How do you suggest that people counter-act the harm that racism/sexism/discrimination against elders/etc. does cause, assuming that everyone ignores the "little things"? What do you want the arena to be?
Well, first, we stop talking about "the harm", since it is an incredibly general, nebulous, and unhelpful category. Instead, we focus upon particular harms.
For example, if sexism motivates employers to pay women less, then we can pass legislation that requires equal pay.
Or, if sexism motivates persons to beat their wives, then we call the police, convict them by a jury of their peers, and send them to jail.
What particular harm would you like a solution to?
Offensive behavior that can't be legally regulated.
How do you suggest that people counter-act the harm that racism/sexism/discrimination against elders/etc. does cause, assuming that everyone ignores the "little things"? What do you want the arena to be?
Well, first, we stop talking about "the harm", since it is an incredibly general, nebulous, and unhelpful category. Instead, we focus upon particular harms.
For example, if sexism motivates employers to pay women less, then we can pass legislation that requires equal pay.
Or, if sexism motivates persons to beat their wives, then we call the police, convict them by a jury of their peers, and send them to jail.
What particular harm would you like a solution to?
So, tell me - how has that strategy been working? Because from where I sit, using purely legal means to deal with inequality has had only moderate success at best.
How do you suggest that people counter-act the harm that racism/sexism/discrimination against elders/etc. does cause, assuming that everyone ignores the "little things"? What do you want the arena to be?
Well, first, we stop talking about "the harm", since it is an incredibly general, nebulous, and unhelpful category. Instead, we focus upon particular harms.
For example, if sexism motivates employers to pay women less, then we can pass legislation that requires equal pay.
Or, if sexism motivates persons to beat their wives, then we call the police, convict them by a jury of their peers, and send them to jail.
What particular harm would you like a solution to?
Offensive behavior that can't be legally regulated.
So, how do we stop "offensive behavior"?
You missed the top of my post, where I suggested that we stop talking about general, nebulous, and unhelpful categories.
What particular offensive behavior do you want to stop, and why do you want to stop it?
Thats ridiculous, if you say something hateful "to get a rise out of people" or because you think saying hurtful things is funny thats still being hateful. And if it was entirely accidental, well then maybe you should inform them of their mistake?
You're confusing a presumed motivation for a linguistic utterance with the utterance, itself.
If a computer randomly generates strings of characters, and it happens to generate "women are terrible at video game", we do not take the computer to be sexist.
Sexism is a feeling that motivates particular actions. We assume our way from particular linguistic utterances to some supposed sexist motivation.
Sometimes people who are genuinely not sexist make linguistic utterances that can be interpreted to be sexist given their similarity to other linguistic utterances made for the sake of hurting women by persons who actually are sexist.
No I am saying it is still sexist, regardless of motivation.
Again, three options:
The person said something hateful because they are hateful (sexist)
The person said something hateful because they "want to get a rise out of people" (still sexist)
The person said something hateful purely by accident (you should still inform them that what they said is sexist)
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Thats ridiculous, if you say something hateful "to get a rise out of people" or because you think saying hurtful things is funny thats still being hateful. And if it was entirely accidental, well then maybe you should inform them of their mistake?
You're confusing a presumed motivation for a linguistic utterance with the utterance, itself.
If a computer randomly generates strings of characters, and it happens to generate "women are terrible at video game", we do not take the computer to be sexist.
Sexism is a feeling that motivates particular actions. We assume our way from particular linguistic utterances to some supposed sexist motivation.
Sometimes people who are genuinely not sexist make linguistic utterances that can be interpreted to be sexist given their similarity to other linguistic utterances made for the sake of hurting women by persons who actually are sexist.
No I am saying it is still sexist, regardless of motivation.
Again, three options:
The person said something hateful because they are hateful (sexist)
The person said something hateful because they "want to get a rise out of people" (still sexist)
The person said something hateful purely by accident (you should still inform them that what they said is sexist)
I think we disagree about how meaning works. And this probably isn't the place for that conversation.
+1
Options
El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The problem with that assessment is that feminist have always operated In the grey area Of their respective times.
A man in the 20s didn't think that they hated women just because they didn't want them to vote and don draper didn't think anything was wrong with slapping his secretary on the ass.
How do you suggest that people counter-act the harm that racism/sexism/discrimination against elders/etc. does cause, assuming that everyone ignores the "little things"? What do you want the arena to be?
Well, first, we stop talking about "the harm", since it is an incredibly general, nebulous, and unhelpful category. Instead, we focus upon particular harms.
For example, if sexism motivates employers to pay women less, then we can pass legislation that requires equal pay.
Or, if sexism motivates persons to beat their wives, then we call the police, convict them by a jury of their peers, and send them to jail.
What particular harm would you like a solution to?
Sexism is part of what motivates people, like the police for instance, to sometimes choose to NOT do something about the things you mention. Their value system says it's okay and the view they have of women - formed by different kinds of media among other things - say that women are incompetent and "aggravate" their husbands routinely. So they don't see a problem with it and won't listen to protests, and maybe the general public doesn't see much of a problem because they hold similar beliefs. By nurturing works like video games or movies that present a more varied view of females these kinds of beliefs will be challenged and hopefully revised to better reflect the complex reality we live in.
Here's another harm: let's say a female politician isn't taken seriously and gets questions about what her favorite dress brand is, instead of being asked what she thinks she can do about the economy. This harms her public image even though it's outside of her control.
Let's say a woman who works at a workplace ends up quitting because dumb co-workers won't stop discussing in their free time what her ass would feel like and even jokes about how it would be nice to rape her.
Or do you mean that noone should say "hey that's sexist" when there's no particular target/victim, just "generally sexist"? That would be a more moderate stance.
This apparently has struck some to be dreadfully unfair, with the implication being that other people responding to folks (usually men) as creepers when in fact they’re trying to make an effort to be charming and witty and fun (or whatever) is some sort of special case in the interaction of human beings, and that such mismatches between intent and reception hardly ever happen in other situations.
To which my response is: you have got to be kidding me. Outside of the realm of possible potential creepiness, you don’t get to choose how other people respond to you, either. In any context. Indeed, regardless of your efforts to present yourself in a certain way, it is almost certain you will come across to some other people as not that way at all, and possibly the opposite of that way entirely.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is seems to be arguing.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is arguing.
Or we could address all the issues, and not play oppression Olympics.
Again, this is the same argument that Dawkins used against Watson, and he got a well deserved coals-raking for it.
I normally like Scalzi but his "how to not be a creeper" article was poorly written and the new follow-up is just digging himself deeper.
What are your issues with it? I think I take his point. There's persistent arguing in this thread that it's unfair that simply because people interpret what you do and say as sexist you're being tarred as sexist even though in your secret heart you're not at all why can't people see that? And the answer is because people cannot see into secret hearts, we need to go off surface impressions sometimes.
Which, I mean, is also why you can feel free to have someone call you a virulent sexist and go "oh jeez this person just doesn't even know well whatever" and be accurate. It is possible for people to misinterpret your actions, but if it's a persistent thing maybe altering your actions is in order sometimes.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The problem with that assessment is that feminist have always operated In the grey area Of their respective times.
A man in the 20s didn't think that they hated women just because they didn't want them to vote and don draper didn't think anything was wrong with slapping his secretary on the ass.
Anyway, so. I've been reading about David Lisaks studies on sexual predators.
Brief summary, Lasik did a bunch of surveys of college students on rape, his conclusions are interesting because he's firmly against the idea that the majority of rape is being a one-time-mistake-offence. What he found is that the majority of rapes, acquaintance, date rape ect are done by a relatively small subset of repeat offenders.
Now heres the creepy part, among these repeat offenders certain patterns come up, and one is that they know how to exploit societies bias against women. That is to say, they know how to pick victims who wont speak out, they overwhelmingly use manipulation and general nice guy (up to a point) tactics rather than violence, and they know to ingratiate themselves in a crowd where they have "social license" to operate.
Essentially in order to get away with being a rapey dude, you've got to be in a crowd where men are the dominant voice, where you can say rapey things and pass it off as "just a joke", and where if it comes down to a he said/she said situation people will at worst, charitably assume it was a matter of simple miscommunication.
Rapists and general misogynists are well aware that as long as you operate in societies "grey area" no one will really call you it. As long as you surround yourself with people who will say "haha thats our frank, don't be so uptight he doesn't really mean anything by it" you can do or say pretty much whatever you want.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is arguing.
Or we could address all the issues, and not play oppression Olympics.
Again, this is the same argument that Dawkins used against Watson, and he got a well deserved coals-raking for it.
Let's address all the issues everywhere at the same time. Let's make posts on every single community on the web. It doesn't matter whether I discuss feminism here or if I do it on a forum filled with 15-year-old male kids. I help women in Gambia just as much by being in Berlin and calling my progressive punk rocker friends out on every single hint of sexism in what they say and then explaining to them in excruciating detail why what they said was sexist as if I was in Gambia protesting outside a school that favors boys over girls arbitrarily when choosing who gets scholarships for higher education.
I think you were thinking I was asking a different question from the one I meant to ask.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is arguing.
Or we could address all the issues, and not play oppression Olympics.
Again, this is the same argument that Dawkins used against Watson, and he got a well deserved coals-raking for it.
Let's address all the issues everywhere at the same time. Let's make posts on every single community on the web. It doesn't matter whether I discuss feminism here or if I do it on a forum filled with 15-year-old male kids. I help women in Gambia just as much by being in Berlin and calling my progressive punk rocker friends out on every single hint of sexism in what they say and then explaining to them in excruciating detail why what they said was sexist as if I was in Gambia protesting outside a school that favors boys over girls arbitrarily when choosing who gets scholarships for higher education.
I think you were thinking I was asking a different question from the one I meant to ask.
I'm not getting where you're going here.
Are you saying you're in the position of honestly deciding between continued discussion on a forum and protesting virulent sexism in another country? I mean I'd go protest, I guess.
Goum: One of the big problems with forum discussions is that they involve multiple audiences who have very different levels of discourse. If Vix and Feral were talking about sexism, they could be blunt and frank and very descriptive, with lots of shared knowledge and experience to guide the way, and without the need to be personally defensive. This is completely different than the conversation between one of those knowledgable folks and someone who is not only not knowledgable, but who has sexist behavior they feel they need to defend.
1) We aren't talking about an internal dialogue between feminists
@Goumindong, we already established a few pages back that no one was calling John Hemingway a sexist, merely that he made a sexist remark. So, while your observation is correct, the audience may still choose to interpret the criticism as an attack on them personally, as anyone who's ever known someone who is bad as taking criticism can attest to.
"What he said was sexist"
"I've have said things like that, and I'm not a sexist, so NO U!"
I read the articles, they did not do a particularly good job of saying it without saying "he is a sexist". Or "gamers are sexist".
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
If a person is genuinely experiencing symptoms of depression as a result of someone they've never met, in an office somewhere, implying that they may not be good at video games, then perhaps there are larger issues with which the person needs to deal.
Sexism permeates our culture and effects the actions of everyone in it. I mean look, if black people genuinely experience symptoms of depression as a result of someone they've never met, in an office somewhere, implying that they might like fried chicken and watermelon, then perhaps there are larger issues with which the person needs to deal.
Yea no. Perhaps the person in the office needs to not do racist things.
The problem that each marginalized person faces in this scenario is not a hypothetical about whether or not they should be offended, but rather how to tell someone that they're doing bad things without saying that that person is a bad person.
People should take time to understand an issue regardless.
-
Is this the most productive, winning-hearts-and-minds kind for her to angle to take? Probably not. But it seems incredibly counter productive and patronizing of me to turn to HER among this group of guys and say "now now, maybe if you calmed down a bit and talked nicer they might listen to you. Don't be accusatory. Maybe smile a little?".
Ultimately shes voicing her discontent, and that's whats important.
So she should take out her frustrations on others?
If you're in that specific situation, probably it doesn't matter. No one will listen. If you're not in that specific situation then yes, you should. Except you should not say "talk nice and smile" because that is loaded bullshit designed to provoke a response from people familiar with the situation.
You might instead say "blogger etiquette" or "proper communication techniques" or "remember who you're talking to, what you want from them, and that you want something from them"
As great as it may be for her to release her frustrations on people that "deserve it" she is perpetuating harmful stereotypes which further entrench sexist thought and behavior every time she does that.
Why? His whole point is that you can't control how others ultimately perceive you, just how you present yourself.
Its audience was generally "men who do not want to be considered creepers" or "men who have been considered creepers in the past". And the article said "you're a creeper, its your fault, don't be a creeper"
It was directed at "you", "you personally the person reading the article who did not want to be considered a creeper". If you're reading that article you're already there on his side or want to be on his side and the article is written in a way that puts the audience firmly on the other side of the author. It does not attempt to understand the other persons position, it does not attempt to understand potential responses from a person in that position.
The problems can be summed up by looking at the segment that people took issue with.
It may not seem fair that “creep” is their assessment of you, but: Surprise! It doesn’t matter, and if you try to argue with them (or anyone else) that you’re in fact not being a creep and the problem is with them not you, then you go from “creep” to “complete assbag.”
Surprise! It doesn't matter whether or not you meant to an asshole and calling people creepers. It doesn't matter whether or not you were saying they had a problem. It matters whether or not they perceive that you're saying it!
And to make this part worse, the audience is ripe for the picking for being told how to not be creepers, since they're actually reading an article about how to not be a creeper they already acknowledge that the issue is their responsibility to correct! They are already doing the right thing and taking responsibility regardless of whether or not the other person is in the right or wrong and instead of talking to them like adults the author is calling them creepers.
What I don’t generally do is demand that the other party see it my way and believe that if they don’t then there’s something wrong with them. One, who has the time, and two, I’m not sure it’s really important that everyone respond to me in precisely the same way.
Actually I am 100% certain that is exactly what is being done in this article. The audience and their position is 100% not considered and it is absolutely demanded that the other party see it his way and if they don't they're a creeper.
Anyway, so. I've been reading about David Lisaks studies on sexual predators.
Brief summary, Lasik did a bunch of surveys of college students on rape, his conclusions are interesting because he's firmly against the idea that the majority of rape is being a one-time-mistake-offence. What he found is that the majority of rapes, acquaintance, date rape ect are done by a relatively small subset of repeat offenders.
Now heres the creepy part, among these repeat offenders certain patterns come up, and one is that they know how to exploit societies bias against women. That is to say, they know how to pick victims who wont speak out, they overwhelmingly use manipulation and general nice guy (up to a point) tactics rather than violence, and they know to ingratiate themselves in a crowd where they have "social license" to operate.
Essentially in order to get away with being a rapey dude, you've got to be in a crowd where men are the dominant voice, where you can say rapey things and pass it off as "just a joke", and where if it comes down to a he said/she said situation people will at worst, charitably assume it was a matter of simple miscommunication.
Rapists and general misogynists are well aware that as long as you operate in societies "grey area" no one will really call you it. As long as you surround yourself with people who will say "haha thats our frank, don't be so uptight he doesn't really mean anything by it" you can do or say pretty much whatever you want.
Yes, this this this exactly this.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
I normally like Scalzi but his "how to not be a creeper" article was poorly written and the new follow-up is just digging himself deeper.
What are your issues with it? I think I take his point. There's persistent arguing in this thread that it's unfair that simply because people interpret what you do and say as sexist you're being tarred as sexist even though in your secret heart you're not at all why can't people see that? And the answer is because people cannot see into secret hearts, we need to go off surface impressions sometimes.
Which, I mean, is also why you can feel free to have someone call you a virulent sexist and go "oh jeez this person just doesn't even know well whatever" and be accurate. It is possible for people to misinterpret your actions, but if it's a persistent thing maybe altering your actions is in order sometimes.
I feel like it's close to the mark, but just misses by a hair.
Turn his principle around. Let's say somebody perceives my posts in this thread as inflammatory and reactionary because I dared to use the word "sexist" or "misogynist." I have no problem saying that this person's perception is incorrect.
There's room for one person's perception of another person to be wrong, and there isn't a general case prohibition against calling people out for that regardless of context.
However, if you look at Scalzi's post through the lens of a convention-goer interacting with a stranger or distant acquaintance, his post makes perfect sense. if that stranger misinterprets your actions, the best thing you can do is just step away and move on.
His first post suffers from a similar contextual limitation. Some of his guidelines are pretty widely applicable across multiple contexts - don't physically box people in, for instance, if you can help it. Others... not so much. He explicitly acknowledges the context he's writing about early on: "A creeper may be of any gender and may creep on any gender, but let’s acknowledge that a whole lot of the time it’s guys creeping on women. Creeping can happen any place and in any community or grouping of people, but in geekdom we see a lot of it at conventions and other large gatherings," but he doesn't really stick to it, he kind of makes it vague whether his guidelines are meant to be widely applicable or very context and gender specific.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Actually I am 100% certain that is exactly what is being done in this article. The audience and their position is 100% not considered and it is absolutely demanded that the other party see it his way and if they don't they're a creeper.
Basically yeah.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
Do they now?
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
Do they now?
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
So if I, say, murdered your parents, your reaction is totally under your control?
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
Do they now?
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
So if I, say, murdered your parents, your reaction is totally under your control?
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is arguing.
Or we could address all the issues, and not play oppression Olympics.
Again, this is the same argument that Dawkins used against Watson, and he got a well deserved coals-raking for it.
Let's address all the issues everywhere at the same time. Let's make posts on every single community on the web. It doesn't matter whether I discuss feminism here or if I do it on a forum filled with 15-year-old male kids. I help women in Gambia just as much by being in Berlin and calling my progressive punk rocker friends out on every single hint of sexism in what they say and then explaining to them in excruciating detail why what they said was sexist as if I was in Gambia protesting outside a school that favors boys over girls arbitrarily when choosing who gets scholarships for higher education.
I think you were thinking I was asking a different question from the one I meant to ask.
I'm not getting where you're going here.
Are you saying you're in the position of honestly deciding between continued discussion on a forum and protesting virulent sexism in another country? I mean I'd go protest, I guess.
No. I'm saying that different actions have different impact and you have to choose between them, you can't just do everything at once. Just because one particular action is pro-feminism it doesn't mean that it's furthering the feminist movement equally everywhere, nor does it mean that something else wouldn't be more effective. I'm also trying to point out that the privileged who do have a voice might become narrow-minded and forget about the non-privileged that are supposed to be part of the group that they are fighting for. Then when they are confronted they say it's OK because while they do only focus on the interests of the privileged, it behooves the non-privileged indirectly. But could the feminists with power do MORE for the people who are less off if they directed more of their forces at first and foremostly helping them? Please don't mistake this as some "influence currency" argument where there is only so much influence you can portion out to different issues, of course it doesn't work that way. But still, if a lobbying group in New York decides to lobby for gender quotas for chief positions at universities, that will obviously mean near to nothing IN THE SHORT TERM for women with very little education. It's not strange or wrong of the group to be choosing to focus on the rights of highly educated women, nor does it somehow counteract the work of feminists fighting for issues closer at heart for women with less education.
What I'm asking is if on the whole, the feminist movement could move forward faster if more effort was shifted toward help explicitly aimed at making things better for relatively non-privileged women. Maybe that could boost the ranks of feminists more quickly, making dealing with subtle discrimination easier? This connects back to what I said a long time ago in the thread about how there used to be more "clear targets"(like suffrage) to go for and that made things progress quickly. In some countries there still is legislation etc. that makes for easy targets. It also is related to what people were saying earlier about how it used to be all white upper-class women fighting for white upper-class women and alienating everyone else. Note that I'm NOT considering leaving some issues altogether to deal with them later, I'm talking about a shift of focus, to a perhaps more balanced approach. Also note that I'm not saying I'm totally absolutely ultra for this, I'm saying it's worth pondering.
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
Do they now?
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
So if I, say, murdered your parents, your reaction is totally under your control?
I mean, it'd be your choice to be upset, right?
Yup.
So environment has no actual effect on human development in your mind?
You realise this is a completely ridiculous and stupid premise, right?
No I am saying it is still sexist, regardless of motivation.
I think we disagree about how meaning works. And this probably isn't the place for that conversation.
Well but it is at the core of understanding what we are debating. BTW the way you think meaning works heavily disagrees with what I learned and teach about communication theory and is hardly applicable to asynchronous communication (which any written statement btw is)
When you read an article or a quote or a tweet... you do not have access to the inner feelings and thinkings of the author. You need to interpret what's written there on face value. And this interpretations form the effects this asynchronous message has on it's readers. The author's intend does not factor in in situations like that, because the author's intent is not available (or it at least takes extra effort) information.
This is where Girlfriend-mode comes in. It's a written statement, which on face value is sexist, reaches a wide audience and comes from a source with authority...
As long as you don't accept that messages are sexist or not independently from the author's intent, y'know accepting that there are misunderstandings (I guess you have heard the term once or twice), you are not qualified to participate in a discussion about cultural sexism and are not qualified to give advice how to fight it.
What I'm asking is if on the whole, the feminist movement could move forward faster if more effort was shifted toward help explicitly aimed at making things better for relatively non-privileged women.
You're calling for more awareness of intersectionality. You're not alone!
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think you're confusing actual harm with "feewings hurt", at least in the case of "Girlfriend Mode".
Other instances of "sexism" can be recast as "employment inequality" or something along those lines, so that we can clarify the issue to get to the actual problem.
1) Feelings affect health. Human emotional states are incredibly important for those individuals and for the world around them. This is a basic biological and social fact.
2) Sexism causes a large variety of different harms. Some are emotional, some are social, some are educational, some are political, some are economic, and usually more than one harm applies.
Persons have control over their feelings, and their own reactions.
Do they now?
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
So if I, say, murdered your parents, your reaction is totally under your control?
I mean, it'd be your choice to be upset, right?
Yup.
This is such a factually wrong and bizarre thing to say that I don't even know where to begin.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I'm beginning to wonder if _J_ is talking about outward reactions versus internal thought. IE, you can't control your personal feelings of anger/offense but you can control how you manifest them to others?
That's the only way I can see it making sense to me.
_J_ has now barricaded himself in a completely impervious fortress of subjectivism, intellectualization of emotions and logical fallacies, that I will now focus my time on talking with people who actually did not argue themselves into a corner.
People should take time to understand an issue regardless.
-
Is this the most productive, winning-hearts-and-minds kind for her to angle to take? Probably not. But it seems incredibly counter productive and patronizing of me to turn to HER among this group of guys and say "now now, maybe if you calmed down a bit and talked nicer they might listen to you. Don't be accusatory. Maybe smile a little?".
Ultimately shes voicing her discontent, and that's whats important.
So she should take out her frustrations on others?
If you're in that specific situation, probably it doesn't matter. No one will listen. If you're not in that specific situation then yes, you should. Except you should not say "talk nice and smile" because that is loaded bullshit designed to provoke a response from people familiar with the situation.
You might instead say "blogger etiquette" or "proper communication techniques" or "remember who you're talking to, what you want from them, and that you want something from them"
What we want from them though, at that moment in time, is to go away.
The really, really critical message to impart is a simple one: "people do not consider what you said to be ok". Ideally for maximum effectiveness yes, you want to deliver that in as non confrontational way as possible, but what is even more important than that is that lots of people are saying it. Whether they're polite people or shouty people or people with saint like patience or people with not so much or whatever.
Like, people in general don't need an extended discourse on race to understand that "n*gger" is a bad word that perpetuates hatred. You internalize that intuitively from the fact that every time you say it, people look at you like an asshole. And you realize that if you don't want people to mistake you for a racist, you should stop saying it.
I'm beginning to wonder if _J_ is talking about outward reactions versus internal thought. IE, you can't control your personal feelings of anger/offense but you can control how you manifest them to others?
That's the only way I can see it making sense to me.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to say you can suppress or manage your reactions to your environment.
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The problem with that assessment is that feminist have always operated In the grey area Of their respective times.
A man in the 20s didn't think that they hated women just because they didn't want them to vote and don draper didn't think anything was wrong with slapping his secretary on the ass.
Anyway, so. I've been reading about David Lisaks studies on sexual predators.
Brief summary, Lasik did a bunch of surveys of college students on rape, his conclusions are interesting because he's firmly against the idea that the majority of rape is being a one-time-mistake-offence. What he found is that the majority of rapes, acquaintance, date rape ect are done by a relatively small subset of repeat offenders.
Now heres the creepy part, among these repeat offenders certain patterns come up, and one is that they know how to exploit societies bias against women. That is to say, they know how to pick victims who wont speak out, they overwhelmingly use manipulation and general nice guy (up to a point) tactics rather than violence, and they know to ingratiate themselves in a crowd where they have "social license" to operate.
Essentially in order to get away with being a rapey dude, you've got to be in a crowd where men are the dominant voice, where you can say rapey things and pass it off as "just a joke", and where if it comes down to a he said/she said situation people will at worst, charitably assume it was a matter of simple miscommunication.
Rapists and general misogynists are well aware that as long as you operate in societies "grey area" no one will really call you it. As long as you surround yourself with people who will say "haha thats our frank, don't be so uptight he doesn't really mean anything by it" you can do or say pretty much whatever you want.
Socially saavy and manipulative people are good at getting away with lots of crimes. This is hardly a revelation.
What I'm asking is if on the whole, the feminist movement could move forward faster if more effort was shifted toward help explicitly aimed at making things better for relatively non-privileged women.
You're calling for more awareness of intersectionality. You're not alone!
Haha, thanks! Now I kinda wish I'd just known it was called intersectionality from the beginning so I didn't need to write all that... At least I argued that intersectionality can be about thinking/working in a more global context, too, that's maybe a bit new? Of course, when/if you do so and try to help/work with underprivileged women in poor countries there's a huge risk that you turn into this authoritarian holier-than-thou, I-know-what's-best-for-you person that doesn't understand the cultural context. Basically the same thing that might happen when the privileged help/try to co-operate with underprivileged people in the same country but more extreme.
@Cliff The point is, sexism creates an environment that is very favorable for rapists. So it would be reasonable to assume that less sexism would lead to less rapists getting away with their crimes.
Craw! on
0
Options
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I think we've moved beyond the point where people are being openly sexist (obviously there will always be some exceptions to this rule, but sadly this is the case with everything). So there are very very few people openly saying "women should shut up and get back into the kitchen!". Maybe they whisper it to their like-minded friends, but rarely will it be public.
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The problem with that assessment is that feminist have always operated In the grey area Of their respective times.
A man in the 20s didn't think that they hated women just because they didn't want them to vote and don draper didn't think anything was wrong with slapping his secretary on the ass.
Anyway, so. I've been reading about David Lisaks studies on sexual predators.
Brief summary, Lasik did a bunch of surveys of college students on rape, his conclusions are interesting because he's firmly against the idea that the majority of rape is being a one-time-mistake-offence. What he found is that the majority of rapes, acquaintance, date rape ect are done by a relatively small subset of repeat offenders.
Now heres the creepy part, among these repeat offenders certain patterns come up, and one is that they know how to exploit societies bias against women. That is to say, they know how to pick victims who wont speak out, they overwhelmingly use manipulation and general nice guy (up to a point) tactics rather than violence, and they know to ingratiate themselves in a crowd where they have "social license" to operate.
Essentially in order to get away with being a rapey dude, you've got to be in a crowd where men are the dominant voice, where you can say rapey things and pass it off as "just a joke", and where if it comes down to a he said/she said situation people will at worst, charitably assume it was a matter of simple miscommunication.
Rapists and general misogynists are well aware that as long as you operate in societies "grey area" no one will really call you it. As long as you surround yourself with people who will say "haha thats our frank, don't be so uptight he doesn't really mean anything by it" you can do or say pretty much whatever you want.
There is a fantastic story to illustrate this, in the comments of that Captain Awkward link I like so much, so I'm going to post it here.
Not surprisingly, I have a story? It’s pretty long, and I’m sorry. My husband, Doctor Glass, recently went on a weeklong workshop. The participants worked on teams, slept in a dormitory, shared meals and spent all day together. While there, Dr Glass acquired a strikingly beautiful female friend, who was absolutely luminous – like a fallen star or a revolutionary. She was also just about to enter university, making her very much younger than Dr Glass. They were on the same team, had much in common, and seemed to enjoy each other.
However, there was a twenty-something dude on the course who, according to Dr Glass, “made things awkward.” Immediately, he tried to make the workshop all about his pantsfeelings for Luminous Girl. Although he was on a different team, he was constantly buzzing around Dr Glass and Luminous Girl, getting in their way (which was dangerous and distracting, as they were doing physical labor) and trying to get her to talk to him, work with him, come over and look at his work, etc. In return she tried to ignore him, laughed him off politely, repeatedly referenced her desire to do her work, physically moved away whenever he got close to her, and stuck like glue to Dr Glass; saying NO in all those thousand little pleasant ways that women are trained to do. Awkward Dude tried to impress her with physical activity, but Dr Glass cut him off because he was being distracting. Confused and annoyed, Awkward stepped up his Game, trying to impress her with his intellectual cred, and it went down like a lead zeppelin, with Luminous and Dr Glass resuming their own work and conversations. So Awkward started loudly asking wasn’t Dr Glass married?!
At this, Awkward Dude attempted to kill Dr Glass with his laser-eyeballs at every turn, lurking and glaring and pining like a bad Snape impersonator. (Dr Glass wasn’t sure why he was suddenly the target of the resulting animosity, as he clearly had no romantic interest in Luminous, until I explained it to him: Dude had decided that the reason Luminous Girl was not sleeping with him was because she was the Possession of Another Male, and further, a Male who Already Had His Fair Share of Females; thus Dr Glass was the enemy for not shunning her and leaving a clear path for fellow males. “Oh,” said Dr Glass in sudden revelation, “That makes sense, I guess.”)
But the guy persisted – it wasn’t that Luminous didn’t like him! It was that she was clearly in thrall of my husband. The solution was to get her alone! So whenever they sat down to a lecture, Luminous, practically dragging Dr Glass by the arm, would move like lightning to position herself between him and a safe wall – with her lovely admirer circling them and glaring, loudly asking Dr Glass about his Wife Back Home. Awkward Dude implied that Dr Glass was creepy and odd for always hanging out with a girl half his age. Awkward Dude was annoyed that the course director, an older woman who should presumably know better, had assigned dorm space based on teams, so that Dr Glass and Luminous bunked in adjacent rooms (while he, Awkward Dude, was in the wing with the married couples!) because it was inappropriate and wrong to place a married man next to a teenaged female. On a particularly cold day, Dr Glass noticed that Luminous did not have warm clothing, and lent her an extra hoodie. It happened to have his name on it; Awkward Dude practically ignited, to the point where even the other people on the course were laughing awkwardly at him and saying “Uh, she’s… allowed to wear clothes?”
Luminous and Dr Glass both liked hiking, so one evening after dinner, they went out for a hike by themselves – not inviting the others in case Awkward Dude got wind of their plans. (“I mean, it sounds cruel, but I just hated him,” Dr Glass said.) It was after curfew when they walked back to their rooms,and the halls were completely dark; Dr Glass hung back to fill his water bottle. When he got to the rooms, at the end of the corridor, Luminous had been cornered by Awkward Dude. When Awkward spotted Dr Glass, he yelled at him about how inappropriate it was to go hiking alone with Luminous. Luminous seized the opportunity to flee to her room, locking the door. “I think it’s inappropriate to police her hiking,” Dr Glass said mildly and went to bed.
The next day was the last day of the course, and Dr Glass had had enough. Awkward Dude was “trying it on” in front of the whole group, making everyone uncomfortable. He had dragged Luminous into yet another unwanted conversation and Dr Glass called him out, in front of everybody, a deadly blow to Awkward’s pride. Awkward Dude tried to appeal to the group – he was only trying to be friendly – but Dr Glass had him up against the ropes, metaphorically, he’d broken the floodgates, and everyone began to laugh at Awkward instead: the old married couples, the other young men, and Luminous.
“I really feel bad about that, actually,” Dr Glass said. He hadn’t really wanted to humiliate the younger man in front of everybody, especially since his only crime had been really inept flirting. Was it really Dr Glass’s place to speak for Luminous? Perhaps he’d made a big deal out of nothing. But Dr Glass didn’t regret it. He just felt odd. He didn’t know why he’d been so savage over something so banal as Awkward’s favorite movie. He was pretty sure that he didn’t regard Luminous as a possession, or something to be protected. He’d just snapped.
“OH MY GOD,” I replied, “WHY DIDN’T YOU DO MORE? WHAT A FUCKING CREEPER!”
Well, Dr Glass wanted to assume good intentions on everyone’s part. They’d all lived together, after all, eaten together, worked together. Emotions had run high. It would have been pretty terrible for the Dude if he’d been ostracized right at the beginning, just because he wasn’t very good at talking to girls. After all, he was there for the workshop. They all were.
“AAAAH,” I wound down, “But what Luminous? WHOSE WORKSHOP WAS RUINED BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T FEEL SAFE?! She couldn’t just relax and enjoy spending time with you/her other new friends/nature – she practically had to have a bathroom buddy! He didn’t even let her focus on the work she was PAYING MONEY to do! You did not cross a line! HE CROSSED THE FUCKING LINE!”
Dr Glass totally agreed. But he still felt oddly uncomfortable about it all, as if there was something there to regret, like he was missing a piece of the puzzle. And then I asked The Question. And after I asked The Question, his face changed. He looked sick. “I didn’t think of that.” After The Question, he wished he’d been more explicit – gone to the course director. Been there more for Luminous. The good intentions that he wanted to assume, the passes he was willing to give the other man, evaporated, completely. They had evaporated for me, halfway through the story.
When I tell this story to women, they spot The Question right away. The men don’t; they think that Dr Glass behaved like a gentleman, neither doing too much nor too little. They are feminist men, and good people. They have read “The Gift of Fear” and they talk about privilege and the patriarchy, and they don’t spot it.
The Question is this: Why Was Awkward Dude Waiting For Her In The Dark?
Earlier in the story we heard that his own room was far away from hers. It was dark, at the end of a dark hall. He was waiting there, after midnight, with the lights off. HE HAD BEEN WAITING FOR HER IN THE DARK AT THE END OF A DARK HALL AFTER CURFEW, HE KNEW SHE HAD GONE OUT AND HE WAS WAITING FOR HER TO COME BACK. He was angry when he realized that she wasn’t alone. And Luminous was afraid – bolting into her room. Locking the door. And the women go HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT as soon as they hear about the atmosphere, and the men just accept it as another anecdote of Awkward Dude’s awkwardness, you know? Because how rude/silly/inept to pester a woman about hiking with another man! While the women are going BAD INTENTIONS BAD INTENTIONS FUCK SHIT THAT WOULD NOT HAVE ENDED WELL. And then you point out The Question to the men, and wait a while, and they suddenly go OH. OH MY GOD. WHY WAS HE WAITING FOR HER IN THE DARK. THAT’S – THAT’S PRETTY FUCKING SKETCHY. Everything changes. Dude-sympathy is gone. They put on the Matrix-goggles and peer into the world that apparently only women see. Awkward cornered Luminous in the dark after curfew at the end of the hall when he thought she was alone and he had a lot of anger and when my husband showed up he read Luminous as afraid and she ran into her room and locked the door. That is the reality. The good intentions, they are not there. Perhaps Awkward would have said that they were, that we, in our paranoia, are seeing rape in every dark corner. Perhaps he was trying to apologize for his previous behavior, or lend her a book, or make sure that she got back safely from her hike… so he’d chosen to do so alone, in the dark, making her afraid. That was what had been bothering Dr Glass. He wasn’t wearing the Goggles of Feminine Intuition, but he picked up on the signals that something wasn’t right. Seeing the Question doesn’t make you paranoid – it means your instincts are working.
If you live in the world of women, it isn’t your duty to educate everybody, to hand-hold and explain, to pass out Matrix-goggles. It’s Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. But perhaps you, Letter Writers, have good men, men who just need to wear the goggles.
That’s not really what I think, but our society is fucked up. I’ll assume good intentions on their part. Maybe it will help.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Posts
Offensive behavior that can't be legally regulated.
So, tell me - how has that strategy been working? Because from where I sit, using purely legal means to deal with inequality has had only moderate success at best.
So, how do we stop "offensive behavior"?
You missed the top of my post, where I suggested that we stop talking about general, nebulous, and unhelpful categories.
What particular offensive behavior do you want to stop, and why do you want to stop it?
No I am saying it is still sexist, regardless of motivation.
Again, three options:
The person said something hateful because they are hateful (sexist)
The person said something hateful because they "want to get a rise out of people" (still sexist)
The person said something hateful purely by accident (you should still inform them that what they said is sexist)
Who are you talking about? Everyone in your neighborhood? Your city? Your social circle? People who have taken post-high school courses? People on the TV? Everyone in the country you live in? The world? Blatant sexism is rampant in many places still, as has been said many times in the thread, even in "highly developed" countries like the US or Sweden. It's not a matter of "very very few people". I understand what you're trying to say, but we shouldn't forget that even though there ARE groups of people who have come a very far way regarding feminism, there are many who haven't and we shouldn't assume that everyone should just get on with "the next step".
The part where people aren't computers also seems to have evaded you.
I think we disagree about how meaning works. And this probably isn't the place for that conversation.
Well, yeah. I did say "there will always be exceptions to that rule". I guess that applies both to a) geographical boundaries, and b) people inside the geographical boundaries.
Feminism as a movement is spending less time against openly/publicly sexist people, and more of its time against people who either don't even realize they are being sexist, or who are limiting their sexism to the "grey area" where it may or may not be sexist and expect the benefit of the doubt, and I think the discussion in this thread is a good example of this.
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The problem with that assessment is that feminist have always operated In the grey area Of their respective times.
A man in the 20s didn't think that they hated women just because they didn't want them to vote and don draper didn't think anything was wrong with slapping his secretary on the ass.
Sexism is part of what motivates people, like the police for instance, to sometimes choose to NOT do something about the things you mention. Their value system says it's okay and the view they have of women - formed by different kinds of media among other things - say that women are incompetent and "aggravate" their husbands routinely. So they don't see a problem with it and won't listen to protests, and maybe the general public doesn't see much of a problem because they hold similar beliefs. By nurturing works like video games or movies that present a more varied view of females these kinds of beliefs will be challenged and hopefully revised to better reflect the complex reality we live in.
Here's another harm: let's say a female politician isn't taken seriously and gets questions about what her favorite dress brand is, instead of being asked what she thinks she can do about the economy. This harms her public image even though it's outside of her control.
Let's say a woman who works at a workplace ends up quitting because dumb co-workers won't stop discussing in their free time what her ass would feel like and even jokes about how it would be nice to rape her.
Or do you mean that noone should say "hey that's sexist" when there's no particular target/victim, just "generally sexist"? That would be a more moderate stance.
Yeah but still, my point is that it's not so much about exceptions and we are doing people who live in less favorable circumstances a disservice when saying that the problems they face are very rare. That's also important, should more focus be put on making a change for these people than currently is, possibly at the cost of slowed development among people who have generally moved past the worst sexism? This is kind of related to what _J_ is seems to be arguing.
Or we could address all the issues, and not play oppression Olympics.
Again, this is the same argument that Dawkins used against Watson, and he got a well deserved coals-raking for it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Why? His whole point is that you can't control how others ultimately perceive you, just how you present yourself.
What are your issues with it? I think I take his point. There's persistent arguing in this thread that it's unfair that simply because people interpret what you do and say as sexist you're being tarred as sexist even though in your secret heart you're not at all why can't people see that? And the answer is because people cannot see into secret hearts, we need to go off surface impressions sometimes.
Which, I mean, is also why you can feel free to have someone call you a virulent sexist and go "oh jeez this person just doesn't even know well whatever" and be accurate. It is possible for people to misinterpret your actions, but if it's a persistent thing maybe altering your actions is in order sometimes.
Anyway, so. I've been reading about David Lisaks studies on sexual predators.
Brief summary, Lasik did a bunch of surveys of college students on rape, his conclusions are interesting because he's firmly against the idea that the majority of rape is being a one-time-mistake-offence. What he found is that the majority of rapes, acquaintance, date rape ect are done by a relatively small subset of repeat offenders.
Now heres the creepy part, among these repeat offenders certain patterns come up, and one is that they know how to exploit societies bias against women. That is to say, they know how to pick victims who wont speak out, they overwhelmingly use manipulation and general nice guy (up to a point) tactics rather than violence, and they know to ingratiate themselves in a crowd where they have "social license" to operate.
Essentially in order to get away with being a rapey dude, you've got to be in a crowd where men are the dominant voice, where you can say rapey things and pass it off as "just a joke", and where if it comes down to a he said/she said situation people will at worst, charitably assume it was a matter of simple miscommunication.
Rapists and general misogynists are well aware that as long as you operate in societies "grey area" no one will really call you it. As long as you surround yourself with people who will say "haha thats our frank, don't be so uptight he doesn't really mean anything by it" you can do or say pretty much whatever you want.
Let's address all the issues everywhere at the same time. Let's make posts on every single community on the web. It doesn't matter whether I discuss feminism here or if I do it on a forum filled with 15-year-old male kids. I help women in Gambia just as much by being in Berlin and calling my progressive punk rocker friends out on every single hint of sexism in what they say and then explaining to them in excruciating detail why what they said was sexist as if I was in Gambia protesting outside a school that favors boys over girls arbitrarily when choosing who gets scholarships for higher education.
I think you were thinking I was asking a different question from the one I meant to ask.
I'm not getting where you're going here.
Are you saying you're in the position of honestly deciding between continued discussion on a forum and protesting virulent sexism in another country? I mean I'd go protest, I guess.
1) We aren't talking about an internal dialogue between feminists
2) the second part is calling them a sexist.
I read the articles, they did not do a particularly good job of saying it without saying "he is a sexist". Or "gamers are sexist".
Sexism permeates our culture and effects the actions of everyone in it. I mean look, if black people genuinely experience symptoms of depression as a result of someone they've never met, in an office somewhere, implying that they might like fried chicken and watermelon, then perhaps there are larger issues with which the person needs to deal.
Yea no. Perhaps the person in the office needs to not do racist things.
The problem that each marginalized person faces in this scenario is not a hypothetical about whether or not they should be offended, but rather how to tell someone that they're doing bad things without saying that that person is a bad person.
-
So she should take out her frustrations on others?
If you're in that specific situation, probably it doesn't matter. No one will listen. If you're not in that specific situation then yes, you should. Except you should not say "talk nice and smile" because that is loaded bullshit designed to provoke a response from people familiar with the situation.
You might instead say "blogger etiquette" or "proper communication techniques" or "remember who you're talking to, what you want from them, and that you want something from them"
As great as it may be for her to release her frustrations on people that "deserve it" she is perpetuating harmful stereotypes which further entrench sexist thought and behavior every time she does that.
Its audience was generally "men who do not want to be considered creepers" or "men who have been considered creepers in the past". And the article said "you're a creeper, its your fault, don't be a creeper"
It was directed at "you", "you personally the person reading the article who did not want to be considered a creeper". If you're reading that article you're already there on his side or want to be on his side and the article is written in a way that puts the audience firmly on the other side of the author. It does not attempt to understand the other persons position, it does not attempt to understand potential responses from a person in that position.
The problems can be summed up by looking at the segment that people took issue with.
Surprise! It doesn't matter whether or not you meant to an asshole and calling people creepers. It doesn't matter whether or not you were saying they had a problem. It matters whether or not they perceive that you're saying it!
And to make this part worse, the audience is ripe for the picking for being told how to not be creepers, since they're actually reading an article about how to not be a creeper they already acknowledge that the issue is their responsibility to correct! They are already doing the right thing and taking responsibility regardless of whether or not the other person is in the right or wrong and instead of talking to them like adults the author is calling them creepers.
Actually I am 100% certain that is exactly what is being done in this article. The audience and their position is 100% not considered and it is absolutely demanded that the other party see it his way and if they don't they're a creeper.
Yes, this this this exactly this.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Do they now?
I feel like it's close to the mark, but just misses by a hair.
Turn his principle around. Let's say somebody perceives my posts in this thread as inflammatory and reactionary because I dared to use the word "sexist" or "misogynist." I have no problem saying that this person's perception is incorrect.
There's room for one person's perception of another person to be wrong, and there isn't a general case prohibition against calling people out for that regardless of context.
However, if you look at Scalzi's post through the lens of a convention-goer interacting with a stranger or distant acquaintance, his post makes perfect sense. if that stranger misinterprets your actions, the best thing you can do is just step away and move on.
His first post suffers from a similar contextual limitation. Some of his guidelines are pretty widely applicable across multiple contexts - don't physically box people in, for instance, if you can help it. Others... not so much. He explicitly acknowledges the context he's writing about early on: "A creeper may be of any gender and may creep on any gender, but let’s acknowledge that a whole lot of the time it’s guys creeping on women. Creeping can happen any place and in any community or grouping of people, but in geekdom we see a lot of it at conventions and other large gatherings," but he doesn't really stick to it, he kind of makes it vague whether his guidelines are meant to be widely applicable or very context and gender specific.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Basically yeah.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That is one of the premises of psychotherapy, yes.
So if I, say, murdered your parents, your reaction is totally under your control?
I mean, it'd be your choice to be upset, right?
Yup.
No. I'm saying that different actions have different impact and you have to choose between them, you can't just do everything at once. Just because one particular action is pro-feminism it doesn't mean that it's furthering the feminist movement equally everywhere, nor does it mean that something else wouldn't be more effective. I'm also trying to point out that the privileged who do have a voice might become narrow-minded and forget about the non-privileged that are supposed to be part of the group that they are fighting for. Then when they are confronted they say it's OK because while they do only focus on the interests of the privileged, it behooves the non-privileged indirectly. But could the feminists with power do MORE for the people who are less off if they directed more of their forces at first and foremostly helping them? Please don't mistake this as some "influence currency" argument where there is only so much influence you can portion out to different issues, of course it doesn't work that way. But still, if a lobbying group in New York decides to lobby for gender quotas for chief positions at universities, that will obviously mean near to nothing IN THE SHORT TERM for women with very little education. It's not strange or wrong of the group to be choosing to focus on the rights of highly educated women, nor does it somehow counteract the work of feminists fighting for issues closer at heart for women with less education.
What I'm asking is if on the whole, the feminist movement could move forward faster if more effort was shifted toward help explicitly aimed at making things better for relatively non-privileged women. Maybe that could boost the ranks of feminists more quickly, making dealing with subtle discrimination easier? This connects back to what I said a long time ago in the thread about how there used to be more "clear targets"(like suffrage) to go for and that made things progress quickly. In some countries there still is legislation etc. that makes for easy targets. It also is related to what people were saying earlier about how it used to be all white upper-class women fighting for white upper-class women and alienating everyone else. Note that I'm NOT considering leaving some issues altogether to deal with them later, I'm talking about a shift of focus, to a perhaps more balanced approach. Also note that I'm not saying I'm totally absolutely ultra for this, I'm saying it's worth pondering.
So environment has no actual effect on human development in your mind?
You realise this is a completely ridiculous and stupid premise, right?
Well but it is at the core of understanding what we are debating. BTW the way you think meaning works heavily disagrees with what I learned and teach about communication theory and is hardly applicable to asynchronous communication (which any written statement btw is)
When you read an article or a quote or a tweet... you do not have access to the inner feelings and thinkings of the author. You need to interpret what's written there on face value. And this interpretations form the effects this asynchronous message has on it's readers. The author's intend does not factor in in situations like that, because the author's intent is not available (or it at least takes extra effort) information.
This is where Girlfriend-mode comes in. It's a written statement, which on face value is sexist, reaches a wide audience and comes from a source with authority...
As long as you don't accept that messages are sexist or not independently from the author's intent, y'know accepting that there are misunderstandings (I guess you have heard the term once or twice), you are not qualified to participate in a discussion about cultural sexism and are not qualified to give advice how to fight it.
...you don't know how the stuff works.
You're calling for more awareness of intersectionality. You're not alone!
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is such a factually wrong and bizarre thing to say that I don't even know where to begin.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That's the only way I can see it making sense to me.
_J_ has now barricaded himself in a completely impervious fortress of subjectivism, intellectualization of emotions and logical fallacies, that I will now focus my time on talking with people who actually did not argue themselves into a corner.
What we want from them though, at that moment in time, is to go away.
The really, really critical message to impart is a simple one: "people do not consider what you said to be ok". Ideally for maximum effectiveness yes, you want to deliver that in as non confrontational way as possible, but what is even more important than that is that lots of people are saying it. Whether they're polite people or shouty people or people with saint like patience or people with not so much or whatever.
Like, people in general don't need an extended discourse on race to understand that "n*gger" is a bad word that perpetuates hatred. You internalize that intuitively from the fact that every time you say it, people look at you like an asshole. And you realize that if you don't want people to mistake you for a racist, you should stop saying it.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to say you can suppress or manage your reactions to your environment.
Socially saavy and manipulative people are good at getting away with lots of crimes. This is hardly a revelation.
Haha, thanks! Now I kinda wish I'd just known it was called intersectionality from the beginning so I didn't need to write all that... At least I argued that intersectionality can be about thinking/working in a more global context, too, that's maybe a bit new? Of course, when/if you do so and try to help/work with underprivileged women in poor countries there's a huge risk that you turn into this authoritarian holier-than-thou, I-know-what's-best-for-you person that doesn't understand the cultural context. Basically the same thing that might happen when the privileged help/try to co-operate with underprivileged people in the same country but more extreme.
@Cliff The point is, sexism creates an environment that is very favorable for rapists. So it would be reasonable to assume that less sexism would lead to less rapists getting away with their crimes.
There is a fantastic story to illustrate this, in the comments of that Captain Awkward link I like so much, so I'm going to post it here.