This is incredibly incendiary and divisive. How should an average male feel about this? Honestly, "men of designer news" paints every single man as "these women haters". Literally be more divisive Ian Williams.

All men are represented by these comments and if you disagree you're just wrong. No agenda here, move along folks.

I think this is wonderful and highlights the major reason that actual people who are serious players in design discourse stay the fuck away from this place.

It's disappointing, and very telling, that the majority of the responses to this post have been defensive, dismissive, or deflective. Instead of acknowledging and discussing the comments highlighted, we've simply ignored them and rushed to the defence of 'all men' — our only concern the 'fairness' of the title (note: 'men' does not, and has never implied 'all men', this is just deflective).

Is it just me, or is there an overwhelming absence of female input on this thread?

I did a quick scroll down the page and counted only a small handful of names that one might expect to be given to a female (sorry, not to gender-normalize : / ).

As a woman, my reaction to this site is that I'm glad someone is putting a spotlight on some of these comments. Granted, they are pulled out of context. I'm not very outspoken or vehement in my opinions, in general, let alone regarding feminism, but some of the comments on the site seem to be inappropriate no matter what the context.

Discrimination, of all kinds, can be subtle and still have a massive impact. On top of that, it's hard to see the discrimination if you're not the one experiencing it.

So... I don't mind that someone made this site. I'm glad they are more open to put their opinions out there than I am.

It's not just Designer News. The whole industry is super homogenous. And this is coming from me - a white male, glasses wearing hipster like 95% of the rest of you.

Any efforts to diversify the industry will annoy the incumbents. It's natural (and hilarious as this blog shows) for those in power to resist change.

We have to keep an open mind, swallow our pride, and at all costs avoid being defensive. We all know the industry needs new perspectives. And if that means I get passed over because I'm not adding diversity (and the other candidate is qualified), so be it. Something's gotta give.

Turns out that most of the quoted comments on that Tumblr are actually no misogynistic at all, instead likely only published because the creator of this Tumblr obviously has a hard time with people having different opinions than him/herself.

Definition of misogyny: dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.

So let's take a look at the comments in the Tumblr:

"How should an average male feel about this?" - Questioning how an average male should feel about a list of comments has nothing to do with contempt for women.

"You need a reality check, go live in a country where misogyny actually exists for a few months, then come back to me" - Denying misogyny is now by definition misogyny? Of course not.

"The majority of DN’s audience is men. Therefore, they will see a higher ROI if they sell men’s t-shirts. It’s a pretty simple business decision, really" - Pointing out how capitalism works doesn't mean the commenter is a misogynist. The reason why the majority of DN's audience are men could be misogyny (but probably isn't), but the commenter is not a misogynist for pointing out that selling to men on a platform full of men would result in the best ROI.

"Being a feminist is the hip, anti-bro du jour in the tech industry right now. #zeitgeist" - Misogynist for highlighting a trend among white males white knighting like crazy?

"So wait, you find one or two sexist games and determine the entire industry needs your help? Did you miss the 10,000 games that are sexist towards men?" - Misogynist for pointing out that although some games have objectification issues, most games don't? Misogynist for pointing out that most games turns the male protagonist into an unobtainable hero object?

"If the bias is that user icons are predominantly male forward, then reversing that to make it female forward is still a biased solution." - Misogynist for holding the opinion that affirmative action-type strategies are not good solutions to equality issues?

"Beth, try making a coherent argument. Check his privilege? Check your assumptions and tired cliches." - Misogynist for saying someone is using clichés? I assume it's misogynist because it's a man not agreeing with a woman.

"I wish radical feminists would stop victimising themselves into submission by claiming the world is against them. You can find discrimination in anything. I’m a short guy and I could easily write a blog post about how it’s harder to raise money when you’re a short man. The world favours tall people, etc." - Misogynist for pointing out that there are discrimination issues everywhere if you look close enough? Or misogynistic because the commenter, who I personally know by the way, doesn't feel women are victims?

...and so on.

I'd say that this is just as much a critique of those that run DN as it is a critique of the design community as a whole. Other than spam, there doesn't seem to be much moderation happening to increase the quality of the community itself.

This is beautiful!

Also, hoping we can keep the comments on this post civil and open minded!

" I think even middle class straight white males brings different perspectives to a team. At least that’s my experience. "

• How is this negative? Some of the quoted posts on this blog seem a little over the top.

A woman made this.

The comment thread for this site just doubled the amount of posts on the site. :(

/r/TumblrInAction

YES, I made the list!

Y’all are fucking adorable. Being personally offended by comments displayed without context, clearly showing shitlords being shitlords, probably means you should meditate on your own shitlordiness.

Keep your highly entertaining self-parody up until you implode!

Pls.

White dudes complaining about white dudes

Case in point all.. them.. white... dudes...

I recall the old days when i used to get most of my design gossip and news and tips etc etc from Zeldman, K10k, surfstation, Australiainfront, a hand full of others .... I loved it, but when i looked at the postings, it always felt like I was standing on the outside of a great party I wasn't invited to...

then along came Newstoday. it was like the wild wild west...people posted the most crazy stuff, their opinions collided and smashed into each other... Anyone here know who Transfatty is? my first interaction with him online was an argument...I won't go into what it was about, but, safe-to-say, it was somewhat along the lines of what's going on here now....or close enough for rocknroll... and a heated arguement it was...between many, MANY designers....but we got passed it, and I ended up liking the guy, although i still disagreed with him...i could and did respect his work.

Newstoday allowed me the chance to chat with and get to know designers from all over the world...I really truly value that. Shellie in LA...Brooke the incredible illustrator, huny c. young in NYC...hell...even LIMMEY...(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limmy's_Show) used to post there all the time... that's what connection is all about...over the years, I got to know some of these folks from chatting online at Newstoday.... got to appreciate their designs and art, and appreciate them as people. One thing i tried to get right from the very begining, was to always maintain a clean and decent online profile. It occured to me (as it must to many of you) that this lives forever. what you post is frequently what you're thought to be ...period. So...over the many years, i've tried to keep it clean, positive, and as much as possible, about the work..about design. I've not always been perfect at that, but as close as I can be.

Newstoday eventually became QBN, and for the most part, many of the old gang nolonger post there. it's not really the same. there's flame wars about political leanings, folks who support trump vs. those who dont...blah blah.... I still go there from time to time for a laugh, or to see if any of the old gang is around, but usually they aren't.

which brings us to Designer News. I'm positive that a LOT of the old Newstoday folks are here (hey folks..it's me Exador) For the most part, I've loved what I've seen on DN... it's great to see all the posts about design...folks helping each other, folks talking about great new apps for design...I love it.

so it really sucks to see what I'm seeing here today...

I'm hoping folks keep it clean....keep it about design....keep it about being helpful to each other....and lets try and be supportive of each other.

lashing out, shaming folks with a site like that tumbler site....I don't know...that just seems to me to be really truly damaging. it damages peoples reputations, it damages the trust we have in DN (why post here if it's just going to end up on that site etc)

but more than that.... I hate the idea that folks aren't comfortable here. If someone was that upset by what they were reading here, somethings really wrong.

Lets try and fix it together...instead of pulling it down around our ears and dancing around the fire.

I think we should be discussing design, not bashing genders.

For those criticizing this as not offering providing any "solution" (a tall order if you ask me), one way one might be part of a solution is to make a conscious effort to upvote and submit stories about or, even better, by underrepresented non-cis-male designers. Alternatively, invite your non-male designer friends (assuming you have them) to join the community (perhaps with a word of warning, especially given the glimpse of misogynistic displays highlighted here). For that last solution to work it requires users to also consider upvoting comments/stories of those who don't identify as men to provide space for their voices to be heard. Another solution is to start reporting the comments highlighted in this tumblr (and others) to help build a more inclusive community.

Perhaps those who are upset with this blog could create a counter-blog which highlights the most insightful and positive comments and submissions by non-cis-male community members to help take the spotlight off of men and better share this space. A great by-product of that is you would be supporting these underrepresented community members and representing this community as a safe space for them (see: becoming part of the solution).

Personally, I think highlighting the negative misogynistic behavior in this community is a very valuable thing and hopefully was eye-opening to some, and perhaps inspiring for those who felt disillusioned by it (such as myself) to take more action toward make this an inclusive and more positive community.

While we're on the subject, in the last 12 months, 75% of the DN AMAs have been male. On average, female AMAs have seen about 25% less comments and 10% less upvotes than the male AMAs.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[thou] doth protest too much, this thread right here.

I like the tumblr. It kinda makes me realize how much privilege I must have to not even notice how exclusive this community can be. That really sucks.

In DN staff's defense, I really don't know what better moderation can be done, when so much of it is passive or subconscious. Sounds like a thankless job. Maybe I'm pessimistic.

I scoffed involuntarily the second I read the title of this. Glad to see my assumptions were correct.

Do all these "men" personally identify as male tho? This is problematic.

I am ashamed of some of the men on DN. If you degrade or limit others personally, then how can you be trusted with anything professionally? I don't want mra apologists in this industry.

I think the unfortunate sexism and lack of understanding in the comments here is unacceptable.

DN mods, please do the right thing and publicly decry the dialogue here. You're witnessing the community become ever more hostile to women.

Had this site been cloned be changed from men to women, or white dudes to Hispanic dudes the "community" would be up in arms.

So, consider this: its okay for us to shame one group but not okay to shame another group for with similar categorization (sex, race, privilege).

TL;DR: Spade should call a spade a spade.

*Late to the party. But going to reply anyway. *

I live in a country where there's quite some equality between men and women. There could be more, of course. I also know that I cannot experience and therefore feel what it's like to not feel welcome. Or to feel harassed. Or to feel that you need to work twice as hard.

And yes, I have made comments on the workfloor that made me cringe a bit afterwards. There were probably situations where I could've done better. You feel shitty, you learn, and you try harder.

A design challenge?

Now this tumblr blog is an easy way to score some points. Yay, a blog with public commenting has some assholes. But our profession is better than that. Whenever we talk to clients, we ask them difficult questions. We need to know what their goal is, their ambition, their big vision. What challenges do they have and how can we help them meet their goals?

Now when looking at this tumblr blog, I find it hard to find some sort of rationale behind this. Is shaming assholes really the best we can do to transform our community?

If we were our own client

Let's say we get a client that really has a shitty website. And they are a bit ignorant, they don't know better. Are we really going to give them a presentation highlighting the shitty parts of their website? Of course not. We show them a vision. We give them something to reach for. And of course, we can frame this against some bad parts of their old website. But we can only effectively travel towards a goal, just running away from something isn't enough.

Starting with a vision

I think we need to create a vision of how we would like our community to be. And we should make it so strong, tempting and beautiful, that even assholes want to be part of it. And we need to make it so that assholes can't be part of it. So they need to change. Because being part of something constructive is way more fun than wrecking stuff.

This is what we do. We take challenges and we create a vision. And we make it work. This is what makes us human, what makes us unique. I'd much rather be part of a movement that works like this, than a movement that shames assholes.

I'm sure the comments here are going to be great.

This is a generalization and doesn't help ANYTHING. I'm all for exposing people for their bullshit, but offer some sort of solution in addition.

OMG who did this?! LOL

This is not what I thought it was going to be.

It makes me so sad to see comments like this on DN. Makes me ashamed to be a guy frankly sometimes.

I didn't make the list :(

I didn't read all 140+ comments

So I'm positive I'm about to say something that's been addressed/said/whatever

But is it not possible for people to fight for general empathy and being decent to people (what I think this project is attempting to accomplish) without simultaneously invalidating any opinion that doesn't agree with said project?

All I see in this thread is either "this is awesome, your a scumbag if you don't agree" or "this is divisive and mean spirited, stop being offended by everything"

For the love of trying to advance the world with good design, can we not agree that diversity is good, and shaming everyone who disagrees with you is counter-productive?

I felt conflicted about whether to comment, but, hey - it's the Internet, it's what it's here for...

So, I think the biggest downfall of sites like these are that they do use the label "men" to delineate the group of people making the sexist remarks.

Now, before we slap the label "not all men" on me, how would it feel if we instead said "Humans of Designer News"? (It's really quite difficult to hold back "not all humans!")

A lot of people will say that we need to be more specific, and this outlines the reason why. If we zoom out a level, things start getting a bit uncomfortable for the people we zoom out to. It's lazy to generalize, and it's damaging to create stereotypes to try to "balance the scales."

Now, "Humans of Designer News" isn't quite appropriate, is it? Because now, we're lumping in a bunch of people who don't quite deserve to be lumped in, and in fact we're also lumping in the victims.

Coming to Designer News casually, and being as intentionally respectful of people on this site as I know how to be, then seeing this tumblr - both for the ridiculousness of the misogyny AND for the incendiary nature of this tumblr to begin with - is enough to click x for the day.

Let me be very clear: there's no excuse for disrespecting women on Designer News. And, there's also no excuse to perpetuate harmful stereotypes.

I looooooove this. Thank you!

While I do think we need to talk about the percentage of women in tech, I don't see how these comments are the problem.

The narrative should be "let's look at why women are not going into tech? is it because their discriminated against?" instead of "the problem is MEN". The latter will make most men switch into defensive mode, because most men have nothing against women.

So, can someone explain what I'm missing?

As someone who has been on Designer News from the beginning, just know that I love this site and all of you who come here and contribute.

I think this is great. :D

So Meta! (Serious note : Nice idea, Ian)

Thanks for this great project. (And also the ressources: https://www.designernews.co/comments/211224)

provocative speculations. every men sucks mens talk only football all men are same I hate men because they're douches design? screw it. I'm trying to generalise all men on every platform.

Nice work Ian Williams :)