From today’s Times story on gender discrimination in Silicon Valley:
“If you believe every allegation in the complaint, it’s appalling and an important window into how the valley works,” Mr. [David A.] Kaplan said. “But I’m somewhat skeptical. The clichés you hear in the valley are about the pranks, the obsessiveness, the Foosball tables. You don’t really hear about randiness and mistreatment of women. That doesn’t prove it’s not there, but that’s not the lore.” [Emphasis added]
Uh, Mr. Kaplan. You might want to think on that.
Let me help.
Consider this analogy:. Let’s say there’s a cult of cannibal WASPs in San Francisco who decide that they need to eat actual human body parts to fully take part in communion. (Why yes. I am rereading my Armistead Maupin. Why do you ask?)
Do you reckon that fact will become part of the lore at Grace Cathedral?
I think not. The first rule of Fight Club and all that.
Out of the realm of fiction, the reality of embedded discrimination is that it does not form part of the “lore.” It’s in the water, the air, so pervasively integrated into the daily life of whatever community in which it is embedded that no one need and very few recognize its existence — at least among those on the winning side. How many white southerners in 1950 perceived the daily reality of their lives to be one that benefitted from the systematic oppression of their African-American neighbors? Some, but it wasn’t part of the lore; it was just an unexceptionable fact.
So too with gender. Example close to home: until the 1999 report on Women Faculty in the School Science at MIT, male faculty and leadership at the Institute were not in general aware of the conditions under which their female colleagues worked. Here’s then-MIT President Charles Vest, introducing the report:
First, I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance. Second, I, like most of my male colleagues, believe that we are highly supportive of our junior women faculty members. This also is true. They generally are content and well supported in many, though not all dimensions. However, I sat bolt upright in my chair when a senior woman, who has felt unfairly treated for some time, said “I also felt very positive when I was young.”
Thus, when David Kaplan– in all sincerity, I’m sure — suggests that a charge of sexual harassment is implausible because the Valley’s oral tradition does not speak of it, the best response I can give is:
Dude. Please. Listen to yourself.*
*BTW — to belabor what should be obvious. Just because someone makes a clueless statement like Kaplan’s, it does not follow that the specific charges in the Pao-Kleiner, Perkins dispute are true.
D’uh.
Image: Thomas Eakins, Study for Taking the Count, 1898.
Cross posted at The Inverse Square Blog.
Liberty60
“Its not part of the lore” is just an updating of the Pauline Kael worldview- “None of my friends are aware of it so it doesn’t exist.”
WereBear
Hmmmm, clueless guy is clueless.
Steeplejack
Great evidence for this “lore” blindness in the thread downstairs on “Voter Suppression on the Ground.” Some commenters find it hard to believe that not everyone has a driver’s license or picture ID or that it would be a burden for anyone to get one.
c u n d gulag
The “problem,” whatever it may be, is part of the rules of the game, and is not obvious too anyone outside of the victims of that problem, and maybe, a few enlightened individuals.
To not be able to see, or understand that, means you’re part of the problem, and not part of the solution – to go back to an old DFJ phrase.
Cargo
I’m starting to think that an inability to see beyond one’s own immediate monkeysphere is really the root of all the problems.
Linda Featheringill
These cliches are commonly real among immature males, regardless of chronological age. Randiness and mistreatment of women are also common within guys of that group.
So if you have a culture of 30-something male engineers who act like they are 19, you will probably see them approaching women in general with an egocentric attitude, based on how-can-you-make-me-feel-good. You probably have a bunch of guys who NEVER think about a woman’s pride or ego or how she can save face.
In short, you will probably meet a whole bunch of male chauvinist pigs.
Edited for clarity.
WereBear
True story:
Back in the day, the satellite dish was brand new. We got one, and also the little gadget that told our VCR when to turn on and off to tape our favorite shows. (I told you it was back in the day!)
Only, it didn’t work.
I was programming heavily at the time, and quickly figured out the bug. I called the company, and fought my way through to the actual techs and told them what the bug was.
But because I did this with my female voice, (since I am female,) they kept arguing with me about it.
Husband #1 (I was sadly widowed in 1999) got on the phone, and said, in his deep masculine voice, word for word, exactly what I’d been saying.
They lit up like Christmas trees. It all made sense now! They were thrilled and loved us and we were the very first ones in all the world who got the updated gadget which spread joy as people actually got the shows they told the VCR to record.
Ya’ll are welcome.
So yeah.
Anoniminous
@WereBear:
Exactimento.
Before I left SillyCon Valley I saw that routinely and even women didn’t accept what women engineers said until a guy uttered it.
Weird.
mary
I can’t agree enough with Linda and Werebear. I also agree with the statement from the MIT report, ‘I also felt very positive when I was young.’ It’s discouraging that sexism like racism is so difficult to overcome and that men of goodwill just don’t see it.
MikeJ
Related: Men invented the internet? Like hell they did.
Linda Featheringill
@WereBear:
Don’t believe it until a man says it:
That problem is pretty widespread. It even infects the BJ discussions sometimes. Doug has a problem with that.
I remember being called a total nutcase and a nincompoop but when some guy came online and said the same thing I did, old Doug was like “Oh, wow. I did not know that.”
Asshole.
The Other Chuck
If you want to raise awareness, you need to start with specific examples. Simply telling people “your culture is sexist” isn’t going to cut it, and pointing out the lopsided gender ratio isn’t enough either.
One thing I like to point people at is The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist (better than the wiki version it points to, which belabors the point to say the least)
Alex D.
I’ve spent twenty years In this industry, fifteen in the Valley, and I will say this of Mr. Kaplan: he isn’t ashamed to admit he saves on his huffing glue by buying the family size at Sam’s Club.
ciotog
Who writes this lore? I’d be willing to bet it’s…not women.
numfar
Men invented the internet.
Uh-huh, sure.
Grace Hopper
Ada Lovelace
Radia Perlman
sharl
There has been a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in some of the STEM and skeptic/atheist forums. Here are a few, grabbed from a quick scan through P.Z. Myers’ Pharyngula blog:
On the declining attendance by women at an annual meeting of skeptics/atheists
Speaker at a scientific conference gets an unsolicited “Contact-Us-For-Sexytime!” card
Women conference organizers/speakers/attendees pass around names of “problem men”, but do so carefully and quietly*
[*there are reasons for not naming names publicly]
Posts like these are usually accompanied by huge responses in comments. Good points and links are to be found in those comments, although the process of finding them is like searching for a gemstone in your dog’s feces. Some of the greatest protest howling comes from the “gender-privileged”, of course (full disclosure: I am such a privileged dood).
This whole privilege issue – and the “luxury of ignorance” thing on the part of those who have privilege – is something seen time-after-time, as Mistermix’s earlier post on voter suppression indicates. It’s a shame our media is generally more financially motivated to cover up this issue (wherever it exists), and provide further comfort to the already comfortable, than it is to expose the problem.
Keep afflicting the afflicted – they can’t fight back!
gaz
Can we all just agree at this point that if you are a straight white male in a society that is run by straight white males that you are by definition THE LEAST QUALIFIED person to write on the topic, and you’d better serve your readers by simply shutting the hell up and letting your betters speak about it?
FFS. Why do these guys feel entitled to thrust their opinions about it on anyone, or that they are entitled to be taken seriously on the subject. Oh wait…
gaz
Can we all just agree at this point that if you are a straight white male in a society that is run by straight white males that you are by definition THE LEAST QUALIFIED person to write on the topic, and you’d better serve your readers by simply shutting the hell up and letting your betters speak about it?
FFS. Why do these guys feel entitled to thrust their opinions about it on anyone, or that they are entitled to be taken seriously on the subject. Oh wait…
Linda Featheringill
@gaz:
You’re right. And if I were a member of the dominant group in a particular circumstance, I might not be able to see what I am/we are doing to folks in the non-dominant groups.
Of course, realizing that takes some awareness.
Tom Levenson
@gaz:
Uh.
Sorry.
gaz
@Linda Featheringill: Generally my response to assholes like this is “If I wanted your opinion, I’d give it to you”. It has the added benefit of ripping their nuts off and pissing them off. You can’t reach them, because the lack of self-awareness is ingrained. Society trains the people with privilege to ignore it. It’s made pervasive and invisible. So an elevated middle finger seems to be the most effective response. Then again, I’m a jerk =)
WereBear
@gaz: Mmmmm. To be a straightwhitemale… it’s like being a Unicorn… to float above the slings and arrows of outrageous fate…
I think it helped me understand when I wound up as the only girl among THREE straightwhitemale brothers. And then to marry first one (well ,Sicilian/Romanian, how does that stack up?) and then another, (Scots Irish, advantageous only if we disregard about a hundred years of Anglo-Saxon prejudice) liberated straightwhitemale husbands.
I have no control over my own melanic genetic heritage or the alignment of my XY external genitalia or my particular sexual orientation when ColumnedA/ColumnedB against what my womb environment did to me. (Guess what? The combo of my genetics/hormonal expression resulted in rampant endometriosis and functional sterility, guddamn!?!?!?)
Just to let everyone know: if you wound up straight AND fertile? Freaking’ luck. And if you never knew that: MORE luck.
burnspbesq
@gaz:
No. And if you think that way, you’re equally part of the problem.
The day you’re “my better” is the day after they put me in the ground.
gaz
@Tom Levenson: I won’t apologize for upsetting you because frankly, the few barbs that you get probably build character. At the same time I can appreciate the fact that you are aware at least to a significant degree of the problem, and we need more of that.
=)
So cheers.
But yeah, the opinions of the straightwhitemale are over represented as it is. It’s just a fact of life.
Martin
@gaz:
Uh, sorta the opposite, actually.
Nobody gave a shit about black discrimination until white people championed it. Until that moment, it was just black people whining about being genetically incapable of succeeding in a perfectly fair and reasonable system.
The key to any minority group getting justice through peaceful means has always been the majority speaking out on the issue, and convincing the rest of the majority that indeed, there is discrimination here. That doesn’t meant that the majority can speak from personal experience what its like to be treated as part of the minority – but they have to be sufficiently receptive to the finger pointing to take the lesson and carry it. In the public discourse they inevitably become the most influential voices – even if they aren’t the most visible or vocal. MLK Jr was unquestionably an important and vocal voice, but the most influential were all white. Civil Rights was ultimately passed by a group of white men perfectly qualified to speak on the issue, because they had finally accepted the lesson.
middlewest
@gaz: Wow, thanks, I was almost going to volunteer this afternoon to make phone calls for MN United to advocate for marriage equality, but I guess I should shut up, stay home, and meditate upon the evils of my privilege. Whew, dodged a bullet there.
Martin
@gaz:
Well, that’s certainly true as well.
gaz
Here we go with the SWM pile-on…
It only underscores my point.
I appreciate anyone that wants to cheer from the sidelines. But you are not one of the “others” and never will be.
And no, I don’t need to thank the SWM for showing some magnanimous display of “helping” the Others(TM) obtain a bit of social justice. If nothing else it’s a penance for years of abuse. I don’t owe you a pat on the fucking back for trying to correct the many errors and abuses at the hands of your brothers. You don’t my deserve praise for you deciding to be a good person(TM) anymore than I do. Fuck your entitlement.
gaz
@middlewest: So if I don’t blow you for deciding to take the side of basic decency you are going to take your ball and go home?
For you it seems, being a good person doesn’t mean shit unless the Others hold you up as a paragon of virtue, rather than it’s own reward. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I call you entitled.
Auguste
@middlewest: This kind of reaction is silly. You now what gaz means, or at least I hope you do. If you don’t, then you need to check your privilege.
Part of being a responsible straight white male is agreeing – with effort if necessary – to get over yourself enough to not get your feelings hurt when someone points out privilege.
If gaz’s comments don’t apply to you, then why get defensive about them?
ETA: So, basically, what gaz said while I was typing mine.
Martin
@gaz:
I don’t think any of us are asking for it. We’re merely saying that nobody gets anywhere unless we get there together. I don’t need a pat on the back. Just don’t tell me that I’m inherently unqualified to champion a cause that doesn’t pay out for me personally, because that’s likely to discourage me from helping.
It’d be much more accurate to say that straight white males should be assumed to be furthering straight white male power unless proven otherwise. But it doesn’t mean we’re incapable of working against a system that favors us – we just have to earn it is all. And I’m not even arguing that it should be easy for us to earn, but at least grant us the ability to earn it.
Starfish
@gaz: What you are doing hurts feminism.
Instead of ostracizing the few supportive, knowledgeable allies that exist, the effort may be better spent on the specifics of what to improve and how. Working on a positive goal is more likely to gain support than working on the negative goal of tearing down people who are trying to understand and be supportive.
You may not need to show thanks, but it would be more useful to not generalize too much and lash out at everyone.
gaz
@Starfish: I started in on this conversation by opining that an SWM is the LEAST QUALIFIED to speak on the subject of privilege. I went a bit further in saying that maybe they should STFU about it and let the people who know something about it speak to it.
For which I get a bunch of predictable results.
That’s when I got divisive.
scav
@gaz: Your position still overly weights in too many contexts who does the saying based on somewhat incidental genitalia rather than the logic or internal consistency or exact topic on which they speak. Basically, you think a woman on Faux saying women want to be raped, barefoot in the kitchen with a quiverfull submitting gracefully while riding a warm-blood is necessarily more meaningful than a white man saying it’s complicated and pointing out why it’s hard to see the advantages when you’ve grown up knowing nothing else. Goody Goody for the holy and saintly purity of your all-perfect purpose, but I don’t see it advancing us as a social group dealing with a social problem that we’re all in together about.
Auguste
@gaz:
Though this may not apply to BJ commenters for the most part, I find it surprising* that so many people in this country are willing to accept the doctrine of original sin – that an apple from 6000 years ago means that we have to spend every day begging God for forgiveness – but when it comes to stuff that AT BEST our great-grandparents were intimately involved in, well, why do you have to keep bringing up old shit?
*not even remotely surprising
gaz
@Auguste: Because it’s not old. It’s rehashed in every public outlet every single day.
Amanda in the South Bay
Of course Silicon Valley has a diversity problem-I see it all the time in CS coursework, I see it at Hackerdojo in Mountain View, where the people who visit here are overwhelmingly male, and I got shit on some IT bros at TiVo a few weeks ago during a shitty interview.
It is often pointed out that there are lots of trans women who work here, but I think that is chalked up to:
1. Trans women transitioning after they’ve already started working and establishing themselves here.
2.Having the (not really wanted) “benefit” of growing up with male socialization, and being able to indulge in all things IT and programming. And then transitioning later in one’s 20s.
I think what’s most frustrating is that this happens here, right smack dab in the middle of the SF Bay Area, supposedly the most liberal part of the country. And yeah, there’s a libertine element to people in SV, but fuck, its a bro culture out there.
Auguste
@gaz:
No, but to a conservative/finger-in-their-ear privilege holder, they treat it as old. That’s all I meant: A lot of people in this country are highly offended by the idea that anyone should have to do penance for anything that ‘stopped in the 60s’ – and even leaving aside the total bullshit of it “stopping in the 60s”, they’re happy to beat themselves up over 4004 BC.
ETA: To be clear – “why you bringing up old shit” could potentially have been in quotes. It was a “Friday” reference, and meant to be in the voice of a douchebag.
gaz
@Auguste: And here, I totally agree.
I may be a bit angry about it. Mostly because my lived experience has been pretty extreme. I’ve othered every single day. Occasionally with violence. So I haz an angry.
My lived experience centers around this:
To white men, i’m a direct threat. To “enlightened” white men, if I fail to acknowledge them when they happen across some decency, I’m a jerk.
To some feminists, I’m invading their space, and am worse than an SWM, because I’m taking what’s theirs – as if my life is simply steeped in privilege. (Luckily a lot of the militant old-guard feminists are receding into the woodwork)
To nearly everyone I’m a freak.
It’s hard to take, but I don’t expect pity. I’ll be pretty angry sometimes and over the top about it once in awhile. Quite possibly, I am doing that here. Walk a mile in my shoes. If you don’t end up in the same space, then I’ll concede you are a better person.
So now, I’ll take a deep breath, and hold my tongue on the subject, and let all of you get back to civility.
Auguste
@gaz:
I’ll just point out that I think where you thought you were disagreeing with me, that was a problem with my communication, not my intended message (see later comment.) I’d hate to have you walk away with the wrong impression. (And if my further comment did not address things, please tell me, because I would want to learn.)
You are on the correct side of things here, and the SWM knee-jerkers DO need to STFU, at least in response to what you said. The pile-on response was as predictable as you say it was.
At one point I was going to shout “Bingo” but didn’t want to derail the thread any further.
gaz
@Auguste: I reread you, and I don’t think we’re in disagreement on this. The red I see makes words run together sometimes. (Black on Red is tough). It’s more of a pink now. =)
gaz
@Amanda in the South Bay: I totally agree.
I’ve abandoned IT myself recently. It is very male (for whatever reason). I haven’t even enjoyed programming in a long time. I’m good at it – but for me I developed the skill as a way of engaging in hyperfocusing escapism. It was a survival mechanism that I’ve outgrown.
Now looking to be a barista =)
muddy
I had the same experience as a woman working as a draftsman, the engineering firms always dominated by men, esp. at the top. Then I got the idiot remarks from employers, “I’d rather hire a woman, men are always ambitious and want to work out in the field”, “Well if we hire a woman there is a man who can’t support his family”, “You have to do the receptionist’s job when she is out, if a man answers the phone it will sound like we don’t have any real work, and btw the drawings had better be done on time despite you having to sit pretty up front” etc.
Then if you call them on it you are a bitch and it is probably your special time of month. Glad I changed careers and worked for myself after that. The drafting did not pay well enough to have to put up with that shit, and I know good and well I got paid less than the men altho my output was better.
RalfW
Thanks for the painting. Fascinating that the study uses nudes but the final piece they’re in whatever would have passed for boxer’s pants back then (in the British sense of the word).
uptown
Has Mr Kaplan ever worked in the industry? No. He is a longtime NYC resident who has written about some tech companies and their bosses. So how the hell is he going to be able write about this without asking folks who are unlikely to talk about it, let alone acknowledge it happens.
gaz
@muddy: I can’t stand this kind of crap in the workplace. I think aspergers must have something to do with it – at least in IT. Properly socialized people generally know how to behave in the work place, regardless of their belief systems – or at least so I’ve been lead to believe. Then again I don’t have any claim of authority on the subject.
In any case, I got the hell out of the boat as well*. So cheers.
— * Even my last IT position which was 100% telecommute was not immune to the dynamic, because I still had to communicate with these people. Sometimes it was even worse than an office. Phone conferencing sucks. =)
Felanius Kootea
Thanks for posting this Tom. I agree with a lot of what gaz has said in this thread but I also think it is super important to have straight white male allies in order to change shit.
gaz
@Felanius Kootea: I don’t disagree with that, FTR. I probably just came across that way because I haz an angry. It’s a sensitive topic to me. Cheers to Scalzi, Tom, and any true allies. Anyone that does a good thing for it’s own reward is someone I’ll keep firmly in my ally camp. Adding that anyone that expects to be included with the Others(TM) or thinks they are entitled to some acknowledgement for their act of basic decency can fuck off. That’s the crux of most of my angry posts. =)
Easier to clarify now that I’ve calmed down a bit.
cheers.
don
Three things:
1) It’s the NYT – home of the mustache of understanding and Ross Do%^$#@*.
2)Did you notice that he gave credit to two women for helping him with the article? Was it a typo?
3)Xeni Jardin at boing boing has this covered: http://boingboing.net/2012/06/03/nyt-men-invented-the-inter.html
(be sure to scroll down for some of the tweets she’s received))
gaz
@don: Thank you for that link. Lovely article there.
jefft452
“What you are doing hurts feminism.
Instead of ostracizing the few supportive, knowledgeable allies that exist,….”
Disagree
I’m a SWM, not just a SWM but a middle-class, middle-aged SWM, who by looks alone wouldn’t stand out at a teabagger rally
My childhood was spent in white bread suburbia during the biggest increase of standard of living in human history
“leave it to beaver” could have been a documentary of my life experience
Gaz saying that I don’t KNOW what its like to be outside of the SWM privilege bubble isn’t ostracizing, its bloody obvious.
I haven’t seen Gaz state that I’m incapable of empathy, but it aint the same.
Face it, there are petty tyrannies that go on all around me that are just not on my radar screen. If you call my attention to them, then sure, I’ll oppose them. But it aint the same as living with them day to day
Starfish
Reading some of what gaz wrote again, it is not as bad as I originally thought it was, and I can see why she is upset.
daveNYC
@Starfish:Gaz’s original post, as written, implied that Clarence Thomas was a better person to write about discrimination than Mr. Levenson. That’s some weapons grade derp.
muddy
@gaz: I recently was explaining to a friend about triggers. I suffer from PTSD and can get triggered from things most people don’t even realize are sensitive.
I likened it to pulling the trigger on an actual gun. Someone else pulls the trigger, you never know when it might happen, but suddenly there you are, a bullet. Once the bullet leaves the gun, it is not like you can just pull it back in. The bullet will travel, sometimes it hits the target, sometimes hits something else that you didn’t mean to hit, or sometimes it just runs out of momentum and falls to the ground.
I felt empathy toward you that you were triggered (I don’t mean that you necessarily have a diagnosis like mine of course), but that was how your replies seemed to me. And I admired how you both stuck up for yourself and apologized for hitting the target you didn’t intend.
muddy
@daveNYC: I don’t see any reference to Clarence Thomas in that post, shove your “weapons grade derp” up your ass.
Clearly a Supreme Court Justice is not a marginalized figure, and in fact he was shoved into his position by the entitled few as their surrogate, and thus is one of them, despite his melanin.
Nutella
I’ve got a question about the NYT article on Pao’s lawsuit:
Why is there a picture of Pao’s husband, and a story about his unrelated real estate lawsuit in New York, and an interview with his ex-boyfriend? Is this standard practice at the NYT to cover news about a lawsuit with details about the complainant’s spouse? And the complainant’s spouse’s ex?
Pao’s suit makes serious allegations against an established company and should not be treated as celebrity gossip.
gaz
@daveNYC: Actually the brunt of my initial post was directed at the people Tom L was aggregating. Some collateral flak hit part of your fanclub. (actually mine too, since I like Tom L’s posts). Tom’s response got the point across, and was far better at both marking him as an ally, and putting my own triggers in perspective. The man’s post had some class. Your post? not so much.
gaz
@muddy: Thank you. I have anger issues around this, and believe it or not, I try to be better about that =). I fail quite often, as this thread will demonstrate. I could have maybe handled it with more tact (but am not conceding ground on my points, just some of the ways I expressed them)
So, for anyone who was unfairly hurt by my outrage, I apologize. Notably Tom L, and a few others.
That said, I delve into these kinds of posts, guns blazing because it is something I’m confronted with every single day that I leave my home.
Also, FWIW I think people should absolutely be made to be upset about this stuff – no matter what position one holds on it. It’s better than apathy. And if I’ve invaded some assholes’ headspace and sapped some mental energy from them for a few hours GOOD. Maybe some of the dynamics of privilege will be swirling around in there along with their ire at me. I doubt anything will change, but I’ll get in my licks where I can. =)
Peggy McIntosh, I am not. I won’t ever be as eloquent or as non-confrontational in my writing as she is. I’m closer to ABL in regard to how I approach the haters and privileged blind men.
Anyway, thanks to you and the others for the kind words and heartfelt defense of my point. I really do appreciate it.
Kerr Lockhart
Many ancient languages had (and have) no word for blue. Those people can see the sky, but they can’t describe it. They don’t perceive it as having color.
How would a fish describe water?
gaz
@The Other Chuck: I like that link, it’s like a programmer version of the more general Invisible Knapsack Essay. I wonder if it was indirectly inspired by that (via Kake, which I didn’t link through). Anyway, thanks for posting that.
gaz
@scav: “Your position still overly weights in too many contexts who does the saying based on somewhat incidental genitalia rather than the logic or internal consistency or exact topic on which they speak.”
I’m trying to figure out which category your argument fits into best this one, or this one, or or this one
It’s important because I’ve nearly got a Bingo, and I’m just trying to iron out which row.
Tom Levenson
@gaz: Not upset. Meant to add the ;) to my own brief comment above.
The only addition I’d make is that one of the reasons that we read — and that I write — is explicitly to find avenues into the minds and experiences of others. A much longer essay flows from that thought, and I may yet write it. But not tonight.
gaz
@Tom Levenson: FTR, I do appreciate what you wrote, and as I said to daveNYC the brunt of my point was directed at the people you aggregated. I’ve never seen you actively marginalize people – at least on this blog. Your self awareness is thus noted and appreciated, at least coming from me. Your articles on privilege are welcome as well, AFAIAC. If I had any criticism of it, it’s more that especially with ABL leaving for Raw Story, there is a gaping hole in terms of perspective-from-the-margins on the issues surrounding privilege here. That’s not your fault. And Zandar does weigh in here and there, but Anne?, Kay? where are you on this stuff? Maybe I just haven’t been paying enough attention.
In any case, keep it up. You’re very thoughtful on these subjects. I like your writing the best when it comes to societal and philosophical stuff as opposed to straight-up politics. That’s where you really bring your A game to this blog, IMO.
daveNYC
@gaz: There’s what you meant, and what you actually wrote. I absolutely agree that cracker-ass crackers probably shouldn’t be opining about how Group X needs to STFU because their problems don’t really exist but, that isn’t what your first post said.
gaz
@daveNYC: Which part specifically do you disagree with?
“Can we all just agree at this point that if you are a straight white male in a society that is run by straight white males that you are by definition THE LEAST QUALIFIED person to write on the topic,”
this part?
or this one?
” and you’d better serve your readers by simply shutting the hell up and letting your betters speak about it?”
(I suppose I could have added a maybe in there, but basically, I stand by what I said there)
or this one?
“FFS. Why do these guys feel entitled to thrust their opinions about it on anyone, or that they are entitled to be taken seriously on the subject. Oh wait…”
I ask merely for information.
IrishGirl
@Cargo: Would agree with you there. The inability to have empathy, ie, walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, is the key. Americans do a shitty job of teaching their kids empathy. I used to teach ethics to college students and their lack of empathy and their frequent inability to to do thought experiments about anything beyond their individual experience was horrifying.
gaz
@muddy: Thanks. I was SOOO mad at teh thread the other day. hehehe. I couldn’t even hold it together. =) So yeah – it’s probably a trigger. I’ve had a lot of really hostile encounters IRL, mostly from SWM assholes. (not that all SWMs are assholes, but the worst assholes are always SWMs). I deal, usually quite well considering, but sometimes it just really really gets to me.
ETA: My mother (the one I still talk to, not the adoptive one) suffers from PTSD, and no, I don’t have it, but I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. Sucks, to say the least. I’m glad you’ve got a handle on some the mechanics around it. Awareness of how it operates tends to help take some of the power out of it, at least according to my mother.