That “never looked at her” line matches some experiences of mine and it always surprises me. Particularly egregious ones: Once, my boss (a math major and capable technologist) was ignored by a vendor through a presentation who then “joked” that we could work out the details for her. In another, I was accompanying a founder (very sharp, good at sales, and quite pretty) to a sales meeting as the engineer in tow and after my dog-and-pony show had to keep redirecting sales discussion back to her. Seriously? The introductions didn’t raise a flag that these women were in charge?
Since we’re on the topic of subtle sexism, ageism, ism-ism, “If you were offended, I apologize” is a classic non-apology form, so if you want an apology to be taken as an apology you might look at alternative ways of stating similar apologies. Not saying you meant it as a non-apology, just pointing it out.
Continuing a long-standing trend, women use Pinterest at much higher rates than men. Nearly half of online women use the virtual pinboard (45%), more than double the share of online men (17%) who do so.
It’s not about saying that Pinterest is female-heavy - it’s about the assumption that everyone is male / has a wife/girlfriend. Even though everyone was male, this contributes to the feeling of ostracization.
I continue to be unable to understand why I’ve never witnessed any of this. I’m a man who has worked in software for years and before that I was educated in STEM for years. In all this time I’ve seen one single example of the kind of misogyny described here: a senior colleague replied to me and not the intern who asked him a question when the three of us were eating lunch together. That was an odd experience made all the odder by the fact that it was the unique time I’ve witnessed such behaviour.
Am I blind? Lucky? It’s not as though I haven’t been trying to find corroborating evidence of this kind of behaviour.
This is why I wrote this. While I’ve been in tech since I graduated in 2001 and have worked with many women I hadn’t seen these behaviors first hand. I write “seen” rather than “experienced” because I’m sure I was oblivious to many instances. Having a female business partner has illumninated to me how pervasive these behaviors are.
I don’t see sexism every day but I certainly do every month. Take that as a lower bound and multiply by years in the industry and it’s a lot to bear.
Am I blind? Lucky? It’s not as though I haven’t been trying to find corroborating evidence of this kind of behaviour.
I wouldn’t say blind, more like our context-experiences, as men, make a lot of this invisible to us. It’s worth asking coworkers for their experiences with this, if they’re comfortable with it; they’ll have a lot of examples to share.
I, like the author of the OP, have had a lot of opportunity to watch second-hand misogyny on the part of my wife. My guess is that if you aren’t seeing it, it’s because you’re not close enough to someone to hear how they experience things.
Listening to my wife, the number of open, clearly sexist things that happen over her 8 year career so far has been fairly low. There’ve been a few instances of “Little Girl” comments – the name stems from the first she experienced, when one of the R&D Engineers suggested that the project would’ve been better in the hands of a “real” Manufacturing Engineer, and not some “Little Girl”.
The result of him saying that, by the way, was a slap on the wrist by HR and, later, a promotion to a managerial position where he would only be dealing with men (because the R&D team there was 100% men).
More often, though, are the instances of much smaller, much less overt things. Some are similar to your sole experience, but many are so subtle that I didn’t understand the issue till she explained to me. One common gripe she has is the “Alright guys… and Sarah.”-trope. It’s insidious because it seems inclusive, but in reality it’s singling her out as being different. I asked her what it made her feel like as I’m writing this, she says:
Those sorts of things aren’t hurtful, but they do make me feel exposed. I don’t mind being one of the ‘guys’, I’d much rather you just do that, then make me seem like I need to be coddled/require special attention. Some women I know don’t like being one of the guys, some like being singled out, but none I’ve met mind when you use ‘folks’ or ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ or some other really common, inclusive phrasing.
(emph mine)
I think these sorts of things can feel really ‘normal’ to someone, even someone looking for sexism and misogyny in the workplace or elsewhere.
Another common kind of misogyny she’s experienced comes in the form of reviews. My wife is a Manufacturing engineer. She’d tell you that being an MFE means that she figures out: “How to take the thing that R&D took 10 months to build 1 of, and make it so we can build 10, 100, 1000, however many a day.” This is a field that requires no small amount of crossfunctional ability. She’s equal parts an ME, EE, Programmer, Quality Control Specialist, Documentation Writer, and half a dozen other things. This means working with lots of people and exerting a lot of will to make things happen simply by convincing people it should. Now, I’m in a similar sort of role, though on the software side. I imagine, given the venue, that you are in some similar situation. I’m sure you’ve known folks who have argued strongly for their position – I imagine you’ve argued strongly for your positions. I know I have. I also know that I’ve never been told to “Be nicer” in my 1:1’s with my boss, or that I was “overly aggressive in supporting my view of the product.” Nor have I ever been called “Petulant,” to my face, by my boss – or anyone else for that matter. My wife is not petulant, she’s passionate. It’s something companies claim to look for in engineers – passion to do good work is important. The difference I’ve seen is not in the actions my wife takes, but in the way those actions are received. This is something broadly hidden from view to outside observers; no one sits in those meetings except her and her boss. When I go hard in the paint to try to argue for a particular design, I don’t leave anything on the table, I make a case as strongly as possible. I can say for a fact that there are times I have been petty and low-minded when I didn’t get what I wanted. I’ve never been called petulant in a review. I’ve never been told I was too aggressive. Even if you don’t believe me when I say my wife isn’t those things, you should at least believe that I’m telling the truth when I claim to be petulant and have never been called on it. Even if you can’t see the misogyny, hopefully that illuminates the privilege that is equal to the problem.
Point being, it’s certainly possible that you work and live in a particularly good environment, where the people are aware and try to curtail this sort of thing, but more likely it’s that the misogyny that’s happening isn’t on the surface. I encourage you to engage with women engineers in an honest and open way; ask them about their experience. Ask them if you’ve been party to that experience. If you care about not doing shitty things to people, it’s worth an ask. Some women will give you the brush off about it – they don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But in my experience, when I’ve asked women about their experiences, they’ve been more than willing to tell me; especially when I open with, “Hey, my wife had something shitty happen to her, does this shit happen to you? Can you tell me about it? Do I do this? I’d like to not; but I don’t know if I am.”
This is a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. Personally I usually just use “People” or “Folks” (as in, “Hey People” or “Hey Folks”); my wife I think was getting at the main point of there being a problem of being singled out, but this article makes a good case for even that ‘more inclusive’ phrasing of “Ladies and Gentlemen” still being about gender. It occurs to me now it also leaves out various folks who find them selves identifying as neither ladies nor gentlemen. Very interesting, TIL.
Now you got me curious. I’d probably smirk or smile a bit but no more than over the unusual things down here. I say adapt it and spread it. To heck with the haters! :)
It ends up somewhere in the vicinity of rhyming with ‘Mal’ (as in “They stabbed me, Mal, with a sword, how weird is that?”). I can put on an accent and say it okay, but if I’m speaking naturally, it doesn’t really work. Suffice to say my accent ended up in a weird place when it solidified; and while I can force other accents, my default is… pretty weird.
I usually try to speak in a pretty flat accent, but it’s an affectation. My natural accent lives somewhere between a Worcester/Brockton/Rhode Island accent; and leans pretty hard on hard ‘a’ sounds (I pronounce “Java” with an ‘a’ like “at” or “apple”, not one like “hard” or “all”); thus the weirdness with “y’all”.
I sometimes do use “y’all” in text, but it’s usually not something I need to do (if I’m addressing a group, I’ve probably started a chat/am sending an email, and “You all” is more appropriate there).
I keep using it being from the South. It’s more efficient. :) It also has the side effect of baiting out those that bully over grammar or just look to argue with those who are perceived as less educated. That’s sometimes useful.
I know this post will sound really bad no matter how I say it, but I wonder how much of sexism, in the present (unlikely) or future (more likely) will be more fear than misogyny.
Womens are becoming a touchy subjects and, in today’s world where a trial is decided by the public before it goes to court, a false rape accusation does more damage than the trial itself (at least imo). If I were an employer I’d be worried of female employees, not out of hatred or anything, but because they would hold so much power to screw me over.
I personally don’t care what gender you are or religion or species.. I even like talking to assholes as long as they have something interesting to say. (Sadly I tend to be a bit of an asshole myself) But I would still be scared of talking to random women in a context like a conference because I might say something that puts me in a really bad place. It feels like I would be talking to someone with a loaded gun in my face.
I think the best friends I have are those who made me notice my mistakes instead of assuming the worst of me, while the tech scene today seems more like a witch-hunting marathon to me.
On that subject, why does the world have to work with cues and aggressive stances? Why can’t we be honest with each other? I see it every day, someone above me expects everyone to catch on her cues, if they don’t, they’re the bad guys, without even letting the other end knowing anything.
Most angry tweets and blog posts about this topic are from people who just kept everything in or bursted out in anger at them and they got defensive or responded just as aggressively (kinda to be expected, honestly). I would love to see examples of people who were made aware of their behavior and everything went fine after that.
a false rape accusation does more damage than the trial itself (at least imo).
A genuine rape accusation also does more damage than the trial itself. In both cases, the victim is affected. It’s only how we perceive it that’s different.
I think somewhere along the line communities started to encourage angry reactions as a way of maximising engagement. Somewhere along the line, we forgot to be kind by default, in a way we weren’t offline. I meet people who spend a lot of time in online communities, and you can see (amongst some people) that their online behaviour leaks into their personal offline behaviour, but rarely the other way.
I think the recent furore over Equifax’s CSO having a music degree is a good example of this. Nobody should care about someone’s degree, but a marketwatch piece designed to provoke angry responses, provoked angry responses on the Internet. The Twitter algorithms designed to increase engagement increased engagement and the Internet went twitter crazy.
There has to be a way to use a combo of the tools we use for engagement to promote de-escalation and de-engagement. Deprioritising inflammatory content to make the world a better place is not losing out. It’s winning.
That’s what I really love about lobsters. People may have issues misinterpreting context and social cues here, but generally people are kind to each other.
[Note: Before reading this, readers should probably know I have PTSD from a head injury. The side effects of nervous eyes, mumbly voice, and shaky hands apparently make me look like an easy target for male and female predators alike. I’m like a magnet for assholes who I usually deal with patiently, dismiss, or stand ground. Mostly ignore them. This issue required special treatment, though, since I was always treated very differently when it as something like this.]
Far as scenario you’re worried about, it’s a real thing that’s happened to me multiple times. Not rape claims fortunately but sexual harassment or discrimination. I think I was getting false claims to managers two or three times a year with dozens making them to me directly as a warning or rebuke but not to my bosses. They just wanted me to worry that they could or would destroy me. Aside from the random ones, it was usually women who wanted a discount on something, wanted to be served ahead of other customers, or (with employees) not wanting to do the task they were given since it was beneath them or “man’s work.” Saying no to any of that was all it took…
However, I was in a service position dealing with thousands of people plus dozens of workers due to high turnover. With all those people, just a few claims a year plus dozens of threats shows how rare this specific kind of bully is. Those that will fully push a false, gender-oriented claim are rare but highly damaging: each claim led people [that didn’t know me well] to assume I was guilty by default since I was male, interrogations by multiple supervisors or managers, and a waiting period for final results where I wondered if I’d loose my job and house with no work reference. Employment gaps on resumes make it harder to get new jobs in the U.S.. I got through those thanks to what I think were coworker’s testimony (mostly women) and managers’ judgment that the good and bad of me they’ve seen versus straight-up evil stuff a tiny number of women were claiming didn’t match up.
Quick example: As a team supervisor, I always gave jobs to people in a semi-random way to try to be equal in what people had to do. Some supervisors seemed to cave in if a worker claimed the work was better for another gender, esp labor vs clerical vs people-focused work. When giving an assignment, the most shocking reply I got was from a beautiful, racially-mixed woman who had been a model and so on. A typically-good, funny worker who had a big ego. She said the specific task was a man’s job. I told her “I enforce equality like in the 19th Amendment here: women get equal rights, equal responsibilities.” She gave me a snobby look then said “I didn’t ask for that Amendment. Keep it, get rid of it, I don’t care. (Smirked and gestured about her appearance) I don’t need it. And I’m not doing man’s work.” I was a little stunned but kept insisting. She grudgingly did the job but poorly on purpose to disrupt our workflow. I had to correct that bias in my head where I assumed no woman would ever counter law’s or policies giving them equality outside maybe the religious. I was wrong…
Back to false claims. That they defaulted against males, including other men who got hit with this, maybe for image reasons or just gender bias led me to change my behavior. Like I do in INFOSEC, I systematically looked for all the types of false claims people made esp what gave them believability. I then came up with mitigations even down to how I walk past attractive women on camera or go around them if off-camera. The specific words to use or avoid is important, esp consistency. I was pretty paranoid but supporting a house of five people when lots of layoffs were happening. The methods worked with a huge drop in threats and claims. Maybe the bullies had less superficial actions to use as leverage. So, I kept at it.
This problem is one reason I work on teams with at least two people who are minorities that won’t lie for me. The latter ensures their credibility as witnesses. Main reason I like mixed teams is I like meeting and learning from new kinds of people. :) It’s a nice side benefit, though, that false claims dropped or ceased entirely when I’m on them for whatever reason. I’m still not sure given I don’t have enough data on that one. I also push for no-nonsense women, especially older with plenty of experience, to get management roles (a) since I’ve always promoted women in the workplace on principle and because mixed teams are more interesting; (b) side benefit that a woman whose dealt with and countered bullshit for years will be more likely to dismiss a false claim by a woman. When I finally got a female boss, esp who fought sexism to get there, the false claims that took serious investigation were handled usually in minutes by her. There was just one problem while she was there with a Hispanic woman… highly attractive with excellent ability to work crowds… that wanted my position launching a smear campaign. It almost worked but she had previously tried something on same manager she needed to convince. Her ego was so strong she didn’t think it would matter because she’d win her over too. Unbelievable lol. She left in a few months.
So, yeah, I’d not go to one of these conferences at all probably. If I do, I’m bringing at least two women, one non-white, who barely like me but support the cause. If they leave me, I’m either going outside or doing something on my computer/phone against a wall or something. I’m not going to be in there alone at all given this specific type of bully or claim will likely win by default in such a place. Normally, though, I don’t mind being alone with women if there’s witnesses around that’s a mixed crowd, I’ve gotten to know them (trust them), or they’re one of the personalities that never pull stuff like this. I’ve gotten good at spotting those thanks to the jobs I did working with strangers all day. I get to relax more than you’d think from this comment, though, since vast majority of females on my team, other teams, and customers’ like me or at least neutral. The risk reducing behaviors are so habitual after years of doing them I barely notice I’m doing them until I see a post like this.
Not funny note: There was also real sexism and harassment against women, esp from younger crowd. We had to deal with that, too. On rare events, some physical assault and stalkers that required police and other actions to deal with. One of the problems in many organizations is people will say the woman is making it up. Then, justice won’t happen. Our women were honest enough and male assholes brazen enough that we usually knew who was lying. Similarly when the women were bullshitting about harassment. In many other places or in trials, the defense was the woman might have been making it all up to spite the male. The reason that defense often works is because of the kind of bullies and lies I describe above. I get so pissed about false claims not just since they impacted me but because a steady stream of them in the media is used to prevent justice for real victims. That combination is why I write longer and fight harder on this issue.
a false rape accusation does more damage than the trial itself (at least imo)
In our society, a woman reporting a rape has to deal with a lot of shit from a lot of different people. Stuff like victim blaming, “What did you wear?”, “Oh you must’ve been reckless” make it already very hard for women to report rape when it happens. If anything we should be more concerned with women not reporting rape cases rather than false reports – especially since the latter is very small compared to the former. Sorry for not providing any sources, I’m on mobile right now.
My favorite part is when you use the phrase “witch hunting” to somehow excuse the fear of women being around.
I could not find a gender-neutral term that carried a similar meaning. This is definitely a fault on my part (my english dictionary is not that rich) but I was referring to the act of persecution by one or more individuals to the intended result of ruining someone’s life, humiliating them etc.
Oh so very little. Do not fear for mysoginy, it will be around forever.
What little hope for humanity and its self-improvement you seem to have. I understand the feeling.
My point was not whether misogyny will go away (it won’t), but how much of the perceived misogyny will be out of outright hatred rather than fear of consequences. Someone who doesn’t interact with women will be perceived as misogynous, but maybe he might just want to stay safe from ending up in a really bad situation? My “gun pointed at your head” analogy still stands. It feels uncomfortable and you can’t expect people to behave normally in those situations.
You seem to be the exact type of person I’m talking about, all going on the aggressive thinking I’m your worst enemy, not giving me the benefit of the doubt. I personally find it really hard to express my thoughts (it’s not just a language barrier, sadly), and getting attacked like that makes me really demoralized and demotivated to even talk. When I am not allowed to talk my mind without people instantly getting so aggressive at me, how am I supposed to not fear doing it?
I personally find it really hard to express my thoughts (it’s not just a language barrier, sadly), and getting attacked like that makes me really demoralized and demotivated to even talk. When I am not allowed to talk my mind without people instantly getting so aggressive at me, how am I supposed to not fear doing it?
I’m sorry that I sounded aggressive, because I was not trying to. I’m still not angry, nor replying out of spite or hate. :) I’m not a native english speaker (either?), so it can be that. Oh, and I also never thought of you as my worst enemy.
I could probably hug your right now, seriously, although I’m a little unsure how to understand your analogy that interacting with women is like having a gun pointed at your head.
As far as I can tell, we agree that misogyny will not go away – try to destroy an idea… – but we kinda disagree about how we should deal with it. I am not in a position to lecture anyone on the topic, and deeply nested threads tend to go off-topic easily, so I’ll happily reply to your emails if you’d like to.
Thank you for your kind words, I’m sorry I misinterpreted your reply then!
I hate to link to it but I think that what best describes my analogy is a scenario like what ESR described. With no proof (even though the source claimed there had been attempts already) either back then or now, that was ruled as “unlikely” at best, but the fact that it doesn’t sound completely ridiculous and could be actually be put to action by a malicious group worries me.
I honestly don’t think most women are like that at all, and as you said, this is going a bit off topic.
About “how to deal with it”, I’m not proposing a solution, I do wonder if being more straightforward with people and less “I’ll totally blogpost this unacceptable behavior” would make anything easier though.
For example, the author quotes Berry’s paragraph about not giving anything for granted, yet instantly assumes that assuming that females are less technical is a big drag for women in tech. What about a little understanding? With so many women in sales and PR positions, the guy might be just tired as hell of having to deal with marketers (although the CTO title should have spoken for itself.)
Not denying that some people are just sexist jerks, though.
Both literal witch hunts and the more recent metaphorical sense were frequently directed at men. The notion that “witch” is female is an ahistorical modern one and simply not part of what the word means in the context of a “witch hunt”.
The witches arrested during the Salem Witch Trials (in 1692-3, around 150 being arrested) and killed (24, 20 executed, 4 died in jail) weren’t all women. A cursory scan of the accused show plenty of male names (although it does seem to bias towards women).
As to witches again being even predominately women, only in certain areas, in Iceland iirc it was as high as 92% of witches were men. If we’re going to get angry at the use of witch to refer to women, lets at least get facts straight about the historical context.
I dated two. They were awesome. Too bad our family moved around a lot. One actually taught me a little about the religion: Wicca. It involved men and women who (my interpretation) were basically nature worshipers. They usually didn’t cause harm because they believed the good or evil they did “came back times three.” When being deliberate rather than spontaneous, they were moderate in actions due to their Law of Extremes saying taking anything to the extreme of left or right makes it identical. That’s incorrect in the general case but there was truth in it where extremists are usually a problem regardless of the topic.
So, they tended to be friendly, non-conformist people that didn’t cause trouble unless provoked where they would warn then fight if necessary. Much like the Satanists I met as their rules similarly require not harming people or animals except in self-defense. For animals, also allowed to kill for food. Only common denominator among them that might inspire the religious choices were they had a lot of outcasts and rebels. The witches I knew were usually intuitive, artistic types whereas the Satanists were often intellectual with mix of artists and non-artists. I don’t know if the artist mix is just my data sample but the intellectual part makes sense given the greatest sin for Satanists is ignorance. They’re expected to pursue knowledge and call bullshit.
By the data, I’d have not worried about witches or Satanists. The majority of religious persecutors and violent offenders are Christian. They also push faith in authority over reason. They’re the most dangerous in the U.S. if I had to go by religion. In reality, all this stuff varies area to area, family to family, and person to person. I accept all groups so long as they’re not causing harm. Live and let live.
While I’m admittedly not an expert, I suspect the witches of the early US have little to do with Wicca, which was first introduced to the public in 1954.
Possibly true. In that case, my experiences with witches wouldnt apply to those. I also suspect there’s a lot of different belief systems and groups using the word witch. Its meaning probably varies by group.
The post content here is a man relating his experience of seeing his cofounder get talked over and ignored because she is a woman, so you immediately comment about… how bothersome it is that a woman might one day accuse you of sexual assault?
What the actual fuck is wrong with you? You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Delete your account.
What the actual fuck is wrong with you? You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Delete your account.
I generally avoid these topics like the plague, but this is the exact reason why. It’s absolutely appalling to me that anyone thinks this is a good response to any comment ever. If you are trying to persuade people or this person, then you have completely failed in backing up your comments with anything but insults. If you aren’t trying to persuade anyone, then you are just a troll who enjoys yelling at someone who is clearly (based on the other comments in this thread) is trying to genuinely learn. You took a teaching moment and made it a display of hatred.
If you are trying to persuade people or this person, then you have completely failed in backing up your comments with anything but insults
This assertion is completely absurd. I’ve been this asshole, been told off and/or beaten up, and learned better. Violent complaint is precisely how signalling to people that their behavior is utterly abhorrent works in society.
How should I signal to you that your behavior here, in this thread, is utterly abhorrent? Should I threaten to beat you up? Tell you to delete your account? Scream aggressive obscenities at you?
Whatever it is you think you need to hear to stop behaving this way, pretend that I said it.
I’ve been this asshole, been told off and/or beaten up, and learned better.
I’ll just say that I find this comment immensely more helpful than your previous comment. If you’d like to expound on how specifically you’ve “been this asshole” in the past, and what you’ve learned from the experience I’d wager that’s much more likely to convince Hamcha (and the rest of us) to change their mind and behavior.
I questioned the reason she was ignored and proposed a motivation for which people might fear dealing with women.
I also questioned what would have happened if the guy would have put any effort in making the issue clear to the people he’s talking shit about other than vague clues before making accusations with circumstantial evidence.
Normal people can have conversions with members of the opposite or same gender without constantly panicking about rape allegations. Do you specifically avoid female waiters at restaurants or cashiers at supermarkets? Is this somehow different to taking to a woman in a nontechnical role? If not, why do you think it is reasonable to pretend a woman who codes is any different? Hell, how on earth can you pretend the possibility of rape allegations is a valid reason to pretend that a person does not exist while in a meeting with multiple participants?
Your regurgitation of sexist crap is shameful. Your lack of thought about it is bewildering. Delete your account.
Great writeup. Many of your examples the kind of good evidence that the other parties had an assumption that pretty much had to be sexism since there was either nothing or very little in terms of alternative explanations. Especially how many times the others just ignore your co-founder like she’s not a person. My move when I meet people in person is to great them, say something friendly or whatever, and especially ask them who they are and what they do. I tend to go right to left, left to right, or the women first depending on the crowd. Still experimenting on that. In any case, I want to know who each person is, what they do in the business, and see how they present themselves.
Much more accurate than just making assumptions at a glance. I think it’s also a richer experience since you meet more kinds of people who just do things differently. Like a novelty effect that drives a lot of what people do as consumers. I experience that effect meeting new kinds of people, seeing new reactions, hearing new jokes, and so on. Not only are the people you describe sexist: they seem like their routines are probably boring with all the predictability and homogeneity. They’re causing big problems for others plus reducing opportunities for themselves. Foolish, foolish.
I know it can seem like a fine line sometimes. Nevertheless, we certainly don’t want to ignore these kinds of issues, even if they do tend to inspire identity politics–related discussions in the comments. As such, I don’t think it’s helpful to use such a pejorative label for these stories just because you don’t like some of the people who tend to flock to them. If you don’t like the content, filter it out, but like it or not this does belong under the “culture” tag.
Note: I hope the downvotes don’t make it seem like you’re being attacked for your beliefs. I’m not one of those who downvoted you, if that helps.
So does porn, yet we find it useful to place it in a distinct category.
Trying to parse out what your point is, I’m guessing you think that it’s actively and inherently unhelpful to place “culture” and “identity politics” in the same category. You didn’t really do anything to prove your point, other than use a “slippery slope” example by bringing up porn in the context of a content aggregation website. Needless to say, if you managed to find porn that might somehow fit in here on Lobsters, I’d be happy to see it.
Here’s a quote from a liberal commentator used in the article you included that pretty much proves my point that the term “identity politics” is presently a pejorative label:
Now, we have the politics of identity, which invites people to stay in, to look inward, to obsess over the body and the self, to surround themselves with a moral forcefield to protect their worldview—which has nothing to do with the world—from any questioning.
That “never looked at her” line matches some experiences of mine and it always surprises me. Particularly egregious ones: Once, my boss (a math major and capable technologist) was ignored by a vendor through a presentation who then “joked” that we could work out the details for her. In another, I was accompanying a founder (very sharp, good at sales, and quite pretty) to a sales meeting as the engineer in tow and after my dog-and-pony show had to keep redirecting sales discussion back to her. Seriously? The introductions didn’t raise a flag that these women were in charge?
Glad to see you’re working on sexism – but while you’re at it, maybe check your ageism?
If you were offended I apologize sincerely. It was only my intention to poke fun at myself as an oldster.
Since we’re on the topic of subtle sexism, ageism, ism-ism, “If you were offended, I apologize” is a classic non-apology form, so if you want an apology to be taken as an apology you might look at alternative ways of stating similar apologies. Not saying you meant it as a non-apology, just pointing it out.
Navigating written text and tone is hard!
Apology accepted :)
In general, “millennial” tends to be a slur, but “see yourself out” really felt non-welcoming. Just FYI for the future :)
Way to man up to your mistakes! punches self in face
Yeah, came here to say this.
The Pinterest thing is kinda justified though:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/224194887670486832 http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/
There should be nothing at all wrong with saying in public to people of any gender that Pinterest is a very female-skewing website.
It’s not about saying that Pinterest is female-heavy - it’s about the assumption that everyone is male / has a wife/girlfriend. Even though everyone was male, this contributes to the feeling of ostracization.
I continue to be unable to understand why I’ve never witnessed any of this. I’m a man who has worked in software for years and before that I was educated in STEM for years. In all this time I’ve seen one single example of the kind of misogyny described here: a senior colleague replied to me and not the intern who asked him a question when the three of us were eating lunch together. That was an odd experience made all the odder by the fact that it was the unique time I’ve witnessed such behaviour.
Am I blind? Lucky? It’s not as though I haven’t been trying to find corroborating evidence of this kind of behaviour.
This is why I wrote this. While I’ve been in tech since I graduated in 2001 and have worked with many women I hadn’t seen these behaviors first hand. I write “seen” rather than “experienced” because I’m sure I was oblivious to many instances. Having a female business partner has illumninated to me how pervasive these behaviors are.
I don’t see sexism every day but I certainly do every month. Take that as a lower bound and multiply by years in the industry and it’s a lot to bear.
I wouldn’t say blind, more like our context-experiences, as men, make a lot of this invisible to us. It’s worth asking coworkers for their experiences with this, if they’re comfortable with it; they’ll have a lot of examples to share.
I, like the author of the OP, have had a lot of opportunity to watch second-hand misogyny on the part of my wife. My guess is that if you aren’t seeing it, it’s because you’re not close enough to someone to hear how they experience things.
Listening to my wife, the number of open, clearly sexist things that happen over her 8 year career so far has been fairly low. There’ve been a few instances of “Little Girl” comments – the name stems from the first she experienced, when one of the R&D Engineers suggested that the project would’ve been better in the hands of a “real” Manufacturing Engineer, and not some “Little Girl”.
The result of him saying that, by the way, was a slap on the wrist by HR and, later, a promotion to a managerial position where he would only be dealing with men (because the R&D team there was 100% men).
More often, though, are the instances of much smaller, much less overt things. Some are similar to your sole experience, but many are so subtle that I didn’t understand the issue till she explained to me. One common gripe she has is the “Alright guys… and Sarah.”-trope. It’s insidious because it seems inclusive, but in reality it’s singling her out as being different. I asked her what it made her feel like as I’m writing this, she says:
(emph mine)
I think these sorts of things can feel really ‘normal’ to someone, even someone looking for sexism and misogyny in the workplace or elsewhere.
Another common kind of misogyny she’s experienced comes in the form of reviews. My wife is a Manufacturing engineer. She’d tell you that being an MFE means that she figures out: “How to take the thing that R&D took 10 months to build 1 of, and make it so we can build 10, 100, 1000, however many a day.” This is a field that requires no small amount of crossfunctional ability. She’s equal parts an ME, EE, Programmer, Quality Control Specialist, Documentation Writer, and half a dozen other things. This means working with lots of people and exerting a lot of will to make things happen simply by convincing people it should. Now, I’m in a similar sort of role, though on the software side. I imagine, given the venue, that you are in some similar situation. I’m sure you’ve known folks who have argued strongly for their position – I imagine you’ve argued strongly for your positions. I know I have. I also know that I’ve never been told to “Be nicer” in my 1:1’s with my boss, or that I was “overly aggressive in supporting my view of the product.” Nor have I ever been called “Petulant,” to my face, by my boss – or anyone else for that matter. My wife is not petulant, she’s passionate. It’s something companies claim to look for in engineers – passion to do good work is important. The difference I’ve seen is not in the actions my wife takes, but in the way those actions are received. This is something broadly hidden from view to outside observers; no one sits in those meetings except her and her boss. When I go hard in the paint to try to argue for a particular design, I don’t leave anything on the table, I make a case as strongly as possible. I can say for a fact that there are times I have been petty and low-minded when I didn’t get what I wanted. I’ve never been called petulant in a review. I’ve never been told I was too aggressive. Even if you don’t believe me when I say my wife isn’t those things, you should at least believe that I’m telling the truth when I claim to be petulant and have never been called on it. Even if you can’t see the misogyny, hopefully that illuminates the privilege that is equal to the problem.
Point being, it’s certainly possible that you work and live in a particularly good environment, where the people are aware and try to curtail this sort of thing, but more likely it’s that the misogyny that’s happening isn’t on the surface. I encourage you to engage with women engineers in an honest and open way; ask them about their experience. Ask them if you’ve been party to that experience. If you care about not doing shitty things to people, it’s worth an ask. Some women will give you the brush off about it – they don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But in my experience, when I’ve asked women about their experiences, they’ve been more than willing to tell me; especially when I open with, “Hey, my wife had something shitty happen to her, does this shit happen to you? Can you tell me about it? Do I do this? I’d like to not; but I don’t know if I am.”
https://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/no-ladies-no-gentlemen-on-gendering-a-room-full-of-people/
This is a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. Personally I usually just use “People” or “Folks” (as in, “Hey People” or “Hey Folks”); my wife I think was getting at the main point of there being a problem of being singled out, but this article makes a good case for even that ‘more inclusive’ phrasing of “Ladies and Gentlemen” still being about gender. It occurs to me now it also leaves out various folks who find them selves identifying as neither ladies nor gentlemen. Very interesting, TIL.
This is the problem that “y’all” was invented to solve.
“Y’all” sounds real bad with my New England accent. Seriously, it oughta be a warcrime when I say it.
Now you got me curious. I’d probably smirk or smile a bit but no more than over the unusual things down here. I say adapt it and spread it. To heck with the haters! :)
It ends up somewhere in the vicinity of rhyming with ‘Mal’ (as in “They stabbed me, Mal, with a sword, how weird is that?”). I can put on an accent and say it okay, but if I’m speaking naturally, it doesn’t really work. Suffice to say my accent ended up in a weird place when it solidified; and while I can force other accents, my default is… pretty weird.
I usually try to speak in a pretty flat accent, but it’s an affectation. My natural accent lives somewhere between a Worcester/Brockton/Rhode Island accent; and leans pretty hard on hard ‘a’ sounds (I pronounce “Java” with an ‘a’ like “at” or “apple”, not one like “hard” or “all”); thus the weirdness with “y’all”.
I sometimes do use “y’all” in text, but it’s usually not something I need to do (if I’m addressing a group, I’ve probably started a chat/am sending an email, and “You all” is more appropriate there).
I keep using it being from the South. It’s more efficient. :) It also has the side effect of baiting out those that bully over grammar or just look to argue with those who are perceived as less educated. That’s sometimes useful.
I’m not from the South, but given that English lacks a distinct 2nd person plural, and here’s this handy one, why not use it? Plus, it sounds awesome.
Well, that’s an interesting take on it. Makes sense.
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I know this post will sound really bad no matter how I say it, but I wonder how much of sexism, in the present (unlikely) or future (more likely) will be more fear than misogyny.
Womens are becoming a touchy subjects and, in today’s world where a trial is decided by the public before it goes to court, a false rape accusation does more damage than the trial itself (at least imo). If I were an employer I’d be worried of female employees, not out of hatred or anything, but because they would hold so much power to screw me over.
I personally don’t care what gender you are or religion or species.. I even like talking to assholes as long as they have something interesting to say. (Sadly I tend to be a bit of an asshole myself) But I would still be scared of talking to random women in a context like a conference because I might say something that puts me in a really bad place. It feels like I would be talking to someone with a loaded gun in my face.
I think the best friends I have are those who made me notice my mistakes instead of assuming the worst of me, while the tech scene today seems more like a witch-hunting marathon to me.
On that subject, why does the world have to work with cues and aggressive stances? Why can’t we be honest with each other? I see it every day, someone above me expects everyone to catch on her cues, if they don’t, they’re the bad guys, without even letting the other end knowing anything.
Most angry tweets and blog posts about this topic are from people who just kept everything in or bursted out in anger at them and they got defensive or responded just as aggressively (kinda to be expected, honestly). I would love to see examples of people who were made aware of their behavior and everything went fine after that.
A genuine rape accusation also does more damage than the trial itself. In both cases, the victim is affected. It’s only how we perceive it that’s different.
I think somewhere along the line communities started to encourage angry reactions as a way of maximising engagement. Somewhere along the line, we forgot to be kind by default, in a way we weren’t offline. I meet people who spend a lot of time in online communities, and you can see (amongst some people) that their online behaviour leaks into their personal offline behaviour, but rarely the other way.
I think the recent furore over Equifax’s CSO having a music degree is a good example of this. Nobody should care about someone’s degree, but a marketwatch piece designed to provoke angry responses, provoked angry responses on the Internet. The Twitter algorithms designed to increase engagement increased engagement and the Internet went twitter crazy.
There has to be a way to use a combo of the tools we use for engagement to promote de-escalation and de-engagement. Deprioritising inflammatory content to make the world a better place is not losing out. It’s winning.
That’s what I really love about lobsters. People may have issues misinterpreting context and social cues here, but generally people are kind to each other.
That sort of accusation could, for example, prevent you from winning an Oscar. Or become elected US President.
[Note: Before reading this, readers should probably know I have PTSD from a head injury. The side effects of nervous eyes, mumbly voice, and shaky hands apparently make me look like an easy target for male and female predators alike. I’m like a magnet for assholes who I usually deal with patiently, dismiss, or stand ground. Mostly ignore them. This issue required special treatment, though, since I was always treated very differently when it as something like this.]
Far as scenario you’re worried about, it’s a real thing that’s happened to me multiple times. Not rape claims fortunately but sexual harassment or discrimination. I think I was getting false claims to managers two or three times a year with dozens making them to me directly as a warning or rebuke but not to my bosses. They just wanted me to worry that they could or would destroy me. Aside from the random ones, it was usually women who wanted a discount on something, wanted to be served ahead of other customers, or (with employees) not wanting to do the task they were given since it was beneath them or “man’s work.” Saying no to any of that was all it took…
However, I was in a service position dealing with thousands of people plus dozens of workers due to high turnover. With all those people, just a few claims a year plus dozens of threats shows how rare this specific kind of bully is. Those that will fully push a false, gender-oriented claim are rare but highly damaging: each claim led people [that didn’t know me well] to assume I was guilty by default since I was male, interrogations by multiple supervisors or managers, and a waiting period for final results where I wondered if I’d loose my job and house with no work reference. Employment gaps on resumes make it harder to get new jobs in the U.S.. I got through those thanks to what I think were coworker’s testimony (mostly women) and managers’ judgment that the good and bad of me they’ve seen versus straight-up evil stuff a tiny number of women were claiming didn’t match up.
Quick example: As a team supervisor, I always gave jobs to people in a semi-random way to try to be equal in what people had to do. Some supervisors seemed to cave in if a worker claimed the work was better for another gender, esp labor vs clerical vs people-focused work. When giving an assignment, the most shocking reply I got was from a beautiful, racially-mixed woman who had been a model and so on. A typically-good, funny worker who had a big ego. She said the specific task was a man’s job. I told her “I enforce equality like in the 19th Amendment here: women get equal rights, equal responsibilities.” She gave me a snobby look then said “I didn’t ask for that Amendment. Keep it, get rid of it, I don’t care. (Smirked and gestured about her appearance) I don’t need it. And I’m not doing man’s work.” I was a little stunned but kept insisting. She grudgingly did the job but poorly on purpose to disrupt our workflow. I had to correct that bias in my head where I assumed no woman would ever counter law’s or policies giving them equality outside maybe the religious. I was wrong…
Back to false claims. That they defaulted against males, including other men who got hit with this, maybe for image reasons or just gender bias led me to change my behavior. Like I do in INFOSEC, I systematically looked for all the types of false claims people made esp what gave them believability. I then came up with mitigations even down to how I walk past attractive women on camera or go around them if off-camera. The specific words to use or avoid is important, esp consistency. I was pretty paranoid but supporting a house of five people when lots of layoffs were happening. The methods worked with a huge drop in threats and claims. Maybe the bullies had less superficial actions to use as leverage. So, I kept at it.
This problem is one reason I work on teams with at least two people who are minorities that won’t lie for me. The latter ensures their credibility as witnesses. Main reason I like mixed teams is I like meeting and learning from new kinds of people. :) It’s a nice side benefit, though, that false claims dropped or ceased entirely when I’m on them for whatever reason. I’m still not sure given I don’t have enough data on that one. I also push for no-nonsense women, especially older with plenty of experience, to get management roles (a) since I’ve always promoted women in the workplace on principle and because mixed teams are more interesting; (b) side benefit that a woman whose dealt with and countered bullshit for years will be more likely to dismiss a false claim by a woman. When I finally got a female boss, esp who fought sexism to get there, the false claims that took serious investigation were handled usually in minutes by her. There was just one problem while she was there with a Hispanic woman… highly attractive with excellent ability to work crowds… that wanted my position launching a smear campaign. It almost worked but she had previously tried something on same manager she needed to convince. Her ego was so strong she didn’t think it would matter because she’d win her over too. Unbelievable lol. She left in a few months.
So, yeah, I’d not go to one of these conferences at all probably. If I do, I’m bringing at least two women, one non-white, who barely like me but support the cause. If they leave me, I’m either going outside or doing something on my computer/phone against a wall or something. I’m not going to be in there alone at all given this specific type of bully or claim will likely win by default in such a place. Normally, though, I don’t mind being alone with women if there’s witnesses around that’s a mixed crowd, I’ve gotten to know them (trust them), or they’re one of the personalities that never pull stuff like this. I’ve gotten good at spotting those thanks to the jobs I did working with strangers all day. I get to relax more than you’d think from this comment, though, since vast majority of females on my team, other teams, and customers’ like me or at least neutral. The risk reducing behaviors are so habitual after years of doing them I barely notice I’m doing them until I see a post like this.
Not funny note: There was also real sexism and harassment against women, esp from younger crowd. We had to deal with that, too. On rare events, some physical assault and stalkers that required police and other actions to deal with. One of the problems in many organizations is people will say the woman is making it up. Then, justice won’t happen. Our women were honest enough and male assholes brazen enough that we usually knew who was lying. Similarly when the women were bullshitting about harassment. In many other places or in trials, the defense was the woman might have been making it all up to spite the male. The reason that defense often works is because of the kind of bullies and lies I describe above. I get so pissed about false claims not just since they impacted me but because a steady stream of them in the media is used to prevent justice for real victims. That combination is why I write longer and fight harder on this issue.
In our society, a woman reporting a rape has to deal with a lot of shit from a lot of different people. Stuff like victim blaming, “What did you wear?”, “Oh you must’ve been reckless” make it already very hard for women to report rape when it happens. If anything we should be more concerned with women not reporting rape cases rather than false reports – especially since the latter is very small compared to the former. Sorry for not providing any sources, I’m on mobile right now.
It does sound really bad. My favorite part is when you use the phrase “witch hunting” to somehow excuse the fear of women being around.
Oh so very little. Do not fear for mysoginy, it will be around forever.
I could not find a gender-neutral term that carried a similar meaning. This is definitely a fault on my part (my english dictionary is not that rich) but I was referring to the act of persecution by one or more individuals to the intended result of ruining someone’s life, humiliating them etc.
What little hope for humanity and its self-improvement you seem to have. I understand the feeling.
My point was not whether misogyny will go away (it won’t), but how much of the perceived misogyny will be out of outright hatred rather than fear of consequences. Someone who doesn’t interact with women will be perceived as misogynous, but maybe he might just want to stay safe from ending up in a really bad situation? My “gun pointed at your head” analogy still stands. It feels uncomfortable and you can’t expect people to behave normally in those situations.
You seem to be the exact type of person I’m talking about, all going on the aggressive thinking I’m your worst enemy, not giving me the benefit of the doubt. I personally find it really hard to express my thoughts (it’s not just a language barrier, sadly), and getting attacked like that makes me really demoralized and demotivated to even talk. When I am not allowed to talk my mind without people instantly getting so aggressive at me, how am I supposed to not fear doing it?
Thanks for saying this.
I’m sorry that I sounded aggressive, because I was not trying to. I’m still not angry, nor replying out of spite or hate. :) I’m not a native english speaker (either?), so it can be that. Oh, and I also never thought of you as my worst enemy.
I could probably hug your right now, seriously, although I’m a little unsure how to understand your analogy that interacting with women is like having a gun pointed at your head.
As far as I can tell, we agree that misogyny will not go away – try to destroy an idea… – but we kinda disagree about how we should deal with it. I am not in a position to lecture anyone on the topic, and deeply nested threads tend to go off-topic easily, so I’ll happily reply to your emails if you’d like to.
Thank you for your kind words, I’m sorry I misinterpreted your reply then!
I hate to link to it but I think that what best describes my analogy is a scenario like what ESR described. With no proof (even though the source claimed there had been attempts already) either back then or now, that was ruled as “unlikely” at best, but the fact that it doesn’t sound completely ridiculous and could be actually be put to action by a malicious group worries me.
I honestly don’t think most women are like that at all, and as you said, this is going a bit off topic.
About “how to deal with it”, I’m not proposing a solution, I do wonder if being more straightforward with people and less “I’ll totally blogpost this unacceptable behavior” would make anything easier though.
For example, the author quotes Berry’s paragraph about not giving anything for granted, yet instantly assumes that assuming that females are less technical is a big drag for women in tech. What about a little understanding? With so many women in sales and PR positions, the guy might be just tired as hell of having to deal with marketers (although the CTO title should have spoken for itself.)
Not denying that some people are just sexist jerks, though.
Both literal witch hunts and the more recent metaphorical sense were frequently directed at men. The notion that “witch” is female is an ahistorical modern one and simply not part of what the word means in the context of a “witch hunt”.
…So? Are you reading that Internet comment in the 1700s when historical witch hunts were actually happening?
The witches arrested during the Salem Witch Trials (in 1692-3, around 150 being arrested) and killed (24, 20 executed, 4 died in jail) weren’t all women. A cursory scan of the accused show plenty of male names (although it does seem to bias towards women).
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That’s not true. Basically everyone learns about the Salem Witch Trials either in high school or via movies and other pop culture references.
“US American” here, 2 things you have wrong:
And one thing not often known by Americans of their own witchcraft shenanigans, of the 21 executed Salem witches, 8 were men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_of_the_Salem_witch_trials#Convicted_and_executed
As to witches again being even predominately women, only in certain areas, in Iceland iirc it was as high as 92% of witches were men. If we’re going to get angry at the use of witch to refer to women, lets at least get facts straight about the historical context.
Not to mention that the primary accusers in Salem were female. It certainly wasn’t just man against woman.
I dated two. They were awesome. Too bad our family moved around a lot. One actually taught me a little about the religion: Wicca. It involved men and women who (my interpretation) were basically nature worshipers. They usually didn’t cause harm because they believed the good or evil they did “came back times three.” When being deliberate rather than spontaneous, they were moderate in actions due to their Law of Extremes saying taking anything to the extreme of left or right makes it identical. That’s incorrect in the general case but there was truth in it where extremists are usually a problem regardless of the topic.
So, they tended to be friendly, non-conformist people that didn’t cause trouble unless provoked where they would warn then fight if necessary. Much like the Satanists I met as their rules similarly require not harming people or animals except in self-defense. For animals, also allowed to kill for food. Only common denominator among them that might inspire the religious choices were they had a lot of outcasts and rebels. The witches I knew were usually intuitive, artistic types whereas the Satanists were often intellectual with mix of artists and non-artists. I don’t know if the artist mix is just my data sample but the intellectual part makes sense given the greatest sin for Satanists is ignorance. They’re expected to pursue knowledge and call bullshit.
By the data, I’d have not worried about witches or Satanists. The majority of religious persecutors and violent offenders are Christian. They also push faith in authority over reason. They’re the most dangerous in the U.S. if I had to go by religion. In reality, all this stuff varies area to area, family to family, and person to person. I accept all groups so long as they’re not causing harm. Live and let live.
While I’m admittedly not an expert, I suspect the witches of the early US have little to do with Wicca, which was first introduced to the public in 1954.
Possibly true. In that case, my experiences with witches wouldnt apply to those. I also suspect there’s a lot of different belief systems and groups using the word witch. Its meaning probably varies by group.
The post content here is a man relating his experience of seeing his cofounder get talked over and ignored because she is a woman, so you immediately comment about… how bothersome it is that a woman might one day accuse you of sexual assault?
What the actual fuck is wrong with you? You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. Delete your account.
I generally avoid these topics like the plague, but this is the exact reason why. It’s absolutely appalling to me that anyone thinks this is a good response to any comment ever. If you are trying to persuade people or this person, then you have completely failed in backing up your comments with anything but insults. If you aren’t trying to persuade anyone, then you are just a troll who enjoys yelling at someone who is clearly (based on the other comments in this thread) is trying to genuinely learn. You took a teaching moment and made it a display of hatred.
This assertion is completely absurd. I’ve been this asshole, been told off and/or beaten up, and learned better. Violent complaint is precisely how signalling to people that their behavior is utterly abhorrent works in society.
How should I signal to you that your behavior here, in this thread, is utterly abhorrent? Should I threaten to beat you up? Tell you to delete your account? Scream aggressive obscenities at you?
Whatever it is you think you need to hear to stop behaving this way, pretend that I said it.
I’ll just say that I find this comment immensely more helpful than your previous comment. If you’d like to expound on how specifically you’ve “been this asshole” in the past, and what you’ve learned from the experience I’d wager that’s much more likely to convince Hamcha (and the rest of us) to change their mind and behavior.
I questioned the reason she was ignored and proposed a motivation for which people might fear dealing with women. I also questioned what would have happened if the guy would have put any effort in making the issue clear to the people he’s talking shit about other than vague clues before making accusations with circumstantial evidence.
What is there to be ashamed of?
Normal people can have conversions with members of the opposite or same gender without constantly panicking about rape allegations. Do you specifically avoid female waiters at restaurants or cashiers at supermarkets? Is this somehow different to taking to a woman in a nontechnical role? If not, why do you think it is reasonable to pretend a woman who codes is any different? Hell, how on earth can you pretend the possibility of rape allegations is a valid reason to pretend that a person does not exist while in a meeting with multiple participants?
Your regurgitation of sexist crap is shameful. Your lack of thought about it is bewildering. Delete your account.
Who taught you to shame people for their feelings and beliefs?
Some beliefs are horrendously evil. Your freedom to believe harmful crap does not constitute immunity from being yelled at for spouting it in public.
Great writeup. Many of your examples the kind of good evidence that the other parties had an assumption that pretty much had to be sexism since there was either nothing or very little in terms of alternative explanations. Especially how many times the others just ignore your co-founder like she’s not a person. My move when I meet people in person is to great them, say something friendly or whatever, and especially ask them who they are and what they do. I tend to go right to left, left to right, or the women first depending on the crowd. Still experimenting on that. In any case, I want to know who each person is, what they do in the business, and see how they present themselves.
Much more accurate than just making assumptions at a glance. I think it’s also a richer experience since you meet more kinds of people who just do things differently. Like a novelty effect that drives a lot of what people do as consumers. I experience that effect meeting new kinds of people, seeing new reactions, hearing new jokes, and so on. Not only are the people you describe sexist: they seem like their routines are probably boring with all the predictability and homogeneity. They’re causing big problems for others plus reducing opportunities for themselves. Foolish, foolish.
Are there any women in this comments section?
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I know it can seem like a fine line sometimes. Nevertheless, we certainly don’t want to ignore these kinds of issues, even if they do tend to inspire identity politics–related discussions in the comments. As such, I don’t think it’s helpful to use such a pejorative label for these stories just because you don’t like some of the people who tend to flock to them. If you don’t like the content, filter it out, but like it or not this does belong under the “culture” tag.
Note: I hope the downvotes don’t make it seem like you’re being attacked for your beliefs. I’m not one of those who downvoted you, if that helps.
So does porn, yet we find it useful to place it in a distinct category.
Is it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics
Trying to parse out what your point is, I’m guessing you think that it’s actively and inherently unhelpful to place “culture” and “identity politics” in the same category. You didn’t really do anything to prove your point, other than use a “slippery slope” example by bringing up porn in the context of a content aggregation website. Needless to say, if you managed to find porn that might somehow fit in here on Lobsters, I’d be happy to see it.
Here’s a quote from a liberal commentator used in the article you included that pretty much proves my point that the term “identity politics” is presently a pejorative label: