Ka-BLOG Day 6: The Globe provides us with an anti-SWC census

I hate to use Day 6 of Take Back the Tech for this but I can't resist.

Did you read the Globe & Mail's readers' comments yesterday? Masochistic, I know, but I couldn't stop. In response to the Canadian Press announcement: "Status of Women offices to be Closed," the G&M received 140 comments. I was astonished at the depth & breadth of the venom...when I regain my composure, I will post some examples. For now, the 'scientician' in me has busied herself tallying the numbers of anti-SWC & pro-SWC, male vs. female commenters...and here' s what I found:

Anti SWC (pro Harper/Oda cuts):
# Men: 57
# Women: 10
# un ID'd: 10
TOTAL Anti SWC: 77

Pro SWC (or at least "concerned" or skeptical of Harper/Oda cuts):
# Men: 28
# Women: 20
# un ID'd: 14
TOTAL Pro SWC (or 'not Anti'): 62

(there was one comment out of 140 that was neutral and just asking for more information about the announcement).

I hasten to add that I scored the "Pro SWC" comments extremely conservatively (Ha! a first!!) and gave comments the 'benefit of the doubt' if their feelings were at all unclear. It was rather easy to separate the wingers from the concerned-unsure-citizen. What's a winger? Well, a winger was more likely than not to use words like "radical," "elitist," "pigs at the trough," "P[olitically] C[orrect]"; bonus winger points for using >1 of these words in a sentence, e.g. Jinean from Montreal (a woman!):

We do not need or even necessarily want to be represented by a group of coniving [sic], elitist, sneaky women working under the guise of upholding women's rights while secretly promoting their own hidden agenda.

or Dave from 'Canada':

Taxes were never intended to support social engineering causes by academic elites intoxicated by their ideology.

And don't forget the ladies who started it all...oh yes, I'm talking about REAL: here's Eddy Black

Would it be a not have been more descriptive if the name was the the Status of Militant Liberal Women? Non-partisan women's groups such as Real Women of Canada that were more representative of married women were pretty much ignored by the Liberal Government as far as funding and support were concerned.

I'd better stop there for now. There's much, much more.

technorati tags: takebackthetech