It is interesting to me that possibility 1 in this post (hypothesis: men and women are annoyed by different mistakes) manages to avoid giving the most obvious (to me) difference in what mistakes men and women are annoyed by, namely: in comparison to women, men tend to be much less sensitive to, and much less annoyed by, sexism in otherwise rational discourse. In fact, there’s even a “mirror image” counterpart: men tend to be more annoyed than women by mention of sexism in situations where it is not clear that sexism is relevant, or where it is clear that no one was explicitly attempting to be sexist.
I suppose that this may have been a conscious omission, as part of the attempt to avoid making things worse merely by bringing up the topic for discussion. But for me it was very confusing, and somewhat alienating. Many male-dominated fields and communities stay that way (sometimes despite the explicit desires of the majority of the community) in part because members of the community engage in casual sexism, sometimes not noticing that they do so, and the other people present, who are mostly men, either don’t notice or don’t think it is important to point this out. Women who enter the community tend to notice the sexism, but may not address it directly (because they are insufficiently self-confident or disagreeable, or because addressing it directly has been a failure in the past) and instead allow it to prompt them to leave the community sooner than they otherwise would have. I don’t know why there should be an assumption that “rationalists” would not share this problem to some degree, and not seeing it listed among possible causes of the gender imbalance here suggests to me that there is a taboo on discussing sexism here, even when doing so is necessary to understanding the phenomena we are discussing. That taboo, if it exists, certainly would make it harder for me to engage with this community. Since I don’t know if there in fact is one, or what general rationalist principles it would follow from, though, I’m currently mainly confused.
It is interesting to me that possibility 1 in this post (hypothesis: men and women are annoyed by different mistakes) manages to avoid giving the most obvious (to me) difference in what mistakes men and women are annoyed by, namely: in comparison to women, men tend to be much less sensitive to, and much less annoyed by, sexism in otherwise rational discourse. In fact, there’s even a “mirror image” counterpart: men tend to be more annoyed than women by mention of sexism in situations where it is not clear that sexism is relevant, or where it is clear that no one was explicitly attempting to be sexist.
I suppose that this may have been a conscious omission, as part of the attempt to avoid making things worse merely by bringing up the topic for discussion. But for me it was very confusing, and somewhat alienating. Many male-dominated fields and communities stay that way (sometimes despite the explicit desires of the majority of the community) in part because members of the community engage in casual sexism, sometimes not noticing that they do so, and the other people present, who are mostly men, either don’t notice or don’t think it is important to point this out. Women who enter the community tend to notice the sexism, but may not address it directly (because they are insufficiently self-confident or disagreeable, or because addressing it directly has been a failure in the past) and instead allow it to prompt them to leave the community sooner than they otherwise would have. I don’t know why there should be an assumption that “rationalists” would not share this problem to some degree, and not seeing it listed among possible causes of the gender imbalance here suggests to me that there is a taboo on discussing sexism here, even when doing so is necessary to understanding the phenomena we are discussing. That taboo, if it exists, certainly would make it harder for me to engage with this community. Since I don’t know if there in fact is one, or what general rationalist principles it would follow from, though, I’m currently mainly confused.