Engaging in online discussion forums have been almost a daily routine for me for the past seven years. When I was 16 years of age I started a job at a Cookie company and it was then that I first experienced the horrific problem of sexism. Because of the chauvinistic nature of the company I was not allowed to perform tasks such as handle money or be promoted because of my gender. I was appalled that it was 2009 and that was still an issue, and an illegal one at that. Instead of reporting the company I just quit. But this experience fueled the fire of feminism in me. I became a part of a feminism discussion group on reddit (www.reddit.com/r/feminism). This sub-group of Reddit specifically has played an enormous role in shaping who I am. From …show more content…
One of the major goals of the feminism sub group on Reddit is to bring to light issues that are occurring today and things that may happen in the future. The subscribers post various articles from newsreels or personal stories to discuss the problem of women being treated unfairly. And although this just seems to be an online forum for discussion to an outsider, one might be surprised to know that the members of this sub-group is so large that if there is a big enough following in a certain area members meetup to propose ideas to bring light upon the fact that even though we are in the year of 2014 that sexism and gender discrimination is a very real issue that needs to be handled. The friendliness of this online community has made it easier for women and even sometimes men who support women’s rights to speak freely to each other. While interviewing members of this online community I promised to only name their username to protect their anonymity. When asked how she felt about being able to speak freely about her passion user AsoMeoneElse1 replied with “I thoroughly enjoy redditing. I have been through many problems in the past, some of which I don’t speak of to anyone else, but the r/feminism thread has supported me throughout my toughest battles with the issue at hand. I offer all my thanks to you, and fellow reddit-ers”. The members of this group seem to create a community effort to make …show more content…
For example, on the Feminism thread on Reddit there are many posts holding discussions on how people who participate in the conversations and forums should address one another in one post titled “Unwritten (now written) laws of r/feminism” one user comments “Please observe our rules - all top level comments, in any thread, must: be informative: i.e. aim for facticity, and avoid merely expressing non-feminist preferences; come from an educated perspective: all ideological considerations must demonstrate actual understanding of the relevant feminist concepts; Comments consisting of exploratory/follow-up questions, in good faith, constitute an exception to these requirements” (reddit.com/r/feminism). Rules and discussions such as these are mechanisms of communication with the purpose of creating an increase of positive interaction between users. Another example of a mechanism in this forum is using capital letters or special characters in titles such as “I’m NOT a Bad B* - I’m a Queen. Being Jaded and Mean Is NOT Cool.” (reddit.com/r/feminism). This certain mechanism is used to grab the attention of the users to entice them to open the discussion and engage themselves in the