Massive ongoing discrimination that affects half the species and that could be, if not necessarily remedied, at least dragged into the open and ridiculed, surely deserves universal lessons.
The reason this doesn’t happen is the same one that keeps anti-racism off the curriculum: racists and sexists are the board, the concerned parents, the local news editor, the elected representatives and the voters.
The reason this doesn’t happen is the same one that keeps anti-racism off the curriculum
I’d say that anti-racism was very much part of the curriculum at my schools. It wasn’t until college that it got past “racism is bad, read these books about growing up discriminated against,” and reached the point of “these are some of the ongoing issues regarding race relations today on which there is actual public disagreement, here are some sources to inform your position on them,” but I did have one class which covered racial issues in this way (among other issues) which was a required course.
I don’t know to what extent my education was atypical, only that the schools I attended up to high school were pretty good as far as public schools go.
That’s too simplistic IMO…
I think it’s more a desire to avoid “politicizing education”, and people not making sufficiently convincing arguments in favour of its inclusion, rather than just terrible people having power.
You hear “sexists” and think terrible people, I think ordinary people. Giving a higher salary offer to Mike Smith and judging his work better than Mary Smith. Picking “someone like us” for promotion the board, so you end up with single digit female representation at CEO level. Having to do orchestra auditions behind a screen, or you won’t hire any women. Catcalling or saying “smile luv” on the street, and then calling her a bitch when she won’t respond. Taking “no” as “keep asking”. Bothering her in Starbucks when she’s trying to read. Having a dress code that requires a shower and a suit from guys, but an hour’s makeup and high heels from women. Interrupting her and ignoring her in meetings. Treating women as a “special interest group”. Getting angry about “political correctness” and “man hating feminists” when somebody tries to start a women’s studies class.
Sexism saturates this culture. It feels normal. It’s accepted by men and laughed off by women who don’t want to be the party pooper. If you are not female and have not been following feminism, your inferential distance may be large indeed.
True. Sexism is frickin pervasive, and that is the underlying problem. Though it’s only pointless quibbling at this point, I still think your previous comment was too simplistic—if nothing else, it doesn’t have any of the depth of this, and, though it is perfectly consistent with the view “most people, even good people, have sexist tendencies due to our culture”, it appears to be coming from a less well-developed view, which is why it has been downvoted. This again may be a question of inferential distance, which thus demonstrates itself to be a very useful concept.
I think it’s not. Basically, I think what I called “racists and sexists” are people of whom only a minority foams on /r/mensrights and A Voice For Men, or listens to right wing talk radio, or believes in “male headship under God”, or attends the local Klan. The majority are people who think they are normal, whose biased ideas don’t even show unless provoked by a situation where their privileges are under threat (AKA “political correctness gone mad”). Feminism that isn’t about shopping provokes them. Anti-racism that is neither anodyne nor cap-in-hand provokes them. And they react, often in ways that look like incidental decisions, to exclude the threat. Such as, here, by marginalizing equality for half the species into an academic backwater.
I can’t figure out which part this is refering to.
Also: I’m pretty sure I agree with what you’ve been saying in these posts, including this one. (Has that come across clearly? I’m curious.) I also may have been strawmanning you (thanks MugaSofer for pointing this out), which is an interesting combination.
The thought behind it was not too simplistic, but I think its presentation in that comment was, largely due to leaving out this background information; I think this is why it was downvoted, and is also what left it open to strawmanning (sigh sexist language).
I think it comes from the fact that a genderless figurine looks male to our eyes—you can see it doesn’t have breasts, and any other pieces of anatomy it’s missing are either routinely stylized away or covered up.
Hmm. My attempt at answering this:
The “incidental decisions” is about such actions as choosing male candidates over female candidates with identical qualifications, ignoring women`s contributions at meetings and then agreeing strongly when a man later says the exact same thing, and so on. As for “excluding the threat”, maybe it refers to perceptions of women as being less skilled, rather than having the cognitive dissonance involved in admitting you’re picking the man because he is male.
The reactions are driven by social instinct reacting with defensive in-group cohesion to out-group threat, so they have effects without feeling like attempts to achieve effects. They feel like righteous indignation, or wanting someone who looks like us, or fear, or moral disapproval, or dismissal as uninteresting, etc.
YMMV, in my experience anti-racism is, in fact, on the curriculum (I’m Irish) and most people don’t see themselves as belonging to the group “sexists” which must be defended (am I strawmanning you here?)
People don’t see their attitudes as anything but “normal” because being a sexist or a racist doesn’t feel like villainy, doesn’t even feel like a moral choice, it just feels like facts.
Oh, yes. Always. I’m just not sure how many people both hold sexist beliefs and allow them to impact the curriculum. Again, I’m Irish, so i may be worse wherever you are.
… I have to admit, I was implicitly defining “sexist” as someone who holds sexist beliefs, not someone who is unconsciously biased. Hell, most people in our society are subconsciously biased against black people, but since we know this to be a bias we will try to work against this if we realize it.
According to the Implicit Association Test, I’m strongly subconsciously biased in favour of black people (though given the particular set of stimuli they used, I think the test only actually shows that I’m biased in favour of broad noses).
No, it’s not just that. When in this TED talk the guy said “Vultures are being poisoned because humans …”, some part of my brain expected to see white people, and when the slide showed black people that part of my brain thought “Wait… so black people do nasty stuff too? o.O”. Likewise, when I read stories about humans causing extensive damage to the environment, I don’t get the same gut feeling of indignation when it’s non-Europeans doing that (e.g. the Māori exterminating moa or the tragedy of the commons on Easter Island) as I feel when Europeans do that.
Massive ongoing discrimination that affects half the species and that could be, if not necessarily remedied, at least dragged into the open and ridiculed, surely deserves universal lessons.
The reason this doesn’t happen is the same one that keeps anti-racism off the curriculum: racists and sexists are the board, the concerned parents, the local news editor, the elected representatives and the voters.
I’d say that anti-racism was very much part of the curriculum at my schools. It wasn’t until college that it got past “racism is bad, read these books about growing up discriminated against,” and reached the point of “these are some of the ongoing issues regarding race relations today on which there is actual public disagreement, here are some sources to inform your position on them,” but I did have one class which covered racial issues in this way (among other issues) which was a required course.
I don’t know to what extent my education was atypical, only that the schools I attended up to high school were pretty good as far as public schools go.
That’s too simplistic IMO… I think it’s more a desire to avoid “politicizing education”, and people not making sufficiently convincing arguments in favour of its inclusion, rather than just terrible people having power.
You hear “sexists” and think terrible people, I think ordinary people. Giving a higher salary offer to Mike Smith and judging his work better than Mary Smith. Picking “someone like us” for promotion the board, so you end up with single digit female representation at CEO level. Having to do orchestra auditions behind a screen, or you won’t hire any women. Catcalling or saying “smile luv” on the street, and then calling her a bitch when she won’t respond. Taking “no” as “keep asking”. Bothering her in Starbucks when she’s trying to read. Having a dress code that requires a shower and a suit from guys, but an hour’s makeup and high heels from women. Interrupting her and ignoring her in meetings. Treating women as a “special interest group”. Getting angry about “political correctness” and “man hating feminists” when somebody tries to start a women’s studies class.
Sexism saturates this culture. It feels normal. It’s accepted by men and laughed off by women who don’t want to be the party pooper. If you are not female and have not been following feminism, your inferential distance may be large indeed.
True. Sexism is frickin pervasive, and that is the underlying problem.
Though it’s only pointless quibbling at this point, I still think your previous comment was too simplistic—if nothing else, it doesn’t have any of the depth of this, and, though it is perfectly consistent with the view “most people, even good people, have sexist tendencies due to our culture”, it appears to be coming from a less well-developed view, which is why it has been downvoted. This again may be a question of inferential distance, which thus demonstrates itself to be a very useful concept.
I think it’s not. Basically, I think what I called “racists and sexists” are people of whom only a minority foams on /r/mensrights and A Voice For Men, or listens to right wing talk radio, or believes in “male headship under God”, or attends the local Klan. The majority are people who think they are normal, whose biased ideas don’t even show unless provoked by a situation where their privileges are under threat (AKA “political correctness gone mad”). Feminism that isn’t about shopping provokes them. Anti-racism that is neither anodyne nor cap-in-hand provokes them. And they react, often in ways that look like incidental decisions, to exclude the threat. Such as, here, by marginalizing equality for half the species into an academic backwater.
I can’t figure out which part this is refering to.
Also: I’m pretty sure I agree with what you’ve been saying in these posts, including this one. (Has that come across clearly? I’m curious.) I also may have been strawmanning you (thanks MugaSofer for pointing this out), which is an interesting combination.
That refers to “I still think your previous comment was too simplistic”.
The thought behind it was not too simplistic, but I think its presentation in that comment was, largely due to leaving out this background information; I think this is why it was downvoted, and is also what left it open to strawmanning (sigh sexist language).
I think it comes from the fact that a genderless figurine looks male to our eyes—you can see it doesn’t have breasts, and any other pieces of anatomy it’s missing are either routinely stylized away or covered up.
Also, waist-to-hip ratio—it would be harder to make a scarecrow with wider hips than the waist.
I agreed with everything you said but this line. Could you clarify it please?
Hmm. My attempt at answering this: The “incidental decisions” is about such actions as choosing male candidates over female candidates with identical qualifications, ignoring women`s contributions at meetings and then agreeing strongly when a man later says the exact same thing, and so on. As for “excluding the threat”, maybe it refers to perceptions of women as being less skilled, rather than having the cognitive dissonance involved in admitting you’re picking the man because he is male.
So subconscious bias, then? “Excluding the threat” makes it sound deliberate and disingenuous.
In my interpretation, yes, subconscious bias, and avoiding the issue or finding various non-answers when it is raised to conscious attention.
I habitually define racism and sexism to exclude such bias, which seems to have led me astray in this case
The reactions are driven by social instinct reacting with defensive in-group cohesion to out-group threat, so they have effects without feeling like attempts to achieve effects. They feel like righteous indignation, or wanting someone who looks like us, or fear, or moral disapproval, or dismissal as uninteresting, etc.
Ah, OK. I was confused by the anthropomorphism there.
Just because something is ordinary doesn’t mean it’s not terrible. :-)
YMMV, in my experience anti-racism is, in fact, on the curriculum (I’m Irish) and most people don’t see themselves as belonging to the group “sexists” which must be defended (am I strawmanning you here?)
People don’t see their attitudes as anything but “normal” because being a sexist or a racist doesn’t feel like villainy, doesn’t even feel like a moral choice, it just feels like facts.
Oh, yes. Always. I’m just not sure how many people both hold sexist beliefs and allow them to impact the curriculum. Again, I’m Irish, so i may be worse wherever you are.
Yep. They don’t see themselves as sexist, but they are. That makes it more difficult to effect change.
… I have to admit, I was implicitly defining “sexist” as someone who holds sexist beliefs, not someone who is unconsciously biased. Hell, most people in our society are subconsciously biased against black people, but since we know this to be a bias we will try to work against this if we realize it.
According to the Implicit Association Test, I’m strongly subconsciously biased in favour of black people (though given the particular set of stimuli they used, I think the test only actually shows that I’m biased in favour of broad noses).
No, it’s not just that. When in this TED talk the guy said “Vultures are being poisoned because humans …”, some part of my brain expected to see white people, and when the slide showed black people that part of my brain thought “Wait… so black people do nasty stuff too? o.O”. Likewise, when I read stories about humans causing extensive damage to the environment, I don’t get the same gut feeling of indignation when it’s non-Europeans doing that (e.g. the Māori exterminating moa or the tragedy of the commons on Easter Island) as I feel when Europeans do that.