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“Let her speak please”

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Re: “Let her speak please”

#21

Edit: I watched the video. The moderator goes on and on and the "let her speak please" sounds very polite. This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men. It's one thing to have one panelist talk over another, but to have the moderator, who is explicitly in charge of facilitating a panel discussion, be the one to drown out a panelist is just unacceptable. Yes, "not all men" do this, but th…

Journalists definitely like to hear themselves talk, even when formulating questions while moderating a discussion. But if he, as a relative layperson in science, felt that comfortable interrupting Dr. Hubeny and riffing off of her area of expertise, imagine what he's like in a topic in which he doesn't think himself a relative amateur.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#22

Edit: I watched the video. The moderator goes on and on and the "let her speak please" sounds very polite. This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men. It's one thing to have one panelist talk over another, but to have the moderator, who is explicitly in charge of facilitating a panel discussion, be the one to drown out a panelist is just unacceptable. Yes, "not all men" do this, but th…

You know men get talked over by women too?

Do you believe that it is as common? Do you believe that the person you are replying to doesn't believe that it ever happens? Does excluding a full disclaimer invalidate his thoughts about trying not to talk over women or dominating conversations?

I don't believe it is always necessary to counter-exemplify what you experience as a general trend.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#23
What's really interesting is that the author only became 'boiling' with rage when this socially-unaware moderator talked over the woman on the panel, not when he talked over the other men.

This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant. Problem? Yes. Sexism? No.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#24
post #14

Aaaaaand it's flagged. No surprises there. I was refreshing every five minutes to see how long it would take. [Edit: Thanks to the mods for taking responsibility for allowing this discussion].

The mere thought that the world isn't a meritocracy frightens techbros. Any word ending in -ism is like a swear word to them. It's a really big problem that no one wants to acknowledge and if you do bring it up suddenly you're an SJW, combative, political, etc... It speaks numbers that in the link so many people had the same thought as the author, but were afraid to speak out. We've successfully stigmatized calling people out in society because that would be impolite and PC culture. There used to be a phrase "speak truth to power", but it doesn't really work when so many are silenced and ostracized.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know men get talked over by women too?

Do you believe that it is as common? Do you believe that the person you are replying to doesn't believe that it ever happens? Does excluding a full disclaimer invalidate his thoughts about trying not to talk over women or dominating conversations? I don't believe it is always necessary to counter-exemplify what you experience as a general trend.

watch the recode lady interview any one of her favourite nerds.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#26

What's really interesting is that the author only became 'boiling' with rage when this socially-unaware moderator talked over the woman on the panel, not when he talked over the other men. This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant.…

Have you actually seen the video?

Re: “Let her speak please”

#27

Can someone please pass that note to Joe Scarborough also? He was interviewed by Colbert, and not once was this raised. Seriously, watch Morning Joe and he just will not let Mika Brzezinski speak, and you can see her suppressing her frustration. Scarborough doesn't even appear to know he's doing it, and Brzezinski seems to be powerless to stop him.

It can't bother her too much. They just announced their engagement.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/business/media/morning...

Re: “Let her speak please”

#29

What's really interesting is that the author only became 'boiling' with rage when this socially-unaware moderator talked over the woman on the panel, not when he talked over the other men. This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant.…

This kind of argument is very akin to saying that we need a White History Month, and that #whitelivesmatter.

STEM, as an institution, has historically not provided a level playing field for everyone. So when stuff like this happens, it stops being an alpha nerd issue, and starts becoming a social issue.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#30

What's really interesting is that the author only became 'boiling' with rage when this socially-unaware moderator talked over the woman on the panel, not when he talked over the other men. This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant.…

You've been able to watch enough of the video to discern that the moderator was an equal-opportunity-interruptor? Honest question, I just skimmed the video, and given that there were 5 men of similar age/race, I don't think even if I were in the audience I'd have a clear tally on how much each man got to speak, versus how easy it is to track how much/little opportunity the woman had. But the OP does assert that the moderator even acknowledged to Dr. Hubeny that she hadn't had much time,. Looking at the time period around 1 hour in, it does seem that he talks excessively while questioning Hubeny. But I didn't sit and watch all of the other interactions he had with the men.

Just because the moderator had interrupted some of the other speakers does not mean the OP is wrong in her assessment that Hubeny was egregiously talked-over. I guess if you think the sexism claim is unwarranted, you could help skeptics by linking to timestamps where Holt gives other panelists the same intensity of talk-over he allegedly gave Hubeny.

Edit: I'll play a little Devil's advocate to help the discussion.

At 39:25, the moderator is going on length about...something. His cadence wavers as if inviting anyone to jump in, but he keeps on going: https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=39m26s

30 seconds later, he finally asks why inflation has such skepticism and points to a panelist. The panelist tells a kind of rambling joke and as he rambles through the punchline, the moderator steps in and moves on to the next question:

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=39m50s

Arguably, though, you could say the moderator did the right thing because the panelist made a kind of weak joke, and the moderator had to interject to go onto the next topic. He ends up explaining, in a way that I imagine is more accessible to the audience, the 2 fields of thought, before pointing to another panelist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

This panelist is given a decent chunk of time to talk, almost 2 minutes, to go over string theory, etc.

At 1:02:00, he pitches to Dr. Hubeny, and he gives her the same treatment in which he takes a good long time to set up the question and the scope that's understandable to the audience, while being a useful topic for her:

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h1m55s

At about 30 seconds in, as he's describing her position (presumably to the audience), she tries to clarify something , but he keeps talking. However, i think this is case of her misreading the moderator's pause as a cue. About 10 seconds later he finishes his train of thought and cedes the floor to her at around 1:03:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

But about 20 seconds later, as she's trying to assert how both theories are correct, the moderator jumps in say "So tell us about those 2 theories".

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h3m21s

...which is fine, because maybe he sensed the speaker was going to go too deep into details about the equivalence of the 2 models, when the audience would benefit from her describing the models.

...However, this interruption goes on for almost a minute, as he apparently decides to do the work of describing the theories. He eventually stops talking and reverts back to his prior prompt of "tell us a little bit about the 2 theories"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

Hubeny appears ready to speak, but the moderator then goes on for 10 more seconds in which he tries to explain to her what he wants her to explain...and this is where Hubeny "giggles". But she's given about a full minute to talk, which seems reasonable.

----

I don't present the above points as complete evidence, it's what I landed on after randomly scrubbing in the period before the 60 minute mark. I think it's not out-of-line to say that the moderator is aggressive/over-eager in talking too much, and it may not just be sexism. But when you have a panel of 5 men and 1 woman and the woman has had little to speak for 60 minutes in, that's a bad time to go on an extended interruption as he did, as it becomes very noticable.

That said, I don't want to say that the moderator is a total ass. He has 6 highly intelligent and possibly highly specialized people who don't have a unifying topic of debate, so it's incumbent upon him to not only define a scope that the audience can relate to, but aggressively move the discussion forward so that no one rambles too far into their rabbit hole.

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