I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it, but maybe we are nicer to women online, and it think it's true that if one expresses oneself to a woman exactly as one would to a man, there is the danger of it sounding 'harsh.' Awareness of the second phenomenon would produce the first, wouldn't it?
And as for the "usually complete jerks are men" observation, it might be that a tendency of women to speak more carefully or tactfully, which you imply, makes them less likely to be perceived as jerks; but really, i haven't noticed that the percentage of complete jerks is higher here among men than among women-- only that there are more men. Though it's true that the ultimate exemplars of jerkiness, at least on feelies, have been the rabid religious/bigotry nuts, and they've all been men.
In life off of SI, my experience is that the relative percentages of complete jerks does not reflect well on women, if the criteria you use include both active and passive jerky characteristics. For example, i have rarely found myself, at a dinner party, or cocktail party, say, in a conversation with a man during which i couldn't find something interesting to talk about or ask him about or provoke a fun argument about; but i have, many times, felt as though i were going to begin whimpering and then weeping and then screaming when unable kindly to extricate myself from converse with a woman.
I know that's a counterrevolutionary observation to make, and i don't know why it should be, though it may have something to do with the 'talk nice' thing. I have other conjectures about why this is (or, i should say, has been my experience,) but they're only conjectures. |
