Thoughts on being sexism neutral: "I Don't Know: Is There Anything You Can Do?" | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on being sexism neutral: "I Don't Know: Is There Anything You Can Do?"

novemberwest.com

12 pointsMz24 comments

Much to my annoyance, the men who most often play this sexism-neutral role tend to be polite enemies rather than allies: Men who don’t much like me or who are subtly trying to keep women out of a male-dominated area or some such but who are basically decent, professional people who don’t stoop to personal attacks and ugliness.

Do you think they actually are sexist but are just acting indifferent? What makes you think they are trying to keep you out because of your sex? Wouldn't the fact they play a sexism-netural role make that less of a possibility?

I offered two possibilities there, one of which was that they don't much like me personally, which may have nothing whatsoever to do with my gender. So I am not suggesting that such men are necessarily sexist. But there are definitely cases where my read of a particular situation is that it is a subtle form of sexism, sometimes probably not consciously intentional but there nonetheless.

Thanks.

...where my read of a particular situation is that it is a subtle form of sexism, sometimes probably not consciously intentional but there nonetheless.

Can you give an example of this?

Some years ago, I belonged to a forum where two of the top dogs in the forum basically challenged me to post a nude photo of myself. I do not think either man was intentionally trying to be sexist but I read the situation as a group attempt to say "You cannot run with the big dogs. You are just a girl." It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation -- a put up or shut up challenge where I should have "lost" no matter how I responded.

The best example you can come up with is something which happened in an online forum? A fabricated, but relevant "real life" story would have been much more appropriate. Heck, a less-relevant, but real "real life" story would have been more appropriate. My issue is that, if this is the best example you can think of, it makes me think you have not encountered these situations in "real life"

It happens to be the first thing that comes to mind for me because it happens to be an anecdote I reread moments before submitting this piece.

Real life example: In a college class, my Egyptian professor would ask me three or four times "How do you know that?" every single time I answered a math question. It became blatant enough that he was being obtuse that a male class member blurted at some point "She has obviously already worked it out in her head."

Best I can do for now as I have to go.

Catch you later.

Thanks.

I don't know that I would call that subtle.

I do not think anyone in the forum but me read it that way (because it was a subtle powerplay). It grew out of good natured kidding around. It is hard to convey the exact context. Let's just say I was doped to the gills, in constant excruciating pain and I have a ribald sense of humor. So I went quite a long ways towards setting myself up for the challenge.

You may just be likable as person.

I find often times, regardless of gender, when I like someone as a person before I get an understanding of their skills as a programmer or engineer I'm less critical of their work. When I don't know someone, or even better don't like them, I challenge them to show me their best work.

Of course, well structured criticism is important to grow as a person, the sweet-spot is finding someone you likes you, but is comfortable criticizing you. A really good manager should be this person, they should feel like you fit into their culture when they hire you and they should have a lot to gain from pushing you to do your best work. Of course that's in an ideal world.

Interesting that the proposed question is almost exactly what a nice guy would ask himself, but applied to her:

Mr. Nice: "Is there anything I can do"

Empowering guy: "Is there anything you can do"

well-meaning nice guys often deprive women of the chance to struggle, to prove themselves and so on. It is often heartbreaking to watch well meaning men make such mistakes.

I can usually tell, so this is confusing me.. is this post satirical? (Update: Seems not!) I'm a "well-meaning nice guy" to anyone, male, female or otherwise, who's not antagonizing me; I haven't appreciated that this may cause people problems, but different strokes, etc :-)

Aren't all "nice guys" well-meaning? The key is the presence of the phrase "well-meaning", which implies that the results of the nice guys actions are actually negative. It requires some linguistic inference that can be frightening(rightly so: Many people use language too sloppily to safely make these kinds of inferences). However, based on the context, it's safe assume she wasn't just talking about all nice guys - rather she was talking about a specific set of nice guys who, through ignorance, perform net-negative quality actions.

Is that you?

It is not intended as satire.

Not all well-meaning nice guys make such mistakes. But I have seen it. Maybe you are both well meaning and reasonably socially savvy?

Thanks.

I'm not socially savvy but I try to apply the 'golden rule' as much as I can to make up for it ;-) (I've found the key is knowing about one's flaws and working out techniques to get around or diminish them - I have enough!)

The key reason, however, is I've found being polite and well-meaning produces the best outcome for my pursuits. I used to be quite argumentative but empathizing with people's positions has led to less anxiety, helped my business, and has given me a better rapport with partners and customers. These are selfish reasons to be nice on the surface, but I've found it eventually becomes a default, natural position to approach people and problems with.

(Oh, and being British seems to help. For some reason people often assume we're going to be polite so it doesn't seem so odd ;-))

Some people are more prone to foot in mouth disease than others. Given my medical condition and the amount of medication I was on at one time, I have spent plenty of time with both feet in my mouth. I try to be understanding even when it just so happens that I am the person being killed with kindness.

Take care.

Disclaimer/confession: I happen to be the author. That may not be obvious but it is also no secret. I posted it as my contribution to the general ongoing HN discussion of issues like women in tech and related stuff that shows up here.

Enjoy. Or not.

Thanks.

I enjoyed it, and I try to stay away from the gender stuff at HN because it is often trite in part due to the issue you are talking about.

First though, I do think in Aliens, that part of the mens' and the audience's enjoyment and celebration with Ripley that she ran that loader so well is because she is a woman, so in that respect, it is sexist (woman shows disbelieving men and audience). (It might also otherwise be because she's been in cryosleep for decades and unused to loaders, or just that she does her job so well.) (Also, there are times I really hate Chekhov's gun, but that scene has never been one of them.)

And one of the aspects of gender discussions on the web I find annoying is in fact that at many such discussions the male commenters getting the most applause are actually often very sexist, condescending, white knighting, patronizing, cheerleading, and fact free commenters (and that are probably clueless as to their own actual behaviors. (cf. Hugo Schwyzer)

For the sake of your essay you categorize men in two groups:

Men who don’t much like me or who are subtly trying to keep women out of a male-dominated area or some such but who are basically decent, professional people who don’t stoop to personal attacks and ugliness.

In contrast, well-meaning, supportive nice guys are frequently maddening in their boundless ability to pave a road to hell with good intentions.

My fear is that you and others default to perceiving the men from Aliens, and in fact, many men, as belonging to the first group. But you can see that Apone and Hicks aren't in either of those groups.

One take away from your discoveries is that maybe you should reconsider the nature of the word "enemy" and what it means to be an enemy or friend, because Apone and Hicks, and people that take you seriously and engage in an intellectual argument with you (and fight with you) are probably your friends in ways that the trite cheerleaders rah rahing you for your gender are not.

I am not sure what the relationship of your essay is to "Hacker News". Written as is, I think it would be better suited to a variety of feminist and men's blogs, including the Good Men Project.

Best wishes,

"First though, I do think in Aliens, that part of the mens' and the audience's enjoyment and celebration with Ripley that she ran that loader so well is because she is a woman, so in that respect, it is sexist (woman shows disbelieving men and audience)."

While I broadly agree with that analysis, I would point out that's a metanarrative analysis. In the context of the narrative itself I believe Mz's analysis is accurate. And you gotta start there. The metanarrative unavoidably has elements of the real world in it and the way it changes is with people choosing and accepting other narratives over time.

I say this because I think in general sometimes people can overanalyze things like this, and the danger there is that sufficient "analysis" can turn anything into anything else. (Which is the core fallacy of postmodernism in an information theory nutshell.) It is unavoidably a product of its time and culture, but irreducibly, it is merely what it is, as well. Too many people get so caught up in the former they forget the latter.

In the context of the narrative itself ... And you gotta start there.

See, I disagree that it has to start there.

I love the movie, but I analyze it that Dan O'Bannon wrote a script in the 80s for an 80s crowd, and he knew that the audience and the purchasers of his script would love seeing a shapely Ellen Ripley in her feminine white panties one moment and in a masculine yellow loader the next showing all the military men she was their equal or better. It was a rah rah feminism moment, one of many you go grrl moments in cinema. (And O'Bannon also knew about Chekhov's gun and knew it would be good for the audience to introduce her talents with the loader early in the movie.)

So I see the internal narrative as a function of what scripts could be expected to sold and be successful in the 80s.

Similarly, Aliens can also be analyzed outside the narrative of the movie as a Vietnam War movie, and in the early 80s when it came out, that was a pretty big deal, especially since the movie was a science fiction movie, set in the future, about the Vietnam War.

The problem with your analysis is that it has no information content, in the sense of information theory where "information" has the ability to distinguish between two outcomes. A movie made in the eighties is unavoidably a movie made in the 80s. There is no distinguishing power between 80s movies if you insist on their metanarrative being "correct", for any value of correct other than "comes from the 80s". They all fail equally.

I've seen attempts to make movies or write books that somehow avoid the context of the time they were made in for a variety of reasons (political correctness, avante garde art attempts, etc), but when I look at them decades later it's clear to see that they merely demonstrate different aspects of the prejudices and context of their time, not that they even remotely succeeded at being a product of another time.

If what you say is true, then there is nowhere to start changing attitudes, because the metanarrative, while interesting and important to consider when analyzing a work, can not be modified, can not be chosen, can not be rewritten. You're stuck with it.

You can not write or watch movies from the metanarrative of the 2050s. And if you could, it would surprise you. I guarantee you nobody actually knows what the 2050 metanarrative will be. Any attempts to guess would themselves only be prejudices of the 2010s.

> I do think in Aliens, that part of the mens' and the audience's enjoyment and celebration with Ripley that she ran that loader so well is because she is a woman, so in that respect, it is sexist

Also known as "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

Quite a long time since I saw Aliens, but isn't the divide between the military and the civilians rather than the men and women?

I was just about to make that point myself: Even the military women talk trash about Ripley at first.

Have an upvote.

Thank you for your long, thought out reply. However, I tried to carefully qualify my statements. Please note the use of phrases like "tend to be". It isn't possible to put forth ideas without trying to generalize somewhat. Unfortunately, generalizations frequently then get misinterpretted as bias as well.

FWIW: I like the scene so much in part because my father and ex husband were both career military. I don't see Hicks or Apone as her enemies. I like the blunt nature of military culture. I do not read such bluntness as "hostility". I just chose to leave out additional thoughts on that aspect of it because I felt it would be an extraneous (thus distracting) tangent which would take a lot away from my point rather than add value.

Edited for accuracy and typos.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com