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“Let her speak please”

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Re: “Let her speak please”

#611

Post by zzzeek »

dmix wrote: post #268
qznc wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, this is silly. All language and behaviour has context. This idea that you can eliminate the shades of grey to find some absolute definition is largely what makes me uncomfortable with the more extreme proponents of this stuff. Such as those who believe particular words in isolation are always bad regardless of context. It would be much healthier culturally if we take into full consideration the meaning and intent…

Objectively, we know that many in the audience were also horrified by what they were seeing - because they verbally stated this afterwards. The moderator clearly had no explicit "intent" and the subject has also stated that she didn't detect this as "sexism". But had noone in the audience spoken out, a large portion of the audience would have come away feeling they had experienced a reminder that women are subject to routine gender-based mistreatment - even if neither person on stage saw it that way.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#612

Post by masondixon »

weberc2 wrote: post #352
masondixon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism So who is sexist in this scenario? Turns out its the feminist in the audience assuming that a woman needs someone to cause a public disturbance because she could not help herself be heard. Why is it every time some social justice event gains public attention, it turns out to not be sexism/racist/etc. at all.

Because our society has advanced a lot in the last fifty years, but some people want to profit from the appearance of "fighting injustice" or perhaps they feel they need some sort of moral consolation?

I really want to understand the internal monologue of these people. There is some culmination of factors that must result in this need to fight injustice. It just feels like they have some chip on their shoulder from adolescents. Being bullied at school. Having gone through a bad breakup. Something like that.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#613

Post by fatbird »

t_brah wrote: post #593
fatbird wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was little and my brother was hitting me, I was always capable of moving away from him so he couldn't hit me. The right thing, though, was for him to stop hitting me.

Sorry that happened to you. What you've said is true - your brother should not have hit you in the first place. Apples and oranges, though. Physical violence, threats, and calls to action must not be equated to expression. The urgency & rigor needed to address violence would be inappropriate applied to expression. As an aside: it's not always possible to take action to defend yourself, but this does not necessarily m…

Thank you. It wasn't severe abuse, it was just annoying sibling bullying. My point, made obliquely, is that the one's agency is independent of how others should behave.

> Are the strong women you're thinking of incapable of overcoming societal pressures without gender sensitive treatment?

Strength and agency are relative, and different in principle and in fact. All women (and men) are theoretically capable of asserting themselves even against an expressive bully (which is what I think you mean when you say " I believe in the strength & agency of women"; in practice many are not for a variety of circumstantial reasons--bad day, bad upbringing, cultural background, misinformation, fear, insecurity.

Whether men (especially conference organizers and panel moderators) should do something differently in light of received knowledge about sexist patterns of socialization, there's no contradiction with believing in the agency of women. Affirmative action might be problematic at the legislative level, but strongly indicated at the social level.

In other words, Jim Holt could be conscious of the fact that sexism against women in science is a real and ongoing problem, and make a point of being deferential to female speakers; at the very least, he could avoid actively preventing them from speaking more than he was preventing the men. The first would be a positive good; the latter a basic expectation. Neither is an infringement on Holt's expression, nor is a social backlash against Holt for failing to meet even the basic expectation of civility.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#614

Post by pron »

Zikes wrote: post #590
pron wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly this is a horrible philosophy -- the notion that anything can be sexist if someone chooses to be offended. But it's the exact opposite. Being offended has nothing to do with sexism. Sexism is an objective situation of an unequal distribution of power. Sexism would exist even if everyone in the world thought it was great, and no one was ever offended in the slightest. > but isn't the ability to recontextual…

> but clearly, the imbalance of power between men and women is so large, that there is still no question about which side has more power. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006 only 3.6% of alimony recipients were men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimony#History Mothers are granted custody in ~80% of cases and are the recipients of 94% of child support dollars paid: https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/15…

Bad and unfair things happen to everyone. But power is a well-studied, and rather specific concept[1], and there's really no question here. None of the things you mentioned change anything about the very clear imbalance of power. Bill Gates may suffer from an ingrown toenail, but that has little to do with the fact that he's richer than you.

Also, men are sexist, as are women. Being sexist is not being bad; it's being a human born in a sexist society. Just as it takes effort to learn about germs and how to fight infection, it takes effort to learn to see sexism and fight it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(social_and_political)

Re: “Let her speak please”

#615

Post by masondixon »

_pmf_ wrote: post #464
masondixon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism So who is sexist in this scenario? Turns out its the feminist in the audience assuming that a woman needs someone to cause a public disturbance because she could not help herself be heard. Why is it every time some social justice event gains public attention, it turns out to not be sexism/racist/etc. at all.

That's exactly my interpretation of the situation. The moderator is exceedingly polite towards everyone; there's not a trace of sexism.

So sad how everyone has been brainwashed onto this feminist band-wagon. Before everyone was chill, and now everyone is on the hunt for the slightest sign of sexism like its a treasure hunt.

And instead of acting from a calm, rationale state, she says herself that she was "literally shaking".

Most of the time you find yourself "literally shaking" you are probably going to do something dumb. Take a breath. Extract yourself from the situation. And come back when your calm.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#616

Post by sctb »

Jedd wrote: post #44

> And I'm thinking. "God, please god let this be an opening for those that were here today ... Hoping that a deity may initiate a major change of human social policy based on this event may be a non-obvious and non-trivial part of the greater problem.

Religious flamewars don't belong on Hacker News in the first place, but we certainly don't need to stretch so far to start them.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#617

Post by weberc2 »

sampo wrote: post #608
weberc2 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which isn't evidence of much; millions of people assumed Darren Wilson was a racist murderer even after the facts were known. There's a very strong temptation for some people to perceive injustice everywhere.

> millions of people assumed Darren Wilson Those people only got partial information from whatever media broadcasts they happened to follow. But the link at hand, the audience literally saw with their own eyes what happened in the panel discussion. They have complete information (unless they dozed off for a while).

And even in these comments, there are people who watched the full video and still came to different conclusions.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#618

Post by ethbro »

Sacho wrote: post #552
ethbro wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/07/23/study_m... Men are 3x as likely to interrupt women. Women will interrupt women, but rarely men. Informal study, but decent sample size.

I don't think this informal study presents as strong of an argument as you may think it does. As the author themselves admitted, seniority was strongly correlated with rate of interruption, but they didn't control for that in their overall gender comparison. The top three out of four interrupters were women. As it turns out, that particular set of people had a lower number of women in positions of seniority. Is that…

Do you have another, more rigorous study?

Re: “Let her speak please”

#619

Post by weberc2 »

aggie wrote: post #386
weberc2 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was plainly speaking figuratively...

I'd be charitable to their claim if they left it at 'every time', but to say the incidents are not due to sexism 'at all' is not a good argument, even interpreted figuratively.

That seems like an arbitrary place to draw a line; it still seems completely, unambiguously figurative to me, but I'm not going to argue the point.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#620

Post by jgalt212 »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #589
camelite wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your links do not justify your confident tone. Two are about the 7 Supreme Court Justices and some Google guy. That's 8 people. The first is about a study involving 11 male-female interactions (19 now), and a study which noted that "...The men interrupted their female conversational partners 2.1 times during a three minute conversation. That number dropped to 1.8 when they spoke to other men." So men just interrupt m…

> So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically I'll buy that. If this disproportionately affects women then I'll buy that too. I don't buy that men interrupt women specifically out of some sort of bias. My experience has been that the more passionate conversationalists among us will interrupt anyone who will let them.

> passionate conversationalists

a nice way of saying workplace bullies.

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