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Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

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Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#31

[flagged]

Someone in another comment thread already managed to type out:

> the new political paradigm of female supremacy

And my eyeballs rolled so hard I might need medical attention.

My guess: Somewhat well meaning Asperbergers person meets female who has waded through years of lowball misogyny and mansplaining galore.

Just bad happenstance.

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#33

First off, you should be careful when using apologic statements at work. They can be seem as an admission of guilt by the claimant and/or employeer and can lead to further action. Saying things as such as: (1) "I understand that you feel that way, but my intention behind that statement was ... ." (2) "It's unfortunate that you feel that way, but my intentions were ... ." (3) "I can see that my actions have affected y…

Frankly those "I understand that you feel that way but my intention was" statements sound far more like evidence that someone is intentionally patronising and denigrating someone than "sorry, I didn't mean..."

That carries all the problems of acknowledging you're aware of the effects of things you're saying (just as bad from an HR point of view), but simply refusing to care (worse), and it's hard to think of any response to accusations of "mansplaining" that sounds more like "mansplaining" than unapologetically stating it's unfortunate a lady is incorrect to object to your statement...

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#36
post #20

[flagged]

But going to a website full of people who work in organizations and rules just like your own seems pretty wise.

Probably wise to seek out alternative points of view as well. Or just find an echo chamber to tell you that you did nothing wrong. Both work, kinda!

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#37
As far as OP goes, this situation is hard to judge, but if somebody seems determined to end your career there, your best bet might be to try and document your Aspergers with both HR (and also perhaps some non-insane upper level manager in your company who might be able to provide some pushback from above) and ask for reasonable accommodation for your medical condition. Aspergers still puts you lower on society's oppression scale, but it's at least something medical that can be documented and makes them more cautious about this circumstance and just taking her word for it without a fair shake. And you'd probably want to do it quickly.

As a general statement on society, this kind of thing is probably rare, but it's common enough to make me see it as a negative risk to work with anybody other than straight White (or maybe Asian) men, because everybody else has social power over you to fuck you over for any perceived slight.

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#38
post #4

You might be “mansplaining”. Think if you may have told her things or explained things she may have already known. She may perceive you are insulting her intelligence. Given that you have Asperger’s, this is likely something you do to everyone, and not related to gender. You probably have a lot of knowledge and it’s natural to want to share that. However you may be missing subtle clues that the person you are talking…

> You might be “mansplaining”. Think if you may have told her things or explained things she may have already known. She may perceive you are insulting her intelligence.

Probably she is perceiving it wrongly?

Explaining things to a coworker seems pretty normal, unless you're unnecessarily repeating yourself and they already told you they got it, or is intentionally public like in a meeting

No matter how much experience they have, everyone knows some detail others don't

I always run through a colleague how I have done X, not that they don't know, but they might not know, or they might suggest improvements, either way more than one person gets informed

Especially in business, you might have to run the same process dozens of time with the same people until it is clear how it is going to be implemented

Accusing someone of explaining too much seems like overreacting. A more worrying problem would be under explaining

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#39
I have aspergers too.

It's hard for me to comment on the specifics of this situation because social dynamics are complex. Given you have aspergers it's entirely possible you're doing things wrong without knowing, but it's also possible this person being unreasonable.

All I can really do is give advice based on what I've learnt as a fellow aspie who once lost their job for being an aspie in the workplace.

Firstly, you shouldn't be trying to make friends at work. If people ask you personal questions you should always redirect the conversation to something work related. But more importantly, you should never (under any circumstances) ask people personal questions – especially females. The reason you shouldn't ask personal questions is because if you're aspie you probably struggle to maintain eye contact and you probably speak in an unusual, perhaps awkward monotoned way. Asking a women, "what did you do on the weekend?" without eye contact and with typical aspie inflections will often be preserved as creepy. And it's possible you might also just look be a bit weird which can add to this. For example, it's quite common for aspies to have strange fashion sense, or look greasy because they haven't washed for a week. Basically everything about you could be sending red flags to this women to the point that it doesn't really matter what you're actually saying to her, the main issue is simply that you're communicating as a person with aspergers.

Secondly, do not engage in casual group conservations, avoid office parties, and do not joke about anything. If you can, even attempt to avoid laughing at jokes or behaviour you find funny. Humour is extremely dangerous for aspies. Causal settings like group chats during lunch, or Christmas office parties tend to be full of humour. Humour is often controversial, but as an aspie you probably don't have a good sense for what's appropriate. Even if you believe you know the rules, you should assume you don't. There's simply too much subtlety in humour and what's appropriate will vary massively on minor variations in context. You might know how to act 95% of the time, but that 5% can cost you your job.

Finally, be extremely polite. Obviously there's the basic stuff like saying please and thank you, but also just acknowledging people for doing good work or being helpful around the office can go a long way. People might not understand you, but if they just know you well enough to know you're a pleasant and polite person in my experience they'll treat you much better. Obviously don't go over the top with compliments – I'm assuming you're at least socially adjusted enough to be able to say "thanks" to someone without coming across as weird here.

In regards to this specific situation, I'd suggest you avoid this person as much as possible and if you interact with them ensure it's purely work-related. But also make sure you do this while being as polite as you possibly can be to them. If you look like you're avoiding them and shutting down them down when they attempt to communicate with you you also won't be doing yourself any favours. That's why you always engage, act polite, but always redirect conversation to something work related.

But that's just my advice, as one aspie to another.

Re: Ask HN: Accused of acting sexist. What do do?

#40

First off, you should be careful when using apologic statements at work. They can be seem as an admission of guilt by the claimant and/or employeer and can lead to further action. Saying things as such as: (1) "I understand that you feel that way, but my intention behind that statement was ... ." (2) "It's unfortunate that you feel that way, but my intentions were ... ." (3) "I can see that my actions have affected y…

Frankly those "I understand that you feel that way but my intention was" statements sound far more like evidence that someone is intentionally patronising and denigrating someone than "sorry, I didn't mean..." That carries all the problems of acknowledging you're aware of the effects of things you're saying (just as bad from an HR point of view), but simply refusing to care (worse), and it's hard to think of any resp…

I think the key thing to question in your response is "sounds more like evidience ..." . How we intend to convey something is a byproduct of who we are at a particular moment in time, as is someone interpreting something is a byproduct of who they are at a particular moment in time. If you were to include gender to be one of the factors in the byproduct of who someone is at a particular moment in time, I would think my considered responses is more likely helpful then anything else unless their is something I'm not considering, because (1) you are acknowledging their hurt, and (2) you are conveying that was not your intentions. You can classify this scenario as a misunderstanding. People in general won't cohesively work well together until they recognize and change the way they handle these misunderstanding.
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