I do not think serious minds watch such videos. So these must be made only for niche audiences. When you are in a community, you know what to expect from an audience.
On line it will be foolish to guess.
9
Frankly, as long as people can post anonymous comments, there will be poor behavior by some. Trolling purely to hurt is a product that has grown out of the ability to post under some pseudonym. I would encourage people to continue to post videos (at least the instructive ones) and ignore the anonymous banter.
23
Pure speculation, but Alphabet (i.e. YouTube) may still be training its comment moderation AI.
It may take a while, though, if they're accumulating a training set for a convolutional neural network that isn't profane and sexist.
2
I started an internet service provider company in 1995, before the World Wide Web. My own observations showed:
Newsfeeds: 50% of requests were for for sexual content.
The 'trolls' who attacked me, for 'broken emails', were equally men and women.
I asked to meet with one who threatened me with death, and he was a pathetic specimen in real life.
Another was a female, who made my life a misery with her caustic personal comments. On meeting her, she was seemingly innocent, quiet and pleasant.
These people have always existed, and always will. The anonymity of the internet enables their hateful behaviour, but I believe that many have no real idea of the impact on others.
The 'world' they live in, may be narrow, ill educated, little contact with a diverse range of people, and abusive, perhaps.
The 'correct' response to this, is to ignore them, and not to enable the 'flame wars'. I guess these people are desperate for attention, and have no other way of getting it.
33
“There is a lot of discussion about YouTube being an unpleasant environment for female creators,” said Inoaka Amarasekara...
think of it as a perverted form of attention. they would not write or even watch unless they were motivated to do so. apathy and inattention could be worse.
besides, you can not expect everyone all of the time to be civil and to play nice. and it is impossible to please everyone.
and men can generate more negative comments. think of all the verbal and written abuse that barack obama and donad trump must witness, some of it on these pages, although possibly because they were not trained in science.
In my 70 years on this planet as a white male (covering all those "required" categories!), misogyny is one of the huMAN traits I understand the least. Although it was never something my dad explicitly "taught" me, like everything else he did in his life as just a great human being, he showed me that respect for a woman, whether as a partner, friend or simply another human being, is fundamental and expected. He loved and respected my mother, just as he respected women in general...not as some fragile, secondary creature needing the wisdom & protection of men, but as the true anchor of society...most importantly, as an equal in our society. That was the key - women are not "different" in the aspect of inferior, they are simply an equal part of society...not so hard, is it? One thing about misogyny that does stand out - those men who act so abhorrently inevitably show themselves to be insecure, narcissistic, juvenile, failures and basically just jerks, every one of them. If there is such a thing as "secondary" or "inferior" humans, they get the tag.
46
This study does not appear to be especially scientific. How do we know that we are seeing a gender effect versus other differences from the sample of videos chosen? This paragraph reveals the crux of the problem:
"After getting lists of the 370 most popular YouTube channels in science, technology, engineering and math, she realized only 32 were hosted by women — not enough for a significant sample size. To flesh out the study, she added 21 women-hosted channels from a list compiled by Emily Graslie, host of the popular science YouTube channel The Brain Scoop."
Twenty one videos from the same host are not like independent random draws from a population. It's not even clear that the original list of 370 was representative or how it was selected. Sample size is much less an issue than lack of random selection. The authors are comparing apples an oranges before they even get to gender.
Then there could be investigator bias in the way comments are categorized. It would be better to automate such a procedure with a computer program.
The fact that the paper was published in a journal called "Public Understanding of Science," and featured in our best news source, is as heartbreaking as it is ironic.
Bad social science does nothing for women, or to beat back the haters of science and women that have taken over the White House and Congress.
11
Women get more comments, likes, and subscribers per view. Also more positive comments. Of course we don't know how much more for any of these, because author wasn't interested enough in these findings to give numbers.
10
For a scientific educator, your comment has a lot of unfounded statements.
Women unpromoted and unappreciated? Not in academia where women are the strong majority of students and schools bend over backwards to hire female staff and faculty. Who's looking out for the boys who are not going to university?
Women get the majority of verbal abuse? Nope. A Pew Study shows men get more abuse online and the NCVIS study of intimate partner violence show women are more often verbally and physically aggressive towards their partners.
Political rhetoric is not scientific data or facts.
7
"“I could see why people would not want to be on YouTube.”
(Larry gags) WhatsaMattaU ?? YouTube is a great medium for getting your video-based message out and around, but you don't have to read the comments! Don't bother, don't even think about it, because the trolls love to hang out there, among the decent people.
Geesh!
2
We've focused on the metoo movement and sexual harassment over the past year (and we need to continue to bring justice to women). Now we must work on social harassment. SH is the daily undermining of women in our society. It includes the afternoon events at the golf club to which women are not invited or are made to feel unwelcome. It's the dumb corporate meetings where you divide up into teams and "fight" for dominance. Ugh. It's the nasty little asides that are not quite seuall and not quite harrassment, and so forth. Everyday in many ways women are marginalized. We need more women in charge and more education/training. Diversity is good but inclusion is better.
12
just disable comments and problem solved. I watch lots of youtube videos that have comments disabled, whats the problem?
8
youTube could do more -- if they wanted. Right now they say they "provide uploaders with tools to moderate, disable and even hold potentially objectionable comments for review." So: more work and no pay for these female moderators? I see...
6
The real story is how consistently vile YouTube comments are compared to Twitter or even reddit. this study is only confirming a commonly held internet opinion about YouTube having a hostile environment where racist, insulting and sexual comments are rarely removed.
6
Did this study make the proper accommodation as to whether the commenters themselves were men or women? Obviously more men, as yet, probably are browsing the science channels. And of course men react differently to women than women do. At least that is the way the world used to work. This does not seem to be a valid scientific survey... just more biased analysis based on presuppositions.
6
How exactly do you propose to determine whether anonymous commenters are men or women? Also, it's pretty rich to criticize these researchers for "presuppositions" immediately after starting out with "Obviously more men..."
10
As if one can tell if a comment is written by a male or female. Most use SNs or fake names. Even if more males do look at science channels it makes negative comments more understandable? Should there not be the same percentage of crudeness against male videos and female ones? Men react differently towards females than females do, so makes misogynist attitudes OK?
5
For the first time in human history, people of ordinary means are allowed to contribute to humanity by sharing their knowledge with a mass audience. There are YouTube channels that contain bodies of work as important as those of the world's top architects, photographers, and composers. I would hope that most content creators are able to see past any negative comments about their material, their presentation, or their appearance and see the big picture.
10
Frankly, this behavior isn't going to stop until women, as a whole, stop putting so much emphasis on their own appearances. How you can get 3.5 billion women to do that at the same time is beyond me, but most things should start with incremental change.
For instance, I do my part by not wearing makeup. The fact that I get to sleep half an hour extra every day is one of the myriad of benefits.
40
"... this behavior isn't going to stop until women, as a whole, stop putting so much emphasis on their own appearances."
Undoubtedly, the Times chose the first photo to debunk that claim. :-)
"... I do my part by not wearing makeup."
Video cameras can make people look very bad if they have no makeup. There are tutorials on Youtube about the subject. Search for "makeup for video shoot". Some are about doing makeup for men.
And while you are on Youtube, look at how Dawkins and Levin are dressed in this video: "In Conversation: Richard Dawkins and Janna Levin".
2
as a woman, I pay attention to my appearance because I want to attract a mate. Much of human behavior is motivated by this drive.
3
This seems to be putting the blame on the victim - we already get plenty of that. I don't wear makeup anymore, either, mostly out of laziness, but it shouldn't matter if we do or don't wear makeup. Heck, there are men are wearing makeup now. It isn't and shouldn't be about appearance, and I think this behavior is actually about keeping women down. There are too many men who are insecure about themselves and can only achieve emotional parity by tearing down those who threaten them - I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the worst trolls for women are also racist. That's what needs to change, not how we look and present ourselves.
15
Anyone who produces information about science is welcome.
The anti science movement is pure poison, designed to keep people ignorant so that they are easier to manipulate.
It is a shame that trolls spoil this, but trolls do what trolls do,
they bully and insult. Lacking actual skill or knowledge that is all they can do.
27
We should look beyond YouTube. The comments were made by people who are learning to get attention by spewing hate, and they exist in the world outside YouTube and the Internet. Filtering or moderating the comments might help reduce the positive reinforcement loop of attention, but the people who made those comments don't magically change their minds because YouTube filtered them. We need to look at how to make changes in the real world, too.
8
Generally speaking, the internet seems to bring out the worst in many people. Those who were afraid to show others how mean-spirited they really are now have no qualms because they can hide their identities.
24
Our culture is very judgmental, isn't it? But I believe that the upcoming generation of women will not be put off by such comments. They are smart and tough.
4
People used to dismiss online comments as just trolls not to be taken seriously. But those comments reflect people’s true feelings. They tend to be more candid under the cloak of anonymity.
They’re not outsiders... One of those formerly “unserious trolls” was just elected president.
15
She is great. This will help her youtube hugely. And, dare I say, she is also charming and pretty
3
Frankly, I'm disappointed by Google's lame PR-speak response. This study merely quantifies what is already common knowledge by anyone who actively uses it uploads on YouTube. They MUST be aware of this problem and I have to believe that there are women working within YouTube who are also frustrated by it. Google/Alphabet has an obligation & incentive to ensure that their platform is a safe and encouraging environment for all of their content creators regardless of gender or background. This isn't 4Chan that they are running and there clearly is much more that they could be doing to address this issue. The question is, will studies like this one (and articles like this one) place enough public pressure on them to encourage change.
6
As a woman who worked in cancer research, pharmaceutical companies, and changed to IT what I found was that men acted as if every incident was a one time thing. Maybe it was for them with respect to the women they made the comments to. However, it's usually more than once for the women on the receiving end. And we get tired of it. We get angry. And we're not being too sensitive. We're tired of being treated like cute little objects.
The most telling incident was when a group of us did to one man what he did to us. He never once apologized for his inappropriate comments but he did leave the room swiftly when we said to him the same sorts of sexual comments he said to us on a daily basis. Note to men: if you don't like having women make sexual comments to you once at work, don't do it to them on a daily basis at work.
49
The degree of misogyny on the Internet is probably the single greatest indicator that differences between men and women were the first political levers to ever exist. It’s also frighteningly telling in regards to the rise of senseless violence among a subset of individuals who are almost universally men who feel ignored by women/society. Societies have placed more existential value on men than women for so long that a vast number of men have effectively turned into emotional invalids with entitlement issues.
78
You bring up a very interesting point. Throughout recorded history, males have been sacrificed by the millions in battle to further the survival of human civilizations. Others have been voluntarily or involuntarily put to dangerous or difficult tasks to benefit others. This suggests that entitlement is not a matter of male-ness, though that is often a necessary condition. The sufficient condition is class, the ability to command resources, such as outlandish paychecks or mom’s wide screen. Some females also enjoy entitlements, Porsches and whatnot, according to their class. Now I’m curious how the various entitlements have changed over time for both sexes, even across cultures.
I would enjoy reading your thoughts on this.
3
The fundamental issue for women, however, is that more women are killed or injured-physically or psychologically-by men than vice versa. Across all cultures and since pre-historic times.
1
Good points Dave but the human mind, though superior in some ways to that of the rat or the dog is nevertheless unable to do what rats and dogs and some species of birds can do and that is distinguish between individuals that have actually harmed them and then fear and/or attack that individual instead of fearing and attacking every form that looks similar to the individual that actually harmed them. They don't hold grudges against groups, we humans do. To the average human mind it matters not that the vast majority of men have never raped a woman, nor disrespected one, nor beaten a child. We are all blamed for the ones who have. Neither have the vast majority of whites lynched a person of color, nor have the vast majority of people of color ever committed a criminal act, yet some blame all for the ones who have. And certainly the vast majority of girls/women have never treated a boy/man like dirt, but some have (personal experience speaking) but individuals of all the above mentioned groups have done all the above things, and so the majority of our generalizing brains-- depending on whom we are and by what we are aggrieved-- generalize, and we become enraged with an unquenchable desire to punish an indeterminate all based on the general qualities of a specific few.
And we do this regardless of sex, gender, nationality, creed, skin color, ideology, intelligence, etc., etc., etc.
This is why history has always repeated itself, and why it always will.
1
I found this post intriguing because I am a woman interested in going into a STEM field. This article shows the backlash and belittlement that women are forced to deal with on a daily basis, people asking highly qualified women to "Go back to the kitchen and make me a double stack sandwich". By doing this, people disregard the tremendous effort and advancement that women faced to be able to even take part in STEM fields.I personally think that more woman would be interested in sciences if the people that they worked with and commenters were not as hostile. Considering that only 9.84 percent of men on TED talk receive the same kind of treatment and comments that women get is quite shocking. How can we advance women working in science when people only focus on the physical aspect of them? Although I am a constitutionalist and a strong believer in the first amendment, I do believe people should think about the sake of humanity before posting a comment online. The intimidation that women receive is baffling, and just makes the growth of our scientific exploration that much smaller.
20
To Neha Sadasivan: Since you are "a constitutionalist and a strong believer in the first amendment," surely you're aware that the 1st amendment applies only to the government not having the right to suppress free speech.
It does not state that troll-speak to private individuals is permissible.
16
As someone who as worked in the STEM field and worked with both men and women, I worked in offices full of men and women and NEVER observed women being belittled "because they were women".
My experience when studying in my field was that the vast majority of people were males. And since then, from what I've read, the percentage of females studying in the field has been 20% or less.
And in my working career, by and large I'e observed that women, again. occupy something around 20% of the positions. So I have to wonder why this is a surprise to anyone.
As for using internet insults as a way to measure how "society" treats women. should we also use Feminist writing to measure how society regards males?
If women want to get into a particular field, they should take the training that allows them to get into that field.
7
Most sites which have unmoderated feedback are dominated by the most insulting individuals, who get off on baiting people and engaging in verbal fistfights. It doesn't matter if the site is " serious - it is hardly just You Tube. You Tube, tho' since it has come to be a major player could, perhaps, do some sort of split: have a moderated section for "educational" stuff - another for the free for alls.
It would have been interesting and informative if the study had also rated the quality of the presentations by men and women presenters; that is, which presentations had more accurate information, or were more comprehensible, or led to better test scores after viewing, etc.
Doing qualitative ratings is of course challenging, but there are well established protocols for training raters to rate or score such presentations accurately and reliably.
Other possible variables include age and race of presenters, though I suspect most presenters were white males, followed by white females, and after that I don't have a basis for speculating about which minority races and genders are represented.
2
"... if the study had also rated the quality of the presentations by men and women presenters; that is, which presentations had more accurate information, or were more comprehensible, or led to better test scores after viewing, etc."
That's setting a ridiculously high bar. Cite some examples of credible social science research that "rated the quality" of something.
19
Do you think sexual or appearance-based comments are a reasonable response to
less competent" video? And if not, who is at fault: the person making the video, or the person making the unreasonable comments?
11
Even if a woman produces a low quality skunk dissection, there is no need to comment on her appearance or make sexually explicit comments.
16
Comments of men about the appearance of women presenters are understandable: in a society that is used to seeing women on TV always well groomed and made to look as beautiful as possible, the rather shabby look on YouTube translates to the reaction of "If she cannot dress well, she is not worth listening to".
7
And the attitude of Trump has given them license.
15
Your comment makes no sense. Most women that men are in contact with in their daily lives are average in appearance. As a society we are used to seeing normal women. Men who comment are their appearance are being immature jerks, and their sexism, while all too common, should not be given a pass.
12
sarasotaliz: this has been going on for at least 15-20 years so it WAY pre-dates Trump in any manner. He's only been POTUS for 18 months! do you seriously think this problem started 18 months ago? Emily Graslie's video here is from 2013!!!! that's FIVE years ago!
The study seems to suffer from a serious flaw - at least what the ratio of negative comments is concerned.
As stated in the article:
"After getting lists of the 370 most popular YouTube channels in science, technology, engineering and math, she realized only 32 were hosted by women — not enough for a significant sample size. To flesh out the study, she added 21 women-hosted channels from a list compiled by Emily Graslie..."
If this is correct, Ms. Amarasekara compares comments on very popular videos mostly from men with comments on a mixture of very popular videos from women with added *not so popular* videos from other women. These other videos are from a list compiled by Emily Graslie - and there is no indication that viewers like these videos as much as Emily Graslie does.
So it is entirely natural to expect the comments on videos from this pool of female authors to be more critical - not because the authors are female but because the videos are less popular.
From what we can read in this article, the numbers cited from the study are not comparable and thus any conclusion drawn from them is pretty much unfounded.
14
" If women are held back from progress in STEM fields, couldn't it be more likely that YouTube videos authored by women will be less competent? "
This is particularly relevant given that the male presenters were drawn from the most popular channels, yet the women were a mix of (less) popular presenters, along with a mix of less-than-popular presenters who they drew from a list given to them.
3
"Better yet, just give users an option to either not show any comments that are not yet approved by a mod"
Yeah, that's already possible. The complaining presenters have the ability to see *no* negative feedback if they wish.
2
"The researchers found that about 14 percent of comments for female on-camera hosts were critical, compared to about six percent for male hosts."
An obvious question would be how different a response one finds if one controls for content. Perhaps I overlooked this. But the implication of the article is that the difference in responses is purely a matter of sexism, yet don't other hypotheses need to be considered? If women are held back from progress in STEM fields, couldn't it be more likely that YouTube videos authored by women will be less competent?
And if comments on videos with female presenters are more "emotional," what follows from this? Does it reflect a tendency on the part of any individual to respond more "emotionally" to a woman than a man? If so, is it because women are acculturated to (or naturally) give more "emotional" presentations than men? Or might it reflect that female-presented videos attract female and male viewers in a different ratio than male-presented videos? Perhaps the differences in the comments say more about the viewership of the videos than anything else.
4
"If women are held back from progress in STEM fields, couldn't it be more likely that YouTube videos authored by women will be less competent?"
The example comments in the article have nothing to do with the "competence" of the video production or presentation.
Anyway, some highly credentialed people have been bad teachers. Wittgenstein harangued and beat some students.
5
Headine:
Women Making Science Videos on YouTube Face Hostile Comments
Article:
"Female on-camera hosts elicited more comments, likes and subscribers per view than the other categories. They even received a slightly higher percentage of positive comments compared to male hosts."
In other words, the headline could just as well have read "Women Making Science Videos on YouTube Receive More Views, Upvotes, and Positive Comments."
Look, no decent person finds negative comments directed at women acceptable. But these days, it is hard when reading the Times not to feel assaulted by a constant stream of articles intended to portray woman as victims. That ends up weakening the message rather than strengthening it.
24
Curious how you view usual expressions of the sexism that still affects our culture as "portraying women as victims." Perhaps because the truth - that it portrays men as sexists - is unpalatable?
9
Unmoderated comment boards should not exist. Or rather, they should not be built-in—let them exist on other, stand-alone, external platforms that people can choose to visit and participate in (or not). CNN, to take one prominent example, did the world a service when it largely eliminated comment boards from its site.
9
If I read the article correctly, about 80% of the comments directed to female presenters fall into the categories neutral/ general discussion, positive, or hostile, compared to about 92% for male presenters. We are also told that the percentage of comments ranked "positive" was slightly higher for female presenters. It's disappointing that the article chose neither to report the ratio of hostile comments nor to quantify the positive comments; from the tone of the article, it seems likely that, had the percentage of hostile comments been greater for female than for male, that finding would have been reported (though I would welcome correction from someone who has the data).
From the data presented, it seems clear that viewers take greater license in posting personal comments about female presenters than about males. This is both unfair and disrespectful.
Given that female presenters generate more comments per view, but that that a lesser proportion of those comments discuss content, it is unknown (or unreported) whether male or female presenters generate more substantive comments per view.
It is clear that the personal comments of trolls are a problem, and significantly more problem for female presenters. It is unclear whether, if all troll comments were ignored, female presenters receive the same level of respect or serious consideration as males, measured by number of substantive comments per view.
3
Yes, a lot of YouTube's commenters are horrible and worse. (Ironically, my mere comments about some particularly hideous YouTube comments, in multiple contexts, have more-often-than-not *not* been approved by NYT...)
But otherwise well-meaning fellow commenters can help by NOT happily feeding the trolling with responses, and NOT calling for Google to add more Real Name harassment. The former just leads to the bizarre and fruitless arguments that extend to tens or even HUNDREDS of comments between a commenter and a troll, and the latter scares away good people to absolutely ZERO effect on trolls who need only have an account for as long as the trolling is done.
Google has a vested interest, as an advertiser and general creep (see: Google+), in having those real names. That alone is a good reason to never speak of killing anonymity on YouTube and the like. Those sites should use the NYT model instead: moderate each and every public comment if the uploader wants moderation, but DO NOT allow the uploader to block or cherry-pick-remove comments or even ratings when the uploader's a megacorp or politician.
Better yet, just give users an option to either not show any comments that are not yet approved by a mod, or show all comments (that weren't deleted as doxing, severe ToS violations, etc.) to wade the troll-infested waters for possible additional insights.
2
This shouldn't be a shock to anyone. As long as people can hide behind their computers and post comments anonymously, misogyny and the bashing of perfect strangers will continue.
It should be noted that the NYT holds commenters to a higher standard, but there still is a smattering of snark that makes it into the comments section.
Incivility has been taking hold for quite some time, but these hateful and misogynistic comments are something different. To eradicate this problem, everyone should have to provide their real name and email address if they want to leave comments anywhere.
Only if people know the comments they leave will follow them around forever, will we have a hope of changing this behavior.
15
The research focused on the comments themselves as broken down into percentages based on six categories determined by the author. But what about the youtube users actually posting those comments? How many "troll" comments were from the same troll? How many came from a number of male viewers? Yes this is significant - because without that kind of analysis or breakdown, you can't determine if the negative comments are a common reaction from the male viewers of these videos - or whether such negative comments are limited only to a few certain trolls who repeatedly attack female presenters. The former scenario implicates male youtube viewers as a whole, whereas the latter would indicate a much smaller number of individuals indulging in this negative behavior.
9
Sadly, this works against women both ways. The ones who want to do great work, to convey enthusiasm and delight, and most of all to be factually accurate, are fighting a good fight that ought not to be a fight in the first place. They deserve all the support we can give them. Then there are the ones who trade on the YouTube audience's minuscule attention span and deliver cleavage first and substance optionally. Bimbofied science or history aren't science or history. They're empty per se, often inaccurate, and dangerously misinformative if the audience actually turns the sound on.
7
This could have been titled "The Puerile Male YouTube Viewer" since the majority of the sexist, appearance-based comments undoubtedly are made by small-handed, insecure men or boys who fear intelligent women. Reminiscent of a certain occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I suspect.
14
Less, and not quite so personal. But the
cesspool of the internet it it often is.
The argument that vloggers just need to toughen up and not be bothered by these comments sound awfully familiar...reminds me of what women were told when they were being harassed in the workplace.
43
Women and men need to understand that there is a rather large segment of humanity that are really just big dumb apes, and we need to accept that, nod briefly to acknowledge we heard them, then move on to advance our own ideas. Giving thuggishness more attention detracts significantly from making your point. Have women learned nothing from being the targets of dismissive behavior of men in the workplace?
6
Judged by looks.
Makes less money.
Works full time, still does majority of housework/childcare.
Shut out of the "boys club"
Openly chastised in meetings.
Expected to think, feel, and behave, exactly as men do.
Treated as "freaks" by religiously conservative male scientists, who have rigid views of women's roles.
These are just a few of the things women in science put up with.
As the article said, on YouTube, male scientists do experience some of the same types of comments as female scientists, but male scientists are still the majority, so their base of support is huge, compared to women's, and that makes a difference.
There's some hope, in that the number of women scientists in some organizations has increased, but that's not universal.
Bastions of men that truly just want their Male-Dominated world to continue, still dominate science, and our society.
From that, the results of the study aren't, in any way, a surprise.
85
"Makes less money."
It's easy to support that claim. What's hard is to explain why. And saying "sexism" isn't an explanation.
Female scientists paid £5,000 less a year than their male counterparts, report finds
by Steve Connor
28 June 2015
The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/female-scientists-paid-5000-l...
3
The New York Times does it right. “Comments are moderated for civility.”. YouTube should adopt the same practice. Hateful comments from Internet Trolls serve no useful purpose. One thing these studies show is that the hateful comments are in the minority. Perhaps YouTube and other platforms should just ban the Trolls. We don’t need civil discourse further degraded by more cruelty. Sure there are jerks in the world. That doesn’t mean we need to give them a megaphone.
19
This is all true but it doesn't only happen to women, as a rule.
1
The article doesn't say it only happens to women. Did you notice that? It says it happens to men, too.
2
"Is the problem ... insecure women looking to be universally liked?"
But one doesn't cause the other. The commenters have no way of knowing whether a particular woman wants to be liked, so that can't have any affects on the comments they get.
2
Even though the bottom feeders among anon YouTube posters are a uniquely revolting and sad set, I think the sickening skew delineated here reflects what goes on in the rest of society. Women are judged on their looks first, brains second. Full stop.
91
So, men making science videos on Youtube do not face hostile comments? The comments section of Youtube is one of the cesspools of the internet.
2
As a next step, I'd be interested to correlate the nasty, sexist comments with membership in the "Incel" movement.
11
I'd like to see a lot more reporting on the "Incel" movement in general, before it gets any more out of control.
2
There are two kids science podcasts we follow, Brains On and Smash Boom Best. Both highly entertaining and hosted by a woman named Molly Bloom. I recommend them, in part to inoculate children against this type of malarkey.
21
One thing we can do is counterbalance these trolls by leaving women positive comments relating to their topic. It is very disheartening to me, and I am sure to all of us with a conscience, to know these women put work into their videos and are talking about topics that have nothing to do with their appearance, only to be treated as meat by meathead commenters. It's not just the person in the video who is harmed by this - it is all of the women and girls reading along and deciding "nope! Not worth it." and removing ourselves from the public eye. Which, of course, is exactly what the troll MRAs want.
16
Unless a comment has a verified, actual name, it is worthless. These people are not Chinese freedom fighters hiding from State Security. They are losers, by any definition of the term. Who cares what people with severe, personal inadequacies write in comments? Just assume your life exceeds theirs by any measure and forget about them.
25
It’d be interesting to know the motivation of the trolls. I’d suspect that many of them make the comments to have fun with the righteous blowback of other commentators, as opposed to having fun by putting the women in the videos down. That’d also be in line with why women get more comments like this - no one cares about defending a man who is slammed for his appearance, so there isn’t any interactivity to be had.
4
Life isn't fair but the only way it changes is to keep plodding forward.
These internet trolls are complete losers and do not represent the scientific community in any way. Why pay any attention to them and give them credibility they don't deserve? They comment on your looks? Why read that, what difference does it make to you what some pathetic idiot thinks about how you look? If you can be forced out of your desired field due to thing like this, you can be sure it will only get worse.
Consider the source and move on.
3
Which will surprise absolutely no woman past the age of puberty.
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I disagree. My women undergraduate students often seem to think that all of these battles are things of the past.
3
How many of these losers who post trash talk about female scientists have won a Nobel Prize in science? Well, Marie Curie won it twice--once in Physics (1905) and once in Chemistry (1921). Did any of these jokers ever help develop a ground breaking scientific instrument? Jennifer Doudna has. She played a leadership role in the development of CRISPR-mediated genome editing which has the potential to save a lot of lives.
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Comments on YouTube are and always have been a cesspool of depravity. It's possible to limit comments to subscribers only, or to just not allow them at all.
2
It's amazing the sort of puerile, pathological, sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, neo-Nazi garbage that anybody with a smartphone or a tablet can post on the internet with abandon.
Take the President of the United States, for instance...
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Back when I was a newbie author, I gathered four great bits of advice from my experienced entertainment industry brethren. One: Everyone feels the need to create and share their creations with the world, and we’ll do it in whatever manner we can manage. Some of us have the time, energy, talent and drive to complete novels, music, youtube series, etc. Others don’t. For many people, their online comments are their only means of public self-expression. Mean or otherwise outrageous comments are easy to write and will gather them even more attention. Two: Consider the source. I treasure the hard learning experiences I gained from my thoughtfully chastising low-star reviews, but that guy who has written over 400 three-sentence two-star Amazon reviews is not the best go-to for useful feedback. Three: Celebrate those trolls, because they’re a harbinger of success. They tend not to bother obscure or untalented creators. Four: I learned this from a farmer talking about squirrels, but it fits online trolls too - you may be smarter, but they have more time.
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Back in the late sixties - when I was in high school - I was one of a select group of talented students selected from the East Coast/New England area to participate in the All-Easter Band --
We spent three days in Washington D.C. rehearsing for a performance on the final day.
They had sent us our music months in advance to practice and prepare our individual parts - however, after rehearsing for a day it was decided the band was so good they handed us a new piece right there on the spot - which we incorporated into our program --
Since the band was so large, they assigned three people to play the part normally covered by a single musician - and I was one of the three assigned to the first chair --
They decided to hold quick auditions to determine the player who would be section leader - and one of the other first-part players was a female student -
We all took turns playing for the coaches - and it seemed obvious to me that the female student was the obvious best of the three of us --
Yet - the judges chose me - a male - to sit in the principle chair and lead the section --
Both of us were stunned by this - and I even recall whispering to her that she should have been selected over me -
Being young teenaged students accustomed to obeying the instructions of our coaches, teachers and conductors - we were both at a loss for words -
We ended up having a good time - and, as a result, I learned to respect all accomplished females in their professions...
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Next, I would like to see a study that compares the overall well-being of these scientists with that of the trollsters.
Perhaps Amarasekara's study will inspire more science related videos that focus on identification and treatment options of such pathology.
These behaviors, almost certainly those of young-to-middle-age boys and men without meaningful jobs or relationships, have only found broad expression with the anonymity of the internet.
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Wear a full burka or paper bag over one's head may take away some sexist observations but doubtful. Women would be wise to disguise the fact they're female in all and any way they can online, sadly.
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I'm one of the originals here. I was one of those who paid $49 for an entire year to comment on the NY Times. Grow a second skin, for goodness sakes. These people are anonymous. So a coward is only emboldened by his secret identity. And if they say they have a PhD. I say that I'm the
Queen of England. I'm a man, but how would they know that?
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My husband is a scientific engineer. He is baffled as to why some people are so nasty to female engineers and scientists.
Last night we were discussing Twitter and "comments" on websites. Y'know what they say about opinions...
We all have opinions and thoughts. But no, everybody in the world doesn't need to know our opinions and thoughts.
Twitter is great technology for pubic service announcements and public safety communication. Severe storm warnings, schools closing for snow, Amber alerts, etc. But your brain-fart opinion about whatever? Unnecessary.
Americans have long been visually judgmental people. The American advertising and marketing businesses have been teaching us to judge and value women by physical appearance and youthfulness for many decades. Any method for unfiltered and unrestrained comments on digital media will inevitably open the door for misogyny, sexism, bigotry and just plain stupidity.
The real question is; why do digital media publishers, editors and hosts set up "comments" or "feedback" from users/viewers? Why give nasty people the platform?
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I’m really curious why you point out that one of the “jerks” you refer to was a “Korean Prof.” Why does that matter?
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If you allow comments from anonymous people, you are best off not reading them at all. Trolls are nothing new. Best to disable comments or just not read them, and know that if you are getting views, then you are on to something worthwhile.
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After 30 years as an engineer I've come to the conclusion that the politics of the scientific field is across the board. There are left-wingnuts who want anyone claiming that humans might not be causing climate change to be dragged kicking and screaming to prison. There are right-wingnuts who believe that only an Intelligent Designer could have put certain types of tissue/cells together. Both cohorts of scientists should be drowned out with laughter.
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I keep postponing a plan to start creating videos on YouTube. I am male, so I cannot attest to the same level of trolling and stupidity women are clearly more subject to then men, but when I do start posting content, I am disabling comments. I don't need this crap.
7
"The researchers found that about 14 percent of comments for female on-camera hosts were critical, compared to about six percent for male hosts."
"Female on-camera hosts elicited more comments, likes and subscribers per view than the other categories. They even received a slightly higher percentage of positive comments compared to male hosts."
Is the problem a relative few insecure men threatened by women with something to say? Or insecure women looking to be universally liked? To have their cake and eat it too? Work on thicker skin for women. There's no effective way to browbeat or censor insecure men into greater security and maturity that doesn't just feed the trolls.
Your comment (Work on thicker skin for women) definitely offers a solution to the problem. However it might not effect the statistics cited. I suggest women make more nasty comments about men, which will also help to decrease their sensitivity to stupid remarks from 12 year olds.
1
It's ALWAYS the woman's fault.
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I have often wished that commenters would have to prove and post their ages. Too many crude comments seem to have been written by 12 year-old boys.
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Or written by adult men with the minds of 12 year old boys.
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More likely men who have not advanced past the mental and social age of 12.
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Interesting thought, however, I doubt your suggestion would help.
In my experience men of any age, including male scientists, that are hostile toward women, present as immature teenage boys, in what they say, and how they say it.
3
It's part of the same attitude that tells women they can't make their own decisions about reproduction or their bodies. It's an unspoken way of keeping women in their place. And if women talk back the language tends to be intensified. There aren't ever any apologies made. Women are told that they are too sensitive, need to toughen up, act more feminine, put on more make up, be more assertive, less aggressive. But the people, male or female, who make the comments are rarely told that they are out of line.
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When you flip the percentage of things around to see what was OK, it looks like things are largely fine:
Percent of comments that were positive: 94% for men, 86% for women.
Percent of comments that did not mention appearance: 98.6% for men, 95.5% for women.
Commments that weren't sexual or sexist: 99.95% for men, 97.25% for women.
Comments that were about talk, not speaker: 90% for men, 85% for women.
29
I suppose it's "largely fine" for you too that women make, say, 95 cents to a man's dollar. Sorry, this is not "largely fine" for me and it shouldn't be for anyone.
12
Don't be disingenuous. If you consistently faced three times as much criticism as your colleages or equals, you would be pointing that out.
Your reasoning reads like this: "99.99926% of men don't die of homicide, and 99.9980% of women don't die of homicide. Therefore there is no important difference in the rates of homicide between men and women." But by this same measure, men are 3.7x as likely to be victims of homicide as women are.
9
If you accept this reasoning about percentages, then you should also accept that it is not a problem that men face triple the homicide rate for women. After all, 99.9926% of men do not die of homicide, and 99.998% of women do not die of homicide. Of course, I present absurd logic; we care about the rate at which bad things happen because we wish to reduce those bad things. If bad things happen 3x as often to one group than they do to another, then we ask why that is, even if those bad things are relatively rare overall.
7
This is one reason why it’s nice to read a good book regularly. A real paper printed attractively typeset novel or non fiction book. You are commandeered by the skill of the author and you are driven by your own uninterrupted need to contemplate the material and ideas.
It’s wonderfully refreshing.
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If you are a Ph.D. but have a thin enough skin to be bothered by this, the problem may not be with the larger society. Instead, the problem may be with you. In light of the massive problems faced by society writ large, this doesn't make the top ten list. I was disabled as a small child. I faced plenty verbal (and occasionally physical) abuse from the general public. I don't decry how "unfair" the world as a whole is. You have to develop a thick skin at some point of your adulthood. This won't be a popular opinion but it's easier to implement than changing the entire world because someone feels uncomfortable.
27
This is about changing the world because women, including women scientists and teachers, face significantly more physical and verbal abuse, incivility, and undeserved criticism in every aspect of our performance than men, across every phase of our career. It means that we are underpaid, under-promoted, and underappreciated. We are treated as though we’re disabled, because we’re still comsidered to be ‘different’. Laws have been passed addressing much deserved accommodations for the disabled. Women scientists deserve to treated fairly (and civilly). What you experienced as a child was wrong, and abuse doesn’t always make a person stronger.
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Anonymity allows for venting, bad jokes and ignorance to be on full display without repercussion. Heck, being mean is in for many these days.
This isn't about thin skin. It's about suppressing opportunity and agency for half the population. It's institutionalized. Please don't try to flick the issue away with false equivalencies.
2
I feel that this problem is not limited to YouTube alone and is not simply about thick skins and mean comments. It's that women in particular are constantly driven away by the male-dominated realms of the Internet, science, and technology in general. It's not just online - we know it's in the physical workplace too.
If you look at YouTube comments for these types of casual educational videos in general, if there's a female present there will be at least a few comments solely discussing her attractiveness (positive or negative). Why would women want to create anything and expose themselves to such an environment? This applies to many male-dominated places and professions.
There are so many stories out there about women being harassed sexually online disproportionately to males. It's seen as commonplace if you're a woman. If you're a male, you're supposed to take it as a compliment which is equally messed up.
The social norms on the Internet need to change. It is starting already in schools, now that we've had more knowledge about the power of the internet and how it can be both a negative and positive force. Cruel comments should not be the norm, and while thick skin is something we should develop that does not excuse people of their behavior online. Unfortunately, people mimic what they see online and feel more comfortable participating in these behaviors when there are no real, tangible consequences to their words and actions.
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Studies like these are of great significance in certain fields, especially academia. Studies repeatedly show that female professors are at a disadvantage when they are being anonymously evaluated by students. And yet higher education persists on having student evaluations considered for promotion purposes. This is a mechanism for reinforcing gender discrimination that colleges/universities are not being confronted with as jobs in academia become ever more precarious.
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Comments sections are the cesspool of the Internet (and yes, I realize I'm here too!). For some reason being behind a screen gives everyone multiple Ph.Ds, millions of dollars, expertise on every subject, and worst of all, entitlement to share their most vile thoughts. One part of me feels compelled to chime in with thoughtful comments on those types of sites (or at least I think they are thoughtful) to turn the tide a bit, but I'm still drowned out by riffraff. And don't bother calling them out, as their retorts are as childish and ill-reasoned as their original comments. (The NYT comments section is usually much better and filled with thoughtful people of all backgrounds, so hats off to you all.)
I feel tremendous sympathy for those torn apart on the Internet for no reason at all, especially when they are young people who may not yet have the confidence to completely brush those comments aside. I appreciate anonymity online when sharing personal or political opinions, but this is the obvious dark side.
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After 30 years as an engineer I've come to the conclusion, shockingly that most of the scientific field is made up of male, right wing racists and misogynists. If I had to do it all over again I might have picked a different career.
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Saying that the problem is overly sensitive women ignores reality. The animus is real and unacceptable.
51
Yeah, I worked at a research institute as an admin, and the amount of men with borderline psychopathic tendencies was scary. These were the best minds but deeply lacking in humanity, and it was soul sucking.
11
Most is wrong; but even a few percent is far too many.
5
YouTubing is just video blogging. Any platform that allows comments, like this one at the NY Times, is an outlet for a certain type of -- what is called in the blogging world -- "troll"-- they hide "under the bridge" and under pseudonyms and leap out to harass the authors or other commenters, making rude comments that don't have anything to do with the topic at hand and are not contributory to the conversation.
Authors (and "creators" on YouTube) must have thick skins and the ability to ignore trolls.
"Creators" who feel hurt by troll-comments can look forward to having entire blog essays written attacking them for their opinions or their looks or what they wear or almost anything. That's part of the package-- sad but true.
16
No, it’s not “part of the package”; it’s only part of YouTube‘s package. That is made clear by the very platform that you happen to be commenting on, in which the New York Times has full moderation. YouTube could, if it desired, give videomakers the choice to moderate their comment feed in the exact same way that the New York Times moderates theirs. Trolls do not have to be part of the package at all.
This is an obvious change for YouTube to make: instead of just simply blocking phrases in comments, you could have full moderation if you chose to do so, just like the New York Times. Some would, some wouldn’t. (Many people enjoy reading troll comments and you might get more clicks if you allowed to them.) It would be up to the videomaker.
This would be a very easy change for YouTube to make and it would definitely increase their usership as they would gain higher participation from the largest demographic in the world.
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Three percent of the comments were about vapid things like appearance? If that small number is enough to keep us women from posting things then WE have a problem.
This society obsesses over the hair styles of every first lady. Dwells on what shoes they wear as they board a plane, carry on about who designed the outfit and commentate on the most minute flaw. It's a national pastime that enjoys a large number of female snipers.
I've never been the cute chick, was in biology/chemistry labs long before STEM was a "thing" and learned how to hold my own with the few jerks who considered it a sport to put me down - that included one Korean Prof as well. Those sorts were the exception and I found that when I turned the tables on them, the standup guys stood up for me as well. They were the targets before me. Seems geeky guys are made fun of as well.
“A person who publishes a book appears willfully in the public eye with his pants down.”— Edna St. Vincent Millay.
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"Seems geeky guys are made fun of as well".
Seems? Well, I can't count the number of nicknames I got throughout school. Or jokes made at my expense.
And this came even from women to my surprise.
I remember one instance where a few guys said I shouldn't think about dating because I would bore the poor girl with stories about molecules.
And the whole class laughed to their hearts' content.
Anyways, this article is not about men, it is about women. But like you said, standup guys will help out if you stand for yourself. They were there before you and the coping mechanism they eventually develop is to keep quiet and hone their skills (in hopes of future revenge as a very skilled professional).
1
Negative comments on the internet are most likely the result of anonymity on the internet. To quote Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University:
“Any setting that cloaks people in anonymity reduces their sense of personal accountability and civic responsibility for their actions.” (p. 25)
Cite:
Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect : Understanding how Good People Turn Evil. Random House, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-8129-7444-7
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Ms Graslie wonders whether Youtube could do more to support women on its platform. Pretty much all videos attract hostile commenters who attack the creators and other commenters, plus there are creators who put out hateful videos. Youtube does nothing about any of this even when the comments or videos are flagged. I suggest she use the tools she has as creator to block comments that contain certain words, moderate comments for civility before they appear on the page (consider hiring another person to do this), disable all comments on videos, etc.
20
I watch quite a bit of Youtube science videos. There are many women who do a great job explaining complex ideas to a simpleton like myself. As to the comments; many are obviously generated by adolescent teenagers with nothing else to do.
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