I have heard this argument before, and I don’t think it carries quite the same force as you apparently do.
You seem to vastly underestimate the kinds of remarks that men hear constantly that tell them that because they are men, they must be a certain way. The general culture is full of notions, some loud and some winking, that men are terrible, evil, violent, lazy, stupid, inept, and on and on. Turn on any American primetime television show and observe the male characters with a dispassionate eye. Try to discern which gender is more often portrayed as truly malevolent (on dramas) or incompetent (comedies), and which gender most often carries the torch of moral rightness, or has to clean up all the messes made by the bumbling idiot.
You are using a “stop sign” (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/semantic-stopsi.html) in your argument when you say that a man couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like. You are heading off disagreement at the pass, signaling that anyone who proceeds with disagreeing nevertheless is therefore insensitive and unfeeling. This is poor form (though of course quite common), and it has the added vice of being untrue. I can understand it just fine, thank you very much.
There are differences between the situation of men and that of women, that I can see that might support your argument. One, supporting your sense that women literally feel these comments in a way that men can’t, is that there are vastly more men in positions of power (although, of course, men pay much more in taxes to a government that redistributes that wealth disproportionately to women, and of course that there are also vastly more male victims of violence, men that die on the streets, die in wars, rot in prison, live as shut-ins, go untreated for severe drug and alcohol dependency… but this rarely enters into discussions about gender privelege because the answer to this question has already been determined before the discussion even started… to even question the premise is purest heresy). But let’s say for sake of moving on that men are indeed in a position of privelege. So that’s one thing that I can think of that might support your assertion that I, as a man, can’t possibly understand the feeling you have, that the power dynamics infuse your internal mental experience with a special category that anyone outside the in-group cannot ever hope to understand.
But you are flat out wrong when you say that gender-typing is only a “rare occasion” for men. It happens constantly, all day every day.
Other than that, I would assert that just because you know what it feels like to be a woman does not mean you are really all that qualified to understand what it feels like to be not-a-woman. I think that as a human you are qualified to understand other humans relatively well. But if you insist on making it a gender thing, then I must object to your characterization of what men do or do not feel inside.
You are certainly right about one thing, that men in this culture do not generally complain about this stuff. But it’s not because it doesn’t happen, but because we have not been trained to be on hair-trigger alert to every tiny perceived slight.
I agree that there is some merit in your point about the “stop sign”; in fact, before I had any real understanding of feminism myself (not that I consider myself to have a massive amount now), that was my general response to this sort of thing too. I thought the stance I’m taking now was rather whiney, self-centred and, as you think, obstructive with regards to dialogue and argument. But I’ve come to see that engaging with feminism rather than seizing this opportunity to dismiss it actually makes a lot more sense.
I do, of course, agree that there are very many negative stereotypes around about men, and they’re as unhelpful and undesireable as the ones about women. And obviously, there are positive stereotypes about women as well as about men (more about this below). But as you go on to say, the situation is far from balanced: men are, by and large, the ones with the power. Do you disagree that this situation, which has been the case forever, means that there’s an imbalance in the effects that stereotyping, exclusion etc. directed towards women as opposed to men can have? (By the way, perhaps this is different political perspectives talking, but I don’t understand your point about redistribution of wealth. Is it okay for certain groups to have less political power as long as they reap the benefits of others paying taxes? I can see that argument working where the group in question is children, and perhaps the severely mentally disabled (maybe that’s controversial?), but otherwise I see no justification for it whatsoever.)
I didn’t actually mean to assert that I could understand men’s experiences better than they can understand women’s—I was simply working with people’s assertions that, in fact, the reversed situation wouldn’t bother them—but it happens that some schools of thought do believe that to be the case: that women do actually have a better handle on how men see the world than vice versa. That’s because the male stance is the dominant or default one, and therefore culture tends to be filtered through the male lens before it gets to women; the same doesn’t happen in reverse. I’ve seen it illustrated with a Venn diagram: women’s and men’s experiences largely overlapping, but with some area of non-overlap on both sides; but while culture provides women with a lot of insight into the non-overlapping part of the men’s section, it provides men with very little about the non-overlapping part of the women’s section. I’m not sure to what extent I personally buy into this, but it strikes me that the example we’re looking at here could be a rather typical instance of it: it seems quite unlikely to me that a woman, knowing she was writing to a mixed audience, would throw in a line like “men will always be alluring” without adding some concession to different viewpoints. Perhaps I’m wrong about that.
Your “women are on hair-trigger alert” argument is certainly one that I’ve heard before, extremely often, and I’m afraid I don’t buy it, for the simple reason that if we were on hair-trigger alert, many of us would never get through a day with all its quagmire of gender-related crap without going insane. There really is that much of it.
I’d also like to add one more thing about the positive stereotypes mentioned above. Being neither American nor a TV-watcher, I can’t speak for American TV, but I can speak for many other aspects of culture, and it seems to me that what people see as “positive” stereotypes can be just as harmful as the negative ones. Women are more emotional, more touchy-feely, more in tune with nature, better with kids, more verbally adept, more empathetic, more arty, and so on and so on and so on. All those are, on the face of it, positive attitudes towards women, but they also all buy into views of women that contribute towards keeping the balance of power and so on skewed towards men. For this reason, I think we should beware of simply making lists of male and female stereotypes and declaring that, just because the positive and negative numbers balance out, there’s no problem in society with marginalising women.
Seconded. I’d like to add that it’s not remotely implausible for two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups to both suffer unambiguously negative discrimination simultaneously; the sorts of negatives women experience have already been gone over in some detail, but for instance, men have a terrible time trying to win custody battles. Unfairness to group A does not compensate for different unfairness to group B; discrimination is not fungible in that way. It is possible to focus on group A’s injustices without, in so doing, assuming that nothing is wrong with how group B is treated.
Fair enough. Even so, any disparity in male vs female political power seems to me to be smaller than the disparity in male vs female politicians. Maybe that’s not Emily meant to claim, though.
If that’s the case (which I’m not necessarily at all convinced of, but let’s go with it), I’m not so sure that it does matter for society as a whole. What does matter is that it’s more difficult for individual women to become politicians than for individual men.
Maybe, but few people even want to become politicians. Does this have anything to do with (what I think was) the original question: that of whether it’s reasonable for women to fear being excluded from places like LessWrong?
So women have more trouble breaking into a particular tiny minority career, and therefore other women should feel anguish over the rare “women are alluring” goofup on LessWrong? If there’s anything relating to the original point here I’m not seeing it.
Well, I wasn’t the one who brought up politicians as an example. But they are an example (just an example) of the imbalance of power, opportunity, control, call it what you like, that exists between men and women. And that imbalance is part of the reason why some women do (no “should” about it; I’m happy for those that don’t) feel annoyance or distraction (not anguish, at least certainly not in my case) over such goofups.
Emily:
I have heard this argument before, and I don’t think it carries quite the same force as you apparently do.
You seem to vastly underestimate the kinds of remarks that men hear constantly that tell them that because they are men, they must be a certain way. The general culture is full of notions, some loud and some winking, that men are terrible, evil, violent, lazy, stupid, inept, and on and on. Turn on any American primetime television show and observe the male characters with a dispassionate eye. Try to discern which gender is more often portrayed as truly malevolent (on dramas) or incompetent (comedies), and which gender most often carries the torch of moral rightness, or has to clean up all the messes made by the bumbling idiot.
You are using a “stop sign” (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/semantic-stopsi.html) in your argument when you say that a man couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like. You are heading off disagreement at the pass, signaling that anyone who proceeds with disagreeing nevertheless is therefore insensitive and unfeeling. This is poor form (though of course quite common), and it has the added vice of being untrue. I can understand it just fine, thank you very much.
There are differences between the situation of men and that of women, that I can see that might support your argument. One, supporting your sense that women literally feel these comments in a way that men can’t, is that there are vastly more men in positions of power (although, of course, men pay much more in taxes to a government that redistributes that wealth disproportionately to women, and of course that there are also vastly more male victims of violence, men that die on the streets, die in wars, rot in prison, live as shut-ins, go untreated for severe drug and alcohol dependency… but this rarely enters into discussions about gender privelege because the answer to this question has already been determined before the discussion even started… to even question the premise is purest heresy). But let’s say for sake of moving on that men are indeed in a position of privelege. So that’s one thing that I can think of that might support your assertion that I, as a man, can’t possibly understand the feeling you have, that the power dynamics infuse your internal mental experience with a special category that anyone outside the in-group cannot ever hope to understand.
But you are flat out wrong when you say that gender-typing is only a “rare occasion” for men. It happens constantly, all day every day.
Other than that, I would assert that just because you know what it feels like to be a woman does not mean you are really all that qualified to understand what it feels like to be not-a-woman. I think that as a human you are qualified to understand other humans relatively well. But if you insist on making it a gender thing, then I must object to your characterization of what men do or do not feel inside.
You are certainly right about one thing, that men in this culture do not generally complain about this stuff. But it’s not because it doesn’t happen, but because we have not been trained to be on hair-trigger alert to every tiny perceived slight.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, RoS.
I agree that there is some merit in your point about the “stop sign”; in fact, before I had any real understanding of feminism myself (not that I consider myself to have a massive amount now), that was my general response to this sort of thing too. I thought the stance I’m taking now was rather whiney, self-centred and, as you think, obstructive with regards to dialogue and argument. But I’ve come to see that engaging with feminism rather than seizing this opportunity to dismiss it actually makes a lot more sense.
I do, of course, agree that there are very many negative stereotypes around about men, and they’re as unhelpful and undesireable as the ones about women. And obviously, there are positive stereotypes about women as well as about men (more about this below). But as you go on to say, the situation is far from balanced: men are, by and large, the ones with the power. Do you disagree that this situation, which has been the case forever, means that there’s an imbalance in the effects that stereotyping, exclusion etc. directed towards women as opposed to men can have? (By the way, perhaps this is different political perspectives talking, but I don’t understand your point about redistribution of wealth. Is it okay for certain groups to have less political power as long as they reap the benefits of others paying taxes? I can see that argument working where the group in question is children, and perhaps the severely mentally disabled (maybe that’s controversial?), but otherwise I see no justification for it whatsoever.)
I didn’t actually mean to assert that I could understand men’s experiences better than they can understand women’s—I was simply working with people’s assertions that, in fact, the reversed situation wouldn’t bother them—but it happens that some schools of thought do believe that to be the case: that women do actually have a better handle on how men see the world than vice versa. That’s because the male stance is the dominant or default one, and therefore culture tends to be filtered through the male lens before it gets to women; the same doesn’t happen in reverse. I’ve seen it illustrated with a Venn diagram: women’s and men’s experiences largely overlapping, but with some area of non-overlap on both sides; but while culture provides women with a lot of insight into the non-overlapping part of the men’s section, it provides men with very little about the non-overlapping part of the women’s section. I’m not sure to what extent I personally buy into this, but it strikes me that the example we’re looking at here could be a rather typical instance of it: it seems quite unlikely to me that a woman, knowing she was writing to a mixed audience, would throw in a line like “men will always be alluring” without adding some concession to different viewpoints. Perhaps I’m wrong about that.
Your “women are on hair-trigger alert” argument is certainly one that I’ve heard before, extremely often, and I’m afraid I don’t buy it, for the simple reason that if we were on hair-trigger alert, many of us would never get through a day with all its quagmire of gender-related crap without going insane. There really is that much of it.
I’d also like to add one more thing about the positive stereotypes mentioned above. Being neither American nor a TV-watcher, I can’t speak for American TV, but I can speak for many other aspects of culture, and it seems to me that what people see as “positive” stereotypes can be just as harmful as the negative ones. Women are more emotional, more touchy-feely, more in tune with nature, better with kids, more verbally adept, more empathetic, more arty, and so on and so on and so on. All those are, on the face of it, positive attitudes towards women, but they also all buy into views of women that contribute towards keeping the balance of power and so on skewed towards men. For this reason, I think we should beware of simply making lists of male and female stereotypes and declaring that, just because the positive and negative numbers balance out, there’s no problem in society with marginalising women.
Seconded. I’d like to add that it’s not remotely implausible for two mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups to both suffer unambiguously negative discrimination simultaneously; the sorts of negatives women experience have already been gone over in some detail, but for instance, men have a terrible time trying to win custody battles. Unfairness to group A does not compensate for different unfairness to group B; discrimination is not fungible in that way. It is possible to focus on group A’s injustices without, in so doing, assuming that nothing is wrong with how group B is treated.
Why does it matter that politicians are men if they enact policies they chose to appeal to voters of both genders?
A few possible reasons, just off the top of my head:
Representative democracy is a pretty weak constraint on political action, all things considered.
Cognitive diversity is generally a good thing for decision making bodies.
Role models are important.
Sometimes symbolism matters.
I think 1-3 are fairly obvious, but can provide more argument/detail if you disagree. I’m probably least sympathetic to 4. YMMV.
Fair enough. Even so, any disparity in male vs female political power seems to me to be smaller than the disparity in male vs female politicians. Maybe that’s not Emily meant to claim, though.
If that’s the case (which I’m not necessarily at all convinced of, but let’s go with it), I’m not so sure that it does matter for society as a whole. What does matter is that it’s more difficult for individual women to become politicians than for individual men.
Maybe, but few people even want to become politicians. Does this have anything to do with (what I think was) the original question: that of whether it’s reasonable for women to fear being excluded from places like LessWrong?
So women have more trouble breaking into a particular tiny minority career, and therefore other women should feel anguish over the rare “women are alluring” goofup on LessWrong? If there’s anything relating to the original point here I’m not seeing it.
Well, I wasn’t the one who brought up politicians as an example. But they are an example (just an example) of the imbalance of power, opportunity, control, call it what you like, that exists between men and women. And that imbalance is part of the reason why some women do (no “should” about it; I’m happy for those that don’t) feel annoyance or distraction (not anguish, at least certainly not in my case) over such goofups.
Upvoted for your consistent politeness on a topic where it is very easy to get angry. Thanks for helping keep the discourse constructive!
From this comment, I infer that you’re white. (The survey says 94% of LWers are, so I’m not winning many Bayes-points.)