Sexism? In my office? In my Internet? It's more likely than you think.

Originally this blog post was going to be a little one dimensional, but I have an interesting new angle on it!  (I've been sitting on this for a while, just hadn't gotten around to writing it.)

I'm also going to throw a content warning here for language, but it's necessary in this case.
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Let's be honest, everyone--we all waste time at work online. (I am right now, writing this!) Sometimes you just need a break, you know?  Clear your head, learn about the world around you, goof off, whatever.  Internet in healthy doses=good.

I'm pretty careful and respectful of what I'm browsing at work.  I'm not really one to look at anything that would land me in any sort of trouble in OR outside of work...well, as far as I was aware of, that is.

A bit of backstory if you aren't aware: Gawker, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9, and a whole bunch of other websites are all under the umbrella of the same company.  They all offer something vastly different that I find interesting:
Gawker has news (usually).
Jezebel has women's and feminist news.
Deadspin has sports, with a snarky twist.
Lifehacker has life tips. (duh)
io9 has interesting science-y stuff.

They all typically link to each other (and the other blogs I don't normally read) so usually I'll click on a link from Facebook for an article, but sometimes I will click on something from another site.

A while back, I saw an interesting looking article on Facebook from Jezebel, and I clicked on it. Immediately the page redirected to screen that said the article was blocked because of content.  Okay, I didn't think the article I clicked on was that provocative, but I closed the tab, made a mental note of it, and moved on.  Clicked on a link from Deadspin, and it opened just fine--despite part of the article title using the word "fuck".

Hmmmm.  O...k...interesting.  I read the article, saw a link somewhere in that article to a different link on Jezebel.  Click on that.  Nope, same page.  Now it's getting frustrating.  I open a new tab and try to go straight to Jezebel itself.  Nada.  Blocked.

I thought I'd try another site about women's interests and issues--Jane XO.  Nope.  Blocked too. I thought "okay, I'll just look at it on my phone", but forgot I'd connected IT to the internet, too.  No dice, blocked.

I didn't inquire into the matter further (I'm really not here to be surfing the web for long durations anyway), but REALLY??  Apparently it's perfectly FINE for me to look at a sports website that sprinkles the word "fuck" in its articles like you'd sprinkle pepper on a steak, but an article about relationships or sex or Hollywood, that's apparently NOT okay.  Near as I can tell, the entire website has been blocked just because of SOME of the content.

I'm not necessarily one of those women who is on a tirade or crusade for justice in equality (it's nice, but COME ON.  Really?  REALLY??  There's no good reason for that that I can see.

On the flip side, something that happened to me yesterday reaffirmed the concept of , as James Brown would put it, it's a man's man's man's world--and apparently, especially on the Internet.

Yesterday there was a fairly popular reddit post (by the way, I LOVE reddit) of some pictures taken in downtown Cedar Falls.  One of the people interacting with the original poster mentioned something about how he plows in Waterloo.  I made an off hand joke about "could you plow for a really really broke person?" and he responded and said yeah sure, as long as I talk about his business. Initially, I told him he really didn't need to, because I literally have no driveway, just a parking spot with about six feet between the spot and the street.  Once I remembered that I had almost gotten stuck yesterday morning, I changed my mind.

I gave him my address, and my work phone number (just in case!) and waited.  He called, I answered, and I could tell I COMPLETELY threw him off.  For one, the location of my parking spot in relation to my house is weird--I live on a corner, my address is one street, but I have to use the other street to turn into my spot--and THAT street is a one way street!  Anyway, I gave him enough of a description so he figured it out, but in regards to the phone call, as he was trying to make sense of the call, I said "reddit?" and he said YEAH! and that cleared things up.

BUT.

I got home, he did a great job, and said he plows near there and if it snows again he'll swing by and plow me again. (it really is the smallest plow job ever, but it sure saved me the trouble).  He also sent me this after I thanked him:

You're welcome random reddit lady who I assumed would be a dude because there aren't any girls on the internet.

Hmmmm.  Okay.  Obviously, I'm a girl (woman) on the Internet, but I am also somewhat socially awkward.  I wrote back and said:

Ha! That's comedy. No wonder you were so confused when I answered. We're just as socially awkward as guys!

To which I got back:

Haha yeah I was like um awesome some guy sent me to get robbed with a fake phone number lmao

Uhh...okay.  Interesting.

Now I'm not going to throw this guy under the bus at ALL.  He did a great job, and he TOTALLY didn't have to do that for me at ALL.  It's really nice to know that good people like that are still out there.  But I KNOW he's not the only one that has that mindset, that there aren't any "girls" on the internet.

I can't find demographic breakdowns for the site as a whole, but I know there's a fairly sizeable female population! Two subreddits that I subscribe to have over 250,000 subscribers--and they are makeup subreddits, so odds are pretty good that it's mostly women.

Granted, one of the top subreddits, funny, has over seven million subscribers, but either way...it's not a SMALL population out there.

Apparently James Brown was right...but I sure hope it's not that way forever.