This is super-important. Listening to and learning from these stories is super-important. I’m a cis, het, white guy and it took many years of patience from folks with less privilege than me to learn to listen and empathize. I still regularly have to remind myself to shut-up in meetings and not assume that an absence of speech implies an absence of ideas. I’m grateful to the author of this post for sharing it.
(edits to add the following excerpts:)
This is one of those notions, so obvious that it needs much repeating:
My “mentor” told me he had never worked with a woman before and wasn’t sure how to talk to me. I suggested he try talking to me like a person.
And another story about the impact of “overlooking” damaging behavior
What frustrates me the most is that he had sexist jokes in his job talk. He could not make it more clear to those who would hire him how he viewed females. However, the faculty at that university decided that his professional accomplishments were more important than the impact he would have on females at his university and the community as a whole … It sends a message to women in the field that their safety and their ability to focus on professional interactions, is a very low priority to others in the field.
I still regularly have to remind myself to shut-up in meetings and not assume that an absence of speech implies an absence of ideas.
I often have problems making myself heard in meetings, because once I find a space where I can get a word in, someone more aggressive will talk over me. At my previous job, a woman joined my team who would notice this, and go ”Alva, do you have something to add?” or ”sorry, $male_colleague, but Alva was speaking.”
This helped me so much, and I wish men would do this, because they won’t get negative performance reviews for being ”abrasive” or coming on too strong.
This is a general thing to do in all meetings, regardless of demographics. Always make sure folks who are not talking enough (because they’re shy, because they’re being talked over, because they have a sore throat, whatever) have a chance to say their piece uninterrupted.
I have a sincere question: do you feel I was rude to you? I did not mean to be. However, your remark seems to have the desired effect to minimize the issue (“everyone should not be rude”, which is obvious on its face) in order to dismiss the primary concern of the OP: there is systemic power imbalance along gendered lines that has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with structural gendered injustice, in ways large and small, profound and petty, but fundamentally different for women than for men. How is one to assist you in understanding that without being direct about what the problem is?
I don’t feel you were particularly rude at all! My comment was just merely noting that this isn’t a problem only for women.
I will note that the smaller the ideological foundation backing something is, the easier it is to get buy-in for it with people who don’t share that background.
“People talk over others too much, please knock it off and be respectful” requires a simple belief in respect and in the near-universal experience of the discomfort of not being heard.
“Men talk over women constantly and women perceive this differently than many men and this is the result of structural power imbalances between the traditional genders and must be addressed as one of many small steps in the remediation of kyriarchical institutions, so please make sure that when presenting as male (or at anytime as a cishet male) you should be sure to let everybody else who is traditionally silenced by the system speak before you” requires the audience to buy in to a lot of social theory and gender optics that are far from universal–and even people who agree on parts of it can spend hours bickering back and forth about some minor point.
For workplace behavior and manners, I suggest that presenting the most straightforward and universally-grounded norms will be most effective.
I totally feel you on the “requires buy-in” part, BUT! The venue here, just this post, given the OP, sort of implies that that is on the agenda, and anything that dodges that is basically off-topic.
“Men talk over women constantly and women perceive this differently than many men and this is the result of structural power imbalances between the traditional genders and must be addressed as one of many small steps in the remediation of kyriarchical institutions, so please make sure that when presenting as male (or at anytime as a cishet male) you should be sure to let everybody else who is traditionally silenced by the system speak before you”
Literal laugh-out-loud, thank you for that :)
For workplace behavior and manners, I suggest that presenting the most straightforward and universally-grounded norms will be most effective.
I was serious there–very little parody intended! It’s just that the long-form provides more points to argue about than the short form “Getting cut off while talking sucks doesn’t it? Shut up and wait your turn.”
The other thing about your original reply (I hope that doesn’t sound too personal, I’m just identifying it to bring it up in the context later in the thread when some fundamentals have been laid down) is that it’s not responsive to the last thing @alva said, and I think that’s a non-trivial omission:
This helped me so much, and I wish men would do this, because they won’t get negative performance reviews for being ”abrasive” or coming on too strong.
(emphasis added)
When women insist on having their voices heard, they tend to be regarded as shrill or otherwise unpleasant, which means that it’s even more important that those in power positions take care to include them.
No, I know, it’s just intrinsically funny to spell it ALL out, and there’s enough strawman*-y satire to leaven into humor; no one is actually saying “…be sure to let everybody else who is traditionally silenced by the system speak before you [at all times, goes the next unstated step into parody]”.
But again, the whole OP is, “Women are shut out more than men are,” and not, “Some people get shut out of contributing or are otherwise marginalized, there’s no rhyme or reason to it, so just be sure you take pains to include all voices who wish to contribute regardless of who or why they’re being shut out.” (only minor parody there)
“However, your remark seems to have the desired effect to minimize the issue “
Your remark seems to have intent to misrepresent what others are saying to push a political agenda. friendlysock added to the claim that people are often rude to women in a specific way… cutting them off… by saying that happens to men a lot, too. So, the recommendation was to watch out for people doing that to anyone to counter that behavior. That generalized advice helps everyone instead of one group.
Again, it’s diversion from the main issue, which is gendered power imbalance. There are plenty of other venues to talk about generalized meeting etiquette, or ways to phrase the issue as not being dismissive of the underlying concern being issued. “That’s just plain being not rude,” is not constructive.
I took pains to be neutral in my reply, and tried to be clear that the appearance of intent was only that: appearance. I don’t think they were trying to carry water for structural injustice, and so the fact that they are, probably inadvertently, doing so needs to be pointed out.
I’m hearing from you that I seem threatening, and I’m sorry my intent is not communicated more clearly and fluently. I’m trying to be very clear that the issues are, society-wide, mostly not personal or character-based, but rather, structural/social/cultural, and the only way to change things is to look at them head-on, identify the dysfunctional dynamics, and purposely create new, better dynamics that benefit everyone. Fire departments don’t treat all homes equally; they rush to the ones that are on fire first. We as a society do not need to “be nicer in meetings”, we need to recognize the ways in which our defaults are unfair to women (and dark-skinned people, and gay or transgendered, or poor, or any other marginalized group), and address them on their face.
I’ll believe it’s a diversion when I see you and others regularly submitting any data on the sexism men face when their bosses or majority of their workplace are women. That is, on top of differentiating which claims are the kind men face from other men and which aren’t since these kinds of articles sometimes conflate them. As in, when people who care about sexism or societal dysfunction address those that men face. Plus, address the abuses I’ve seen women report when their bosses or majority of their workplace are women. They do their own kind of political games and abuse. I look for all the political abuse that happens due to genders, men or women, being in control pushing politics out of management decisions where possible. You seem to only care about one specific setup: male to female. Most submissions or comments addressing that in agreement with you get upvotes where those indicating any other form even with examples are labeled sexist, rude, or off-topic. That’s a sign of political suppression of alternative views or even counterpoints.
You’re also not threatening so long as those disagreeing with you aren’t banned. You’re just inaccurate at this point where you misrepresented one person’s comment, didn’t try to see if these “only to women” things were happening to men (some were), didn’t care about anything happening with women in control, made recommendations that we exclusively focus on female victims of sexism based on that, and then ad hominemed me in another comment. If anything, you indicate how damaging your type of politics would be to both whites and males given you can do everything from ignore any structural discrimination they face to dismissing their claims on forums to personal attacks without a single downvote or reply asking you to knock some of that off. Compare that to the piles of downvotes and irriated comments that show up when anyone does it to a minority member or issue in comments here. That I have to be careful about what I say to not get labeled racist or sexist while you can shoot from the hip like that indicates it is you and those with similar views to yours that have privilege here. As usual, it’s privileged people pretending I’m one for political gain.
Given you’re other comment, I’ll note it’s same at my work, too. It was mostly white in management with a mix of races in workforce. As several groups got black leads, they changed hiring to systematically bring in black hires and move up black employees regardless of performance. One group only rewards older, black women punishing or overworking all male candidates. Over past year, we have three groups where workforce is almost all black (our area isn’t) after discrimination drove whites out, including high performers. Turnover even among younger, black males is high due to claims of sexism. Our teams even have to do some of their work when their laziness or be allocation gets them backed up even though it hurts our numbers. Why? HR people investigating our claims about their performance were older, black women sympathetic to the issues “they” faced. ;)
Just another day as a white male in a racist, sexist, work environment you’ll never see people submit articles about. There’s tons of them: just pick an area that’s got a lot of non-whites in business or especially an industry that’s higher in women than men. And here’s the fun part: I get to hear about how much privilege I have on online forums due to racism and sexism that only happens due to whites and males structurally only to non-whites and non-males. Reverse is either made up or just “a diversion.” It would be funny if it wasn’t getting enforced in more and more colleges, companies, and forums with negative consequences for people disagreeing. So, I counter it at least once every time it pops up before it becomes a norm. Usually starts with someone saying something is “rude,” “offensive,” or shouldn’t be here. And that something was disagreement with their view of politics.
That’s a sign of political suppression of alternative views or even counterpoints.
What exactly does that mean? Are there laws being passed? Are rights being infringed?
That I have to be careful about what I say to not get labeled racist or sexist while you can shoot from the hip like that indicates it is you and those with similar views to yours that have privilege here. As usual, it’s privileged people pretending I’m one for political gain.
It’s true, I’m fortunate to find myself surrounded by people who generally don’t need to watch what they say lest everyone realize what terrible values they hold, and to also not hold those terrible values myself. I submit that you could easily achieve this privilege, by simply not having such terrible ideas, or at least, not getting mad in public when other people talk about their not-terrible ideas.
When I was in sixth grade, I had to go to Catholic catechism classes on Wednesday nights. The woman who taught it that year for me used to let the girls go at the end of class, but usually held the boys after class to punish them for the rambunctiousness of two or three extra-loud kids who were boys.
I was furious. It was so unfair. I never came to like that woman. But you know what it wasn’t? Proof that women have the real power in society. At no point in the last thirty years since then have I thought, “Well, that just goes to show you that sexism is not real!”
So why haven’t you learned that lesson yet? Are you twelve?
But you know what it wasn’t? Proof that women have the real power in society. At no point in the last thirty years since then have I thought, “Well, that just goes to show you that sexism is not real!”
There you go again with sophistry. I said sexism was real, it happened to each group, and who was doing it varied at what level. You just made up a strawman to counter so anyone reading it would think it was my belief. I think most workplace sexism is either men or women biased against women. I also think there’s a ton of sexism against men in women-controlled institutions. Women themselves write about both all the time under phrases like “office politics” instead of sexism. Once we use that term, people’s minds shift to see narrower behavior because they’ve been trained to by what they read and who they talk to.
Problem is broader. People like you dismiss at least one of those angles (women-dominated vs men) with some also dismissing problems women cause for women. When a victim from that gender notes this, you dismiss them under a controversial definition of privilege without an actual assessment of their privilege or move to personal insults. You don’t refute their points with any evidence, though. That’s difficult since people with your beliefs don’t collect that evidence in the first place. That would be doing science on gender discrimination or justice as an activist that (like me) helps every kind of victim you run into. Instead, you only collect evidence of one type with all beliefs built on that but never changing it as data comes in running contrary to your foundations. That’s how religion operates.
The religion: Structural, gender discrimination is someone only women face across all groups and institutions of society. Men don’t face anything similar with ties to gender. Men also always have privilege and power that gets them extra benefits. Therefore, we should frame all discussions on gender in terms of how women are disadvantaged and how to help change that.
The truth: Structural discrimination is something all groups face when a different group is in power (in vs out group). Gender is the same with men discriminating against different types of men, men discriminating against women, women discriminating against different types of women, and women discriminating against men. The types and intensity of the discrimination that occur depend on the institution, its culture/history, parties on both sides of equation, and their numbers. We should recognize these biases exist combating every instance of them as part of the same problem of in groups in control treating out groups badly. Due to resource constraints, we will also put more resources into the types of discrimination that happen more often than others in our locale, at a national level, and for some at a global level. We’ll still acknowledge and put some resources into combating the rest.
See the difference? Your religion inhumanely dismisses whole classes of people suffering. It then lets new powermongers dominate them for as long as it exists. My scientific approach notes groups screw with other groups for politics as a general pattern. It then attacks the pattern directly. The pattern can take on any form but we identify and fight it. That helps the most people.
Also, you clearly don’t want any politics in your computers, and you’re privileged enough to have that. So why do you engage just to get mad online about it? Enjoy your privilege! It’s literally the least you can do!
The entire point is that there is structured imbalance along gendered lines; it’s not generalizing, it is accurately describing what is happening. If you are a man, that means you’re in a privileged position, and if statements such as, “men have more power than women in the united states” threaten you or otherwise make you uncomfortable, it means you maybe feel you’re not doing enough to address that, or you otherwise feel implicated in it somehow.
you’re probably not the kind of person who desires things to be that way for men and women, and
you can use your position to do something about it.
I’m not attacking you, but I am pointing out here that your statement, that “systematically generalizing is rude”, is neither correct (it’s not generalizing) nor rude (it’s not a baseless or out-of-place personal affront). Choosing to make your voice heard making statements like these when an attempt at conversation is being made is carrying water for the status quo by attempting to shut them down. Again, I’m not saying that that is your intention, but that is the effect, and I ask you to think about it.
“The entire point is that there is structured imbalance along gendered lines; it’s not generalizing, it is accurately describing what is happening. “
I just addressed that here under “religion” vs “truth.” You’re not looking for the structural imbalance. You’re looking for just imbalances that hurt specific groups you apparently like more than the rest. It’s why you’ll ignore all structural imbalances that hurt the others or are caused by the group you give special treatment to. Since you sure won’t bring them up, other people have to in these conversations, Otherwise, the selection bias on the articles or commentary by folks like you mislead people into thinking this is a exclusively a male-female thing instead of a general problem which includes discriminating, female-controlled, power structures because you spend zero time researching that due to an ideology that won’t allow it.
“ for the status quo by attempting to shut them down. “
You keep saying this kind of nonsense as well. The status quo per the votes on this forum is that Lobsters is extremely in favor of this article that was on the front page a while. They support it. At least 5 people agreed with you and nobody attempted to censor you. Instead, three people merely had dissenting views from one or more points in an article that at least two of us probably mostly agree with. Just a discussion occurring as discussions do.
On the society side, I see everything from sexist men or women putting subordinates in place complaining in the workplace about their behavior up to both feminists and MRA’s getting shouted down by crowds when their makeup is people on the other side. I also see shouts of support on both sides with dissenters getting punished when the crowd’s makeup is people that agree with them. Whether anything is getting shut down again depends on who is in control, who is in the crowd, and that specific institutions’ culture, policies, and laws. Your blanket concept that it’s always one group causing problems for another group with any dissent always equaling an attempt to shut down a group entirely is a lie not supported by data. It serves your political interests for sure but not helping suffering minorities in general since you ignore whole classes of them.
Your blanket concept that it’s always one group causing problems for another group with any dissent always equaling an attempt to shut down a group entirely is a lie not supported by data. It serves your political interests for sure but not helping suffering minorities in general since you ignore whole classes of them.
You ARE twelve! I’m really sorry, I honestly thought you were not a simple child incapable of understanding complex issues, but I was mistaken.
See, a grown-up understands that there are times when things may seem one way, but really, that’s a fiction apart from the rest of the larger world. For example, the popular stances on lobsters are not like the rest of the world, which is why people want to come here to talk about them. And so when grown-ups come to say, “There are gendered problems in the larger world where men marginalize women, here are some examples,” it’s a bit of a shock to come across a child here who starts yelling, “No there aren’t! Just as many men are marginalized by women! Stop talking about the thing you want to talk about!”
If a grown-up were to behave like that child, other adults would be very upset, and wonder how he got to that be that way without some kind of serious learning disability that has left him unable to reason about more than what kind of cereal he wants to play with. But kids get a pass, because it’s not their fault they’re so ignorant and fragile.
I know, the world is scary. But one day, you’ll understand that you have the power to change it, if only you can look it in the eye. Until then, keep learning!
You ARE twelve! I’m really sorry, I honestly thought you were not a simple child incapable of understanding complex issues, but I was mistaken.
Another data point corroborating my previous claim that wouldn’t be tolerated if said to a woman expressing her opinions, perceived as correct or incorrect, on gender issues or personal experience. Telling her she was twelve would have people like you showing up saying the person who said it was a sexist who shouldnt be tolerated. Many of you think it’s OK if it’s one of you doing it to a man, though.
Worse, you equate any dissent from grown adults based on both thousands of data points second hand and personal experience in this topic with unproven claims that (a) only children produce such thoughts and (b) anyone saying that must therefore think like a child. Since many surveyed women disagree with you, you’re also dismissing them as children to be ignored on gender issues even as you claim to want to stop discrimination against women. That’s logically contradicting but religion allows contradicting views. After these faith-based claims and sexist dismissal of millions of women’s views, you then bring in an unrelated situation of how older people react to childish ignorance. Then, you attempt to connect your claim that any men or women disagreeing with you are children with the story of how children’s ignorance is regrettably tolerated. You do this believing there’s a logical conclusion to that despite building it on a faith-based foundation neither proved nor even researched given you dismiss all women who disagree as children. Building logic on faith-based beliefs and ad hominem characterizations is something children and irrational adults are prone to doing.
People like @nickpsecurity will hopefully fight the good fight, but after reading this thread, I can’t imagine anything being posted in culture that will counter-weight stumbling on this stuff.
People like nickpsecurity are whiny man-babies who are too fragile to hear that there are problems in the world and get mad when grown-ups try to talk about them.
This is super-important. Listening to and learning from these stories is super-important. I’m a cis, het, white guy and it took many years of patience from folks with less privilege than me to learn to listen and empathize. I still regularly have to remind myself to shut-up in meetings and not assume that an absence of speech implies an absence of ideas. I’m grateful to the author of this post for sharing it.
(edits to add the following excerpts:)
This is one of those notions, so obvious that it needs much repeating:
And another story about the impact of “overlooking” damaging behavior
I often have problems making myself heard in meetings, because once I find a space where I can get a word in, someone more aggressive will talk over me. At my previous job, a woman joined my team who would notice this, and go ”Alva, do you have something to add?” or ”sorry,
$male_colleague, but Alva was speaking.”This helped me so much, and I wish men would do this, because they won’t get negative performance reviews for being ”abrasive” or coming on too strong.
This is a general thing to do in all meetings, regardless of demographics. Always make sure folks who are not talking enough (because they’re shy, because they’re being talked over, because they have a sore throat, whatever) have a chance to say their piece uninterrupted.
It’s just good manners.
Of course it is, but part of the problem is that men are, systematically, rude to women under this metric, hence the need to point it out especially.
Men appear to be systematically rude to each other under this metric as well. It’s quite annoying. :(
I have a sincere question: do you feel I was rude to you? I did not mean to be. However, your remark seems to have the desired effect to minimize the issue (“everyone should not be rude”, which is obvious on its face) in order to dismiss the primary concern of the OP: there is systemic power imbalance along gendered lines that has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with structural gendered injustice, in ways large and small, profound and petty, but fundamentally different for women than for men. How is one to assist you in understanding that without being direct about what the problem is?
I don’t feel you were particularly rude at all! My comment was just merely noting that this isn’t a problem only for women.
I will note that the smaller the ideological foundation backing something is, the easier it is to get buy-in for it with people who don’t share that background.
“People talk over others too much, please knock it off and be respectful” requires a simple belief in respect and in the near-universal experience of the discomfort of not being heard.
“Men talk over women constantly and women perceive this differently than many men and this is the result of structural power imbalances between the traditional genders and must be addressed as one of many small steps in the remediation of kyriarchical institutions, so please make sure that when presenting as male (or at anytime as a cishet male) you should be sure to let everybody else who is traditionally silenced by the system speak before you” requires the audience to buy in to a lot of social theory and gender optics that are far from universal–and even people who agree on parts of it can spend hours bickering back and forth about some minor point.
For workplace behavior and manners, I suggest that presenting the most straightforward and universally-grounded norms will be most effective.
EDIT: Minor phrasing tweak to clarify claim.
Thank you for the extremely thoughtful reply!
I totally feel you on the “requires buy-in” part, BUT! The venue here, just this post, given the OP, sort of implies that that is on the agenda, and anything that dodges that is basically off-topic.
Literal laugh-out-loud, thank you for that :)
Agreed, but…. see my first point above.
I was serious there–very little parody intended! It’s just that the long-form provides more points to argue about than the short form “Getting cut off while talking sucks doesn’t it? Shut up and wait your turn.”
The other thing about your original reply (I hope that doesn’t sound too personal, I’m just identifying it to bring it up in the context later in the thread when some fundamentals have been laid down) is that it’s not responsive to the last thing @alva said, and I think that’s a non-trivial omission:
(emphasis added)
When women insist on having their voices heard, they tend to be regarded as shrill or otherwise unpleasant, which means that it’s even more important that those in power positions take care to include them.
No, I know, it’s just intrinsically funny to spell it ALL out, and there’s enough strawman*-y satire to leaven into humor; no one is actually saying “…be sure to let everybody else who is traditionally silenced by the system speak before you [at all times, goes the next unstated step into parody]”.
But again, the whole OP is, “Women are shut out more than men are,” and not, “Some people get shut out of contributing or are otherwise marginalized, there’s no rhyme or reason to it, so just be sure you take pains to include all voices who wish to contribute regardless of who or why they’re being shut out.” (only minor parody there)
*) “strawmyn” ;)
“However, your remark seems to have the desired effect to minimize the issue “
Your remark seems to have intent to misrepresent what others are saying to push a political agenda. friendlysock added to the claim that people are often rude to women in a specific way… cutting them off… by saying that happens to men a lot, too. So, the recommendation was to watch out for people doing that to anyone to counter that behavior. That generalized advice helps everyone instead of one group.
Again, it’s diversion from the main issue, which is gendered power imbalance. There are plenty of other venues to talk about generalized meeting etiquette, or ways to phrase the issue as not being dismissive of the underlying concern being issued. “That’s just plain being not rude,” is not constructive.
I took pains to be neutral in my reply, and tried to be clear that the appearance of intent was only that: appearance. I don’t think they were trying to carry water for structural injustice, and so the fact that they are, probably inadvertently, doing so needs to be pointed out.
I’m hearing from you that I seem threatening, and I’m sorry my intent is not communicated more clearly and fluently. I’m trying to be very clear that the issues are, society-wide, mostly not personal or character-based, but rather, structural/social/cultural, and the only way to change things is to look at them head-on, identify the dysfunctional dynamics, and purposely create new, better dynamics that benefit everyone. Fire departments don’t treat all homes equally; they rush to the ones that are on fire first. We as a society do not need to “be nicer in meetings”, we need to recognize the ways in which our defaults are unfair to women (and dark-skinned people, and gay or transgendered, or poor, or any other marginalized group), and address them on their face.
I’ll believe it’s a diversion when I see you and others regularly submitting any data on the sexism men face when their bosses or majority of their workplace are women. That is, on top of differentiating which claims are the kind men face from other men and which aren’t since these kinds of articles sometimes conflate them. As in, when people who care about sexism or societal dysfunction address those that men face. Plus, address the abuses I’ve seen women report when their bosses or majority of their workplace are women. They do their own kind of political games and abuse. I look for all the political abuse that happens due to genders, men or women, being in control pushing politics out of management decisions where possible. You seem to only care about one specific setup: male to female. Most submissions or comments addressing that in agreement with you get upvotes where those indicating any other form even with examples are labeled sexist, rude, or off-topic. That’s a sign of political suppression of alternative views or even counterpoints.
You’re also not threatening so long as those disagreeing with you aren’t banned. You’re just inaccurate at this point where you misrepresented one person’s comment, didn’t try to see if these “only to women” things were happening to men (some were), didn’t care about anything happening with women in control, made recommendations that we exclusively focus on female victims of sexism based on that, and then ad hominemed me in another comment. If anything, you indicate how damaging your type of politics would be to both whites and males given you can do everything from ignore any structural discrimination they face to dismissing their claims on forums to personal attacks without a single downvote or reply asking you to knock some of that off. Compare that to the piles of downvotes and irriated comments that show up when anyone does it to a minority member or issue in comments here. That I have to be careful about what I say to not get labeled racist or sexist while you can shoot from the hip like that indicates it is you and those with similar views to yours that have privilege here. As usual, it’s privileged people pretending I’m one for political gain.
Given you’re other comment, I’ll note it’s same at my work, too. It was mostly white in management with a mix of races in workforce. As several groups got black leads, they changed hiring to systematically bring in black hires and move up black employees regardless of performance. One group only rewards older, black women punishing or overworking all male candidates. Over past year, we have three groups where workforce is almost all black (our area isn’t) after discrimination drove whites out, including high performers. Turnover even among younger, black males is high due to claims of sexism. Our teams even have to do some of their work when their laziness or be allocation gets them backed up even though it hurts our numbers. Why? HR people investigating our claims about their performance were older, black women sympathetic to the issues “they” faced. ;)
Just another day as a white male in a racist, sexist, work environment you’ll never see people submit articles about. There’s tons of them: just pick an area that’s got a lot of non-whites in business or especially an industry that’s higher in women than men. And here’s the fun part: I get to hear about how much privilege I have on online forums due to racism and sexism that only happens due to whites and males structurally only to non-whites and non-males. Reverse is either made up or just “a diversion.” It would be funny if it wasn’t getting enforced in more and more colleges, companies, and forums with negative consequences for people disagreeing. So, I counter it at least once every time it pops up before it becomes a norm. Usually starts with someone saying something is “rude,” “offensive,” or shouldn’t be here. And that something was disagreement with their view of politics.
What exactly does that mean? Are there laws being passed? Are rights being infringed?
It’s true, I’m fortunate to find myself surrounded by people who generally don’t need to watch what they say lest everyone realize what terrible values they hold, and to also not hold those terrible values myself. I submit that you could easily achieve this privilege, by simply not having such terrible ideas, or at least, not getting mad in public when other people talk about their not-terrible ideas.
When I was in sixth grade, I had to go to Catholic catechism classes on Wednesday nights. The woman who taught it that year for me used to let the girls go at the end of class, but usually held the boys after class to punish them for the rambunctiousness of two or three extra-loud kids who were boys.
I was furious. It was so unfair. I never came to like that woman. But you know what it wasn’t? Proof that women have the real power in society. At no point in the last thirty years since then have I thought, “Well, that just goes to show you that sexism is not real!”
So why haven’t you learned that lesson yet? Are you twelve?
There you go again with sophistry. I said sexism was real, it happened to each group, and who was doing it varied at what level. You just made up a strawman to counter so anyone reading it would think it was my belief. I think most workplace sexism is either men or women biased against women. I also think there’s a ton of sexism against men in women-controlled institutions. Women themselves write about both all the time under phrases like “office politics” instead of sexism. Once we use that term, people’s minds shift to see narrower behavior because they’ve been trained to by what they read and who they talk to.
Problem is broader. People like you dismiss at least one of those angles (women-dominated vs men) with some also dismissing problems women cause for women. When a victim from that gender notes this, you dismiss them under a controversial definition of privilege without an actual assessment of their privilege or move to personal insults. You don’t refute their points with any evidence, though. That’s difficult since people with your beliefs don’t collect that evidence in the first place. That would be doing science on gender discrimination or justice as an activist that (like me) helps every kind of victim you run into. Instead, you only collect evidence of one type with all beliefs built on that but never changing it as data comes in running contrary to your foundations. That’s how religion operates.
The religion: Structural, gender discrimination is someone only women face across all groups and institutions of society. Men don’t face anything similar with ties to gender. Men also always have privilege and power that gets them extra benefits. Therefore, we should frame all discussions on gender in terms of how women are disadvantaged and how to help change that.
The truth: Structural discrimination is something all groups face when a different group is in power (in vs out group). Gender is the same with men discriminating against different types of men, men discriminating against women, women discriminating against different types of women, and women discriminating against men. The types and intensity of the discrimination that occur depend on the institution, its culture/history, parties on both sides of equation, and their numbers. We should recognize these biases exist combating every instance of them as part of the same problem of in groups in control treating out groups badly. Due to resource constraints, we will also put more resources into the types of discrimination that happen more often than others in our locale, at a national level, and for some at a global level. We’ll still acknowledge and put some resources into combating the rest.
See the difference? Your religion inhumanely dismisses whole classes of people suffering. It then lets new powermongers dominate them for as long as it exists. My scientific approach notes groups screw with other groups for politics as a general pattern. It then attacks the pattern directly. The pattern can take on any form but we identify and fight it. That helps the most people.
Also, you clearly don’t want any politics in your computers, and you’re privileged enough to have that. So why do you engage just to get mad online about it? Enjoy your privilege! It’s literally the least you can do!
Systematically generalizing whenever topics like diversity are brought up is rude as well.
Maybe the culture tag should be split so these could be hidden without filtering the baby out with the bathwater?
The entire point is that there is structured imbalance along gendered lines; it’s not generalizing, it is accurately describing what is happening. If you are a man, that means you’re in a privileged position, and if statements such as, “men have more power than women in the united states” threaten you or otherwise make you uncomfortable, it means you maybe feel you’re not doing enough to address that, or you otherwise feel implicated in it somehow.
you’re probably not the kind of person who desires things to be that way for men and women, and
you can use your position to do something about it.
I’m not attacking you, but I am pointing out here that your statement, that “systematically generalizing is rude”, is neither correct (it’s not generalizing) nor rude (it’s not a baseless or out-of-place personal affront). Choosing to make your voice heard making statements like these when an attempt at conversation is being made is carrying water for the status quo by attempting to shut them down. Again, I’m not saying that that is your intention, but that is the effect, and I ask you to think about it.
“The entire point is that there is structured imbalance along gendered lines; it’s not generalizing, it is accurately describing what is happening. “
I just addressed that here under “religion” vs “truth.” You’re not looking for the structural imbalance. You’re looking for just imbalances that hurt specific groups you apparently like more than the rest. It’s why you’ll ignore all structural imbalances that hurt the others or are caused by the group you give special treatment to. Since you sure won’t bring them up, other people have to in these conversations, Otherwise, the selection bias on the articles or commentary by folks like you mislead people into thinking this is a exclusively a male-female thing instead of a general problem which includes discriminating, female-controlled, power structures because you spend zero time researching that due to an ideology that won’t allow it.
“ for the status quo by attempting to shut them down. “
You keep saying this kind of nonsense as well. The status quo per the votes on this forum is that Lobsters is extremely in favor of this article that was on the front page a while. They support it. At least 5 people agreed with you and nobody attempted to censor you. Instead, three people merely had dissenting views from one or more points in an article that at least two of us probably mostly agree with. Just a discussion occurring as discussions do.
On the society side, I see everything from sexist men or women putting subordinates in place complaining in the workplace about their behavior up to both feminists and MRA’s getting shouted down by crowds when their makeup is people on the other side. I also see shouts of support on both sides with dissenters getting punished when the crowd’s makeup is people that agree with them. Whether anything is getting shut down again depends on who is in control, who is in the crowd, and that specific institutions’ culture, policies, and laws. Your blanket concept that it’s always one group causing problems for another group with any dissent always equaling an attempt to shut down a group entirely is a lie not supported by data. It serves your political interests for sure but not helping suffering minorities in general since you ignore whole classes of them.
You ARE twelve! I’m really sorry, I honestly thought you were not a simple child incapable of understanding complex issues, but I was mistaken.
See, a grown-up understands that there are times when things may seem one way, but really, that’s a fiction apart from the rest of the larger world. For example, the popular stances on lobsters are not like the rest of the world, which is why people want to come here to talk about them. And so when grown-ups come to say, “There are gendered problems in the larger world where men marginalize women, here are some examples,” it’s a bit of a shock to come across a child here who starts yelling, “No there aren’t! Just as many men are marginalized by women! Stop talking about the thing you want to talk about!”
If a grown-up were to behave like that child, other adults would be very upset, and wonder how he got to that be that way without some kind of serious learning disability that has left him unable to reason about more than what kind of cereal he wants to play with. But kids get a pass, because it’s not their fault they’re so ignorant and fragile.
I know, the world is scary. But one day, you’ll understand that you have the power to change it, if only you can look it in the eye. Until then, keep learning!
Another data point corroborating my previous claim that wouldn’t be tolerated if said to a woman expressing her opinions, perceived as correct or incorrect, on gender issues or personal experience. Telling her she was twelve would have people like you showing up saying the person who said it was a sexist who shouldnt be tolerated. Many of you think it’s OK if it’s one of you doing it to a man, though.
Worse, you equate any dissent from grown adults based on both thousands of data points second hand and personal experience in this topic with unproven claims that (a) only children produce such thoughts and (b) anyone saying that must therefore think like a child. Since many surveyed women disagree with you, you’re also dismissing them as children to be ignored on gender issues even as you claim to want to stop discrimination against women. That’s logically contradicting but religion allows contradicting views. After these faith-based claims and sexist dismissal of millions of women’s views, you then bring in an unrelated situation of how older people react to childish ignorance. Then, you attempt to connect your claim that any men or women disagreeing with you are children with the story of how children’s ignorance is regrettably tolerated. You do this believing there’s a logical conclusion to that despite building it on a faith-based foundation neither proved nor even researched given you dismiss all women who disagree as children. Building logic on faith-based beliefs and ad hominem characterizations is something children and irrational adults are prone to doing.
No, I think I’m done with the culture tag.
People like @nickpsecurity will hopefully fight the good fight, but after reading this thread, I can’t imagine anything being posted in
culturethat will counter-weight stumbling on this stuff.People like nickpsecurity are whiny man-babies who are too fragile to hear that there are problems in the world and get mad when grown-ups try to talk about them.