About women in mobile

When I started this blog, I stated that one of the reasons that drove me to posting was the fact that mobile bloggers tend to be, almost all of the time, from the other gender, ie males. After browsing the web for around 10 months now, and after being a member in a couple of mobile dedicated forums for a while now, my first impression hasn't changed a bit.

It is common sense to suspect that the majority of mobile bloggers would be male, since obviously, "girls/women tend to concentrate on make-up, fashion and basically any other stupid superficial activity". Mobile addicts are technology geeks or nerds, sorry for the word. And well, women are less interested in technology, which makes them less eligible to the post of mobile blogger or forum poster. I understand that.

But on the other hand, why do forum members always call you a dude without even considering looking at your profile. I have been getting lots of thanx dude, nice work dude, nice post dude, keep the good work dude, dude can you help me with...and many more like that. While many members call each other by their nicknames, I get the dude word. Which makes me think: is it that my posts are too geeky to an extent that makes it unconceivable that I could be anything but a male?

Thinking back, I believe part of it is my fault: being on a dial-up connection, I don't even consider uploading an avatar to my profile. Well, that would eventually make me genderless. Still my nickname teddy_bearrr or teddybearrr doesn't sound like a dude's nickname, or does it? Well to me, unless I was counted as a 14 years old boy or a gay guy or an extremely obese person, I don't get how teddy_bearrr could be confused with a male's nickname.

In any case, I raise my voice to say to all forum members : I am a FEMALE (no longer a girl, still not yet a woman... sounds like Britney Spears *puke*). And since I haven't made any comment so far on the dude-calling habbit, I will, in the following days, make these steps in order to affirm my gender identity:

- Upload an avatar to all the forums I am a member in

- Make sure to reply to anyone who calls me dude by saying "I am not a dude, dude!"

- Add a signature to my posts that says "I am a woman, so don't call me dude"

That's basically it. I have written so many times the word dude in my post, i am starting to wonder whether the word actually exists (happens to me sometimes).