(EDIT: The article itself uses the word "sexist", so it might indeed have been a call-out. However, that doesn't affect my point that we should not tolerate shitty behaviour, no matter which label is attached to it.)
The moderator's behvaiour itself was inappropriate, no matter which gender the other person had, and no matter whether the other person is offended or cool with it.
Why? Because others might not be cool with that, and rightly so! If we publicly tolerate inappropriate behaviour, we are making it even harder for those who are not cool with it.
That's why we (the audience, the society) should not tolerate shitty behaviour, and speak out publicly against it. Not just to fix this individual case, where the affected person may or may not need our help, but to establish a culture where this shitty behaviour will occur less often in the first place.
The "call out" is the Facebook post and the subsequent social media firestorm that follows it.
It is arrogance to assume that we know the mind of another well enough to call this sexism.
But also note that the moderator called the person from the audience "heckling" just because she made him aware of his inappropriate behaviour. If not sexism, this is at least a clear sign of ignorance.
> interrupt (a public speaker) with derisive or aggressive comments or abuse.
When a member yells out something from the audience to someone on stage: That's a heckle. They forced a break in the 4th wall. (yes, the audience member was right, but so was the moderator in that small instance)
Why do you feel that calling the person who interjected a "heckler" is a bad thing?
Second, attaching such an attribute at all to that person was inappropriate, given she pointed out an obvious misbehaviour of the moderator.
An appropriate reaction would have been: "Oh, I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing this out!"
> Second, attaching such an attribute at all to that person was inappropriate, given she pointed out an obvious misbehaviour of the moderator.
That is an assumption based on your emotional connection to the word. No one believes that the moderator's behavior was "bad" (different attributions have been made)
> An appropriate reaction would have been: "Oh, I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing this out!"
I would strongly disagree with that. It's impressive that he recognized the heckle, and didn't respond negatively. From what I saw he acknowledged the event and made the correction. For someone to do that on stage is VERY impressive. That takes a lot of experience and a lot of skill. (Many performers respond very negative to a heckle).
The heckle broke the 4th wall, it was processed by the moderator, acknowledged (mentally and then verbally) without anger (which requires processing and understanding), the suggestion (I'm being generous in that) was taken, and the moderator returned back to the 4th wall with the context prior.
That's a freaking amazing job.
Err meant to say: No one believes that the heckler's behavior was "bad" (different attributions have been made)
To gauge for myself, I clicked the video linked above in the comments that went straight to the segment under scrutiny. My immediate response (without reading the comments here or anywhere else) was not that the moderator was sexist, but rather that he seemed extremely energetic and really into the topic that happened to be her area of expertise and got carried away with himself and started rambling about string theory. From the video I actually get the impression he has a great deal of respect for her and is genuinely extremely interested in the topic and just ran off course.
Revisiting it after the comments here, I think that's still very true, but I think what was mentioned by another about this being his extroversion filling the gap her introversion left is probably even more accurate. Watching some more of the video, she seems more introverted and slightly less comfortable speaking than the other panel members. I also think that in the general case the other panel members made their responses a bit more concise. I think all of this was a factor in how he responded to her.
Maybe that makes him a poor moderator. But I don't think he's necessarily sexist.
I agree that call out culture sometimes doesn't leave room for nuance and sometimes unnecessarily shoves people into defensive spaces - i.e. telling people they 'are sexist' vs telling them a behavior they are exhibiting is 'a little sexist'.
In this situation the impact wasn't "The speaker is being offended, I must speak up", the situation was "Im here to hear what the expert has to say on the subject that they are an expert in, and the moderator is doing all the talking" Which would be irritating regardless of the genders involved. But this behavior fit with a very common pattern of men speaking over/for women.
If this makes you uncomfortable, embrace that discomfort. It's the first step to understanding this.
This is the pinnacle of stupidity and hubris. We should be happy with our social progress and move onto other real problems.
As for "intent", how can one be accidentally racist if racism is defined in useful terms? One can conceivably accidentally participate in a racial disparity, for example, by being an English-speaking business owner providing a useful service, I might only advertise my services in English such that mainly English speakers benefit. Because the racial distributions vary across these language groups, Asians and Hispanics would benefit less, and a race gap might widen. This obviously isn't racism in the original sender of the wires, but people tend to use it in this sense, often it seems to use this ambiguity to make harsh accusations about individual motives while affording the accuser the ability to say "No, I didn't mean it _that_ way! Why are X people so sensitive/guilty/etc?"
The other plausible explanation is that "intent" is meant to refer to a decision by the conscious brain, and prejudice is a deeply subconscious activity. This is generally what I subscribe to, but I could never imagine making wanton and very damaging accusations about the happenings and motives in others when they can't even reliably tap into them. Even when we have existence of a disparity, our society seems quick to attribute it to discrimination, but this is rarely the case to any significant degree (for example, all of the data on the wage gap suggests that discrimination is responsible for a small fraction of the gap at very most).
I mean a moderator for a panel consisting of four men and one woman, in this day and age, shouldn't one of their mental bullet points going on stage be "make damn sure she gets about the same airtime as everyone else"?
In many cases I do feel sorry for the person who's 'called out', but in this case: he failed spectacularly at his task, and when you do you can't expect to fully control the narrative of why that happened...
The story tells how the audience applauded to the "let her speak" comment, and how afterwards a large number of people came to thank her for the comment. So in this case it was a large number of people who perceived there being sexism.
You mean [these informed witnesses][1]?
To be clear, my "uninformed judgment" is consistent with eye-witnesses, the jury, and even Eric Holder's justice department! The case is entirely unambiguous. All of the material evidence and many witnesses corroborated the officer's story. Many other witnesses admitted making false testimonies, and those who didn't admit have conflicting testimonies. There is no reasonable alternate conclusion. Even BLM have distanced themselves.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown#Witn...
Those people only got partial information from whatever media broadcasts they happened to follow. But the link at hand, the audience literally saw with their own eyes what happened in the panel discussion. They have complete information (unless they dozed off for a while).
You can never hide behind "the victim said it was ok". You need to examine the behavior. Consider the environment in which it took place. Consider the statement the behavior makes to those observing it. Maybe even consider why the perpetrator was behaving that way, but don't give that too much weight.
The important part is that public behavior does not exist in isolation, by definition. Public behavior shapes the world in which it takes place, and the perception of it is shaped by the world in which it exists.
Let me jump to a hypothetical case, totally unrelated to what was presented here:
Let's imagine a couple who in private mutually enjoy the male partner dominating the female partner, including verbal and physical abuse. There is nothing wrong with this. "It's not a problem, she enjoys it" is a perfectly true statement.
Now move that couple's behavior into the public realm. "It's not a problem, she enjoys it" is no longer true. She can completely enjoy it, even feel empowered by it, and the situation still presents a problem. The abuse must now be considered in a wider context. If no one challenges it, it is tacitly accepted behavior. That acceptance influences other people - a man sees that there are no consequences for abusing women and thinks the behavior is a bit more acceptable; a woman sees the same and thinks her only option in that situation is to put up with it.
To move the subject back to the original post, then:
It really doesn't matter whether the victim believed she was being attacked. What matters are the conclusions observers would draw from the interaction. Up until the OP spoke out, an observer would see evidence that it's acceptable for a male speaker to talk over the female speaker he's supposedly asking a question of. The OP speaking out (and the room's reaction to it) provided a very strong contrary signal - it's not acceptable.
In context, does this one incident mean a whole lot either way? No. But our reactions to it do. If you read about this and say "hey, that was a good thing, I should do the same if I notice a situation like that" then you are helping to fight sexism in a real way. Every single time someone says "Let her speak, please" it is creating a tiny shift away from sexism. On the other hand, if your reaction was "this was a non-issue, just ask the woman on the panel", you're not doing a thing to help the culture shift away from sexism.
I'm in the former camp myself. I've been on a work call where a male participant jumped in and started talking over the top of a female participant. I'm ashamed it took me almost a whole minute to work up the nerve to tell him we should let her continue talking. Next time I'll be faster about it. And Marilee's story definitely makes me feel better about doing so in the future.
Don't call this "problematic". It's explicitly shifting cultural norms in the correct direction, a little bit at a time. Stand up for what's right and do the same next time you notice a public situation which would serve to normalize sexism. Trust me, I know how uncomfortable it is. But I also know it's worth it.