating a show, men's 1s are perhaps a bit under 3% of all ratings. However over 40% (so 60% or fewer men, vs 20% or fewer women for the same effect on the other side) this increases dramatically, reaching perhaps 12% of all ratings being 1s for the shows with the highest female percentage (capping at 80%). There's definitely a difference in both perception and tolerance for shows that are outside your primary demographic.

Now, if you look at the rate that each one increases, women's percentage of 1s grows faster than men's (0.3 vs 0.225), but men's starts much sooner (40% rather than 80%). Possibly an indication that men are more likely to severely diss shows that are only mildly outside their comfort zone, while women will try to remain tolerant until things reach extreme levels, and then they start going negative far more quickly.

On the Sex and the City example, it was interesting to note that the average rating, when broken down by age group, was almost exactly the same across all ages (5.7 - 5.8 for men, 7.5 - 8.1 for women, with the 7.5 being a slight outlier of a relatively low sample size group of 45+ women [1100 vs 10k+ in other groups], the rest being 7.8 - 8.1).

The fact that the average doesn't vary by age actually seems like a counter-point to the misogyny as a source effect. One would expect that general behaviors have changed over time, and certainly over ~3 generations. Thus one might look for explanations outside of mere sexual attitudes, and more into behavioral aspects that have not varied over time. However the fact that men end up giving the same average ratings over such a large age range implies it's not just teenage brats going on a 1-rating spree, nor the influence of an older (presumably more misogynistic) age bracket influencing the final totals. It's something more pervasive and consistent.

Anyway, there's most definitely evidence of some sort of behavior difference between men and women in the data, though a lot more research is needed before I'd agree to any specific 'cause' being defined.

Re:Suprise

[PaulRivers10]

"misogyny" is just a word for some women to use to call a man a bitch. It's 100% the same word with the same meaning just directed at the other gender.

Re:Suprise

[Oligonicella]

Misandry is alive and well on the internet also. What's your point?

Re:Suprise

[Lehk228]

and feminism is as pants-on-head-retarded as ever.

take your "participant" ribbon and go home.

Re:Suprise

[Grishnakh]

They're probably not "going out of their way". They're probably sitting in bed with their SO watching this crap, but the man has his laptop computer with him so he doesn't have to focus all his attention on the crappy TV show. It's not hard for him to type in a nasty review while he's watching the show.

Re:Suprise

[Grishnakh]

Actually, the 2003 Battlestar Galactica was hugely popular with women as I remember (at least compared to other sci-fi shows). My then-wife absolutely loved it.

Women tend to like shows with a lot of human drama and character development, and BSG had that stuff in spades.

That's probably why Game of Thrones seems to be universally popular too. Tons of human drama and character development, plus lots of battles, swords, etc.

Re:Suprise

[Archangel Michael]

No, TV show ratings show evidence that misogyny exists

Just because you think it, doesn't mean it does. TV show ratings don't show anything, but how people feel about TV shows. That Misogyny exists is irrelevant here. Because it exists, you can point to just about anything in life and say "Shows evidence of misogyny", in the same way that DiHidrogen Monoxide is present in all sorts of dangerous compounds. BTW, did you know that 100% of all cancers have DiHydrogen Monoxide present?!!!???!!!!

And all your stats indicate is that Men shows have more universal appeal than women shows do. And that is actually not misogyny.

It is right up there with trying to say that because Empire is panned by white people, that white people are racist. However, I would counter that logic by saying a "black show, about black people doing black things in a black way" is actually where the "racism" comes in. It isn't something culturally relevant to anyone but black people and people who want to be immersed in that subculture. In fact, if you substitute "asian" or "latin" or "indian" or even "Gear heads" for black, I'd bet very few people would be interested it that show unless they were part of that culture. Empire might be a fantastic show, but it is of limited appeal because the subject matter is itself limiting. And there is nothing wrong with limiting your audience, as long as you understand what you're doing. And it isn't racism, it is about cultural relevancy to the subculture you're targeting. And there is nothing wrong with that. That isn't racism.

Bollocks isn't it.

[Fragnet]

Sex and the City is shit. Next question.

Re:Bollocks isn't it.

[DexPleiadian]

Captain Janeway for President of the United Federation of Planets!

Re:Bollocks isn't it.

[barbariccow]

Worst captain ever. Any time they get a break, she makes sure to personally ruin it.

Re:Bollocks isn't it.

[rickb928]

ST:E is so retro it's nearly steampunk. Fabulous just for that. Leave it alone.

Sabotaging?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of SJW bullshit is this? Maybe men just have different taste in TV shows. I can't imagine too many men wanting to watch The Bachelorette, either. The low ratings are just a reflection that men don't like the show. It's not sabotage. Cut the SJW bullshit. Why is Slashdot so full of SJW nonsense lately?

Re:Sabotaging?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, stop trying to oppress me with your logic! If you like a show and I don't, it's because the show is trash.
If I like a show and you don't, it's because you are the oppressive arm of the patriarchy flaunting your male privilege!

Re:Sabotaging?

[queazocotal]

The article is not actually that unreasonable apart from the headline.
'Men are downvoting shows aimed at women' may be a more fair title.
To quote:
" But ratings taken as an aggregate obfuscate crucial detail. They can smooth over dramatic imbalances in demography that belie a thoroughly unscientific sample. They have the habit of lumping the divisive among the universally mediocre. And as long as they purport to underscore the true value of a work, they undermine people’s ability to find new and interesting material just because a subset of passionate and vociferous dudes on the internet somehow hold it in low regard."

This is not unreasonable.
Another example is complex software only usable by professionals (or very skilled amateurs). Votes from people coming to it who have no idea of the field are basically worthless.

Re:Sabotaging?

[mjwx]

First off, anyone using the term "SJW" is completely full of shit.

Secondly, the article is just trying to get their name in some headlines in order to get eyeballs on ads. This is Buzzfeed turned to 11.

No nefarious agenda behind it (well other than getting your eyeballs around their ads).

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

First off, anyone using the term "SJW" is completely full of shit.

Why? It perfectly, succinctly describes what it's all about. It's dead on.

Re:Sabotaging?

[Roger Wilcox]

So the men that watched "Sex and the City" didn't really like the show. "Sabotage" has a specific meaning that the article doesn't really support. A better title might have been "Men don't like women's TV." Is this SJW nonsense? Based on the title I'd say it is. Apparently it was written by a none-too-bright guy who felt it was necessary to stand up for women by speaking poorly of his fellow men. The data doesn't even really support his claim... a much more plausible explanation is that men simply don't like certain shows that are aimed at women. Why is it on Slashdot? Now, that's your question and I don't have an answer. However, it does give us an opportunity to take a look at the fact that yes, SJW BS is happening, and a good number of people are buying in. Just read the comments at the bottom of the main article... sure some of them are actually sane and reasonable, but a disturbing number are agreeing and making statements about men in general as a result of this BS article. Here's the real question: why does the author feel the need to paint men in a bad light over this (non)issue despite the fact that he is a man? Answer me that one and we'll be getting somewhere.

Re:Sabotaging?

[jareth-0205]

What kind of SJW bullshit is this? Maybe men just have different taste in TV shows. I can't imagine too many men wanting to watch The Bachelorette, either. The low ratings are just a reflection that men don't like the show. It's not sabotage. Cut the SJW bullshit. Why is Slashdot so full of SJW nonsense lately?

It's funny, I find it very difficult to take anyone seriously who uses that ridiculous acronym (let alone in every sentence). It's not even a very good slur... like someone can be proud that they are not interested in social justice.

Re:Sabotaging?

[Roger Wilcox]

So the men that watched "Sex and the City" didn't really like the show. "Sabotage" has a specific meaning that the article doesn't really support. A better title might have been "Men don't like women's TV."

Is this SJW nonsense? Based on the title I'd say it is. Apparently it was written by a none-too-bright guy who felt it was necessary to stand up for women by speaking poorly of his fellow men. The data doesn't even really support his claim... a much more plausible explanation is that men simply don't like certain shows that are aimed at women.

Why is it on Slashdot? Now, that's your question and I don't have an answer. However, it does give us an opportunity to take a look at the fact that yes, SJW BS is happening, and a good number of people are buying in. Just read the comments at the bottom of the main article... sure some of them are actually sane and reasonable, but a disturbing number are agreeing and making statements about men in general as a result of this BS article.

Here's the real question: why does the author feel the need to paint men in a bad light over this (non)issue despite the fact that he is a man? Answer me that one and we'll be getting somewhere.

Re:Sabotaging?

[TangoMargarine]

When the target demographic refers to themselves with the term in question, how can there possibly be a problem with it?

Other than "reclaiming" slurs I guess

Re:Sabotaging?

[chispito]

Another example is complex software only usable by professionals (or very skilled amateurs). Votes from people coming to it who have no idea of the field are basically worthless.

No. Good niche software is not "divisive."

We're talking about entertainment. You do not need to be a TV Expert to give a "qualified" rating of entertainment.

Re:Sabotaging?

[rickb928]

That's White Male Privilege, you insensitive clod.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

So you're suggesting that social justice is an undesirable thing? Or just that allowing oneself to be labeled as a crusader for it is unacceptable?

*sigh*

No. The point is that the people who carry on in this way are generally over-wrought, pretentious idiots that don't understand what the word "justice" actually means, but consider themselves to be passionate warriors for their nebulous cause because they tweet with some magic hashtags. They aren't "fighting" for anything, but they do get their feelings hurt for all the wrong reasons about all the wrong things.

Yes, "social justice" (as the term is used by its shrill priesthood, most of whom make careers out of getting paid to manufacture phony injustice that only they can solve through being paid to blog about it) IS an undesirable thing. Because it's not at all about justice, it's about faux grievances and misplaced senses of entitlement.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

Yep, you are a practitioner for sure. A sure sign of a seminar-trained SJW enthusiast is the cherry picked moral equivalence hysteria, and a careful avoidance of any sort of context or awareness of actual history. When WAS your seminar - just last week?

Re:Sabotaging?

[misanthropic.mofo]

Don't forget about the people that review things based purely on the description of the show or product. Then there are the people that can't/won't RTFM, then complain because product X does not perfectly perform unsupported action Y.

Re:Sabotaging?

[UnknownSoldier]

> First off, anyone using the term "SJW" is completely full of shit.

Agreed. Stupid Justice Whiners always lie

Re:Sabotaging?

[PoopMonkey]

It's the "stay in your lane" bullshit expanded to TV shows.

Re:Sabotaging?

[pipingguy]

"Why is Slashdot so full of SJW nonsense lately?"

Trying to get laid? Virtue-signalling? In touch with their feminine side? Sand in their vaginas?

Re:Sabotaging?

[sciengin]

The term SJW or Social Justice Warrior can be perfectly appropriate if you want to express that someone is campaigning for non-issues instead of being a true fighter for social justice like the people who try to get girls into school in countries infested by islamism.
Those are the true heroes who risk their lifes.

SJWs in contrast complain about being triggered by the color teal, not getting money to fund their surgery procedure to transform them into a pansexual wolfkin apache attack helicopter, and of course about wickedly evil sexist scientists who dare to wear shirts with women on them while landing a probe on a freaking comet.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

Yes, I can see that you're the very picture of level headed, civilized discourse. Please, do go on.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

What are you even TALKING about? People don't change. The whiny SJW types are just like every other power-hungry group looking to exploit manufactured, phony victimization in order to control other people. History is full of that stuff, with minor variations.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

Hilarious. I don't want to control them, I want them to not be awarded with control over me. Orwell would be proud of you, though: "Resisting others' control over you and wanting to be left alone is actually a way to control them!"

Please, keep your comedy routine up. It's great.

Re:Sabotaging?

[Kartu]

Troll, seriously?

Re:Sabotaging?

[serviscope_minor]

It perfectly, succinctly describes what it's all about.

In that it describes the user of the phrase as at pinhead then yes, indeed it is dead on.

"SJW" has become a grab-bag of miscellaneous "shit I don't like on the internet", and the reasoning seems to go

1. Here's bunch of shit I don't like.
2. EEEW SJW
3. You're saying something unrelated I also don't like.
4. You're an SJW.
5. Ergo you're responsible for everything from 1.

It is a sign of incredibly lazy thinking at best. But mostly it's a sign of someone who's wearing a trilby when they think it's a fedora.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

Up is down! War is peace! You're fantastic.

So, let's see. I don't belong to any groups or associations that have been founded based on race or gender. I think that such groups are ridiculous. But of course I'm a big fan of the first amendment, so people should use their protected freedom of assembly however they like. But you know, and I know, that if I were to actually start group that's based on my sex and skin color (especially on a college campus!) there would be howls of screeching outrage from Big SJW, and formal finger-wagging letters written and signed by the members of people who started their own groups based on genitals and skin pigment. That's the difference: I don't care, but they are spectacular hypocrites on the subject.

You seem to think that the only way to improve the things you don't like is through the subjugation of others, based on things like gender and skin color. I think the best way to improve things is to stop obsessing about those things in the first place. Who wants control over others? You do. You're the one that's obsessed about "power," not me. Thanks for being so transparent about it, though - it helps the rest of us when you put those tyrannical urges of yours on display.

Re:Sabotaging?

[ScentCone]

Wow, you really are either a completely disingenuous spinner on behalf of the hand-wringing progressive SJW quadrant, or you are so afraid of life that you probably scare yourself looking in the mirror.

You want others to behave in a certain way.

Which way? Be specific. Let's try a couple on for size:

1) Control what people say! Nope, I don't care, but the SJW/liberal crowd want to shout people down, shut people up, and censor those they don't like.

2) Control what people do! Nope, I pretty much don't care. But the SJW/liberal crows is absolutely obsessed with telling other people what they cannot do, what they cannot say, what size drink they cannot buy, which car they can drive, which skin color quotas must be obeyed, and all of the other controlling things they insist on.

Want more? Nah, what's the point. You are insisting that left is right, dark is light, hot is cold. Those that don't want control of people are the controllers, and those that insist on censorship and minute control over other people's lives are the ones who don't want control.

No, nobody could actually believe it when they say those things, so you're just trolling for fun. What do you get out that, exactly? Just curious.

Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[grasshoppa]

I'm going to throw out a radical suggestion here....

Maybe men legitimately don't like shows that are aimed at women, and they're more vocal about it?

Is that wrong? Are men supposed to simply sit down and keep their opinions to themselves? What's the hope here?

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

When a boyfriend and girlfriend want to watch different things on TV, the girl wins out. Men get stuck watching girl shows. Women don't get stuck watching guy shows. As a result, men have the knowledge to rate girl shows poorly. Women don't see the guy shows, so they have no reason to rate them poorly. This isn't sabotage. Slashdot needs to cut the SJW bullshit.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[geschbacher79]

Exactly right. For the small percentage of women who did watch The League, Southpark, or Ballers, were their ratings equivalent to the males who watched them? Or how about my house where my wife loves "House Hunters International" but I'm ambivalent towards. She would give it an 8, myself a 4. Am I sabotaging the ratings? Perhaps men and women just like different programming? Perhaps blacks, Latinos, Persians, etc all have different tastes when it comes to pop culture?

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[klek]

Are these men actually watching the shows seriously, with interest, finding them irksome, and then downvoting?
Or are they just downvoting w/o giving two shits about the show in the first place...

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
  Bill Bullard

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[rossz]

Are men supposed to simply sit down and keep their opinions to themselves?

That is exactly what the radical feminists are demanding.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Your.Master]

You didn't read the article.

The difference is that when men don't like shows that are aimed at women, they apparently rate the show, but when women don't like shows that are aimed at men, they don't rate the show. There are shows popular with men and unpopular with women, and vice-versa, and the latter get way more "wrong-gender" votes. No particular reason was proposed as to why this is. The call to action was to recognize that single-number rating systems obscure important details in general.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[geek]

Are men supposed to simply sit down and keep their opinions to themselves?

That is exactly what the radical feminists are demanding.

Its the victim mentality.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[tom229]

Amen. Sex and the city IS a terrible show. It's junk food for the SJW agenda and anyone interested in benefiting from it. Men (the least likely to benefit from any modern social justice agenda) are acutely aware of this and develop appropriate opinions. Was someone under the impression that straight men liked sex and the city?

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anrego]

So much actual this.

And beyond that, when your GF does sit through one of "your shows" she's usually doing something else, whereas for whatever reason I feel guys are compelled to watch what's on the TV even if we hate it to our core.

There are certainly legit social issues relating to gender inequality, but I wish we could find a balance and accept that yes, there _are_ actually differences between how men and women generally behave and that may not actually be a bad thing.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[goose-incarnated]

When a boyfriend and girlfriend want to watch different things on TV, the girl wins out. Men get stuck watching girl shows. Women don't get stuck watching guy shows. As a result, men have the knowledge to rate girl shows poorly. Women don't see the guy shows, so they have no reason to rate them poorly. This isn't sabotage. Slashdot needs to cut the SJW bullshit.

That's certainly the script. However I don't follow it - I tend to encourage my wife to watch the shows she likes because I won't be watching them with her. I've even got an agreement with her that I will watch exactly three chick flicks in a given year (no carryovers) as long as i get to veto her proposed chick flicks.

I haven't seen a show aimed at women since (possibly) 2004. I simply refuse.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[squiggleslash]

It's the "more vocal about it" bit that's the problem. If you're relying on quality ratings (which admittedly is probably something you shouldn't be), then it renders them meaningless if a 6 means "Superb, but aimed at women, so lots of men for no apparent reason decided to voice their displeasure", while a 9 means "Popular with men, but the other 50% of the audience just rolled their eyes and ignored it."

Again: I'm not trying to say movie/TV/etc execs should be using IMDB ratings, just that this is but one reason why they're meaningless. Likewise you probably shouldn't use them in an Internet argument for much the same reason.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[tom229]

I think you've identified the real cause of this data. Only someone with a victim complex would interpret this as "men sabotaging women's shows". Men simply watch way more television aimed at women due to them defining that as quality time.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[sconeu]

My wife watched House Hunters International.

I'd rate it a 1. Why the f**k would I give a shit about someone with too much money trying to buy a house in some exotic place?

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[fahrbot-bot]

My wife watched House Hunters International.
I'd rate it a 1.

You know... If they merged the two shows "House" and "Hunters" I might watch that.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[thomasw_lrd]

I find it entertaining, just to see what houses in foreign places go for versus what I paid for my house.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, let's quote the article.

Nearly 60 percent of the people who rated “Sex and the City” on IMDb are women, and looking only at those scores, the show has an 8.1. That’s well above average. Male users, though, who made up just over 40 percent of “Sex and the City” raters, assigned it, on average, a 5.8 rating. Oof.

Oh, how horrible, the "B- rating given by 60% of the respondents is being averaged with the F+ rating given by 40%.

Seventy percent of IMDb TV show raters are men, according to my analysis,

So if all 30% of female IMDB raters voted up this crap-show, that means 20% of the total IMDB raters were males downvoting it. So if all the female IMDB voters were upvoting, about 29% of the male IMDB voters downvoted. Clearly this shows a coordinated attack by the patriarchy against womanity.

I'm sure Walt believes that by writing this nonsense that he will get some sex in the city himself.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Alomex]

I've seen movie ratings on a grid precisely for this reason. The rows were "action flick", "drama", comedy", "romantic comedy", "indie", "sports movie", etc.

This way the critic could differentiate between, say, people who don't like sports movies period, and a bad sports movie.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[BlackSabbath]

So you and the parent are contending that men are too pissweak to say "honey, I'm not a huge fan of sex and the city. I'll just snuggle up next to you and watch game of thrones on my ipad", and then, having been "forced" to watch a show they didn't want to (oh, the humanity!) bother to wait till the show is done and their s.o has left the building in order to angrily (but secretly - we don't want to piss her off!) type a terrible review.

Sheesh! How passive-aggressive can you get?

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[GlennC]

To answer your questions:

Maybe men legitimately don't like shows that are aimed at women, and they're more vocal about it?

I think that's a fair assessment.

Is that wrong?

I wouldn't say its wrong, but I would say its not helpful.

Are men supposed to simply sit down and keep their opinions to themselves? What's the hope here?

I'll answer these together, starting from the base assumption that men are watching these shows with their wife and/or girlfriend.

The rationale here is that you as the guy have a deep affection for the woman in your life, and want her to be happy. She enjoys watching this particular program, and for some reason she also enjoys your company. I'm sure she's made sacrifices for you, such as watching a movie or show you enjoy that she didn't care for. It's all part of the give and take of life.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[jareth-0205]

It's junk food for the SJW agenda and anyone interested in benefiting from it. Men (the least likely to benefit from any modern social justice agenda) are acutely aware of this and develop appropriate opinions.

See, this worries the fuck out of me and is why I'll give time to this so-called agenda even though it riles me too - because since when have we become so fucking selfish that any other group trying to improve their lot immediately means we have to fight it? Maybe we should recognise imbalances (even if they are in our favour) and help to right them?

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anrego]

Meh, guilty as charged to pretty much all of that.

If what you said works then I'm envious.. I accepted having to choose between sitting through some crap while cuddling or no cuddling and possibly a speech a long time ago.

I do complain about the shows though, it's no secret that I don't like them. Why women (or at least the subset I've known) absolutely insist on forcing us to watch stuff with them that they _know_ we hate is beyond me, but it's a thing and I (like I suspect many others) gave up fighting it a long time ago.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[TangoMargarine]

The tough part is stretching out one episode of stalking Hugh Laurie into an entire season

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[itsenrique]

This all day. If your lady is domineering TV make a stand so that it's more egalitarian. Or just steal the remote.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[barbariccow]

When a boyfriend and girlfriend want to watch different things on TV, the girl wins out. Men get stuck watching girl shows. Women don't get stuck watching guy shows. As a result, men have the knowledge to rate girl shows poorly. Women don't see the guy shows, so they have no reason to rate them poorly. This isn't sabotage. Slashdot needs to cut the SJW bullshit.

Sounds like you're in a very one-sided relationship. If she always "wins," then either you are overstating "always" or it is not a good relationship, in which case, get out and find someone who shares similar interests.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Ichijo]

That's easy to fix: display the rating on a percentile scale relative to other shows of the same type. Then when men are forced to watch other women's shows and rate them just as (un)fairly, their ratings will cancel each other out and what remains are honest and fair evaluations of each show.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[tom229]

Welcome to the 1960s. The imbalances, as defined by changes in culture, have been identified and largely corrected. I wouldn't claim were at a perfect state of equality, but special treatment for groups of disadvantaged people is surely no longer required. At some point, everyone needs to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own destiny.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[jammer170]

Great statement by someone who doesn't understand the majority of women. As with most things, women care a great deal about the social aspects of watching TV, discussing what is happening and what is going to happen and what just happened. If I pull out my iPad or laptop to watch something else (or as is common in my case, play video games), and I plug in earphones, she loses that aspect and it isn't as enjoyable for her.

In fact, I wonder if that is at least part of the cause of the lopsided ratings. Women might care less about the show and more about its capability to discuss it with others. Despite enjoying Sex in the City, she wasn't very enthused when I got her a copy of the show because I wasn't really interested in watching it with her. I tried watching the first episode with her, and found it rather hideously boring. The show is off the air, so none of the women she knows is going to be discussing it anymore. When it was originally on the air, lots of women (and I believe it was a hit among gay men as well - and before the outragists here start shouting, these are generalizations) were discussing it. It probably doesn't hold up as well now, and I be interested to see the plot of ratings over time.

Ultimately, it seems like this information is just a stereotypical conflation of correlation versus causation. There are gendered differences to the rating, so there is a leap to the unsubstantiated reason of "sabotage". The true results of this study should be, "Hey, I wonder why this is?"

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[rickb928]

For the beach houses, of course.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[PhrostyMcByte]

You didn't read the article.

The article very clearly has an agenda, with a sensational title like "Men Are Sabotaging..."

The observation that men vote more than women is an important one and the display of data should be changed so that bias is accounted for. That's just not what the article was going for.

Men aren't sabotaging anything. The report makers are, by not showing two numbers. And women aren't doing themselves any favors by self-censoring their legitimate opinions, if that is truly the case.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[rickb928]

If you are observant, you realize that men are intended to be victims of feminism.

Coincidentally, women are also.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[rickb928]

Yes, I was.

Because I did. And I'm honest about it.

Really, it was a current show before anyone thought rating it online was a thing.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[CrimsonAvenger]

I tend to encourage my wife to watch the shows she likes because I won't be watching them with her. I've even got an agreement with her that I will watch exactly three chick flicks in a given year (no carryovers) as long as i get to veto her proposed chick flicks.

And thus the difference between "wife" and "girlfriend" is displayed for all to see.

Yes, you can do that with your wife (fortunately for me, I don't have to - my wife is more likely to want to watch Arrow than Sex in the City). But it's a bit harder with your girlfriend (assuming, always, that you want to keep her your girlfriend), since alienating the GF might very well mean no GF....

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[goose-incarnated]

I tend to encourage my wife to watch the shows she likes because I won't be watching them with her. I've even got an agreement with her that I will watch exactly three chick flicks in a given year (no carryovers) as long as i get to veto her proposed chick flicks.

And thus the difference between "wife" and "girlfriend" is displayed for all to see.

Yes, you can do that with your wife (fortunately for me, I don't have to - my wife is more likely to want to watch Arrow than Sex in the City). But it's a bit harder with your girlfriend (assuming, always, that you want to keep her your girlfriend), since alienating the GF might very well mean no GF....

I dunno; My wife *was* my girlfriend prior to becoming my wife and I still had the same rule :-) Same with my previous wives (and girl-friends).

My observation about the women in my life is this: the more submissive you behave in an effort to please her, the less pleased she is. Because I never tell her what she can or cannot do, I make it clear that she cannot tell me what I can or cannot do.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[pipingguy]

You're not applauding enthusiastically enough, comrade.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[jareth-0205]

Welcome to the 1960s. The imbalances, as defined by changes in culture, have been identified and largely corrected. I wouldn't claim were at a perfect state of equality, but special treatment for groups of disadvantaged people is surely no longer required. At some point, everyone needs to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own destiny.

What, as determined by... you? You know that's exactly what people said in the 60s. It's the ones who are disadvantaged who are the best at seeing if they are disadvantaged. And the ones that have the advantages belittle and diminish the problem so they can keep the status quo.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[s.petry]

Ahh, the great advice of relationships by someone who can't maintain them.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[vel-ex-tech]

Are your genitals good and mutilated? Were you forced to meditate with your head on your desk over lunch break like all the other boys because some other fuckwit who just happened to be assigned the same letter at birth as you was being a fuckwit during class? Were you given the lecture that even an accusation of thinking about date rape would have you expelled from campus?

Imbalances. What a fucking piece of shit.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great statement by someone who doesn't understand the majority of women. As with most things, women care a great deal about the social aspects of watching TV, discussing what is happening and what is going to happen and what just happened.

Yeah, right, but somehow, that great deal of care about "the social aspects of watching TV" doesn't apply when she has to watch one of your shows. In that case, it is ok for her to take our her iPad and do other stuff.

Guess what, even though this is /., so of us DO have experience living with a woman.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should recognise imbalances (even if they are in our favour) and help to right them?

Imbalances like the majority of university degree holders are women? Imbalances like the fact that the wage differential is bullshit when normalized for taking time off to raise kids in addition to picking bullshit 'pink ghetto' careers? Imbalances such as the fact that they're not required to register for the draft? Imbalances like the fact that the majority of suicide victims are male?

Cry me a river. I'll stomp a mudhole in your white knight ass.

No keyboard pussy here, just a retired divorced veteran on his next career tired of seeing the radical feminists (and worse yet, their simps like you) bleat about how bad they've got it.

Sit the fuck down.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[Oligonicella]

Great statement by someone who doesn't understand the majority of women.

Said someone pretending they do.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[tom229]

*Plays the world's smallest violin* now get off your computer and do something. Quit waiting for the government to do it for you. If you really want it, you'll find no insurmountable obstacle in your way.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[goose-incarnated]

Ahh, the great advice of relationships by someone who can't maintain them.

Why do you think I can't maintain them?

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[roman_mir]

since when have we become so fucking selfish that any other group trying to improve their lot immediately means we have to fight it?

- since the time that these 'imbalances' became government required entitlements for some and obligations for others. I will never support anything that puts an obligation on me by any government.

Re: Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[serviscope_minor]

It sounds like you don't have strong boundaries.

google "strong boundaries" and you'll get millions of words written about them, why they're good and importantly how to get them, assert them and maintain them.

If what you said works then I'm envious..

It does work, and it can work for you too. I presume your partner doesn't actually have any desire to see you suffer (otherwise I'd question why you're in a relationship with her), but is getting what she wants because it's easy and pleasant and probably doesn't realise it matters.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[serviscope_minor]

I will never support anything that puts an obligation on me by any government.

I think people should be free to drive on whichever the fuck side of the road they feel like after downing 15 beers. And I'll never support any govermnent that says otherwise.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[roman_mir]

Actually AFAIC government must not be in road policing business at all, however this example does not have entitlement part vsbobligation part. Who is obliged to do anything to provide another with an entitlement in your strawman?

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[serviscope_minor]

Actually AFAIC government must not be in road policing business at all

Why not?

however this example does not have entitlement part vsbobligation part.

Who's going to enforce that though?

Who is obliged to do anything to provide another with an entitlement in your strawman?

So say the guy has paid for a year of use of the road, so he's entitled to use it. Or perhaps he just straight out busts onto it without paying.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[roman_mir]

Government should not be in road policing business at all because roads shouldn't be 'public', all roads need to be private (and they used to be before usurpation of power).

As to entitlements and obligations, those are constantly enforced by government. A very simple example of-course is people with disabilities. Just because some people have disabilities, governments enforce obligations upon individual businesses to provide entitlements to people with disabilities, whether a businesses actually cares about that segment of the market or not (and regardless of whether it makes sense for a business to care about a segment of the market that may be completely irrelevant for that business).

So say the guy has paid for a year of use of the road, so he's entitled to use it. Or perhaps he just straight out busts onto it without paying.

- this entire argument is crazy, people shouldn't be forced to pay for something for a year that they had no use for that year.

Re:Maybe they just don't like the shows?

[serviscope_minor]

Government should not be in road policing business at all because roads shouldn't be 'public', all roads need to be private

Again, why? That's just a bald assertion with no reason.

- this entire argument is crazy, people shouldn't be forced to pay for something for a year that they had no use for that year.

Except I didn't say that.

Say the road goes somewhere he wants to go, e.g. his favourite pub, so he's paid for a year of usage in advace. Or say he just trespasses and busts on to it without paying.

Sabotaging?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, those shows are only for women, and men should not have an opinion of the shows? Really? Men don't seem to like them, but how is this sabotaging? What the fuck, really?

Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Maxo-Texas]

A single rating isn't doing the job in this case.

I'm a guy and I loved sex and the city.

Otherwise pretty nerd profile.

12 Monkeys, Fear the Walking Dead, Game...of...Thrones, Big Bang Theory, Mr. Robot, Person of Interest.

But also Bones and Death in Paradise.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[goose-incarnated]

But also Bones and Death in Paradise.

Bones is trash. My wife is now on season $WHATEVER and of the two episodes I've seen I think that the science in CSI is more accurate.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Anrego]

This would actually be really useful, but would probably cause a huge PR shitstorm.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[rickb928]

I'm not into GoT at all, the gratuitous everything is not for me. If the Sopranos were starting now, I wouldn't watch it either, but I changed. I choose my entertainment sex and violence differently now.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Maxo-Texas]

Lol. I like the actors and the characters they play. (Esp. since I was a buffy fan ).

They've kept the show really fresh with the rotating interns scheme which is fairly unique in television.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Carewolf]

They already do. You can also filter for age and other things.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Maxo-Texas]

This is very nice! But I can't find a path to it through the site menus. is it a premium feature?

For now, I can look up a show and post its tag into your url.

Re:Sounds like they need to break it out by gender

[Carewolf]

No, I am not a premium member. You click on the number of votes below the score to get to it.

Oh please

[tom229]

So... men can't dislike shows aimed at women? A show like sex and the city paints a pretty shallow, incomplete, and unfortunate picture of both sexes, it just tries overly hard to "empower" women while doing so. It's bad reviews are greatly deserved. What I gather from the tone of the article is that any SJW agenda deserves nothing but praise. *eye roll* This mentality is out of control. My wife hates a lot of the sports and sci-fi stuff I watch and would probably give them a bad review too.

Re:Oh please

[geek]

A friend of mine posted something on Facebook today. I rarely look at Facebook and when I do I just glance but this caught my eye.

The average wedding in Europe is around 6,000 euros. The average wedding in the US is around 36,000$. The blurb was accompanied by a little video showing a British woman talk about how its a family event and about the commitment, all the important stuff. Then it cut to a spoiled American girl screaming "ITS MY FUCKING WEDDING" while holding onto her dress and throwing shit.

My response to her was "Too many princesses in the US and not enough women". Sex in the City embodied that to me. It was such a horrendous show that to this day when I hear a woman talk about how great it was I gag and throw up in my mouth a little. The women on that show were so shallow and lifeless I have a hard time understanding how it existed at all. Then I talk to some of the princesses this countries pumped out over the last 30 years and it all becomes clear.

Re:Oh please

[pr0fessor]

What they didn't mention in tfa that I took away from it is that men are more likely to rate a show than a women on imdb. These shows won awards and had a high viewer ship so apparently imdb is mostly used by men and it's reflected in the ratings. This isn't sabotage because these rating have nothing to do with the amount of viewers or how these shows are renewed or canceled.

Re:Oh please

[tom229]

Yes it's poor conclusions based on general data. Men are also much more likely to be forced into watching "chick flicks" to satisfy quality time quotas. This is extremely common and has to have some effect on this data. Women just aren't watching shows directed at men as much.

Re:Oh please

[rickb928]

"A show like sex and the city paints a pretty shallow, incomplete, and unfortunate picture of both sexes"

I was never under the delusion that TV shows show the truth of anything, especially "Reality TV".

Re:Oh please

[pr0fessor]

No one is forcing me to watch things I don't want to but then again I wouldn't be surprised if my wife didn't know or care what imdb or tmdb is although I do use them. She also doesn't read /. but then again I don't use her favorite sites either.

Re:Oh please

[DRMShill]

The average wedding is not 36k. The source for that number was a survey in a high end bridal magazine which caters to the type of reader that would spend that much on a wedding.

Re:Oh please

[im_thatoneguy]

The women on that show were so shallow and lifeless I have a hard time understanding how it existed at all.

My Fiancee and I concluded that Sex and the City is the female equivalent to Entourage. I liked entourage more. She liked Sex and the City more. (I'm far more likely to ever visit IMDB).

Re:Oh please

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. In fact, $36k sounds really low to me; I've heard of much higher numbers from people who really weren't *that* well-off. Americans spend an absurd amount of money on weddings.

Just because the magazine reporting that number caters to big spenders doesn't mean their data is faulty. Where'd they get that number? Presumably they're reporting the average cost of weddings nationwide of all people, not just their readers.

Re:Oh please

[athenaprime]

It's not that hard to rack up the bills. In the US, as soon as you mention "wedding" there are people lining up to part you from your money at a 10X mark-up rate because it's a wedding and not, say, a corporate picnic. Weddings are also big social status things in the US. In the absence of titled nobility, status gets achieved by ostentatious displays of wealth. Plus, Madison Ave. advertising is really, really good at hitting hard in the weak spots, and bypassing the logical brain and going right for the id.

Re: Oh please

[undefinedreference]

The average is still high in the US. Somewhere around 30k, not including rings. It's insane. The wedding industrial complex is absolute madness.

Re:Oh please

[DRMShill]

Jesus Christ, fine here's a citation:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

So it works out to be 15k median. Which I think also might be misleading. I think that number neglects people who just don't want to do anything special for the wedding and really just want to focus on the marriage.

RFTA - It has some good points:

[Registered Coward v2]

TFA brings up some good points:

1. There are significantly more men rater stain women rates, which means their results will skew ratings towards what men like to watch

   A poor rating does not mean it is bad TV nor does a high one mean it is good

   The rating in and off itself is pretty much useless, a better idea is to look at the data to get a clearer picture if a show might be of interest to you

IMDB could separate mens scores from women's; as well as show what shows were highly or poorly rated by the same people who rated a particular show. That would give you a better idea of the value of a rating in deciding if you might be interested in the show.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[93 Escort Wagon]

IMDB could separate mens scores from women's; as well as show what shows were highly or poorly rated by the same people who rated a particular show. That would give you a better idea of the value of a rating in deciding if you might be interested in the show.

You know, that's a really excellent idea. I would think it would address the concerns of both sides on this issue.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[Princeofcups]

IMDB could separate mens scores from women's; as well as show what shows were highly or poorly rated by the same people who rated a particular show. That would give you a better idea of the value of a rating in deciding if you might be interested in the show.

I suppose that would be useful, but you really can't solve for the general case. For example, my favorite film is Fellini's 8 1/2. It has a very high rating, but I suspect that people who would generally like that kind of film go out of their way to find it and watch it, and rate it. If Netflix pushed it on their front page, I'm sure IMDB would fill up with negative reviews from people who hate B&W films, surreal plots, over dubbing, long films, and generally not be ready for the experience. And then you have every terrible blockbuster start out with an 8 rating, mostly from teens, before the rating slowly falls as others discover the film. Another example is a film like ET, which I despise. It has a high rating, and I understand why. I have no problem with that. But it is still a terrible film. You have to take the audience and distribution into consideration. It also helps to read the top of the "Loved it" and bottom of the "Hated it" to see WHY people rated it the way they did.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[smelch]

This is such a dumb thing to look at. These ratings tell you exactly what they measure, the mean score given to a show by all raters. To read in to it any more than that is silly. If you're trying to find out if you would like the show, then there should be some sort of predictive model that takes in a set of attributes and spits out how likely you are to like the show. You can do that yourself by thinking about what you like in shows, what actors you like, what genres you like, and looking at that information from IMDB.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[CrashNBrn]

Most reviews are fit for about one thing, Expressing said person's opinion - and they don't even (usually) do that very well. Thus about the only thing you can get from a review "rating" is to find one or more people whom express opinions in a manner that matches your experience.

If IMDB would allow any degree of control (filter|sort) it would be an improvement over what it is now - an Amazon owned database for Xray, and ad-platform for Amazon Video

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[thegarbz]

IMDB could separate mens scores from women's; as well as show what shows were highly or poorly rated by the same people who rated a particular show. That would give you a better idea of the value of a rating in deciding if you might be interested in the show.

Next up, white people sabotage shows aimed at black people. Old people sabotage shows aimed at young people.

The problem is you're playing the SJW game and will endlessly fall down the pit of trying to appease everyone because dammit it we're all being oppressed. It just happens to be men vs women today. .... actually it was whitewashing blacks yesterday. Tomorrow is "religion Friday" is it not? Looking forward to an anti-Islam article.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[avandesande]

I felt that way about Avengers.... I hated it but understand why some would like it.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[jareth-0205]

The overall problem being that a show loved by (say) 20% of the population but hated by the rest still should have merit, and be financially viable etc, but does badly in a rating system. A mild crowd pleaser does better in the rating, but it's hard to say that it's of greater value.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[Firethorn]

IMDB could separate mens scores from women's; as well as show what shows were highly or poorly rated by the same people who rated a particular show. That would give you a better idea of the value of a rating in deciding if you might be interested in the show.

You could also implement a netflix type rating system - a sort of "viewers like you rated this as X.X"

The typical chick-flick hating guy will see the 1 star and be satisfied, the woman who loves them sees the 5.0 and is happy.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[Luthair]

I think charactarizing this as a men vs women is misleading, the issue sounds more like a complaint that people who aren't in the intended audience (sorta like how action movies always have a poor rating by critics). The answer already exists, click through to the details and eyeball the distribution if there are a lot of high ratings and it sounds like your cup of tea ignore the low ratings, if you aren't sure consider them.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[Ken D]

or you could use a state-of-the-art ML recommender system that tells you which shows were highly rated by people who rated shows like you do.

Using Average ratings to represent how good a show is so.... Golden Age of Television-ish? Welcome to the age of personalized recommendations.

Re:RFTA - It has some good points:

[athenaprime]

It shouldn't be terribly difficult to stream out the data according to a number of demographic separations - gender, age, physical location, method of viewing (theater, streaming, DVD), rent/purchase, first-run or later viewing, etc.

Re:iMDB ratings are worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

You only get two types of people rating things:

1. People who love the ever-loving shit out of something SO MUCH that they feel the need to go online and rate the fuck out of it

2. People who HATE the ever-loving shit out of something SO MUCH that they feel the need to go online and rate the fuck out of it

There's no middle ground at all, it's a worthless system loaded with bias, the flamewars it generates likely fuel iMDBs forum advertising revenue

For a rebuttal, take a look at many of the Amazon "Ask a Question answers"...

Q: What are the EXACT dimensions of this X?
A: I don't know, about a foot I guess. ...

Really? If you don't know, don't answer! Amazon asks you if you CAN answer the question. It's not a home work assignment where you lose credit for not handing one in...

Back on the direct topic... The Shield is an awesome show - best version of the cop genre ever IMO. How is SITC vs every other sitcom/drama in that genre, which is itself a less funny, gender narrowed version of Friends/Seinfeld? Besides having an older, exclusively female primary cast? Tip: If the "main male lead" in your show is named "Mr. Big" and he's not a crime lord, he's a secondary character/foil for the primary.

SITC is a water down, overly hyped version of the Daphne Coleman/Dolly Parton/Lily Tomlin/the other one, movie "Working 9-5" which was edgier and more daring... 30-40 years before SITC.

In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews...

[shaitand]

of shows aimed for men. Seriously, what is this nonsense? Next up, those who prefer certain skin tones when selecting sexual partners are racist! Only eye, hair, breast, and wallet size are allowed. Men are allowed to indicate they dislike shows just as much as women are allowed to indicate they like them. If anything the system is unfair to men because there are more women than men in the world.

Go Figure...

[sycodon]

...a guy would hammer a show about 4 whiney women.

Re:Go Figure...

[ShanghaiBill]

...a guy would hammer a show about 4 whiney women.

Instead of "hammering" it, he should just realize he is not part of the target audience, and watch something else. I don't enjoy watching Teletubbies, but I don't give it a bad review because I am not a three year old.

Re:Go Figure...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there wasn't a whole thing going on in a number of entertainment sectors in which even thinking someone isn't 'the target audience' is a mortal sin demanding everything to be restructured so appeal to people who don't have any interest to begin with.

Re:Go Figure...

[PopeRatzo]

I don't enjoy watching Teletubbies

Geez, what kind of monster doesn't enjoy watching Teletubbies? You get behind a little endo and a few cocktails and Teletubbies is as engrossing as anything on HBO.

Re:Go Figure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo, people finally envy me for something.

Re:Go Figure...

[Anonymous Coward]

But they didn't "hammer" it -- the average rating was 5.8. That's good, that's above average. They enjoyed it, just didn't think it was one of the greats. The kind of show I willingly watch with someone else who loves it -- no horrible coercion required, because I'm glad to share the experience. If my rating was, like, 3, then I'd pass.

Re:Go Figure...

[murdocj]

Let's see, a show about a bunch of loose chicks looking for guys to bang them. Yeah, that doesn't sound like anything I (as a guy) would be interested in.

Re:Go Figure...

[AdamThor]

Your point makes sense. Don't go around just thinking of things that piss you off and then spend your time trashing them, it makes you a negative person.

But on the other hand doesn't that kind of boil down to "don't poorly review shows you don't like"? Doesn't that kind of break the concept of reviews?

I can see both of these points, not sure if they can be reconciled. The concept of voting isn't so good for protecting minority opinions, and the author mentions that IMDB voting population is 70% male.

Re:Go Figure...

[murdocj]

I guess I was luckier, my ex would just yell at me to get online in Warcraft because they needed a healer.

Re:Go Figure...

[im_thatoneguy]

He should just realize he is not part of the target audience, and watch something else.

I have watched Sex in the City, I would not have watched Sex in the City by my own volition. I would give it a solid 6-7 rating.

My Fiancee does not watch Clone Wars, nor would I even suggest that she watch Clone Wars, because it's bad. I know it's bad. I complain about how bad it is. But I keep watching it. I would also give it a solid 6-7 rating. I'm sure she would give it a 1. But she doesn't watch it.

I think that's the difference. Guys watch mediocre or bad television with their female partners, female partners go do something else.

Re:Go Figure...

[jedidiah]

> Some guys actually admit to watching Sex and the City?

Some guys are into overpriced Italian shoes.

Re:Go Figure...

[ShanghaiBill]

But on the other hand doesn't that kind of boil down to "don't poorly review shows you don't like"?

No, not really. If there was a show about CNC machine tools, then I am the target audience, and I can give a useful review about whether the show was good or bad. But I would not like a show about single women in NYC with dysfunctional relationships, no matter how well it was made. So I could not provide useful feedback to a person that might be interested in that topic.

Re:Go Figure...

[jmv]

So basically one should always give positive ratings because if you don't like a show then obviously you're not the targeted audience. Not that I rate *any* shows...

Re:Go Figure...

[tnk1]

I have seen something that does make sense while reading the comments, oddly enough.

Women don't watch shows that cater specifically to men, on average. Of course, some women do, but many, many do not.

Men, however, do tend to have TV watching time with their significant others where you are expected to watch together. My wife isn't one of those who insist on that, but there have been times when I will end up in front of a show she's watching and end up watching it because I'm hanging out with her. I actually find some of them interesting, although many of them are indeed eye roll inducing.

So... there may well be some male trolling, but many of those males probably *DO* watch those shows. So, these ratings may seem odd, but could simply be the result of real viewers who do not have such a show as a first preference.

Nonetheless, they are totally legitimate reviewers. Yeah, they may be missing the point, but so what? People can rate video games as gory and misogynistic even if they aren't the target audience. I can say that a show on Lifetime has shitty writing, and it can be totally true in an objective sense, even if a female might overlook that because she derives some entertainment from the theme or the plot.

Yes, you would have to acknowledge that some of the viewers are captive to some degree but that's really only important when you want to use that information for a specific purpose. I doubt a woman-oriented show goes off the air because men didn't like it in a review, especially if someone is checking the sex of the reviewer. So what is the harm?

What would happen if you somehow forced your wife or girlfriend to play a video game that was extremely violent or somehow did not appeal to females in general. Do you think they would all resist writing reviews? I am not sure they would. But as legitimate players of those games... they earned their voice, especially if they played the whole thing just like some men had to watch Sex and the City in its entirety at TV time.

I think that the discrepancy is relatively easy to explain if you look at it that way. Men don't insist on TV viewing of "male-oriented" shows as "together-time", so there are a lot fewer disgruntled females who are actually viewing them.

Re:Go Figure...

[tbannist]

But they didn't "hammer" it -- the average rating was 5.8. That's good, that's above average. They enjoyed it, just didn't think it was one of the greats. The kind of show I willingly watch with someone else who loves it -- no horrible coercion required, because I'm glad to share the experience. If my rating was, like, 3, then I'd pass.

Actually the average rating for a show is 7.3. By comparison, 5.8 is pretty low.

Re:Go Figure...

[Rockoon]

So what you are saying is that men should never give their opinion, because men are _______.

What do I fill in that blank with that doesnt make you like like a royal cunt?

Re:Go Figure...

[Solandri]

I think that's the difference. Guys [are forced to] watch mediocre or bad television with their female partners, female partners [are allowed to] go do something else.

FTFY. Since complaining about the show to said female partner would disqualify him from nookie time later, guys suffer through the show and instead vent by bashing it online. I'm not sure why anyone who's been in a typical MF relationship would be surprised by this.

Re:Go Figure...

[AdamThor]

I dunno, if you're going to stipulate that only people who the show is aimed at can review the show, then should we also stipulate that only those people can read those reviews? Because if you don't know about "Sex and the City" (which is why you're reading reviews anyway) and you see reviews from only the target audience then you (as a CNC machinist) would be misled.

No attack here, just trying to sort out a logical position.

Re:Go Figure...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a guy's nookie time is negatively affected by his complaints about a show, he either (a) isn't very good at nookie, (b) needs a better partner, or (c) both. -PCP

Re:Go Figure...

[axewolf]

...a guy would hammer a show about 4 whiney women.

Instead of "hammering" it, he should just realize he is not part of the target audience, and watch something else. I don't enjoy watching Teletubbies, but I don't give it a bad review because I am not a three year old.

Yeah except there is something wrong with that kind of programming, that guy hammering on it perceives that fact, and is acting on it.
The lack of enjoyment is a clue to a rational conclusion.
That kind of show is pure garbage. It is destructive to a person's wellbeing.

Re:Go Figure...

[serviscope_minor]

FTFY. Since complaining about the show to said female partner would disqualify him from nookie time later, guys suffer through the show and instead vent by bashing it online. I'm not sure why anyone who's been in a typical MF relationship would be surprised by this.

Mate, if that's your relationship, you should take it to the knacker's yard ASAP because it's not only dead but it's started to smell bad too.

Re:Go Figure...

[pagedout]

Yep, I watched the entirety of Buffy for my wife. The deal was I would watch it and she would live with me criticizing it. I still related people doing dumb things back to that stupid show all the time.

Re:Go Figure...

[allo]

But maybe in context. If somebody asks me if teletubbies is a show, which should be recommended to grown ups, i would give 0/10 for this. So it hopefully does not end up in suggestions for my demographics. When somebody asks me on shows for three year olds, i may give 7 to 10 for it and want it to appear in recommodations for children shows.

Look at Netflix reviews of kids series

[hibiki_r]

Pretty much everything is rated horrible because, from an adult perspective, yes, they are horrible.

So what we really have here is that a single dimensional rating alone is not good at separating something that is mediocre for everyone, or something that is loved by some, and hated by others. What a surprise.

Re:Look at Netflix reviews of kids series

[JBMcB]

Most kids shows on Netflix have bad ratings because most kids shows on Netflix are garbage. There are a few good ones - those generally have better ratings. They stock up on those ultra-cheap Pixar/Disney/Dreamworks knock-off "movies" from Brazil, there are a ton of them. They also stock up on cheaply made "educational" TV shows made for the FCC's educational requirement.

Re:Look at Netflix reviews of kids series

[JBMcB]

And Peep and the Great Big World is a friggin' amazing show. But for every decent show there are a dozen Baby Genius, Leapfrog, Animal Mechanicals, Barney, etc...

Re:Look at Netflix reviews of kids series

[Master Moose]

Did you try watching Netflix take on Ritchie Rich?

Re:Look at Netflix reviews of kids series

[Luthair]

Aren't the ratings supposed to take your preferences into account?

Re:Butthurt whiners

[shaitand]

This is ridiculous. If men don't like the show and are giving it poor ratings that is nothing more than an honest review. Stop gender biasing your material and target audience and you won't have this problem. Likewise with the poor ratings women can and do give on things targeted at men.

About 60% of the population is female and 40% of those who seen the show think it sucks. If 40% of the people in the world think a show sucks it shouldn't be possible to achieve better than 6/10. It isn't as if only females see the rating.

This just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Men on slashdot think article is skewed and vapid. They now think they are allowed to disparage in the comment secton. What can we do to end their reign of terror?

But what's the cause?

[Just Some Guy]

I'm too lazy to read the article so I'll wildly speculate in grand Slashdot tradition. Did the authors investigate why that's happening? I could imagine at least a few non-nefarious causes:

Maybe men are more likely to vote against a show they dislike than women are, so as many women dislike "Blue Mountain State" as men dislike "Private Practice" but they don't bother downvoting it.

Maybe men are more likely to watch shows they dislike with their partners than women are (and this is certainly true in my house). I'll sit through shows I don't care for because I'm not all that picky and I'd rather spend time with her watching Grey's Anatomy than doing other stuff. The converse isn't true: she isn't likely to sit through COPS with me. I'm more likely to have an opinion and vote on her shows than she is mine because I've seen more of hers.

As a variant of the last one, maybe women generally feel that they have less spare time around the house to watch TV. In households where routine chores are "women's work", the male resident might put in more screen hours than the female who has laundry and cooking and only has time to watch the shows she really cares about. (Note: I am not saying laundry and cooking are women's responsibility, just that lots of households divide work that way, and I think probably enough to sway the numbers.)

Yes, I'm sure there are dumbasses who routinely vote down female-centric shows (as defined by the study) just to be jerks. I'd stake money that there are plenty of women who would go down the list of male-centric shows and vote them down, too: "Batman? Dumb. The Shield? Dumb. Star Trek? Dumb." But are there enough to make a difference, or is it more likely the effect of different TV viewing and/or Internet poll taking habits between the sexes?

Re:But what's the cause?

[Verdatum]

To be fair, the 60s Batman was pretty dumb (but I loved watching the reruns as a kid), and the 60s Star Trek was frequently straight up ridiculous. I remember The Shield generally being pretty good though.

Re:But what's the cause?

[Livius]

I really do think the implication that men are simply being petty about something that is less than wholly inclusive of men (on average) is far too simplistic, but there *are* a lot of men who are jerks.

All of these possibilities should be examined seriously and objectively.

Re:But what's the cause?

[Just Some Guy]

Oh, there're are definitely "those guys". I'd be surprised (perhaps not as much as I wish) if that accounted for a significant portion of the outcome, though.

Remember the good old days...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when Slashdot carried stories about science and technology?

What is this BS?

Re:iMDB ratings are worthless

[queazocotal]

Amazons questions are exactly not this.
To quote:
(myfirstnamename): Can you answer this question about X
'As a reviewer of X, can you help this fellow customer?
  Chris B. asked
"Will this charge an ipod classic"

This sort-of-implies that Chris intended to ask me personally - which gets a very very different response to an optional ratings box.

Put the ratings in a table

[RobinH]

There's a movie site called Cinemaclock. One of the things I like is that it shows the ratings in a table divided among gender and age ranges. Then I can look and see, if it was liked by men in my age range I'll probably enjoy it too.

Re:Put the ratings in a table

[gustygolf]

That's funny -- IMDB has that too.

Re:Butthurt whiners

[StikyPad]

Seriously folks, if this is how you life revolves then it's no wonder people keep harping on you. Quit being a bunch of whiners and thinking being a man means acting like a two year old.

You mean the way women complain about about male-centric video games? When women do it, it's raising a legitimate concern, but when men do it, it's sabotage. I feel like I'm reaching enlightenment. Or, enlightenpersont, I should say. Go on?

In related news...

[Narcocide]

... for decades now, a concerted effort by a loosely-affiliated organization of non-nerds has been working to sabotage online reviews of television programming aimed at nerds.

Sabotage? Or just honest opinion?

[mark-t]

Wow... so instead of assuming that people have different tastes, blame the fact that apparently a lot of men don't seem to like some shows that happen to be popular with a lot of women happen on their gender.

Could this story be any more sexist?

This kind of tripe makes me sick. Just sick.

Re:iMDB ratings are worthless

[lgw]

So, what you're saying is: "Crack team of scientists desciver the surprising truth: online polls are worthless".

, the flamewars it generates likely fuel iMDBs forum advertising revenue

Well, at least someone profits.

we must man-tain a certain man-dard

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women

Excuse me: It's called "manotage". Did the editors sleep through 2014 or something? Everything that misogynists do now has to start with the prefix "man-". At least it does if you want your thinkpiece in Slate to be taken seriously.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[hsthompson69]

There's only really one transgender I've seen - XY chromosomes, with androgen insensitivity syndrome, so that the testes never descend, there is no uterus or menstruation, but otherwise the body is phenotypic female. The "I identify as some social construct that requires me to mutilate myself" thing is mental illness, pure and simple.

But, if SJWs are going to demand that transgender is a thing, and simply identifying as something makes it legitimate and true, then this goes for *everything*. People with penises can go to women's restrooms, play and dominate women's sports leagues, get affirmative action for being female, get preferential treatment in family court for being female, avoid registering for the selective service because they're female, so on and so on.

tl;dr - There is no such thing as gender differences if you believe it's simply self-identification.

"an interesting article"

[axewolf]

AHAHAHAHAHahahahahahaha
okay if you say so

TV Shows Aimed At Women

Aimed...you mean...like a weapon?

I think I have a succinct translation of this article: PLEASE fight among each other for no reason, we would really like influencing your point of view through our programming to be not quite so difficult

People are still rating The Shield?

[damn_registrars]

I am rather fond of that show, but it's been off the air for over 7 years now. Why would someone waste their time writing a review of it?

Re:People are still rating The Shield?

[chiefmojorising]

I dunno. Why is IMDB soliciting reviews for it?

SJWs to the rescue!

[Pyramid]

So I need to consider the feelings of the other gender before offering an honest opinion of TV SHOWS?

Do they have any idea where the "Special Snowflake" stereotype comes from and how this reinforces it?

Re:SJWs to the rescue!

[thegarbz]

Just block IMDB at the firewall of their safe space. They'll be fine.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[Archangel Michael]

Transgendered = Creation of science.

Re:In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews.

[Ogive17]

There are not enough women giving reviews to sabotage anything. Even if the viewership were equally split between men and women, many women would probably not log in simply to give something a bad rating.

The problem with internet rating and reviews

[bano]

See this is the problem with ratings and reviews on the internet.
I'm only likely to fairly rate the things that I'm interested in and therefor receive recommendations based on those ratings, so often I don't get recommendations for legitimately good things that I wouldn't otherwise watch since most of my ratings are within my areas of interest. On the other hand.
If for some reason I do watch something, but is generally out of my area of interest and I don't like it based on being predisposed to not liking it and I do rate it poorly, who does that serve?

While I do know there are malicious bad raters on the internet and very likely ones driven by a gender bias, I don't think that is necessarily the problem here. I feel the problem is our human nature to not care about the things we don't care about.

Weird society of paranoid men

[HalAtWork]

It very well could be any of these reasons, but the other day I found out there was this weird society of men who feel persecuted and sabotaged by women, and believe there is truly an orchestrated affront to their gender. So maybe it's these weirdos. The idea that there is any conspiracy either way makes me laugh. The internet is full of people who love to complain so I'm sure any place that allows reviews has some of this.

Re:Weird society of paranoid men

[Just Some Guy]

I think that's certainly a possibility. I also tend to respect the 538 gang so I won't quickly dismiss their results (with the caveat that I still haven't RTFA). It just seems to me like there are plenty of unmalicious reasons for the stated outcomes that I'd prefer to see ruled out first before attributing the result to "gangs of sabotaging men".

Re:Weird society of paranoid men

[Just Some Guy]

Yep, nothing like ignoring half of humanity to simplify things. Yep.

Re:Weird society of paranoid men

[HalAtWork]

Yeah I was just wondering if that's what contributed to some skewed results, it's weird anomalies like this and 4chan that can come in on a whim. The MGTOW site has a ticker with 'today's initiative' which could potentially create statistical anomalies. Anyway 538 is definitely respected by me, very good analysis done there.

One Edge Case - Submission (tv series)

[Jonah Hex]

I was curious how the ratings for this new BDSM/Kink show/softcore porn were skewing so I checked out the breakdown on IMDB. It's audience is definitely the Mommy BDSM set who made 50 Shades of Grey a sensation, and features women as leads, with a dose of nudity and sex for the men. I was surprised then and am still now that it's got more ratings in to see women voting it on average lower than men, despite it being their target audience. Of course maybe I should actually get around to watching it and see for myself. :P

Where is Slashdot?

[William Baric]

Some time ago, there was a web site called Slashdot which was about "news for nerds and stuff that matters". I tried to find it, but when I use the address slashdot.org, what I see is a site about "news for feminists and excuses to whine about men". Where is the old site?

Re:Where is Slashdot?

[david_thornley]

There's plenty of men whining about women also. We're keeping this equal-opportunity.

Re:Where is Slashdot?

[Bender Unit 22]

True.
I think the old site is dead, when I saw the first mention of a buzzfeed "article", I know something was up and it wasn't good.
It is such a shame.
I have been looking for another source of serious tech news for some time.

no actually its the opposite of that

[Anonymous Coward]

women AREN'T sabotaging the reviews of shows aimed for men. they simply don't vote about shows that are clearly not intended for them. if women all of a sudden started downvoting sports shows and dudebro shows, that would be annoying too, but thankfully they have some decency and just ignore shit they don't care about'

the entire point of the article could be summed up as 'men are loudmouthed complainy assholes'. sex and the city isn't targeted towards you, we get it. don't watch it, don't review it, keep your mouth shut and move on.

or, put differently - for a show as highly targeted as sex in the city, WOMEN DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION. so if you give the show a bad rating, you are actively making the ratings system less useful.

Re:no actually its the opposite of that

[shaitand]

"they simply don't vote about shows that are clearly not intended for them."

Riiiight.

"if women all of a sudden started downvoting sports shows and dudebro shows"

And what makes you think they don't? Along with action flicks and t&a movies.

"WOMEN DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION"

Ratings do not have an intended audience.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the "I I identify as X" claims are a lazy patch for society incorrectly assigning behaviors and artifacts to a single sex.

A biologic male who wants to ware a skirt gossip about fashion and have sex with men, can easily see that they'd be considered perfectly normal if they were a woman, and come to the conclusion that being a woman is the easier fix than convincing all of society that "men don't do that" is arbitrary. As we have the medical technology to make a pretty convincing faxcimily of a sex change, some portion will opt to give it a try.

If you want people to stop identifying as trans stop pigeonholing people based on sex.

Yep. I give the KKK zero stars

[raymorris]

You are quite right. By way of analogy, I'd rate the Ku Klux Klan zero. I'm not their target audience? So what? I still say they suck.

Re:Yep. I give the KKK zero stars

[linuxrocks123]

Congratulations, you managed to get within a hair's breadth of Godwinning a story about men not liking Sex and the City.

Seriously, good work, man. That takes skill.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[GodelEscherBlecch]

cisfemale hunnies

This seems to be your favorite phrase these days. It gets creepier every time you say it. It feels like those unsettling pieces of robo-thesaurus-ized grammar you find in gutter ads of shady websites and the titles of online porn videos uploaded from god-knows-where. It makes you sound not just like a troll, but like a troll who is speaking through Google translate circa 2008.

You aren't even aware of how much seething hatred there is in the feminist movement for trans women, do you?

Make that 2006. Also, you haven't a fucking clue what you are talking about. I actually live among / align with these people you are talking about, and I have no idea what you are on about. The pressures you are describing are being manufactured by whatever lunatic demagogue feeds you your daily thoughts, because they are certainly not a part of my reality. I find it quite easy to get along in life knowing that there are men/women/gay/trans people, that some subset of each of them are rabid assholes, that most of them are OK folks and, most importantly, that they are all people not caricatures painted by some dipshit who overcompensates for their own suppressed perversions by freaking the fuck out over what everybody else is doing. Please try it sometime, I think you will find it is very relaxing.

Is 15% women watching BG really "shocking"?

[jacks smirking reven]

For some anecdotal evidence my wife was skeptical when I wanted to watch Battlestar Galactica (the 2004 version) but ended up loving it greatly and with good reason. It's an excellent written show with a great cast that includes several strong women roles. Much stronger female roles than say TNG had (which she also enjoyed after some coaxing to give it a chance). If anything i find that only 15% of women reviewed as a case that maybe more women should give it a shot and it's probably one of the best shows for introducing Sci-fi to women, who in my experience are just as quick to write things like that off as men are of writing off something like Sex and the City without giving a chance first.

How is this 'sabotage'?

[kheldan]

The use of the word 'sabotage' seems to indicate a conspiracy. Seems more likely to me that people are just rating according to how much they liked a program. Also seems likely to me that, ironically, this article has some sort of agenda all it's own.

Nothing to see here?

Re:How is this 'sabotage'?

[110010001000]

Exactly. Why wasn't I invited to them? Any why are the percentage of men in Universities getting smaller and smaller every year?

Men's interests might be more narrow

[Firethorn]

Recently I did a lot of reading on toy preferences for children. Monkey studies even got involved, as were efforts to no bias the child one way or another beforehand.

The outcome? Girls actually like a 50-50 split, on average, between 'girl' toys like dolls and 'boy' toys like model trucks. Boys are basically 100% involved in 'boy' toys.

Extend this to media like movies and TV shows. Thinking back, mom enjoyed the same movies the males in my family enjoyed. But she also enjoyed the 'girly' shows we didn't.

It could be that media that women's interests are wider, on average, or that an equivalent zone for men to the 'chick flic' hasn't been discovered. I don't know.

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be that media that women's interests are wider, on average, or that an equivalent zone for men to the 'chick flic' hasn't been discovered. I don't know.

It's called porn and it's been discovered.

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[CronoCloud]

I think men self constrain their interests based on "cultural expectations and bias"

Suppose we have a man who likes the Gilmore Girls, do you think he's going to mention that to his buddies? No, because he's afraid they'll call him "pussywhipped". Or say things like "are you turning into a girl on us bro, here, have another brewski" And a lot of that social censure against anything that isn't "knuckle dragging manly" is derived, to a certain extent, from misogyny and homophobia. Basically, and in "man speak"

"Fags are like women so anything that women like will make you a fag if men like it."

And another part of that social censure is artificially created by madison avenue to sell more beer, unhealthy food and oversized gas guzzling vehicles to men. Think about it, american media and advertisers go out of their way to imply that "high culture" like literature, theatre, opera, classical music, and ballet are for women and gay people.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...

When it wasn't that long ago that MEN took pride in supporting and attending such things. And in fact they're almost all created by MEN in the first place!

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[PaulRivers10]

It could be that media that women's interests are wider, on average, or that an equivalent zone for men to the 'chick flic' hasn't been discovered. I don't know.

On average, men tend to specialize more. Women have a "wider" range of interests but they don't get as deeply into them as men do. Like a woman might have a casual interest in football, baseball, and golf, whereas a man only likes football. But the man will know the stats of all the football players on half the teams, whereas the woman will only know a few of the players names. I'm just making an example. Not saying one is "better", but I am saying that a wider range of interests comes with less knowledge and investment in each of them.

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[erice]

It could be that media that women's interests are wider, on average, or that an equivalent zone for men to the 'chick flic' hasn't been discovered. I don't know.

The male equivalent of the chic flic is the "action" film. But were talking about TV. Action is expensive to film thus we see less of it on the lower budget small screen.

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[CronoCloud]

These are all more reasons to completely shun cisfemales.

But it isn't "cisfemales" doing it...MEN are doing it to themselves! They're the ones enforcing "bro culture" on other men!

It wasn't "cisfemales" who picked on me for being "sensitive" or a "sissy" it was BOYS!

Just let cisfemales starve in the streets.

Really? Do you want to be perceived as a chauvinist "batshit internet tranny" with anger issues? Because that's how you're coming across.

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[vlad30]

Women like porn especially if they are in it offer to record it and see the reaction

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[MiSaunaSnob]

then how do you explain the popularity of "batman the animated series", is it because it is so manly that men can come right out and tell there construction worker buddies how good it is? (for the record I really like that show, but its not exactly football or MMA on the manly scale)

Re:Men's interests might be more narrow

[CronoCloud]

Easy, superheroes are part of a subset of "guy culture" even if it is animated. Of course it helps that it was fairly good for an animated superhero show with the whole art deco & noir thing. Basically a modern "Batman in the style of Fleischer"

And after all, comic book superheroes became rather "dudebro-ish" during the "Dark Age" (DAMN YOU LIEFELD!)

http://assets.sbnation.com/ass...

Tell me that wasn't an blatant "manly manlyness of BLUD" sort of thing. The whole Dork Age of comics was all about macho posturing with characters with X's, K's and Z's in their names and everyone having DETH, BLUD, SLYCE, or KYLL in their names and everyone having cyborg limbs, swords AND guns. DAMN YOU LIEFELD!

What about your girlfriend?

[Firethorn]

And what if your girlfriend wants you to watch it with her?

And go ahead and give teletubbies a bad review if you're watching it with your kids. Maybe you can find a 'kids show' that is sophisticated enough for adults as well.

Re:What about your girlfriend?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet Teletubbies was better than Barney

Is like saying Ebola is better than Smallpox..

Re:What about your girlfriend?

[tnk1]

Yes, it may well be comically missing the point to rate Teletubbies as trash that no adult could stand, but there are children's shows that benefit from an adult audience to some degree and adults can derive entertainment from them.

As long as the reviewers are clear that they are rating it with adult expectations, I don't think that's unfair, even if it is not really coming from the target demographic.

Re:What about your girlfriend?

[chispito]

Maybe you can find a 'kids show' that is sophisticated enough for adults as well.

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

Re:What about your girlfriend?

[Coren22]

Spongebob Squarepants, Kim Possible (canceled), Jimmy Neutron. There are quite a few shows I enjoyed watching with my kids. Teletubbies is drool inducing, it is so utterly stupid that it causes a negative IQ progression. If you need something for that age group, turn on Sesame Street.

Re:in this case, your honest opinion is sabotage

[mark-t]

it would be much like if women suddenly started giving shitty reviews and votes to monday night football.

You say that like there is some sort of orchestrated conspiracy among them.

would you find that to be helpful, or sabotage?

I would find it to be an opinion. It might be an opinion that differs from mine, or even an unconstructive opinion, but that doesn't make it sabotage.

put another way: for the purposes of calculating a ratings score for sex in the city, WOMEN DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR OPINION. by reviewing it, you are diluting the score with your completely inappropriate demographic.

Perhaps people who feel this way need to be reminded that not even a hundred years ago they could not vote in US elections because *THEIR* opinion didn't matter to society at the time.

Re:iMDB ratings are worthless

[ceoyoyo]

IMDB benefits from a lot of people who think they're film critics. Some of them do give balanced reviews. Some of them are even good. Yes, they can be hard to find among the masses of people who are as you describe.

Re:in this case, your honest opinion is sabotage

[PPH]

WOMEN DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR OPINION

Actually, it appears that they do. Or at least they care about the opinion of other women.

if women suddenly started giving shitty reviews and votes to monday night football.

I wouldn't care. I watch what I like and the networks respond by airing shows that attract viewers. So I'd venture a guess that football is safe, no matter what the online comments say. If you like it, watch it. Never mind what others think (men or women).

Re:Butthurt whiners

[Anrego]

I honestly feel like when it comes to television, women are better represented.

It seems like most shows are either squarely aimed at women, or are designed to appeal to both sexes. For all the whining about it, there arn't that many "guy shows" any more.

Shows created specifically for women are disliked

[melted]

Shows created specifically for women are disliked by men. News at 11. Da fuq? Couple this with societal pressure on boys and young men to not like anything "girly", and explain me again how is this not an expected outcome? Besides, the shows are mostly shit anyway. You can't expect me to care about "relationships" and all, unless there's fucking involved.

Politics and the English Language

[mi]

Men Are Sabotaging The Online Reviews Of TV Shows Aimed At Women

"Sabotaging"? I certainly love the word, but it is decidedly non-applicable... Let's see:

sabotage -- destroy property or hinder normal operations; "The Resistance sabotaged railroad operations during the war"

How do the reviews — however negative — destroy or hinder anything?

Once again the terms are chosen not for accuracy, but for a spin — to build up our emotional reaction to the story...

IMDB has the same problem as all online polls

[rundgong]

It appears IMDB has the same problem all online, voluntary polls have. You do not get the opinion of the population at large, you only get the opinion of people who like to answer polls.
For IMDB this means their scores represent the score of people who like to rate movies.
From the article this appears to be men to a greater extent than women. There are most likely other biases as well. Maybe tech savvy people are more likely to do online ratings, and the scores are biased towards show that techies like?

You don't have to be a SJW to find this an interesting problem.
It's the same problem as can be seen in voting polls for presidential election, and all other election where people are trying to predict the result. You are trying to predict the general result based on the answers from people willing to answer the polls.

A second problem specific to movie ratings is that I may not be interested in the general opinion. For recommendations I want opinions that correlate with my own opinions. If you happen to like Sex And The City, you don't care that all the nerds vote Firefly to the top. You want shows that align with your interests.

But lets start with figuring out the real score for the general population...

Re:Butthurt whiners

[Anonymous Coward]

the demographics of tv viewers disagree with you. hint majority female. you're an idiot.

Watched White Chicks yet?

[mveloso]

Yeah, how many white people have actually seen White Chicks? Anyone? Anyone?

Sex & the City was overexposed, provoked backl

[superdude72]

When it was on, every woman and gay man with a blog seemingly had to share their opinion of the latest episode of Sex and the City. As a straight man, I was inclined to let them have their fun. I'm a modern guy. The world does not revolve around my interests.

Then I went to Chevy's on a weeknight, and there were like 20 squealing, tipsy-on-one-margarita ladies having a "Sex and the City" party, and I was like, ENOUGH! This show sucks! Years of overexposure had finally made me revert to the sexist troglodyte I had been repressing for all this time.

Compare to Blue Mountain State. It gets, maybe 1/1000th the media coverage as Sex and the City. I'm it's target audience apparently, yet I'm barely aware it exists.

"women's television shows"

[bmo]

Television "aimed at women" is awful on the whole, and if I was a woman, pretty much insulting.

Sex and the City is the bar that we judge women's television by? I rest my case.

Scandal is a "targeted at women" show? REALLY?!

>one tree hill

"MY KIDS WATCHED THAT AS TEENAGERS." - wife. It's not exactly for adults.

>538 is surprised that Battlestar Galactica garners some women voters

That's because it's a good show.

I'm not going to actually go read the article, because there's enough in the summary to tell me that this is bullshit.

"The problem is that men writers /think/ they know what women want to watch." - also wife.

And she's right.

--
BMO

Voter selection

[BCGlorfindel]

The only solution to this micro-aggression by white cis-males is clearly to demand that media reviews have a stricter voter selection criteria. If a movie wasn't made for your gender, race, religion or orientation you have no business reviewing it.

You know, when you follow the article's logic out fully, it sounds kinda insane...

Simple 1-10 ratings are misleading anyway

[John Allsup]

The question I want to answer, for a given movie, is whether I will like it, not some abstract average viewer.
What IMDB should do is:
1. Require users to have accounts to vote
2. Analyse correlations between votes for various movies, for a given user
3. When rating movies for me, produce a number of ratings based on groupings from the analysis
4. Allow me to select a few movies I like and don't like to seed the process.
The data gathered would be valuable (so the effort could pay for itself).
Further, if there is a large male/female discrepancy, for example, the rating system can point this out.

And the man bashing continues

[erp_consultant]

Must have been a slow day on the liberal news front. Time to throw up a man hater story. How is giving less than favorable reviews to a TV show "sabotaging" it? Did it ever occur to anyone that Sex and the City really and truly does suck? Four selfish, narcissistic, shallow, materialistic bimbos stumbling through their me first world in high heels. Yeah...sure sounds riveting to me - yawn!

And since when did winning awards equate to quality programming? Hollywood abandoned that notion years ago. I gave up on sitcoms years ago so my example is dated but let's examine Everybody loves Raymond. The guy is depicted as a complete and utter dope. The woman, of course, is depicted as smart, confident, funny, etc. In other words, she wears the pants in the family. Much to the delight of the feminists, and feminist surrogates. Of course if the roles were reversed the man would be accused to being anti-female, sexist, you name it.

Seems biased

[dotslashdot]

"Sabotoging" means deliberately destroying something. The author failed to provide any basis that men want to deliberately destroy programming for women and overcome the glaringly obvious reason men voted against certain shows: they disliked the program. In fact, the article dismisses all men's opinion by calling it "sabotage" rather than a valid expression of their feelings. Men may dislike shows depicting guys as the bumbling idiots often portrayed in shows targeting women. Rather than blame men for their vote, the author should encourage women to vote, or ask why such shows portray men that way.

What about the opposite?

[aliquis]

I'm sure women rank down racism, but maybe also car shows or wrestling or whatever? Maybe not?

Sabotage ?

[Archfeld]

I don't see how expressing your opinion of a show can be construed sabotage, as long as you actually watched the show. I do see how content can skew the results based on the target audience but again if you watched the show your opinion is valid. What they need to do is find a way to divide the viewing audience, and hence the reviews into sex, and consider them that way.
People who are reviewing shows they haven't watched are dill wads regardless of their sex or social agenda.

People with taste are sabotaging reviews...

[Comboman]

People with taste are sabotaging reviews of Pauly Shore movies! Somebody call the social justice police! I bet white people are dragging down the reviews of Tyler Perry movies too!

Seriously, WTF! Am I not supposed to honestly review something I don't like because some group that does like it would be offended? People are getting accused of "sabotage" just for giving their opinion? I'm not a Trump supporter, but it's bullshit like this that drives people to him.

Meh

[dskoll]

So guys show pettiness by downvoting women's shows, and women don't give a crap about downvoting guy's shows. OMG, say it ain't so! Who would EVER have predicted that???

Re:In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews.

[shaitand]

Does anyone log in just to give something a rating? Surely most reviewers are just using the site and give ratings while they are there. And what makes women so special and superior?

The more people who give ratings the better and I certainly hope people are giving bad ratings as well as good ones otherwise the rating will all be skewed and it will be used as justification to make more bad movies!

Male and Caucasian

[misanthropic.mofo]

Given that I'm a white male 99.999999999999% of what's wrong with the World is already because of me. So now I'm going to start watching shows/movies aimed at women of color and I'm going to give such poor reviews on them. Really show those bitches who is in charge and make sure they understand that they have no business being out of the kitchen.

Just like Donald Trump

[danbob999]

Sane voters are sabotaging polls by saying they won't vote for Donald Trump, even if they are not his target audience.

Target Audience or Actual Audiance

[medv4380]

Sorry but they've assumed that Men didn't watch Sex in the City. They're using "Sailormoon is for Girls" logic. Sorry, but 55 year old men may actually have been a part of their actual audiance. Not like I believe DailyMail, but I certainly don't believe a "study" that didn't even bother to figure out the actual viewership of Sex in the City and rather assumed that Men didn't watch it.

Oh no.

[Bender Unit 22]

wait, who cares?

Re:In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews.

[Ogive17]

Are you new to the internet?

Newsflash - Demographics Matter

[eepok]

There is no scandal here. Some amount of taste is shaped by demographics.

Men dislike Sex and the City more than women.
Black women and Latinas probably dislike Sex and the City more than White women.
White people probably didn't like Culture Clash as much as Latinos did.

There's no sabotage. It's just demographics.

Re:In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews.

[Ogive17]

When a show is specifically made for women viewers yet most of the reviews come from men, you don't see how that could potentially be a problem?

Just going by the data, there are clearly not as many women giving reviews.. their collective voice is drown out by males. I'm not saying that makes anyone more or less special, it just means that the results are easy to skew.

If I go to a southern Baptist church and ask them their opinion on gays getting married, do you think I'll get a acceptance rate that is similar to nationwide average?

Network TV is female focused

[ProfBooty]

TV procedurals highly skew female which I was rather surprised to learn.

from tv by the numbers: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.c...

1.00 = equal ratings for men and women 18-49, Below 1.0 = more men, Above 1.0 = more women

NCIS 1.19
NCIS:LA 1.25
CSI: Miami 1.29
CSI 1.55
CSI:NY 1.55
Criminal Minds 1.57
Law & Order 1.73
Glee 1.76
Law & Order:SVU 1.84

by comparasion in 2010, these were the only network shows to skew male:
Simpsons 0.67
Family Guy 0.68
Cleveland Show 0.71
Chuck 0.83
Fringe 0.95
24 0.97

everything else on network tv skews female. http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.c...

Re:Network TV is female focused

[LWATCDR]

Funny thing is that I do not watch any of those shows. I used to watch the Simpsons a decade or more ago.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[tnk1]

Oddly enough, many MtF transgender people tend to still like women. So they ended up going from what they would consider to be heterosexual to lesbian, although presumably even when they had male parts, they probably identified as lesbian.

Which now makes me look kind of odd at one of those men who loves to say, "I'm actually a lesbian too, I love women! Hur hur." One wonders if some of them actually think of themselves that way more than I thought.

Anyway, my rule of thumb in dealing with this is to treat people the way they want to be treated. And really, if I can't tell if some woman was born a male, I actually don't need to care, because for all practical purposes, it doesn't matter. In terms of the bathroom stuff, unless the person was a gorilla stuffed into a dress and then started leering under stalls in the ladies room, we already do have a laws against harassment and peeping toms. It shouldn't really matter if the "Tom" is identifying as a "Toni". I doubt most women would even notice if some girly looking trans went to the bathroom with them. And they're all in stalls anyway.

I should be clear, though, I do know women who have experienced peeping tom behavior in bathrooms before from men who would sneak in and run out, and I know that freaked them the hell out. So I have sympathy for their position where they feel unsafe, even if I recognize that the reality is that a trans isn't going to do that. I think some people are more upset about the abstract case of transpeople in bathrooms than they ever would be about the reality of it.

Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[denzacar]

Cause its audience is supposedly up to 15% female. And that's shocking.
Cause it is clearly a show "aimed at males". So women have nothing to do with such a show, and apparently, should avoid it in favor for shows "made for women".

What? Strong female what? Characters? You mean Starbuck is a girl? And president is a girl?
And a bunch of cylons are girls, one of them portrayed by Xena?
Ah! But I forgot. It is SciFi!
Which means it's automagically "for boys" and not "for girls".

Good job explaining that there. Women shouldn't meddle in things that are not their concern.
Stick with soap operas about shopping and finding Mr. Right. Or Mr. Big. Or the right shoes.
And let's just disregard the fact that apart from "Ballers" and "Blue Mountain State", which are both not shows for men but for sportsball jocks, and which both have quite a lower rating both by men and women - women grade "male shows" similarly to how men do.

In fact... "Ballers" is the only show mentioned that women like less than "Private Practice". Barely. By 0.2 points.
They more like every other "male show" mentioned.
They like "Gossip Girl" less than any Batman show. And none of them have "girl" in the title. And they are all CARTOONS. From two decades ago.
And women only like "Batman Beyond" (out of animated Batman shows) LESS than "Sex and the City". By 0.1 points.

Could it be that this is the case of cherry picking?

"Female shows", male votes, male score; female votes, female score, score difference:
Gilmore Girls - Males 17130 7.3; Females 34638, 8.5, 1.2
Scandal - Males 15678, 7.3; Females 23146, 8.3, 1.0
Grey's Anatomy - Males 52515, 6.9; Females 79175, 8.3, 1.4
Sex and the City - Males 27631, 5.8; Females 39410, 8.1, 2.3
One Tree Hill - Males 19575, 7.1; Females 28637, 8.1, 1.0
Gossip Girl - Males 31125, 6.7; Females 64088, 7.8, 1.1
Private Practice - Males 4634, 5.7; Females 11156, 7.1, 1.4

"Male shows", male votes, male score; female votes, female score:
Battlestar Galactica - Males 84715 , 8.8; Females 15521, 8.7, 0.1
Batman: The Animated Series - Males 38196, 9.0; Females 4032, 8.6, 0.4
Justice League - Males 19039, 8.6; Females 2228, 8.3, 0.3
The Shield - Males 41769, 8.8; Females 4737, 8.1, 0.7
The League - Males 27117, 8.3; Females 3577, 8.0, 0.3
Batman Beyond - Males 13466, 8.1; Females 1375, 8.0, 0.1
Blue Mountain State - Males 29078, 8.5; Females 2631, 7.6, 1.1
Star Trek: Enterprise - Males 21473, 7.5; Females 3427, 7.4, 0.1
Ballers - Males 10309 7.5; Females 1201, 6.9, 0.6

But wait. What about arguably THE manliest shows ever?

Band of Brothers - Males 164067, 9.6; Females 16053, 9.5, 0.1
The Pacific - Males 53467, 8.3; Females 4193, 8.4, 0.1
The Sopranos - Males 134921, 9.3; Females 18200, 8.8, 0.5
The A-Team - Males 18727, 7.6; Females 2869, 7.4, 0.2

What about simply the bestest shows evar?

Band of Brothers - Males 164067, 9.6; Females 16053, 9.5, 0.1
Planet Earth - Males 70632, 9.5; Females 9958, 9.5, 0.0
Breaking Bad - Males 559396, 9.5; Females 104158 9.3, 0.2
Game of Thrones - Males 596473, 9.5; Females 162356 9.4, 0.1
The Wire - Males 135691, 9.4; Females 16281, 9.0, 0.3
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey - Males 38626, 9.3; Females 4978, 9.4, 0.1
"Cosmos - Males 14761 9.3; Females 1519, 9.2, 0.1
etc. etc.

Hmm... is it just me... or is there a much lower number of women voting on imdb, even on shows they like, whenever it is not a "female show"?
Also... Looks to me that women tend to like "male shows" more or as much as they like "female shows".
While those average male votes are IN THE WORST CASE only 2.3 points lower. ~1.2 - 1.3 points on average.
That does not look like much of a male conspiracy to !SABOTAGE! "female shows"... or even trying that hard to dislike.

Meanwhile, women on average dislike "male

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[Grishnakh]

Interesting that the only two non-"female" shows where women rated it higher than the men were Planet Earth and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

I wish I could find a girlfriend that like to watch those shows.

But as you can see from the voting numbers, the women who like shows like that, and shows like BSG and Star Trek, and a minority of women. Most women want to watch dreck like Real Housewives or Long Island Medium.

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[denzacar]

To be fair... Cosmos and Planet Earth are kinda aimed at a rather preselected audience.
So the pool of fans of that show WILL be smaller to begin with.

Compared to e.g. Game of Thrones, with its 965509 votes, Cosmos (2014) with 54092 votes, Planet Earth with 97487, and Cosmos (1980) with 20951 votes... simply aren't popular.
It's 1 in 10 viewers TOTAL, and that's when comparing Planet Earth to Game of Thrones.
Selecting from those sets... it's like looking for a natural redhead. 1 to 2% of the entire population.
Then again... you could go to Scotland to increase your chances... or wherever it is that people who are into those shows hang out.

BTW... Game of Thrones and Planet Earth do show something else too.
Game of Thrones has some 206452 votes that are not declared as either male or female.
Planet Earth has 20076.
Sex and the City has 11459. Out of 78529. That's 14.5% votes.
Yet... it's not even hinted that THOSE viewers might be skewing the scowe.

Also, that bit with ST: Enterprise being the "most male-heavy"? By 0.1 points.
7.5 to 7.4, male to female.
DS9? 7.9 to 7.8.
TOS? 8.4 to 8.4.
TNG? 8.6 to 8.7.
VOY? 7.7 to 8.0.
Not cherry picked and misrepresented examples at all.

On a side note... I get a feeling that a Star Trek convention might look a lot like Scotland.

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[Grishnakh]

I don't get it: what's with the references to Scotland? Is it full of nerdy women or something? If so, maybe I need to look for a job there....

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[denzacar]

Clearly a bad "brick" joke, relying on the reader catching the "redheads" bit, recognizing/knowing that there are larger numbers of redhead people in Scotland, then conflating that with the rest of the post about TV shows and finally transposing that conflated idea of Scotland as a place where statistics are much more favorable for otherwise rare traits, genetic or otherwise.

TLDR:
Redhead stats are similar to female nerd stats.
There are more redheads in Scotland than anywhere else.
???
Profit.

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[Grishnakh]

Well crap, there goes my idea of moving to Scotland. And I like chilly, wet weather too. I guess I'll have to settle for the Pacific Northwest. I like that area a lot, but everything I've read about the Seattle area says that it's a sausagefest. For some strange reason, all the single 30+ women live in the east coast cities of DC, Philly, and NYC. But those cities mostly suck for programming jobs unless you're either a web programmer or into defense (but the single women won't be interested in you if you work in defense).

Re:Meanwhile... BSG is "somewhat shocking"...

[denzacar]

but the single women won't be interested in you if you work in defense).

Well... you can always say you're just doing it for the money.
Or waiting for your Snowden opportunity.

What's the percentage of single female pole dancers/ballerinas out there anyway?

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[BronsCon]

I wasn't counting sports because A) I have no interest and B) I didn't think Monday Nigh Football would actually have ratings on IMDB. Turns out it does and some of the highest are from women. That said, the game is a social event (as you describe it) and the woman isn't being forced to make dinner for the man's friends, she's being hospitable to guests in her home (including the females of the group) and could just as well tell her husband to order some damn pizzas, no? And while she's in the kitchen she's not watching the game, while she's chatting she's not watching the game, in fact, it's not her husband holding sex (or anything else) over her head, it's her wanting to please her guests.

Not that there aren't better examples, just that yours sucked at illustrating your point. Come back with something better and we'll talk.

Because it's considered "Feminism"

[Cloud K]

And Feminism is now considered a Very Bad Thing by large chunks of the internet (I still like it, but I see/understand it differently to how most seem to).

It's hated for two primary reasons by my view:

1) Some of the newer third wave stuff often associated with Tumblr has gone a bit too far the other way and started to push man-hate, and they're so loud and vocal that they've managed to give the illusion of hijacking the entire movement, which is moderate and supposed to help men as well as women (by for example changing the image of feminine away from something to somehow be ashamed of)

2) Younger generations are less keen to associate themselves with the sins of their fathers i.e. historical misogyny and privilege. As they were born into a world where equality is encouraged and we don't have so much of an indoctrination into the old patriarchy, they feel that those who tell males they're privileged and should be mindful of feminist issues, are actually trying to oppress men and make people feel guilty for being born with the wrong genitals.

Sadly, this has manifested itself in quite rampant hate towards all things interpreted as feminist, which includes anything aimed at females or featuring a female heavy cast (Ghost Busters). One could rightly argue other factors (like whether Ghost Busters is crap regardless of gender) but I do think it gets silly sometimes as I do see a heavily anti-anything-that-smells-feminist bias out there at the moment.

As always I think both sides are simply human and have their own worries and issues of defensiveness. But at the moment are more likely to dehumanise and attack each other, unfortunately, or go on mass sabotage efforts like this.

Re:Men == Women, etc.

[CronoCloud]

You aren't even aware of how much seething hatred there is in the feminist movement for trans women, do you? You don't care, either.

TERFs aren't a majority of feminists. A bunch of them date from the 70's separatist movement and aren't going to live forever. Not even taking into account the number of trans-feminists.

Your cisfemale hunnies demand it. You hate trans women.

What the hell are you talking about. and what is with that "cisfemale hunnies" phrase. Are you autistic spectrum?

Tv is being ruined!

[Time_Ngler]

You can tell how big a problem this is by the lack of television programs aimed at women.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[ArmoredDragon]

Really? Personally, I hate watching sports, and the few times that I have is usually because a woman talked me into watching it.

Sabatoging?

[Dcnjoe60]

Really, sabotaging? That implies intentionally messing up the reviews. Yet, they are looking at reviews with at least 10,000 reviewers. So, are so many men really trying to skew the ratings for shows target at women or are they just rating them based on how they feel about the show? Yet, the article admits that the same thing happens with show with a predominately male audience, such as various sporting events. How come the woman down rating boxing, for instance, aren't accused of sabotaging men's shows?

Here's news, the value of the ratings is questionable at best. It's not statistically valid by any measure. These measures only measure the opinions of those who happen to spend time on IMDB and rate shows. They aren't Nielson or other ratings system. As worthless a measure as the rating is on IMDB, it would be even more worthless if only people who value the show (ie. by gender) are allowed to rate it.

In short, the IMDB ratings are about as valid as Distrowatch's linux distro popularity rating. Here's a thought - if you want to know if a show is good or not, read the reviews people write, not an arbitrary number they click on. Or better yet, watch a few episodes and decide for yourself.

Re:modest proposal

[vel-ex-tech]

You'd be angry too if the life you had attempted to have had been raped from you at every turn. "We'd treat you according to your actions, but research shows that since you were assigned the male gender at birth, you're $thing." *present evidence* "Nope! Says right here you were assigned the male gender whether you like it or not!" *present more evidence* "Nice try you bathroom rapist!" *here's my plan to make this work* "Go to hell you demon!" All rational argument goes out the window. I am not an individual. Burn it all down. I'm looking forward to when the bombs fall in 2024.

This is all wrong. It's not the way it's supposed to be.

And how many of those supposed males are over 18?

[Z80a]

Because you know, this might be an action to try to stop other kids from getting the cooties or similar.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[Xicor]

i would say 'most men' dont like sports either. i like playing sports but i hate watching them.

"Sabotage", my ass.

[jcr]

They're posting reviews, not hacking the review sites. Calling it "sabotage" is just sniveling SJW bullshit.

-jcr

Re:modest proposal

[vel-ex-tech]

Should I try to go back to my Chinese Amazon fantasy from before everything became so terribly wrong? I feel that was a much more positive personality. It's better than this reality at any rate.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[Ol Olsoc]

That isn't true. Men force women to watch their shows all the time. Most women don't actually watch sports on their own yet not only are forced to watch games but also cook dinner for the guy and their friends so they have food during the game.

Look at a group of friends make and female "watching a game". Most women are chatting or doing other thing during the actual game itself.

Not all but it holds true more often than not.

Fortunately in our house, we have multiple televisions no one watches anything they don't want to. Now most of the shows I watch - and there aren't a lot, my wife has no problem with. She does watch more Hallmark channel movies, which are watchable, but obviously oriented toward women, and I watch more science stuff. But we'll watch both together. She watches hockey along with me as well - a surprising number of women enjoy Ice Hockey.

And if a woman is "forced" to watch anything or forced to prepare food for the husband and friends, perhaps she needs to be in a different relationship with a different kind of guy. I've been married 39 years now, and never forced my better half into anything.

She has however cooked many meals voluntarily, and without me asking. I've done stuff for her and her lady friends as well.

Why? Becuse our relationship isn't some sort of sadistic masochistic war between the sexes. I fear altogether too many seem to that a generalized hatred of their spouses is somehow normal.

Not accessible to half the population.

[nbritton]

Is a show that only appeals to 50% of the population really "award winning"? In my opinion shows such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or Modern Family are worthy of critical acclaim because they are inclusive and accessible to everybody.

SJW double standards

[Kohlrabi82]

Let me get this straight. Some men dislike a show which is about shallow nonsense and motivations, and downvote said show on IMDB. Instead of congratulating them, some SJWs bash them for having an enlightened viewpoint, . So even if you are in support of feminists/enlightened motives, you still get bashed by SJWs, just because you are a man. It looks like SJWism isn't really about social justice, but only about bashing the supposed oppressors.

It still puzzles me that SJWs are unwilling or unable to realize that the current western culture, while admittedly not being social justice utopia, yet, is probably the most socially just culture in human history. People have lived and died for what some people take for granted. Gay rights are not natural rights (because, in nature, gay behaviour is, by definition, "abnormal"), but they have been fought for and defended. Medical sex reassigments have been made possible by the medical advancements in western "patriarchic" societies. Universal suffrage, that people regardless of sex or income have one vote, is a huge achievement.

I'm not saying western culture is free of any social problems, but please don't suggest that voting down a shallow TV show on an internet platform is one of those problems.

And we are surprised..... why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Women rant every day about the unrealistinc way men behave on television, and the *offensive* way they act. The results have been the demise of some of my favorite shows from feminazis too put off by actually funny material, or by inspiring drama that wasn't "sensitive to women's rights".

So they got their own for a show about slutty women who whore their way through inheritances, divorce money, and a year's worth of wages in just shoes for a single season of the show? Oh, boo-hoo, cry me a river.

I rate things that I feel strongly about

[OrangeTide]

I really don't think that a TV show has a gender. Either it's a show that I enjoy watching, or one that I do not.

PS - I recommend watching a few episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race if you're still hung on gender roles.

Scandal?

[superwiz]

Really? Do people really watch TV shows for the context? It's context is blatant Communist propaganda, but its content is that of a really good spy thriller. Maybe because the key figures are women? I guess that means Blacklist is about to lose a lot of female viewers.

Gilmore Girls

[redcliffe]

I regularly get forced to watch Gilmore Girls reruns with my wife. Seriously every single character on the show is annoying. They're all drama-queen, fast-talking, bitches. Even the guys. 0/10 would not recommend.

Sorry, but that sounds dubious at best, care to

[Kartu]

Care to post a link?
Because what I read and experienced (having both a son and a daughter) contradicts what you state.

My son inherited most of the toys (including gazillion of cars) from elder sister.
Compared to her he is:
1) obsessed with the cars and planes (we bought our daughter all kinds of them, because, fuck 'girl/boy' toys model)
2) tends to speak less and has inferior language ability in general
3) shows next to no interest in listening to stories, unless there is a car or a plane involved, his sister would eagerly listen and then repeat the story ("read" the book)
4) is much much less cautious than sister

DNA is what really makes us different, why should we behave the same?
1. Women have greater constitutional vitality, perhaps because of their unique chromosomal pattern, and normally outlive men by 3-4 years (U.S.). This is also reflected even in the womb. More than 140 male babies are conceived for every 100 females; by the time birth occurs, the ratio is 105 to 100, with the rest of the males dying in spontaneous abortions.
2. Men have a higher incidence of death from almost EVERY disease except three: benign tumors, disorders related to female reproduction, and breast cancer.
3. Men have a higher rate of basal metabolism than women.
4. In skeletal structure, women tend to have a shorter head, broader face, less protruding chin, shorter legs, and longer trunk, and a more rounded pelvis.
5. Women have a larger stomach, kidneys, liver, and appendix, and smaller lungs than men.
6. Women have three very important physiological functions totally absent in men--menstruation, pregnancy, and lactation, and each SIGNIFICANTLY influences behavior and feelings. Female hormonal patterns are more complex and varied.
7. The glands work differently: e.g. a women's thyroids are larger and more active, enlarging during menstruation and pregnancy, making them more prone to goiter, providing resistance to cold, and is associated with the smooth skin, relatively hairless body, and the thin layer of subcutaneous fat that are important elements in the concept of personal beauty. Women are also generally more responsive emotionally, laughing and crying more readily (think how many women complain men are less emotional).
8. Women's blood contains more water (thus 20 percent fewer red cells). Since red cells supply oxygen to the body, they tire more easily and are more prone to faint. Their constitutional viability is therefore strictly a long-term matter. During ware-time conditions, when the working day in British factories was increased from ten to twelve hours, accidents among women increased 150 percent; the rate of accidents among men did not increase significantly.
9. Men are 50 percent stronger than women in brute strength.
10. Women's hearts beat more rapidly than those of men (80 vs. 72 beats per minute). Their blood pressure (averaging 10 points lower than men) varies more from minute to minute, but they have much less tendency to high blood pressure until after menopause.
11. Female lung capacity is about 30% less than in males.
12. Women can withstand high temperatures better than men because their metabolism slows down less.
13. Men and women differ in every cell because of differing chromosomal patterns, the implications of which range from obvious to extremely subtle. In one classic example, when researchers visited high school and college campuses to study behavior of the sexes, they observed that males and females even carried books differently - men tended to carry them at their sides with their arms over the top. Women and girls, by contrast, usually cradled their books at their chests.
14. Men have roughly 10% bigger brain, but some parts of responsible to certain activities are smaller than women's.

Re:Sorry, but that sounds dubious at best, care to

[Firethorn]

Care to post a link?
Because what I read and experienced (having both a son and a daughter) contradicts what you state.

1. Sure, here you go. I said a lot of reading, remember?
2. You do realize that anecdote is different than data, right? I stuck qualifiers in there like 'average' and 'basically' for very specific reasons.

1) obsessed with the cars and planes (we bought our daughter all kinds of them, because, fuck 'girl/boy' toys model)
2) tends to speak less and has inferior language ability in general
3) shows next to no interest in listening to stories, unless there is a car or a plane involved, his sister would eagerly listen and then repeat the story ("read" the book)
4) is much much less cautious than sister

Your #1 is right in line with expected behavior for a male child. Also, your noting that you bought your daughter 'all kinds' is ALSO right in line with expected, because as I noted, the observed behavior with children was that males tended to go for 'male' toys almost exclusively, while females went for both.
2. I didn't address this, now did I? Also, easily explained by individual variances between children.
3. Again, individual variance, and actually in agreement with my posted theory. Narrower interests for men, remember?
4. Different caution - I didn't address this either.
Where's the contradiction?

DNA is what really makes us different, why should we behave the same?

... Didn't I just get done saying that we don't behave the same? I mean, I was outlining detected differences in toy preference! Still, some WTF in your posts.

1a. Define "unique chromosomal pattern", because the only real difference is XX vs XY. Women don't have any genes that men don't, though hormones make them express differently.
1b. Outliving men is a known issue, not sure of it's relevance here.
1c. Citation on the 140 males conceived? I know about the 105 to 100 thing for male babies, and I also know it's even by 16 or so, because males die more often in childhood as well. Was getting ready to rant before I saw that you were talking before birth.
2, 3, 4, 5. Don't see how this is relevant...
6,7. No duh?
8. Not a blood expert, women having less physical endurance than men is known.
9. No duh?
10. Relevance?
11. Repeat from #5
12. Citation? Heat tolerance is more a function of hydration.
13. Relevance?
14. Again, I was mentioning the differences between toy selection. Not that men and women are identical.

So my questions are:
1. Did you intend to reply to me?
2. Did you actually read my post?
3. Do you do more than paste some sort of standard reply in?

I mean, I already know most of what you posted, it's just that I don't bring it up if I don't think it's relevant. For example, bring up a thread about how badly women have it over men and I'll bring up how more men commit suicide, are homeless, suffer from mental illness, are in prison, die earlier, etc... How there's virtually no shelters for abused men, how while male rape is rarer than female rape, the reporting rates are drastically worse(and female reporting sucks to begin with), and there's virtually no support for them - one raped male was referred to a rape prevention hotline intended to 'help' men thinking about raping women! And that's just a sample list, not comprehensive, about how men have it crappier than women.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[Bigbutt]

Yea, I'm not into sports either. My girlfriend asked me if I'd watch the Superbowl with her (she follows her team) and about half way through the game (the Broncos one last year?) she told me to get out and play my guitar :)

[John]

It's the 21st Century, Guys, Get Over It

[doggo]

As a man, I'm appalled and dismayed to see all the bile aimed at women. Whether it's gaming, or politics, or entertainment, there's this poisonous aggression towards women that's disturbing as fuck.

Seriously, dudes, what the fuck are you so afraid of?

I reserve my aggression for reaction to physical threats, not insecurity about my manhood.

B*tch please

[codeButcher]

I self-identify* as a woman. How dare you begrudge me the right to watch a show targeted at my gender, not liking it, and giving an honest review about how I feel about it???? What grows between my legs and on my chin has zero to do with what I review or not review.

* = sometimes - its fluid.

Re:In other news WOMEN are sabotaging the reviews.

[shaitand]

"Just going by the data, there are clearly not as many women giving reviews"

It says right in the summary that 60% of the reviews with an average of 8.0 are from women. There are more women giving reviews.

I don't think the target audience of a show is relevant to the review. The show was not released to only women, the target audience of the review site is not only women. As a man when I scroll through the top 100 or 250 or whatever looking at titles this is the score I'd see if that title were listed and this is the score that would determine if that show is listed.

The target audience is relevant only to the makers of a show/movie. There are men who like Sex in the city and men who hate it and men who feel inbetween; there are women all over the spectrum as well.

"I'm not saying that makes anyone more or less special."

I'll let you respond by quoting your parent post in which you did exactly that with a sexist generalization.

"Even if the viewership were equally split between men and women, many women would probably not log in simply to give something a bad rating."

"If I go to a southern Baptist church and ask them their opinion on gays getting married, do you think I'll get a acceptance rate that is similar to nationwide average?"

Do you think you can exclude 40% of the national population by gender (males) and get a result that is similar to the nationwide average? What if you exclude the slightly higher than half in the major cities? What if you exclude the slightly less than half outside the cities but who include the majority of communities? Doing any of these things would radically change the results vs the national average.

The target audience for the results is the general user base of the site, therefore the ideal sampling of people giving a rating should be the general audience of the site including men and people who hate the show.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[Grishnakh]

And if a woman is "forced" to watch anything or forced to prepare food for the husband and friends, perhaps she needs to be in a different relationship with a different kind of guy. I've been married 39 years now, and never forced my better half into anything.

Most women are not "forced" to watch stuff they don't want. That was BronsCon's point. In most married couples, the man is like you: he doesn't force his will onto his wife. We've been taught by society to not do that kind of crap, because that kind of thing used to be commonplace ages ago (and still is in some backwards cultures). But the same isn't true for women: they routinely badger their husbands into watching and doing things they don't enjoy, like watching Hallmark movies, going to church, etc. Men do it because after too many years of being single and sex-less, they reason that this is what they have to put up with if they don't want to be alone and only have the company of porn videos at night.

As a society, we've put a lot of effort over the past century into teaching our boys not to be ogres and to treat women respectfully and as equals. However, while we've mostly stopped teaching our girls crap like being submissive and that "a woman's place is in the home", we seem to have overlooked teaching them useful things about how they should behave in relationships to actually achieve the equality we aspire to. (And also, IMO, how to pick decent guys to date.)

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[Ol Olsoc]

But the same isn't true for women: they routinely badger their husbands into watching and doing things they don't enjoy, like watching Hallmark movies, going to church, etc. Men do it because after too many years of being single and sex-less, they reason that this is what they have to put up with if they don't want to be alone and only have the company of porn videos at night.

This reminds me of a joke. two guys were sitting in a bar, and one buys the other a drink, saying "I'm celebrating! I'm getting married next week. Now I can have sex any time I want!"

The other says "That's odd - that's the exact reason I got divorced."

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[BronsCon]

This. One of our first dates (my wife and I) was a Giants game. She won tickets at work (ah, work, something she no longer has to -- or does -- do) and wanted to go so we could spend time together. I have to say, neither of us were really into it, but that was kind of the point: neither of us felt bad ignoring the game going on in front of us, we simply enjoyed each others' company. Of course, we've never gone to another game since then because it really didn't add anything to the experience (the experience being having spent time together), but that's not the point. We mutually agreed to do something neither of us really wanted to do in order to spend time together.

And therein lies the problem: watching a TV show only one person is interested in is not a mutual experience, either mutual suffering or mutual enjoyment. It does not lend itself to bonding, as the partner who is interested in the show is going to get annoyed when the partner who isn't tries to talk to them during it, and they're not going to talk about the show after because one of them wasn't paying attention to it in the first place. A show both are interested in? Sure, they don't talk during, but they'll talk after. A show neither is interested in? Background noise to fill silences (periods of thought) in a thoughtful conversation.

I have to say, some of the best bonding moments for my wife and I have been things that absolutely sucked for both of us. Thing where we've looked at each other afterward and said, in unison "there is no way in hell we're ever fucking doing that again". I dare say, if a couple never has such an experience, they're stuck in a rut and will get tired of each other sooner or later. But, if experiences one partner enjoys and the other does not are a common theme, well, that's a sign they're not a match. A healthy couple doesn't have to like and dislike all of the same things but, at some point, they should be able to tell beforehand whether their partner will feel the same way they do about something, and they should (both) be mature enough to not subject their partner to those things; of course, they should also both be secure enough to trust their partner going and doing those things alone or with friends, no matter who those friends are.

I feel sorry for the men writing these reviews; they're probably faced with a decision between having sex used as a weapon or paying alimony for the foreseeable future. And it's likely not something they could have seen coming; if a woman doesn't start playing those games until after marriage, you can't simply not marry her because of the games.

But yeah, back to sports... If I want to watch a bunch of sweaty men rubbing on each other, I live 20 minutes from San Francisco.

Re: Strong enough for a man, made for a womanI

[BronsCon]

Where is this man's (I'm making an assumption, my apologies if that assumption is incorrect) +5, Insightful? Not only did he absolutely nail the point I was making, he succinctly pointed out several root causes of these types of issues.

Add in alimony, and some women being sly enough to not play those kind of games until they've secured it, and you've got a recipe for oppression. And no, a man should not be oppressed because other men have, themselves, been oppressors.

right off the bat ITFA

[Some_Llama]

FTA:

".....but I think most people would agree it was better than average.

At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the program’s remarkably poor score according to IMDb’s user ratings when I analyzed the data history of HBO. “Sex and the City” has an overall rating of 7.0 on a scale from 1 to 10. "

isn't 7/10 above average? 5 is average in a scale of 1-10.

So right off the bat it's obvious this is a slanted article with a bias view point.

the comments drive the point* farther (in the case a full article about how men* suck* didn't)

So fucking what

[fluffynuts]

Boo-hoo, some people don't like show [X]

If a woman rated some "made for men, show boobies and do crass jokes" show as shit, that's her right to do so. For her, it IS shit. For a lot of men, so is Sex In The City. Or are you only allowed to air your opinion if the creator deems you worthy?

Utilizing the full dynamic range

[GPS Pilot]

I've had classical piano training. I've noticed that male pianists tend to venture further into extremes of volume than female pianists. During fortissimo passages, males really pound the keys, and during pianissimo passages, they seek out the lightest possible touch.

In other words, males tend to utilize the full available dynamic range more than female pianists.

So I'm not surprised they do so when rating TV shows.

Gender-oriented shows tend to suck...

[undefinedreference]

...but those intended for men usually suck less.

Not saying all shows angled toward men were/are great, though. The 1980s was basically nothing but a stream of low-budget man shows that were utter crap. They were as bad, if not worse, than daytime soap operas. Sadly, shows oriented toward women have never caught up, they're still just as bad as they have been decades. Women were just conditioned to endure it.

Most TV is crap, anyhow. I don't own one, but my fiance does and she watches her trash shows. She even calls them that and tries to watch them without me. We do share a love of a handful of shows that probably have a predominantly-female audience, so you can't always predict what males will like or dislike. I mean, the pinnacle of reality TV is probably Project Runway, but I bet people assume only women and gay men would enjoy it.

Secession

[s1sfx]

IMDB, Wiki, Slashdot ... it is known who the people are who dominate these and many other online "communities." There will be no battle. Simply secession. Marginalization for those who cannot or will not go beyond their own perceived ideas and limitations. Rightfully so.

what the hell is the point of this non-article?

[sursurrus]

So the author's claim is what exactly? That when a woman-oriented show gets bad ratings and reviews from men that this is somehow a conspiracy?

Let me introduce you to my friend the correlation-causation fallacy. I'm too fucking tired to explain this simple point that most 'journalists' these days don't get, but ask any smart person you know to explain it. Anyways, it would be JUST AS FUCKING VALID OR INVALID to 'explain' this result as: "Sex & the Shitty and other vagina-friendly shows, in fact, suck. Men rate them accurately, women drastically overinflate their ratings because of a conspiracy to promote these shows.

BTW as a man who often watched SATC during its original HBO run due to housemates/girlfriends wanting to watch it... I can unequivocally state that it is the most overrated HBO full series of all time. SJP is a shitty writer -- does not seem to realize that self-referential humor and breaking the fourth wall only works if done with restraint by an excellent screenwriter. She, due to the self-referential nature of both the writing and her character, comes across as a reasonably dumb, trashy whore.

I think the unintended consequence of this show is that it opened men's eyes about women. Even if the characters aren't realistic, they are people a lot of ordinary women seem to be able to relate to and are entertained by. We started to think... maybe our girlfriend is as big a skank as Samantha, or as crazy/bitchy/bossy as Red, or as flat out stupidly pretentious & catty as Carrie. Shit, maybe our only hope is to meet the Charlotte's of the world who haven't yet experienced the cock carousel and let their looks go into a mass of cellulite!

Failing to see the issue

[KenHansen]

A product targeted towards women gets strong reviews from it's intended audience - women, and middling reviews from those outside the target audience - men. If men rated it as highly as women (something the submitter expected) then isn't that an indication that the producers failed in focusing on their target audience? Ask yourself why men are reviewing a show like 'Sex and the City'? Perhaps because the women in their lives 'forced' them to watch it... That they down-rated a show they were forced to watch isn't surprising.

Let's sum up

[allo]

There is a voting system, men and women can vote for shows, there is the average vote displayed common for both groups.

Now men and women vote and men do not vote as high for women shows as women do. They do not troll (no 1 star ratings, but realistic 5.8 which imply they want to tell a real opinion) and suddenly its abusive?

Either they make a women only vote for "shows aimed at women" (isn't that sexist?) or they have a general vote and the outcome represents the average viewer. And when enough men watch women shows, they vote for them and influence the average vote. Which means the number finally matches the opinion of the average human, not the average women. Maybe biased to the men/women ratio on the site, which isn't bad either, as the site should display the average vote with respect to its user base.

Men are still part of the audience

[anti-disney]

Even though they are watching these shows to spend quality time with a wife or girlfriend they are still part of the viewing audience. The NFL has made changes in the past few years to appease the women who may be viewing the game with a husband or boyfriend who would otherwise not be watching the game.