Outrage culture front and center. Time to pull out our morality antennas and virtue signal how pious we are in support.
> virtue signal
Your use of this vapid phrase is itself a form of virtue signalling.
“Let her speak please”
301–310 of 723 posts
Re: “Let her speak please”
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might be the thing that is most problematic about 'call out' culture. We assume that we know the intention of people's behavior (sexism) and how it is received (offense). In many cases there may be neither. But I'm just cynical enough to suspect that this many not matter to people who 'call out.' They feel that they are on a mission to make society better regardless of whether there are problems in any individua…
'Impact' is far more important than 'intent'. People do racist/sexist/less than ideal things all the time, without even meaning to, because many of those behaviors are ingrained/systemic. Not meaning to be sexist doesn't excuse sexism. I agree that call out culture sometimes doesn't leave room for nuance and sometimes unnecessarily shoves people into defensive spaces - i.e. telling people they 'are sexist' vs telling…
I'm not sure what you even mean by "impact" and "intent". If by impact you mean treating a man differently than a woman, you're neglecting the myriad of factors besides sex which could have resulted in the distinction in treatment. The canonical example being the wage gap, which is ultimately caused by individual choice and not discrimination. If people insist on defining sexism, etc based on the result and not on the cause, then these so-called prejudices aren't worth fighting (because a huge portion of what we're fighting isn't prejudice but individual freedom).
As for "intent", how can one be accidentally racist if racism is defined in useful terms? One can conceivably accidentally participate in a racial disparity, for example, by being an English-speaking business owner providing a useful service, I might only advertise my services in English such that mainly English speakers benefit. Because the racial distributions vary across these language groups, Asians and Hispanics would benefit less, and a race gap might widen. This obviously isn't racism in the original sender of the wires, but people tend to use it in this sense, often it seems to use this ambiguity to make harsh accusations about individual motives while affording the accuser the ability to say "No, I didn't mean it _that_ way! Why are X people so sensitive/guilty/etc?"
The other plausible explanation is that "intent" is meant to refer to a decision by the conscious brain, and prejudice is a deeply subconscious activity. This is generally what I subscribe to, but I could never imagine making wanton and very damaging accusations about the happenings and motives in others when they can't even reliably tap into them. Even when we have existence of a disparity, our society seems quick to attribute it to discrimination, but this is rarely the case to any significant degree (for example, all of the data on the wage gap suggests that discrimination is responsible for a small fraction of the gap at very most).
Re: “Let her speak please”
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men men get talked over as well some people just talk over other people nothing new
I can't find the study, but men interrupt women much more than they interrupt men. Also, women interrupt other women more than they interrupt men as well.
You gotta find the meta study that aggregates the verification studies (and discounts the first due to publication bias.)
Re: “Let her speak please”
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We all have the responsibility and option to guide things back on track So the woman panelist failed in her responsibilities? Nice try.
What exactly am I trying? To bring reason to a table overrun with emotive finger-pointing? She didn't "fail". Please don't put dramatic words in my mouth. When you accept an invitation to speak on a panel, there are certain expectations around participatory behaviour of all the members. At the rare times something runs off track, there's always an option to speak up and deal with it in the moment. No harm done. Wait.…
You dropped the word 'responsibility' and left 'option'. You stated that she had the responsibility to get things back on track. I disagree with that specific point. Of course you're right she had the option.
The moderator did a bad job, it seems that most accounts agree on that. If he's behaving badly to one member in particular - as the OP states - then it's particularly not her job to save him from looking foolish.
Edit: 'People like you'? Sheesh.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you wear sexism-colored glasses, don't be surprised if everything looks like sexism." and if you wear glasses that block out sexism, don't be surprised if nothing looks like sexism.
So, how should I deal with it? The only way I see is to have an objective definition, which can be objectively applied no matter which glasses I wear. What would that definition of sexism be?
The dichotomy of objective/subjective is a weak rubric for complex situations involving multiple observers and actors all of whom have asymmetric experiences. Sexism is an intersubjective phenomenon which means that it can only be analyzed effectively by taking into account many viewpoints and reconciling them.
As an example in physics of a situation where multiple observers have to be reconciled, imagine a spaceship zipping along at some fraction of c, observed by two observers, both of whom are moving some fraction of c relative to each other. Their observations of the length of the spaceship don't match up naively, but special relativity tells us how to reconcile their measurements: This allows us to consider their measurements as describing the same underlying phenomenon.
In this situation, one of the observers, A, can infer what B sees because B's measurements should only depend on properties of B that A can observe. So A can construct B's measurements by observing B, without B having to do anything. This is a very easy epistemological situation to deal with.
In a complex social situation, A can't take independent measurements and get the big picture. B needs to tell A about how they perceive the situation. Furthermore, B can't reasonably tell A everything all at once: Imagine if we had to spill all of our guts every time we wanted to reach a common understanding. Nothing would get done! So, reaching common social understanding needs to be a process, a dialogue between people.
Understanding phenomena like sexism involves communicating and interacting with each other in order to understand how we communicate and interact with each other. It's a much more complicated epistemological situation than observing an external object, like a spaceship. That's why I think you won't be able to get a satisfactory definition that you would consider objective, especially one that fits in a hacker news comment.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you wear sexism-colored glasses, don't be surprised if everything looks like sexism." and if you wear glasses that block out sexism, don't be surprised if nothing looks like sexism.
So, how should I deal with it? The only way I see is to have an objective definition, which can be objectively applied no matter which glasses I wear. What would that definition of sexism be?
It's not possible to use an objective definition unless you can read minds. Use your best judgement, and keep in mind history and context. Actions don't exist in a vacuum.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way to improve society is to recognize when things are really done with ill intent I strongly disagree. We need to fix issues no matter if they had been done because of ignorance or because of ill intent. The measures and consequences should be different, but naming and fixing the issue should be independent from that. "Bad social skills" is a common excuse, but in the end, it's just another word for ignor…
Are you saying we should fix when people geek out about a topic and ramble? If so, I agree. But good luck making progress on that!
In the context of being a moderator for a panel of people who have gathered specifically to talk about their things, yes, it's a bad thing to geek out and ramble over someone. The audience haven't gathered to listen to the moderator crap on; they're there for the panelists.
Chairing a panel of professionals isn't about you getting to talk to them, it's about showcasing their positions for the audience. "Aw, he just got excited" is not an excuse in this context.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's biology. Women are less aggressive and assertive by nature. Testosterone and stupidity (much more prevalent in male population) does wonders when it comes to being aggressive, assertive and risk seeking.
No, this behavior is likely not biological. It's not a universal behavior, there are cultures where this phenomenon is reduced or completely lacking. That means it is likely a social construct, not biological.
Which cultures?
There are social constructs but I would not deny biology. Effect of testosterone and estrogen on behavior has been studied extensively and it is quite clear from that why men and women behave the way they do.
Is women avoiding STEM a social construct? It most definitely is. Is women having lower salaries a social construct? In some cases yes, in some cases it is quite clear that they are not as risk taking as men, and are much more agreeable (they will not risk by asking a higher salary during a job interview).
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/08/reddit-ceo-ellen...
A nice example of how biology created an inequality.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#309Outrage culture front and center. Time to pull out our morality antennas and virtue signal how pious we are in support.
I'm willing to accept the duality of this situation and that issues in life are full of nuances that are not so easily dismissed as entirely one thing or another.
I'm curious, for those that seem so absolutely certain that things are only exactly one thing, where does this confidence come from? I have yet to see any evidence that life is that simple.
Re: “Let her speak please”
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
There can not be any sexism without the behavior being based on sex, and it in this case it isn't clear that it was. That's an assumption people are making.
That's not true at all. Sexism comes from the conclusions others draw, not the intentions of the participants. If this makes you uncomfortable, embrace that discomfort. It's the first step to understanding this.
I don't understand the proliferation of these silly definitions of sexism and racism. It's like we spent decades attributing malice to every possible demographic gap, and now that the data don't bear out our conclusions, we redefine those sins so they're actually not even inherently bad (for example, sexism is now the perception of sex-based prejudice and not actually prejudice).
This is the pinnacle of stupidity and hubris. We should be happy with our social progress and move onto other real problems.