I am tired of the scarcity of females in la esperantujo. What's wrong with e-o for them? I cannot find anyone suitable to bother with messages or anything. I joined caused they told me it was a powerful dating resource, but clearly I have been taken for a ride. I am considering to quit. Some of you surely have access to lernu! stats; released them; is 4:1, is it? Argh. No interest in languages in general cannot be the answer; is Zamenhoff so appallingly off-turning or what?

Half joking (only half)

honestly, is dating the reason to learn esperanto?

I get a lot of messages from guys trying to pick me up here, you think I ever would repond to those? Except from getting annoyed it's a waste.

It's lernu! not amu! and it's purpose is to learn esperanto and enjoy it's culture.

me

I was unaware that this was even an issue. Are there other men out there who started learning Esperanto in order to meet women?

My suggestion to young men who want to meet women is to take ballroom dance lessons where the women outnumber the men by about 4:1. i'm quite serious. And learn to give good lead. It's the man's job in dance to make the woman look good on the floor, and the man who can give good lead could look like Quasimodo and women will still line up to dance with him.

But Esperanto was invented for social intercourse, not the other kind.

I had not even considered the ratio of Male to Female when joining the site?.

But hey I did not think it was a dating site

A good point was made by Enni, if you get a load of posts from males just because you are female it must be off putting and a pain.

I doubt this is the reason for the statistics on Lernu, just my hormonal charged gender set

I can vouch for Lunombrulino's post, I grew up with a girl whos mother and father taught clasic ballroom dancing. It had far more female dancers than male and was a good social outing.

I started to learn Eo to communicate in the "raw" as it is with people on a common ground. It had and still has no relevance if the people I message are male or female.

Who said it was a powerful dating resource?

Apart from the dating question (which must be annoying), to have an answer to "why there is much more men learning Eo than women?" may be interesting.

It was not always the case : I think that the ratio women/men of people who have learned Eo before internet was about 1.

Hi jean-luc.

I remember reading a headline banner in some magazine recently that complained "Kie estas al junulinoj?"

So perhaps it is an issue. I did not read the article, and I don't remember which magazine or newspaper.

I haven't seen anything in particular that indicates that Esperanto fails to attract women. I'm sure that everyone here on this site could make a claim that a characteristic they have is the reason that there aren't a lot of people of the same characteristic on this site.

I could say, "Why is Esperanto failing to attract Americans/Catholics/disabled/whites/blacks/Hispanics/Asians/Europeans/older people/younger people....ktp." Am I accomplishing anything by saying so? No.

Also, when someone says something like that, there's an underlying message of "....why isn't Esperanto attracting people of my group, because I'm more comfortable with people just like me." That's not the point of Esperanto.

There's also the other underlying message: "I must be different/special because there aren't more people of my group here, because Esperanto attracted me, even though I'm one of the groups that isn't being attracted"

I'm rather skeptical about the claim that women on this site get hit on a lot. I've had many people email and postcard me. All were guys. Not a single one has hit on me, if you mean they either asked to date me, or have sex with me, or marry me. Besides, define "hit on". Because a guy talked to me? Asked me questions? Looked me up and was the first to message? Am I screaming about getting hit on? No. But I've known people who would consider all of that being "hit on".

Besides, if you were getting "hit on" e.g. someone made a sexual pass at you, don't complain to us. Tell the person you're not interested. If they don't take the hint, report them. I thought the people who come here were at least mature enough to say no without having to tell everyone about it to show how Esperanto is at fault, not the person who can't take a hint.

The whole point of Esperanto is so we can communicate with each other REGARDLESS of sex/gender, race, ethnicity, or age. The more someone decides that Esperanto is blamed when an Esperantist does something, the more we all lose out. Blame whatever guys you're saying are harassing you, if you're sure that's what's happening. Don't blame Esperanto.

Before you totally flame me, there could be at least one reason that I can think of that maybe some guys might be "hitting on" women here. Who here hasn't seen a description on an Esperanto site that doesn't make at least one reference to couples who meet because of their mutual interest in Esperanto, and then get married? That might be the reason some people seem to be getting romantic ideas.

Shawna

And did anyone bother to notice foje said he was JOKING???

It depends on who gets an exposure to Esperanto. I got into Esperanto because a guy I knew(who was getting his degree in linguistics)spoke some.

I was recently hospitalized for a week, and, whenever I mentioned Esperanto, no one knew what the heck I was talking about. If you haven't heard of it, you won't investigate it.

The few people I have run into who've heard of Esperanto either thought it was a "dead" language, or there were less than 1000 speakers. It's up to us to change people's minds.

Statistics only tell a little of the story. How do we know that there aren't people here that, for whatever reason, don't care to broadcast their sex/gender?

Sorry, foje. Possibily women aren't interestest in Esperanto because the fact that there's a lot of men in it.

Shawna

Shawna:And did anyone bother to notice foje said he was JOKING???

No, but I did notice that he said he was "half joking." A different connotation entirely.

This may be difficult for some people to believe, but I remember being young -- in my teens and twenties -- and thinking that every new personal encounter contained some potential for romance. But this was back in the days when your choices in modem speeds were 110 and 300 baud. When I seriously looked for romance, I did it face to face.

Trust me on this, foje. A woman finds it far more romantic if you look her in the eyes and tell her you see stars there than to sit at a computer typing message.

So, meet friends on Lernu, but if you want to meet young female esperantists for romance, go to a junularo kongreso and ask them to dance.

My opinion.

Hi,

Shawna, I didn't say I'm putting the fault with Esperanto, I love the language. It's just a general annoyance with community websites. In case of lernu! the reason for staying on this is cause it's an amazing resource for learning Esperanto.