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“Let her speak please”

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Re: “Let her speak please”

#671
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've been repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines in this thread by crossing into name-calling, incivility, and now even personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, so please take care to edit such stuff out of your comments here.

ok I will stop. I had more than my say. delete/edit my comments if you like but please dont ban me!

Re: “Let her speak please”

#672
post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> women are more expected to just take it. Or women, in general, just don't want the bother. > giving the guys push back Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after. > highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it. That seems unlikely. If you are…

> Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after. That complaining about it is pushing back. And you whine about it right now.

Did you even understand that sentence? Let me clear it up.

The "not standing up for themselves" is in the actual situation, against the actual person they need to stand up against.

The "complaining afterward" is after the situation has passed, and complaining to a completely different person not involved in the original interaction.

That is the exact opposite of "standing up for yourself", and it is also not "pushing back", because in order for it to be a push "back", it has to be a push against the original force, not against some random other person.

If I got berated by my boss, which I just let happen, and then reacted by, a while later, berating you, a completely uninvolved third party, would you consider that "standing up for myself" and "pushing back"?

Re: “Let her speak please”

#673
post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context all we really know is that the moderator was rude, and the person he was rude to was a woman. We have no way of knowing for certain if he acted that way because of her gender. Saying this is sexism is pure speculation. To brand someone as sexist is very damaging to their reputation. That women in general suffer from a power imbalance is no excuse for attacking a persons reputation with no strong evide…

> We have no way of knowing for certain if he acted that way because of her gender. Saying this is sexism is pure speculation. It isn't speculation, and why he acted the way he did is completely irrelevant. Sexism is a quality of a (social) situation where women's power is diminished compared to men. It doesn't have to be nefarious or intentional. > To brand someone as sexist is very damaging to their reputation. No,…

> Sexism is a quality of a (social) situation where women's power is diminished compared to men.

Or the other way around. Not super relevant for this discussion, but I feel it's important in the understanding of sexism to keep in mind that the discrimination can swing both ways. (In fact, sexism where men are discriminated against often _also_ end up hurting women, which is a phenomenon that holds for many issues related to sexism -- it's in the interest of both genders to get rid of this problem).

Re: “Let her speak please”

#674
post #590
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…

I agree with your assessment. You are quoting a lot of examples that are blatant examples of sexism, it just varies in which contexts each gender has more power.

This just underscores the need for fighting sexism in all its forms! And it is also a good idea to not get stuck in the mindset that sex discrimination is something that only impacts women negatively -- this is far from the truth.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#675
post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gp just gave evidence of structural sexism against a group. It just happened to be men. Saying that "life is unfair" when one group suffers, while rushing to the defense of the other group is hypocrisy and clearly a double standard.

> The gp just gave evidence of structural sexism against a group. No, he mentioned things that happen to men[1]. That is not sexism any more than a rich man's illness is called "poverty". He may be sick; he may be miserable; he may be worse-off than just being poor -- but his condition is still not called poverty. > Saying that "life is unfair" when one group suffers, while rushing to the defense of the other group i…

This is just arguing semantics at this point, but even if we didn't agree that it's sexism or gender discrimination that male victims of domestic violence don't get help or that only men can be compelled to die or get mutilated in war, we would presumably be close to agreeing that these are good examples of power imbalances.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#676
post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please quote the exact number in those papers. The summery of the first do not specify the levels of women interrupting women or men interrupting men, explicitly focusing only on interaction between men and women. The other one only say that "both men and women exhibiting higher levels of interruption behavior in male-dominated groups" . Citations is only as good as the ability it provide to verify a claim. Those do…

I'm not trying to prove anything, it just sounded like people were interested in relevant research with higher sample sizes. The first says "The participants for this study included 216 university students". The second says "We systematically varied the sex composition of the six-person groups, [...] Data on 31 groups in all were collected." The second study directly addresses this discussion: "The odds of a male att…

Interesting to see actually numbers. They imply that the one odd number here is the low rate of male attempting to interrupt another male, and that the natural base line should be around 0.1435 (assuming that the female variance of 0.0025 is the natural one for all humans).

That changes the tone of the issue. A 0.0195 difference from the norm is tiny on the negative discrimination of men interrupting women if we compare it to the norm difference of 0.0655 as positive discrimination for men interrupting men. As a social issue of 13.6% negative discrimination vs 45.7% positive discrimination, its a good time to ask what we want to fix. Is it the negative 13.6%, which mean we want men to interrupt women at the same rate as women interrupt women, or do we want men to treat other men worse by interrupting men as much as women do?

It also raises questions about moderators. Should we favor male moderators over female ones because they will in average interrupt 20% less (.241 vs .287) for a panel of 50% women and 50% men? The original post had a panel of 80% men and 50% men, which given the above numbers would have a male moderator interrupt a panelist at the rate of 0.095 while a female moderator would have interrupted a panelist with the rate of 0.145. A female moderator would be 52% worse than a male moderator in this specific case.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#677
post #673
post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have no way of knowing for certain if he acted that way because of her gender. Saying this is sexism is pure speculation. It isn't speculation, and why he acted the way he did is completely irrelevant. Sexism is a quality of a (social) situation where women's power is diminished compared to men. It doesn't have to be nefarious or intentional. > To brand someone as sexist is very damaging to their reputation. No,…

> Sexism is a quality of a (social) situation where women's power is diminished compared to men. Or the other way around. Not super relevant for this discussion, but I feel it's important in the understanding of sexism to keep in mind that the discrimination can swing both ways. (In fact, sexism where men are discriminated against often _also_ end up hurting women, which is a phenomenon that holds for many issues rel…

> it's important in the understanding of sexism to keep in mind that the discrimination can swing both ways.

It could (and may even happen in small systems), but in reality, women are the ones with significantly less power. But it's also important to remember that not every discrimination is sexism. For example, sexual discrimination designed to correct an already existing imbalance of power is the opposite of sexism (regardless of whether or not you find it just).

Re: “Let her speak please”

#678
post #675
post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The gp just gave evidence of structural sexism against a group. No, he mentioned things that happen to men[1]. That is not sexism any more than a rich man's illness is called "poverty". He may be sick; he may be miserable; he may be worse-off than just being poor -- but his condition is still not called poverty. > Saying that "life is unfair" when one group suffers, while rushing to the defense of the other group i…

This is just arguing semantics at this point, but even if we didn't agree that it's sexism or gender discrimination that male victims of domestic violence don't get help or that only men can be compelled to die or get mutilated in war, we would presumably be close to agreeing that these are good examples of power imbalances.

> This is just arguing semantics at this point

I disagree. If someone responds to an imagined accusation, it is important to explain to him that no one has accused him of what he believes he's been accused, because once people understand that, they become less defensive and angry.

> male victims of domestic violence don't get help

That's certainly very bad and requires addressing, but it isn't a problem on the same scale at all. The fact that women outnumber men significantly as victims of domestic violence clearly demonstrates that the problem as a whole harms women much more.

> or that only men can be compelled to die or get mutilated in war

If you think that on the whole men lost more power than women in wars, then you need to review your history. Although, it is true that in some cases male absence did lead to an increase in power to women back home, but the scale still tips very strongly in men's favor. It is also true that women today have more power than 100 years ago, but we're still far from achieving equality, and the gains were precisely due to constant political struggle against sexism.

> we would presumably be close to agreeing that these are good examples of power imbalances.

If we both start with ten toys, I take five of yours and you take one of mine, we cannot say that the one you took from me is an example of an imbalance of power in your favor.

There can certainly be conflicts where a man is more harmed than a woman, but sexism is a global quality of the system, not necessarily a property of each and every interaction.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#679

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…

People get talked over by people. I see this all the time and it's generally sexless. As a consultant I've helped at least 100 teams have crucial conversations across tens of businesses. I don't get the constant refrain that this is a male vs. female thing.

I'm guessing you're male.

Re: “Let her speak please”

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. Here's a thought, treat them as people and not "a black" or "a woman". You don't have to ingratiate yourself in the fear that some random person will think you're a racist. He's just a person going about his day delivering packages. He's got his own worries and concerns and things going on in his mind. "Is becoming a racist the best solution, so I'm able to function more effectively?" I can't tell if yo…

> He's just a person going about his day delivering packages. He's got his own worries and concerns and things going on in his mind. Of course. He could also be vigilantly looking for 'racists'. I really don't know. I'm using the theory of mind to construct a possible world view. My data set is Twitter/HN/reddit, mainly. I would love to treat everyone like a person, but if I do I leave myself vulnerable to accusation…

> > My (admittedly somewhat harsh) advice is to close your IDE and go interact - in person - with other humans.

> I've done enough of that.

I promise you haven't.

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