it has more to do with the typical gender of trolls rather than
the typical gender of someone defending a particular issue. Most
trolls are men. Most of the times this topic is brought up is by
trolls. Most of the time trolls, who are men, pretend to defend
controversial issues they really don't care about personally. In
short, I think it's more indicative of the "typical troll" than
anything else. That's not to say you're incorrect: You may well
be correct. But that's my best explanation for why you see it so
frequently: the correlation has a significant additional
component to it that can be considered. == Indeed. I mean, it
depends on the group as well. Philosophy groups, at one time,
were almost EXCLUSIVELY sausages gossiping about old dead men
they read about in Philosophy 101 + Ayn Rand. Now there's a
slightly larger representation of women in Philosophy groups but
still very much the minority. If you want to find where there
are a lot of women talking on the internet about intellectual
issues, you might be more prone to find it groups where there
are large amount of mothers or teachers or caretakers or
psychology. Also these days, theoretical physics has been
growing in popularity among women online that I've seen. The PhD
candidate list is growing tremendously and I think it's
marvelous, although the job market is saturated. Anyway, yeah -
you won't find a strongly vocal female base in Philosophy groups
generally. There's a higher representation of female on tumblr
for example, who are very chatty and a higher representation of
male in 4chan, for example. [I don't go into either side much:
tumblr a ittle bit, but 4chan, never. It's too... much] As I've
been a member of psychology and groups on education and teaching
forever, as a male I'm generally under-represented by other
males. But that being said, I don't pay attention to the gender
of someone I'm talking with online much, unless they bring it
up. But I do notice trends and populations. I guess I'm a closet
sociologist at heart or something. ==
