1.4. The guidelines.
- Any generalizations that demean or degrade the female sex were considered sexist.
1.1. Sexist statements and generalizations made by women were also considered sexist.
Sexism in dialogues with women.
2.1. The use of unmotivated obscene vocabulary specifically emphasizing the female sex of the interlocutor were considered sexist. (Words as “whore”).
2.1.1. Racist curses or swearwords implying a low intellect of the interlocutor were not considered sexist. (Except when it was neighboring or derived from some generalization).
2.2. Another sign of sexist comment was, when the interlocutor, in an attempt to insult a woman, attacked exclusively her appearance. It was considered hidden sexism.
2.3. Victim-blaming (aimed at the victim or during the talk about the victim) was considered a case of sexism.
Sexism and politics.
3.1. Criticism of feminism or simply aggressive statements about feminism were not considered sexist, because they could be politically motivated.
3.2. Criticism of female politicians was not considered sexism until it was reduced to criticism of appearance or generalizations about women in politics.
3.3. A special case: the infamous story of Diana Shurygina’s rape, which became particularly popular through television. Every piece of news about Miss Shurygina caused a lot of comments, and many people speculated that she was not a victim.
This has always sparked a lot of discussion, including a lot of sexist rhetoric. The news portals raised this topic so often (even in a few years after the incindent), that with every news item mentioning Diana Shurygina, a large number of comments were made that negatively responded to the fact that the news about her continued to be published. We did not consider these comments were sexist, nor did we think it was sexist to use her name as a denominator as long as it was meant to be “hyperboleted news”[1]. If her name was used as a denominator for a rape victim, the comment was considered sexist.
In retrospect, this may not have been the best solution. This is one of those cases where the look of another annotator would have been very useful.
[1] - in the sense that news were abusing the story and trying to spark more and more debates, if she guilty or not. (AFTER the court’s decision)
Sexism in dialogues with men.
4.1. We did not mark every comment that had sexist expressions as sexist. (See Part 1, on the difference between offensive speech and hate speech)
4.1.1. Therefore, for example, among the comments on the Antifemale forum, a lot of comments are marked as non-sexist, unless the purpose of the comment at the time was some kind of offensive generalization.