zlacker

>>stable+(OP)
We all need a safe space to come in from the cold. When you feel vulnerable, you want to communicate with friendly, like-minded people. However, you'll find more noise within an echo chamber and that jerks exist regardless of gender.

This sort of gender-specific walled garden is nothing new and I suppose will always attract a certain stereotype. Here's an old Anthony Lewis post from 1994 that may sober folks on the idea: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/14/opinion/abroad-at-home-tim...

"I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member" --Groucho Marx

>>adfm+zf
>Michael Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public-interest law firm, made the same point -- if slightly less elegantly -- about the Santa Rosa case. People who objected to the computer message, he said, "should have called the guy who posted the message a jerk."

Call an obnoxious speaker a jerk: what a useful formula, what an intelligent way to get the resentment off your chest without starting down the legal road to suppression of speech. It would have worked well, for example, in the notorious case of Prof. J. Donald Silva of the University of New Hampshire.

I find this section to be a disturbing summation of the author's attitude on the subject. And, the Groucho Marx quote has no bearing on any of this; it's self-deprecation.

>>grassh+Zl
Do I find a mens club repugnant? Yes, but I do appreciate comfortable chairs. As for Groucho, I suppose the subtlety of his humor falls on deaf ears.

>>adfm+bs
So, how does it relate then? What did you add by including it? It's a famous quote, and I remember mentioning it to a college professor when we covered Poe's 'The Black Cat.' I'm all for learning. Please explain.

>>grassh+7x
It's about exclusion. The Marx family were Jews. Men-only clubs (just "clubs" back then) excluded Jews. Groucho's feigning snobbery was self-deprecating, but also allegorical.

Walled gardens are for suckers.