“She should get used to it”: how Reddit’s r/relationships forum sides with men

190 points•24 comments•submitted by loxicom to r/GenderCritical

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2018/07/she-should-get-used-it-how-reddit-s-rrelationships-forum-sides-men-0 (I've edited it down a bit)

Surprise! A forum on the “esteemed home of incels and the alt right” has a significant gender bias.

By Sarah Manavis.

In incredibly predictable news, Reddit’s popular relationships forum has a significant gender bias toward men in heterosexual disputes. 

We scraped hundreds of posts from r/relationships and what we found shows that Reddit’s amateur agony aunts overwhelmingly support men over women in posts about heterosexual romantic relationships. When a relationship challenge pits a man against a woman, we found that the comments favoured the man 63 per cent of the time, and with the woman in just 33 per cent of the posts (with four per cent split or no bias given.)

The results were calculated by pulling all posts from r/relationships over the last four months and narrowing it down to those marked “romantic” that concerned heterosexual scenarios. Since many of Reddit’s users conceal their identity, it was not possible to assess whether those commenting were more likely to be men or women, although one online survey from 2016 suggested US Reddit as a whole is dominated by men. Posts were taken as individual case studies, assessing whether the majority of comments in reply to a given story sided with the man in the scenario or the woman. To avoid an overly lopsided view, if the comment count was close (ie if, out of 25 comments, 12 supported the woman and 13 supported the man) they were counted as split. 

Many of the individual comments themselves illustrate the overall bias in favour of men. Even when replying to women who are trying to help men with life-threatening issues, or replying to a man who has admitted fault in a clear cut situation looking for advice, the women are still regularly demonised. 

In one post, a woman asked for advice on how to help her boyfriend of several years with his drug addiction. She also revealed that he serially dumped her when high, but she forgave him. Responses included, “Why are you so obsessed with this guy?” and “Have you thought you might be propping up his behaviour?” When a man in a similar situation (being dumped by his girlfriend who then wanted to get back together, blaming the problem on a medical issue) posted his stories, responses included, “She’s just dragging you along” and “block her.”

In another post, a man looked for guidance on how to apologise after making a negative comment about his girlfriend’s aging body. Responses included: “Make her an honest woman!”, “She’s being too sensitive”, and “She should get used to it.”