--and pretty much feel the way Brian does (my bias is that you would decide not to "go", and still post when you feel it is relevant).

There are times when even those of us who feel quite friendly with one another disagree and get into long and even heated arguments over some issue (both publicly on the boards and through private e-mails). Evnetually, though, most of these seem to die down and if they are not actually resolved, at least the principals seem to "agree to disagree".

I can't speak to the more personal nature of some of the repsonses that you seem to indicate played a part in all this, but I think even if such content was highly insulting, you would still stay and post when needed--you don't want to let the b*****ds win.

One thing that confuses me--you metion that you've been around for five years, but Neurotalk has been around only a little more than a year; are you including Braintalk time with that? And were the major incidents you refer to through this board only?

BTW, in response to Joe's post, yes, these boards can be a little "cliquey" (if that's a word), but I've found the bias is nto so much gender-related as articulation related. I've watched a number of boards at a number of forums, and each has a "particular" style that is "standard". At this one (and to a great extent at BT) this style could loosely be described as "informational", as opposed to "chatty". And this style requires a certain degree of writing skill and vocabulary to explain one's symptoms and medical history. People who post the way they might at other forums--with clipped writing, bad sentence structure, grammatical confusion, "instant message"-style wording, and the like--may get requests for more information from other posters, but they do not get the number of responses that the more articulate do.

This may mean the bias here is more intellecutual than anything else. (That doesn't mean there isn't humor, or some off-topic stuff--but even that tends to be written much more in "NY Times style" than "IM-style".) There are boards that are much less intellectual/technical--and sometimes I feel uncomfortable at those, given my penchant for long responses and medicalese (and my disdain for abbreviation--IM-style abbreviation, i.e, "cuz", "u", etc. is a big board and generational distinguisher). But, that's why the Internet is great--one can find a community that suits one.

For the record, I've never felt a gender bias here. In fact, given the nature of internet board posting, there are still a few people whose genders I don't even know, and that doesn't seem to affect the discussions much. Even when discussions drift into more female areas, I feel I can sometimes contribute--I have lived with one for 26 years, and observed.