Why do some women act like men when they talk in chat rooms or use chat programmes? Is it because some immature men treat all women like they are second-class citizens or dumb bimbos, so you have to act like a man to be heard? Or is it just that they are interested in how men talk to each other? Or how other women speak to men?
Someone who plays a game I run asked if his friend could join, and then put me in touch with her through a chat programme. Before we met in person, we talked for a while on the Internet. She told me while we were talking that she sometimes acts like a man online. I haven't asked her why yet, but now I'm curious. I'll have to ask her when she gets back from her trip abroad.
It's kind of freeing that it's so easy for a woman to pretend to be a man online. You don't need to cover her up with big clothes or a fake beard. She can just make a new profile that says she is a man and try to act like that when she talks to other people. She was so good at being a man that she had a six-month friendship with another woman who said she was a man but was really a woman.
Does a person's biological gender matter in today's world of equality? Maybe, in the name of not discriminating, we should all say we are men when we are online, no matter what our real gender is. Or, we could all just refuse to say what our gender is, affirming and announcing that we are neutral and asking to be treated as just "people."
When I think about it more, it seems like the opposite of freedom to force everyone to give the same answer. Why even try? It would be easier if everyone online could just answer the question about their gender in any way they want, like we all do already for our own reasons.
