Exacerbating the problem

We aren't particularly interested in assessing trends here. Obviously most of us are caring, sharing men and a small but very much appreciated minority are caring, sharing women.

The interesting statistical question is, why is the female minority so small. And a very plausible answer is, because some men behave badly. The question of *how many* men are behaving badly isn't half as interesting as how many women there are, or how many there might be if the men did not misbehave.

Any problem of sexist behaviour in our community is not a major trend. It consists a few isolated examples of totally-unacceptable behaviour, of which anecdotes are an existence proof.

Oh, and another problem consists in this kind of thread, which demonstrates that as long as no-one mentions sexism everyone is cool, but as soon as it is adduced a small minority of posters make a very loud noise trying to insist that no problem exists, or that if it does it is statistically insignifigant, or that it's not as bad as problem Q "in the real world", or that women have the upper hand these days, or that even if a problem does exist in this community, the poster isn't responsible, etc.

When you do that, you don't make the problem go away, you exacerbate it.

You are defending the indefensible.

Please don't.