Men get it
Guys like WarrenStupidity and other allies in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=thread&address=10024522226
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that's good.
I hope that allies will realize that it's important for them to respond to sexist baiting. Tut-tutting but saying nothing enables them.
Finally, such repeated sexist baiting should be grounds for tombstoning, or whatever it's called now. Because they actually like the attention we give them by trying to raise consciousness. Or defend ourselves against their attacks.
Banning the people who react angrily to REPEATED BASHING, ALERTING, HATRED, etc., while letting smug, word-gaming, malicious harassers get away with it is so wrong, I don't even have words for it. 
I intend to start reaching out to the women and minorities at DU on a personal level .. .
But make no mistake - from what I've seen shared by the women of the HOF group - and my fellow groups members in the AA group -
We have lives. I've also noted that specifically for those women who are heterosexual - we have men in our lives who are very very kind, and very very loving. My husband reads - English is not his first language so he does not feel comfortable posting here (except for Saturday night
with bravenak) - he reads a great deal.
He picked up on the fact that seabeyond had been given a vacay yesterday before I did. And he doesn't understand why people 'pick on that sweetheart'. Now - he's not being sexist. Again, different culture. But she along with several other women that he follows in this group are 'sweethearts' as far as he is concerned who are just trying to be heard. Perhaps this is not the best place for women to be heard.
And perhaps - he knows I'm capable of developing a successful online community where women can be heard . . . But I digress.
We all HAVE lives. So often I would like to post, "Hey Mister! I HAVE a life!"
But I don't - to keep the peace. And well, then I would get alerted on for pointing out that some guy on the other end of the internet does NOT have a life.
See - lately - that's the way it's been working around here.
that they may not have in their personal lives or offline in general, more than not having a life at all.
Note that the concerns we have raised, like a hostile environment, have been prohibited in workplaces for decades. I have never worked anywhere or been in a public place where pictures of that sort were acceptable. That's not to say that men don't have them in their own homes, but they typically know better than to impose them to female acquaintances. The actions here are somewhat similar to those that led to the landmark sexual harassment case, Jensen vs. Evelyth Taconite, but since this is the internet we are spared some of the more disgusting behavior that accompanied the posting of sexual images of women to claim the mine as exclusive male space and humiliate the female miners in an attempt to force them out of their jobs.
If you work for a public agency, a non-profit of any kind, a corporation, or any employer who is concerned with following labor law, the sort of behavior that is common on DU is strictly prohibited. Some here have been clear as to their motives. One referred to it as "civil disobedience." They think they are protesting a "handful" of HOF members. What they are actually opposing is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that forms the legal basis for sexual harassment law. The same is true with threads insisting that African Americans be "honored" when presented with obviously racist and stereotypical fried chicken and watermelon dinners. They resent that they should be asked to take into account the concerns of anyone who is different from them, and they are striking out in anger. Witness some of the hostile reactions in my thread with photos of female athletes. A couple of people referred to it as "sickening" and promoting "victimization." 
The protestations that only a few radical feminists find the posting of commercialized sexualized images objectionable simply do not ring true. Is it possible that none of those people has held a job at any point in the past thirty years? If they had, they would not find these concepts unfamiliar. Or, more likely, do they know exactly what they are doing and are determined to create a hostile environment designed to drive out many women and people of color to establish DU as pre-modern male space?
Ultimately, the responsibility for all of this lies with the administrators. What is particularly incongruous is that it is members of the Democratic Party's major constituencies, African Americans and women, who are treated as interlopers, as outside the mainstream. The fact is we are not. Rather, some are seeking to reestablish a fiefdom for a particular kind of white male dominance that hasn't existed in this country for at least twenty-five years. I believe they do so precisely because they feel so disempowered offline and they hold women and people of color responsible for that.