« Why focus on the extremes, rather than on the area of overlap where women and men exhibit similar kinds of variation? The existence of gendered styles must be explicitly demonstrated in order to put to rest the myth that gender is invisible on computer networks. This myth not only misrepresents the reality of gender on-line, but further perpetuates the uncritical tolerance of practices (such as flaming) which discourage women from using computer networks (Herring 1992, 1993a). Such practices affect large numbers of users even when only a minority of men are responsible, and thus it behooves those concerned with gender equality in cyberspace to understand them well. »
« Flaming is generally considered hostile and rude. Yet the phenomenon is too widespread to be explained away as the crank behavior of a few sociopathic individuals. Indeed, many male-predominant groups, including stuffy academic ones, are adversarial in tone to a degree that, in my female-biased perception, borders on the uncivil. Could it be that men and women have different assessments of what is 'polite' and 'rude' in online communication?
In order to test this hypothesis, I prepared and disseminated an anonymous electronic questionnaire on netiquette. In addition to background questions about respondents' sex, age, ethnicity, professional status, and years of networking, the questionnaire included three open-ended questions asking respondents what online behaviors bother them most, what they most appreciate, and what changes they would like to see in Net interaction in an ideal world.
The questionnaire generated considerable interest: I received nearly 300 usable responses, 60% from men and 40% from women. Immediately I noticed a pattern relating to gender in the responses: Male respondents were more likely than female respondents to 'flame' me about the questionnaire itself. »
« Finally, as if this were not potentially alienating enough to female users, the Usenet guidelines also actively discourage appreciative and supportive postings in the name of reducing message volume:
In aggregate, small savings in disk or CPU add up to a great deal. For instance, messages offering thanks, jibes, or congratulations will only need to be seen by the interested parties—send these by mail rather than posting them. The same goes for simple questions, and especially for any form of 'me too' posting. (Horton and Spafford 1993) »
« Moreover, despite male concern with freedom from imposition, men are responsible for the majority of violations of negative politeness (my questionnaire notwithstanding) as well: It is men, not women, who post the longest messages, do the most cross-posting, copy the most text from previous messages (and respond, point by point), have the longest signature files, and generally take up the most bandwidth on the net. How can these behaviors be explained? »