I find this type of nitpicking really annoying. Surely everyone (no matter their gender / sex / preferences) understands the sentence ‘Women will be alluring’ to be a generalised example and can easily convert this to include their own specific preferences without the author having to jump through hoops to provide examples that apply to everyone.
“The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous”—you can’t say that—you are discriminating against those without a sense of touch!
“sunsets”—you can’t say that, what about blind and/or extreme photo-sensitives
and so on.
If he had written ‘Football games will still be exciting’ I would have got the intended meaning and moved on, despite the fact that I have zero interest in football.
I’m genuinely puzzled by this sort of hostile reaction to what was really a pretty mild request for gender neutral language/examples. It seems utterly out of proportion to the original comment(s).
Clearly, any example one comes up with is probably capable of somehow excluding someone, and trying to screen off all possible objections seems unduly onerous given (a) it’s damn near impossible; and (b) the benefits of not excluding left-handed hermaphrodite axylotl enthusiasts are, all things considered, rather small.
But that’s not quite what we’re talking about. While women are certainly scarce on LW, in other parts of the world, they comprise roughly half the population. And using gender neutral language/examples is really easy—much easier than jumping through actual hoops, and probably also easier than writing comments telling people how annoyed you are about their nitpicking. The cost-benefit analysis here seems pretty straightforward.
So why does this seem to annoy (some) people so much?
Is the problem that you actually think it’s illegitimate for people to be bothered by stuff like this? Seriously? Wanting to be included is illegitimate? Wow. I guess it’s easy to think that things don’t matter when they don’t systematically affect you personally, but still.
I’m genuinely puzzled by this sort of hostile reaction to what was really a pretty mild request for gender neutral language/examples. It seems utterly out of proportion to the original comment(s).
His reaction wasn’t all that hostile. And a request being mild doesn’t make the request reasonable, or make it unreasonable to be annoyed by it.
And using gender neutral language/examples is really easy—much easier than jumping through actual hoops, and probably also easier than writing comments telling people how annoyed you are about their nitpicking. The cost-benefit analysis here seems pretty straightforward.
Not really? This is a baffling take. How does writing one comment about being annoyed by something compare to potentially years of committing to gender-neutral language, not just by using singular “they” (for example), but by replacing entire sentence clauses like “Women will still be alluring” with “The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous” (what??), even when you’re obviously writing said sentence to reflect your own sensibilities more than the audience’s and the sentence is easily generalizable anyway?
Not to mention that it’s the principle of the thing. If you genuinely don’t see any good reason why you should do a Thing at all, and perhaps even see some reasons why you shouldn’t, it makes little to no difference that the Thing is supposedly “really easy” to do. That doesn’t by itself constitute a good reason to do the Thing. (I realize part of conchis’s argument against this in the first place is the burden it imposes, but I don’t perceive that as their only argument. But even if that was their only argument, it still holds as long as “doing the Thing” is not strictly easier than not doing it. As opposed to only being easier than jumping through hoops.)
Is the problem that you actually think it’s illegitimate for people to be bothered by stuff like this?
“Stuff like this” is a very broad category. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, but you’re essentially sneaking in anything vaguely related, including things that are reasonable to get upset about, to make conchis’s position look worse.
For my part, I don’t think it’s illegitimate to be bothered by all “stuff like this”; but I do think it’s illegitimate to be bothered by this specific sentence that Emily et al. complained about.
Wanting to be included is illegitimate? Wow.
You’re conflating the actual contested issue, “wanting this specific sentence, and perhaps similar sentences in similar contexts, to be gender neutral”, with the broader and much less contested issue “wanting to be included”. They are not equivalent. I am reminded of some webcomic’s (forget which) sly attempt at discrediting people who are against political correctness, by replacing “being PC” with “being nice to people”, even though “being nice” is not what political correctness often boils down to in practice, and is rarely what opponents are talking about or why they take issue.
I am a woman too, and I want to be included too. And yet, the sentence “Women will still be alluring” doesn’t bother me at all. Because I am not excluded at all by that sentence. The fact that some women seem to perceive being excluded does not imply that this is what’s actually happening.
If anything, I feel more excluded by the fact that the sentence was ultimately changed as a result of the complaints of a few women, even though I, also a woman, don’t think it should have been changed. Why does my opinion matter less? (I’m not suggesting my perception of being excluded is well-founded, or worthy of demanding remedy; but my point is made either way.)
Not to mention that, just like “being nice”, “being inclusive” is not always an imperative or even a reasonable restriction. It often is, but there are times where it isn’t.
I guess it’s easy to think that things don’t matter when they don’t systematically affect you personally,
I believe conchis’s argument is that the particular sentence under discussion shouldn’t affect anyone personally. I’m inclined to agree.
Women are a much larger actual and potential audience than the blind. Therefore, it makes much more sense to consider women’s preferences when writing.
But are “Women who would be annoyed by the statement ‘Women are alluring’” a large potential audience?
I would think that the audience for this specific sentence would break down into (roughly):
a) Those it directly applies to (hetro males, bi females, etc.), who immediately agree ‘Yes, women sure are alluring!’
b) Those it does not apply to , but who regard it as complimentary (e.g. hetro females), ‘Yes, I sure am alluring!’
c) Those it does not apply to, but who understand its intention without feeling that it marginalises them. ‘I don’t get what the big deal about women is, but I know LOTS of people who find women alluring’
d) Those it does not apply to, who feel actively excluded. ’I don’t find women alluring, the author is trying to exclude me—he really should change the text to something that I like.”
I would have thought that category d) is tiny.
Note to Emily: I am really not trying to exclude you or pick on you! I just find it really surprising you would feel excluded by a (positive, and relatively uncontroversial!) comment about women from a male author.
Don’t worry, I don’t feel picked on or excluded—actually, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how willing people are to have these discussions frankly. But you haven’t quite got the issue right, not from my personal point of view anyway. What I think when I run across something like the “women are alluring” statement isn’t too similar to d). It’s more like: “Women are alluring, ah yes they sure are to many people (possibly even insert a little of b) here). Cool. I hope this isn’t one of those people who thinks we aren’t good for much else… Hey, you can really tell this post is written by another het guy, can’t you? And that he didn’t stop to consider any viewpoint other than his own on this particular issue. Not that I blame him particularly, but does this ever get tiring when it happens all the damn time. I wonder if there’s anywhere else this guy has forgotten to account for other valid perspectives in this article? What the heck was this piece all about anyway?”
I’ve noticed a couple of people saying that it wouldn’t bother them if the situation was reversed. I have to admit to a twinge of impatience with this opinion, although I’m sure those expressing it are not being deliberately obtuse or condescending. No, of course it wouldn’t bother you, because you don’t have to put up with this crap all the time. It’s called privilege. Being male, you have the privilege to ignore that sort of thing on the rare occasions when it does happen to you. This is why it’s an issue. Just like it was an issue that my friend was asked by her supervising professor yesterday whether she’s ever considered that there might be something seriously wrong with her “because most girls have really neat round writing and yours isn’t”. That’s an idiotic remark that deserves to be simply ignored. But we can’t afford to ignore these little silly things because they happen so ridiculously often.
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.
Just like it was an issue that my friend was asked by her supervising professor yesterday whether she’s ever considered that there might be something seriously wrong with her “because most girls have really neat round writing and yours isn’t”.
I must confess, I am somewhat dismayed that an individual who would say something that inane and obtuse is a professor.
I only wish academia were immune to this sort of nonsense. I actually feel as though I’ve noticed an increase in my experience of it since coming to university.
With the isolated environment, there is a certain tendency for academics to… fossilize. If the professor in question was an older man, likely he was a product of his time who changed little since then.
For all the “liberal” reputation the academic world has, in many ways it is remarkably backward-looking, except possibly in cutting-edge science.
What I think when I run across something like the “women are alluring” statement isn’t too similar to d). It’s more like: “Women are alluring, ah yes they sure are to many people (possibly even insert a little of b) here). Cool. I hope this isn’t one of those people who thinks we aren’t good for much else… Hey, you can really tell this post is written by another het guy, can’t you? And that he didn’t stop to consider any viewpoint other than his own on this particular issue. Not that I blame him particularly, but does this ever get tiring when it happens all the damn time. I wonder if there’s anywhere else this guy has forgotten to account for other valid perspectives in this article? What the heck was this piece all about anyway?”
Have you considered that this runaway train of thought might be a you problem, rather than a problem with the sentence? Because that was tiring to read, so I’m sure it must be tiring to think whenever you read a sentence that could plausibly lead to the conclusion that the writer is a guy. From where I stand, the issue seems to be that you didn’t stop at that observation (which should be a neutral observation). You went well beyond what can reasonably be gleaned from the sentence, into unnecessary negative speculation (“I hope this isn’t one of those people who thinks we aren’t good for much else”, “he didn’t stop to consider any viewpoint other than his own on this particular issue”). Nothing wrong with getting lost in the weeds, but these are your weeds, not the sentence’s weeds.
If you could halt that train of thought at “Oh, the writer’s probably a guy”, and not get lost in the weeds, would there still be a problem with the sentence?
No, certainly nothing distracting from the point like the alluring women statement. I slid past it without much of a specific reaction at all, as I imagine most people would. I’m not sure I see the connection here—what am I missing?
There are no systematic, entrenched mechanisms in society for excluding and marginalising people who don’t find Michaelangelo’s David particularly beautiful (okay, you could probably construct something here about the tension between “high” and “low” culture, but I don’t think it would be germane). Hence the fact that you don’t feel excluded or marginalised, and nor do I by this one. There are systematic, entrenched mechanisms (perhaps not quite the right word) for excluding and marginalising women, so a statement that excludes most women is taken not just alone but as part of a cumulative effect that many women feel. I’m not sure how I can put this any more clearly.
Pretty much the same applies to the Venus de Milo as to David, I’m sure. They’re works of art. Individuals may or may not like them, whatever—as you say, we still see the point clearly, and it’s no big deal because there’s no general discrimination going on over such preferences.
The Jessica Alba one probably lies somewhere between the alluring women and the beautiful sculptures, to me. The fact that you’ve used “beautiful” rather than “alluring” makes a big difference; as a straight woman, I can certainly find other women beautiful, although I may not find them alluring, so it doesn’t feel like as great a disjoint. I imagine people would have quite varied reactions to that one.
The fact that you “immediately got the intended meaning” from the David point is somewhat irrelevant, I think. Of course I also immediately got the intended meaning from the alluring women one; the problem certainly isn’t that it’s hard to see. It’s just that all the other reactions surrounding it are a distraction from the point.
I agree with your main point,* few people will be bothered by such an example, BUT its easy to use more inclusive language, so in my opinion the benefits still outweigh the costs. So it takes us white hetero males from middle/upper class backgrounds a few extra seconds to come up with examples. I think we can handle it.
*I don’t quite agree with your categories… people may find it complimentary, or at least not believe that the author is trying to exclude them, but still be distracted from the point of the sentence or be reminded that they are a minority in our community, a reminder some prefer not to have.
Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior? Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
I just find it really surprising you would feel excluded by a (positive, and relatively uncontroversial!) comment about women from a male author.
I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but to me, your focus on “positive, and relatively uncontroversial” seems to miss the point. The problem is that the original statement: (a) assumed that the relevant agents are exclusively male, and that women are merely passive objects that men are attracted to;* and that (b) it did so in a context where this implicit assumption is fairly common, which probably gets a bit frustrating after a while.
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that you find their concerns “really annoying”?
* While it was technically compatible with the agents being bi/homosexual females, it seems fairly fairly clear that this wasn’t really a factor in the choice of wording.
Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior?
Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do
feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
Prior. I have updated very slightly towards Emily’s position, but this is balanced by the responses from every female I have personally asked about this, all of whom fell into the a) or b) response. Of course, we all know that comparing two very small samples is far from ideal :-)
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that
you find their concerns “really annoying”?
No, but excluding people is certainly not the intent. Every time I write something I assume that someone, somewhere will find it really annoying.
I am irritated to find my post named as “nitpicking” when I was answering a direct question. I too “got the meaning and moved on”. Alvarojabril below, much clearer- “The glance of a lover will still be alluring”. Why not go with that?
Sorry, the rather harsh ‘nitpicking’ should really have been addressed to the top comment in the chain that started this line of discussion. I placed it as a comment after your contribution because I wanted to point out that even your attempts to give a more generic and widely applicable example will be doomed to failure, because you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
I’m sorry about that—I’m aware that it does seem like nitpicking, and if it were just an isolated thing then it certainly would be irrelevant nitpicking. But when it’s a common occurrence that I believe really does have a negative impact, I don’t see it that way.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
The outcome of this surely seems likely to swing behavior closer to what you would like to see. It seems that the comment was a success. I wouldn’t feel guilty about it at all.
you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
Yes, but we should keep these assumptions to a minimum, especially when:
a) they might negatively affect some people’s experience of LW.
b) it is fairly easy to make it more universal.
Is it really reasonable to equate something that applies intrinsically to half the population to something that applies to very few people, or to something that is a matter of non-intrinsic taste?
I’m genuinely puzzled by this sort of hostile reaction to what was really a pretty mild request for gender neutral language/examples. It seems utterly out of proportion to the original comment(s).
Clearly, any example one comes up with is probably capable of somehow excluding someone, and trying to screen off all possible objections seems unduly onerous given (a) it’s damn near impossible; and (b) the benefits of not excluding left-handed hermaphrodite axylotl enthusiasts are, all things considered, rather small.
But that isn’t really the situation here. While women are certainly scarce on LW, in other parts of the world, they comprise roughly half the population, and using gender neutral language/examples is really easy—certainly much easier than jumping through actual hoops, and probably even easier than writing comments telling people how annoyed you are about their nitpicking. The cost-benefit analysis here seems pretty straightforward.
Is the problem that you actually think it’s illegitimate for people to be bothered by stuff like this? Seriously? Wanting to be included is illegitimate? Wow. I guess it’s easy to think that things don’t matter when they don’t systematically affect you personally, but still.
I find this type of nitpicking really annoying. Surely everyone (no matter their gender / sex / preferences) understands the sentence ‘Women will be alluring’ to be a generalised example and can easily convert this to include their own specific preferences without the author having to jump through hoops to provide examples that apply to everyone.
“The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous”—you can’t say that—you are discriminating against those without a sense of touch!
“sunsets”—you can’t say that, what about blind and/or extreme photo-sensitives
and so on.
If he had written ‘Football games will still be exciting’ I would have got the intended meaning and moved on, despite the fact that I have zero interest in football.
I’m genuinely puzzled by this sort of hostile reaction to what was really a pretty mild request for gender neutral language/examples. It seems utterly out of proportion to the original comment(s).
Clearly, any example one comes up with is probably capable of somehow excluding someone, and trying to screen off all possible objections seems unduly onerous given (a) it’s damn near impossible; and (b) the benefits of not excluding left-handed hermaphrodite axylotl enthusiasts are, all things considered, rather small.
But that’s not quite what we’re talking about. While women are certainly scarce on LW, in other parts of the world, they comprise roughly half the population. And using gender neutral language/examples is really easy—much easier than jumping through actual hoops, and probably also easier than writing comments telling people how annoyed you are about their nitpicking. The cost-benefit analysis here seems pretty straightforward.
So why does this seem to annoy (some) people so much?
Is the problem that you actually think it’s illegitimate for people to be bothered by stuff like this? Seriously? Wanting to be included is illegitimate? Wow. I guess it’s easy to think that things don’t matter when they don’t systematically affect you personally, but still.
His reaction wasn’t all that hostile. And a request being mild doesn’t make the request reasonable, or make it unreasonable to be annoyed by it.
Not really? This is a baffling take. How does writing one comment about being annoyed by something compare to potentially years of committing to gender-neutral language, not just by using singular “they” (for example), but by replacing entire sentence clauses like “Women will still be alluring” with “The touch of another person’s skin will still be wonderfully sensuous” (what??), even when you’re obviously writing said sentence to reflect your own sensibilities more than the audience’s and the sentence is easily generalizable anyway?
Not to mention that it’s the principle of the thing. If you genuinely don’t see any good reason why you should do a Thing at all, and perhaps even see some reasons why you shouldn’t, it makes little to no difference that the Thing is supposedly “really easy” to do. That doesn’t by itself constitute a good reason to do the Thing. (I realize part of conchis’s argument against this in the first place is the burden it imposes, but I don’t perceive that as their only argument. But even if that was their only argument, it still holds as long as “doing the Thing” is not strictly easier than not doing it. As opposed to only being easier than jumping through hoops.)
“Stuff like this” is a very broad category. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, but you’re essentially sneaking in anything vaguely related, including things that are reasonable to get upset about, to make conchis’s position look worse.
For my part, I don’t think it’s illegitimate to be bothered by all “stuff like this”; but I do think it’s illegitimate to be bothered by this specific sentence that Emily et al. complained about.
You’re conflating the actual contested issue, “wanting this specific sentence, and perhaps similar sentences in similar contexts, to be gender neutral”, with the broader and much less contested issue “wanting to be included”. They are not equivalent. I am reminded of some webcomic’s (forget which) sly attempt at discrediting people who are against political correctness, by replacing “being PC” with “being nice to people”, even though “being nice” is not what political correctness often boils down to in practice, and is rarely what opponents are talking about or why they take issue.
I am a woman too, and I want to be included too. And yet, the sentence “Women will still be alluring” doesn’t bother me at all. Because I am not excluded at all by that sentence. The fact that some women seem to perceive being excluded does not imply that this is what’s actually happening.
If anything, I feel more excluded by the fact that the sentence was ultimately changed as a result of the complaints of a few women, even though I, also a woman, don’t think it should have been changed. Why does my opinion matter less? (I’m not suggesting my perception of being excluded is well-founded, or worthy of demanding remedy; but my point is made either way.)
Not to mention that, just like “being nice”, “being inclusive” is not always an imperative or even a reasonable restriction. It often is, but there are times where it isn’t.
I believe conchis’s argument is that the particular sentence under discussion shouldn’t affect anyone personally. I’m inclined to agree.
Women are a much larger actual and potential audience than the blind. Therefore, it makes much more sense to consider women’s preferences when writing.
But are “Women who would be annoyed by the statement ‘Women are alluring’” a large potential audience?
I would think that the audience for this specific sentence would break down into (roughly):
a) Those it directly applies to (hetro males, bi females, etc.), who immediately agree ‘Yes, women sure are alluring!’ b) Those it does not apply to , but who regard it as complimentary (e.g. hetro females), ‘Yes, I sure am alluring!’ c) Those it does not apply to, but who understand its intention without feeling that it marginalises them. ‘I don’t get what the big deal about women is, but I know LOTS of people who find women alluring’ d) Those it does not apply to, who feel actively excluded. ’I don’t find women alluring, the author is trying to exclude me—he really should change the text to something that I like.”
I would have thought that category d) is tiny.
Note to Emily: I am really not trying to exclude you or pick on you! I just find it really surprising you would feel excluded by a (positive, and relatively uncontroversial!) comment about women from a male author.
Don’t worry, I don’t feel picked on or excluded—actually, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see how willing people are to have these discussions frankly. But you haven’t quite got the issue right, not from my personal point of view anyway. What I think when I run across something like the “women are alluring” statement isn’t too similar to d). It’s more like: “Women are alluring, ah yes they sure are to many people (possibly even insert a little of b) here). Cool. I hope this isn’t one of those people who thinks we aren’t good for much else… Hey, you can really tell this post is written by another het guy, can’t you? And that he didn’t stop to consider any viewpoint other than his own on this particular issue. Not that I blame him particularly, but does this ever get tiring when it happens all the damn time. I wonder if there’s anywhere else this guy has forgotten to account for other valid perspectives in this article? What the heck was this piece all about anyway?”
I’ve noticed a couple of people saying that it wouldn’t bother them if the situation was reversed. I have to admit to a twinge of impatience with this opinion, although I’m sure those expressing it are not being deliberately obtuse or condescending. No, of course it wouldn’t bother you, because you don’t have to put up with this crap all the time. It’s called privilege. Being male, you have the privilege to ignore that sort of thing on the rare occasions when it does happen to you. This is why it’s an issue. Just like it was an issue that my friend was asked by her supervising professor yesterday whether she’s ever considered that there might be something seriously wrong with her “because most girls have really neat round writing and yours isn’t”. That’s an idiotic remark that deserves to be simply ignored. But we can’t afford to ignore these little silly things because they happen so ridiculously often.
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.)
I must confess, I am somewhat dismayed that an individual who would say something that inane and obtuse is a professor.
I only wish academia were immune to this sort of nonsense. I actually feel as though I’ve noticed an increase in my experience of it since coming to university.
With the isolated environment, there is a certain tendency for academics to… fossilize. If the professor in question was an older man, likely he was a product of his time who changed little since then.
For all the “liberal” reputation the academic world has, in many ways it is remarkably backward-looking, except possibly in cutting-edge science.
Have you considered that this runaway train of thought might be a you problem, rather than a problem with the sentence? Because that was tiring to read, so I’m sure it must be tiring to think whenever you read a sentence that could plausibly lead to the conclusion that the writer is a guy. From where I stand, the issue seems to be that you didn’t stop at that observation (which should be a neutral observation). You went well beyond what can reasonably be gleaned from the sentence, into unnecessary negative speculation (“I hope this isn’t one of those people who thinks we aren’t good for much else”, “he didn’t stop to consider any viewpoint other than his own on this particular issue”). Nothing wrong with getting lost in the weeds, but these are your weeds, not the sentence’s weeds.
If you could halt that train of thought at “Oh, the writer’s probably a guy”, and not get lost in the weeds, would there still be a problem with the sentence?
Wow, you certainly got a lot from “Women are alluring”! Thanks for clarifying, this is very interesting.
I would be very interested to hear what was your reaction to the phrase “Michaelangelo’s David will still be beautiful”. Was it anything similar?
No, certainly nothing distracting from the point like the alluring women statement. I slid past it without much of a specific reaction at all, as I imagine most people would. I’m not sure I see the connection here—what am I missing?
How about if he had said that ” The Venus De Milo will still be beautiful”? Or “Jesssica Alba will still be beautiful”?
I personally would have put David fairly low on my list of things that I find beautiful, but I immediately got the intended meaning.
Several thoughts on that:
There are no systematic, entrenched mechanisms in society for excluding and marginalising people who don’t find Michaelangelo’s David particularly beautiful (okay, you could probably construct something here about the tension between “high” and “low” culture, but I don’t think it would be germane). Hence the fact that you don’t feel excluded or marginalised, and nor do I by this one. There are systematic, entrenched mechanisms (perhaps not quite the right word) for excluding and marginalising women, so a statement that excludes most women is taken not just alone but as part of a cumulative effect that many women feel. I’m not sure how I can put this any more clearly.
Pretty much the same applies to the Venus de Milo as to David, I’m sure. They’re works of art. Individuals may or may not like them, whatever—as you say, we still see the point clearly, and it’s no big deal because there’s no general discrimination going on over such preferences.
The Jessica Alba one probably lies somewhere between the alluring women and the beautiful sculptures, to me. The fact that you’ve used “beautiful” rather than “alluring” makes a big difference; as a straight woman, I can certainly find other women beautiful, although I may not find them alluring, so it doesn’t feel like as great a disjoint. I imagine people would have quite varied reactions to that one.
The fact that you “immediately got the intended meaning” from the David point is somewhat irrelevant, I think. Of course I also immediately got the intended meaning from the alluring women one; the problem certainly isn’t that it’s hard to see. It’s just that all the other reactions surrounding it are a distraction from the point.
Thanks for the thorough reply. Sorry if I appear to be missing the point here, but I am genuinely trying to understand your point of view.
Re. 4), yes, I worded that badly and it’s obvious that you get it!
You’re welcome. It’s good to have a genuine dialogue.
I can’t speak for others, but I was in category d).
Fair enough. I have updated my estimate of the size of the d) population.
I agree with your main point,* few people will be bothered by such an example, BUT its easy to use more inclusive language, so in my opinion the benefits still outweigh the costs. So it takes us white hetero males from middle/upper class backgrounds a few extra seconds to come up with examples. I think we can handle it.
*I don’t quite agree with your categories… people may find it complimentary, or at least not believe that the author is trying to exclude them, but still be distracted from the point of the sentence or be reminded that they are a minority in our community, a reminder some prefer not to have.
Is this an expression of your prior about the size of the category, or your posterior? Have you updated your prior on learning (to your surprise) that people apparently do feel excluded/get distracted by this sort of thing?
I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but to me, your focus on “positive, and relatively uncontroversial” seems to miss the point. The problem is that the original statement: (a) assumed that the relevant agents are exclusively male, and that women are merely passive objects that men are attracted to;* and that (b) it did so in a context where this implicit assumption is fairly common, which probably gets a bit frustrating after a while.
As an aside, would it surprise you if people felt excluded by your telling them that you find their concerns “really annoying”?
* While it was technically compatible with the agents being bi/homosexual females, it seems fairly fairly clear that this wasn’t really a factor in the choice of wording.
Prior. I have updated very slightly towards Emily’s position, but this is balanced by the responses from every female I have personally asked about this, all of whom fell into the a) or b) response. Of course, we all know that comparing two very small samples is far from ideal :-)
No, but excluding people is certainly not the intent. Every time I write something I assume that someone, somewhere will find it really annoying.
I am irritated to find my post named as “nitpicking” when I was answering a direct question. I too “got the meaning and moved on”. Alvarojabril below, much clearer- “The glance of a lover will still be alluring”. Why not go with that?
Sorry, the rather harsh ‘nitpicking’ should really have been addressed to the top comment in the chain that started this line of discussion. I placed it as a comment after your contribution because I wanted to point out that even your attempts to give a more generic and widely applicable example will be doomed to failure, because you will always end up making some assumptions about the audience.
I’m sorry about that—I’m aware that it does seem like nitpicking, and if it were just an isolated thing then it certainly would be irrelevant nitpicking. But when it’s a common occurrence that I believe really does have a negative impact, I don’t see it that way.
I do feel a bit guilty about having created a runaway thread and somewhat derailed the topic at hand. On the other hand, the number of responses suggests to me that others agree this is an important topic, so I don’t think a discussion on it is a bad thing at all.
The outcome of this surely seems likely to swing behavior closer to what you would like to see. It seems that the comment was a success. I wouldn’t feel guilty about it at all.
Yes, but we should keep these assumptions to a minimum, especially when: a) they might negatively affect some people’s experience of LW. b) it is fairly easy to make it more universal.
Gender role models matter for choosing a science major in college. I realize that is only a loosely related issue, but it does make me think more carefully about gender issues.
Is it really reasonable to equate something that applies intrinsically to half the population to something that applies to very few people, or to something that is a matter of non-intrinsic taste?
This sems like an unfair argument from absurdity.
I’m genuinely puzzled by this sort of hostile reaction to what was really a pretty mild request for gender neutral language/examples. It seems utterly out of proportion to the original comment(s).
Clearly, any example one comes up with is probably capable of somehow excluding someone, and trying to screen off all possible objections seems unduly onerous given (a) it’s damn near impossible; and (b) the benefits of not excluding left-handed hermaphrodite axylotl enthusiasts are, all things considered, rather small.
But that isn’t really the situation here. While women are certainly scarce on LW, in other parts of the world, they comprise roughly half the population, and using gender neutral language/examples is really easy—certainly much easier than jumping through actual hoops, and probably even easier than writing comments telling people how annoyed you are about their nitpicking. The cost-benefit analysis here seems pretty straightforward.
Is the problem that you actually think it’s illegitimate for people to be bothered by stuff like this? Seriously? Wanting to be included is illegitimate? Wow. I guess it’s easy to think that things don’t matter when they don’t systematically affect you personally, but still.