Gender and the Internet

Society is tougher on women than it is on men, and the Internet doesn't offer a much-improved environment. For a long time, the internet had the stereotype of being full of men. A large portion of notorious online communities still maintain a male-heavy user base, and internet-savvy women will receive constant reminders about this.  For a very long time, it was a prevalent joke among online circles that there were "no girls on the internet". If a girl was to make her gender known in many of these same online circles, then other users would accuse her of lying. That, or post pictures of herself. Overall, this was not the most encouraging environment.

The internet has changed drastically since the days that these attitudes first came to exist. However, with the scope of the current internet and its many communities, it's difficult to pinpoint a general attitude towards the question of gender. The modern internet user is constantly bombarded with information, and it's easy to run into conflicting (and sometimes contradictory) indicators of the modern demographics and attitudes.

Let's try to sort through this issue. First, where do men and women hang out on the internet?