Very Blokie language

While I like just about everything I have discovered on the Pit Bull site and particularly the assistance provided by both the staff and forum participants I am very intrigued about the extent of the assumption that all guitar builds are by blokes, based on the language used, particularly in the videos.

The recent success of the new Woman's Football League, yes I do mean AFL, would suggest that there may be a market out there that the language used on the site, is definitely not encouraging. Just a thought.

Now I will just go and find out whether the first stain coat, put on my first build a couple of hours ago is actually going to wash off my hand. Yes I did wear the glove provided but quickly started to use my other hand to apply it.

regards

Steve Mars

We have actually had a few female builders on here so I'm not sure that is an issue.

One even did build vids of her GR-SF build along with a tutorial on wax potting pickups

Hi Steve, fair point raised. I think it's the assumption of most blokes that other blokes are reading the posts. I can remember about 3 or 4 females doing a build and a build diary. It's certainly a male dominated hobby but we should treat our comments suitable for both sexes and clean as there are quite a number of father and son/daughters building and reading the forum as well.

@ DK good point that was Shazrandom, I think she wouldn't be upset with the blokie language she was one of the boys really !

I'm certainly not looking to offend, but I'm wondering what is Blokie about the conversations on here?
Swearing is extremely minimal, sure some of the threads in the off topic section are aimed at mens hobbies, but it's not exclusive to blokes.
Which videos are you referring to?
I think the main issue is that without using your actual name, or indicating that you are either a male or a female, it is commonly assumed that the person in question is a male. It's hard to avoid that assumption, especially when I visit my local guitar shop, the only females in the store are bored out of their brains just like guys are when the ladies take them clothes shopping.

Might jump in here to try and hose down any gender biased BS bash-up as there may be some guys who may feel more at home in the clothing stores and some ladies more at home in a guitar store or maybe tinkering on a car, vice-versa and who are any of us to judge?

Hopefully everyone from all walks of life, irrespective of gender, enjoys the interactions between forum members and also understands that as we become more familiar with each other a bit more jovial nonsense can tend to creep in. Probably no different to what you would encounter on Facebook or any other social media platform or public forum.

Just wondering if the reference was more about actual verbage used or the tone of conversational exchanges between each other?

Steve, I am sure the moderators would be interested for you to clarify things a bit more as they would never want to portray an image of this forum as a 'Blokes Club' only.

Personally, I'd be the first one to encourage women to get interested in building guitars, since it is a great and rewarding hobby which could lead to a successful career.

I agree Doc, although a bit Blokey, I haven't read anything here that I would consider offensive. After all the majority of us here are Blokes, and should be able to express ourselves as long as we are not being unreasonable or offensive. And I'm sure that there is more than enough room for a "Lady's Touch" as well.....

Last week at our local market I saw a youngish, say 13 year old girl carrying her AFL ball throughout the market as one is encouraged to do if one wants to become better footballer. Something I suspect I would have been most unlikely to see before the start of the National Women's Roster and the associated advertising/promotion. All I was trying to point out that the blokiness of the language in many of the videos, if you haven't noticed it just watch a couple again, is probably not doing the company any favours in encouraging women and girls to become involved. It was not meant as a criticism of the language used per se, but rather to suggest they may be missing an opportunity.

Hey Steve do you mean the Pitbull video's or video's of demo's posted by the forumites ?

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Originally Posted by Steve Mars

Last week at our local market I saw a youngish, say 13 year old girl carrying her AFL ball throughout the market as one is encouraged to do if one wants to become better footballer. Something I suspect I would have been most unlikely to see before the start of the National Women's Roster and the associated advertising/promotion. All I was trying to point out that the blokiness of the language in many of the videos, if you haven't noticed it just watch a couple again, is probably not doing the company any favours in encouraging women and girls to become involved. It was not meant as a criticism of the language used per se, but rather to suggest they may be missing an opportunity.

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I think the Blokish language in the videos is really just due to the majority of us being Australians, and the way we live life here in Australia, plus there's the Australian culture, most Australians tend to be big followers of Australian Rules Football, and Cricket too, we Australians tend to use Australian "Slang" words when we say things, for example, we use the word "mate" a lot which is Aussie slang for "friend", it is equivalent to the American slang word "buddy", or "bro", the word "bloke" is Aussie slang for "man", there are lots of other slang words that we Australians use too.


Most of us are pretty broad-minded, but we do try to keep this forum family-oriented, that's one of the reasons why I actually do like being a part of this forum and it's community, I'm also a member of another forum that is dedicated to building D.I.Y. effects pedals, and the tone of some of the posts in it is not exactly what would be acceptable in this forum.

well said Doc you hit the nail on the head mate !

Yes, it is a bit of a sausage fest here... but so are most forums to to do with anything woodworking, music etc.
You will be pleased to know that the moderation team keep a close eye on language and attitudes on this forum and we are very quick to delete comments and if necessary ban members for abusive, racist, sexist, homophobic, or any other unnecessary stuff.

Judging by our sales, I would guess that 1 in 5 of our customers are women. To date, I am unaware of any of these ladies being offended or put off by our vids. All of the comments I have recieved from women re our vids have been positive.

However, we will take your observations on board and endevour to improve in future videos.

1 in 5 customers women DB ? of the 3200 odd forum members I can remember about 5 women builders doing a build diary which would make it about 0.15%

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

1 in 5 customers women DB ? of the 3200 odd forum members I can remember about 5 women builders doing a build diary which would make it about 0.15%

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Just keep in mind, "Customers" does not necessarily mean "Forum Members", and not all members, have actually posted a comment.

Edit: I just had a look at the members list, and rearranged the list by post count. Of the 89 pages of members, there are 57 + 1/2 pages of members who have not made a single post!!

Wot Zandy sed.
We do sell a lot of kits to ladies, especially around Christmas, Valentines and Fathers day.
Forum member numbers are in no way indicative of numers of kits sold.

good call Zandy I never knew that member list existed ! Sure we can't compare customers to forum members

57.5 pages of members who haven't made a post yet, I had no idea. There could be a much larger percentage of women in that list !

Also as female customer is not necessarily the builder...
However, we pride ourselves on being an all inclusive family forum, and the more women and kids who participate, the better

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

good call Zandy I never knew that member list existed ! Sure we can't compare customers to forum members

57.5 pages of members who haven't made a post yet, I had no idea. There could be a much larger percentage of women in that list !

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Yeah, once you know it's there, it's an interesting list to check out. I used to be an admin on another forum that used the same basic principle as this one, so I knew it was there.
It's even scarier when you start looking at members who have only made 1, 2, 5 or even 10 comments.
You go to the opposite end of things, and there are only 4 complete pages, and an additional 4 members who have made over 100 comments!!

You'll also notice that most forum members have a particularly Aussie brand of sense of humour too, which is similar to those forum members who live in the UK, considering that some of our ancestors were originally from the UK.