Edit: I watched the video. The moderator goes on and on and the "let her speak please" sounds very polite.
This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men. It's one thing to have one panelist talk over another, but to have the moderator, who is explicitly in charge of facilitating a panel discussion, be the one to drown out a panelist is just unacceptable. Yes, "not all men" do this, but the fact that this continues to happen in such visible and public settings, where presumably people are on "their best behavior", would suggest that it happens even more in more private situations. Research has shown that groups where speaking is more distributed are more successful at solving problems, and explicitly teams with more women are more successful: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/the-sec...
I will take this story as another reminder to be aware of situations where I might be dominating a conversation, and I hope you will too.
People get talked over by people. I see this all the time and it's generally sexless. As a consultant I've helped at least 100 teams have crucial conversations across tens of businesses. I don't get the constant refrain that this is a male vs. female thing.
Your fuzzy memory is not research so I quote the three top scientific magazines: Forbes, HBR [1] & NYT.
(If you look in the articles, they quote studies with 20 participants. At university I would have been destroyed when making fundamental claims on a sample size of 20).
And yes my gut feeling tells me women get interrupted more often. And from this comment you may assume I'm guilty of this, though my bad social habits probably interrupt men as often.
Please quote the exact number in those papers. The summery of the first do not specify the levels of women interrupting women or men interrupting men, explicitly focusing only on interaction between men and women.
The other one only say that "both men and women exhibiting higher levels of interruption behavior in male-dominated groups".
Citations is only as good as the ability it provide to verify a claim. Those do not do that as far as summery goes.
I'm not trying to prove anything, it just sounded like people were interested in relevant research with higher sample sizes. The first says "The participants for this study included 216 university students". The second says "We systematically
varied the sex composition of the six-person
groups, [...] Data on 31 groups in all were collected."
The second study directly addresses this discussion: "The odds of a male attempting to interrupt another male (.078) are less than one-half the odds of a male attempting to interrupt a female (.163). Females attempt to interrupt male and female speakers at essentially identical levels (odds of .146 and .141 respectively). In other words, men discriminate in their interruption attempts, interrupting women much more often than men.
Women, on the other hand, do not discriminate; they attempt to interrupt men and women equally. Group composition does not appear to influence interruption attempts."
Interesting to see actually numbers. They imply that the one odd number here is the low rate of male attempting to interrupt another male, and that the natural base line should be around 0.1435 (assuming that the female variance of 0.0025 is the natural one for all humans).
That changes the tone of the issue. A 0.0195 difference from the norm is tiny on the negative discrimination of men interrupting women if we compare it to the norm difference of 0.0655 as positive discrimination for men interrupting men. As a social issue of 13.6% negative discrimination vs 45.7% positive discrimination, its a good time to ask what we want to fix. Is it the negative 13.6%, which mean we want men to interrupt women at the same rate as women interrupt women, or do we want men to treat other men worse by interrupting men as much as women do?
It also raises questions about moderators. Should we favor male moderators over female ones because they will in average interrupt 20% less (.241 vs .287) for a panel of 50% women and 50% men? The original post had a panel of 80% men and 50% men, which given the above numbers would have a male moderator interrupt a panelist at the rate of 0.095 while a female moderator would have interrupted a panelist with the rate of 0.145. A female moderator would be 52% worse than a male moderator in this specific case.
Your links do not justify your confident tone. Two are about the 7 Supreme Court Justices and some Google guy. That's 8 people. The first is about a study involving 11 male-female interactions (19 now), and a study which noted that "...The men interrupted their female conversational partners 2.1 times during a three minute conversation. That number dropped to 1.8 when they spoke to other men." So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically, i.e. not sexist behaviour but a simple gender difference.
Ironically, the guy's "fuzzy memories" are more accurate than your "research-based" opinions.
> So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically
I'll buy that. If this disproportionately affects women then I'll buy that too. I don't buy that men interrupt women specifically out of some sort of bias. My experience has been that the more passionate conversationalists among us will interrupt anyone who will let them.
The more interesting question is whether there's a 3rd variable we're missing.
You were right in your initial assertion: people talk over people. The people desperately trying to prove that "men talk over women" using statistical analysis are all missing the point.
The first thing to do, before looking for sex differences, is to try and identify the reasons why people interrupt, because there are many of them and sometimes there are conflicting or related motives.
Gathering anecdotal evidence would be a starting point for articulating hypotheses. What are the conditions of the discussion? What is at stake? What is the expertise of the participants? What are the personality factors? What is the general conversational ability of each participant? How long is the attention span of each participant? What is the apparent purpose of each individual interruption?
There are so many factors you could look for before looking at sex differences. And would the sex differences persist when those factors were controlled for?
I think you're losing your focus on defending your position in the face of the criticism you're receiving. I agree that there are other possible explanations besides "passion" such as men generally displaying more aggressive behavior which could, I'm conjecturing because this is a hypothetical, spill over into not only physical behavior but also conversational behavior. However, without contextualization, aggressive behavior is not the same as damaging behavior which is what you're implying when you bring up bullying. For my part, I agree with the others who don't think your sources support the position you're taking.
That being said, it seems to me that the broader implication of your position is that when men and women participate in group dialogue the meta-game of the dialogue often leans in favor of the male speakers. I'd need to do more research to prove this but in general, if this was your position, I'd be inclined to agree with it based on my own anecdotal experiences. However, this still doesn't establish the hostile intention or implicit sexism that, from my reading of your posts, is presented in your claims.
Not really. Bullies have something specific going on. They are trying to hurt people. Many average people get excited when they talk about a subject they are passionate about and enter into a state entirely unlike any bullying I've ever seen but which nevertheless results in non-bullying behaviors like talking over people. These people are exhibiting behaviors like interrupting because they are excited and passionate, not because they are trying to strike out at the people they are interrupting.
I'm occasionally accused of interrupting others. But here's the thing: I like being interrupted. I enjoy conversations with lots of rapid back and forth. When I'm misguided, I want to be corrected as quickly as possible. I want others to finish my thoughts.
From what I gather, it does get done to women more than to men. From my perspective, an even bigger problem is that women are more expected to just take it.
Having read the piece, it is by a woman who spoke up and said "Let her speak, please" and that's fine. But I have mixed feelings about the title of this piece and how it looks before you read it, because white knighting is a big problem for women. Men coming to the rescue of some damsel in distress and championing her often just deepens the problem. It often simply reinforces the idea that the only role women are allowed to play is that of victim and any justice that happens will be credited to some heroic guy. It often gets done in a way that in no way empowers her. It is frequently just some guy coming in, playing hero and getting pats on the back and when he goes off stage, her situation remains just as crappy and disempowered as before.
I am a woman and I personally don't have any problem with giving the guys push back and that gets me perceived as incredibly confrontational and fighty. At one time, my account on HN was rate limited. My feeling on that is that simply standing up for myself as a woman who often gets a lot of pushback merely for being a demographic outlier was being punished. That winds up a no win situation for women. If you don't stand up for yourself, you get walked on. If you do, you can be actively punished for it.
To be fair, the current mod team on HN has been great. I am sure they often find me cringe-worthy, but they have made me feel much more like I can report people who are really engaging in bad behavior towards me that is beyond the pale and much more like I can stand my ground without fear that doing so is highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it.
Hacker News has generally been great about putting up with my outrageous agenda* to open my mouth here and engage in conversation on equal footing with the guys. I am well aware that is a shocking expectation and is simply Not Done in so many spaces, both online and off. I want to thank everyone here for being so good about that.
Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after.
> highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it.
That seems unlikely. If you are getting banned, maybe you're not being reasonable about it?
> If you do, you can be actively punished for it.
This is not a women-only issue. Men get "punished" just as much for unpopular opinions. Just like they get talked over if they let themselves be talked over. etc.
> Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after.
That complaining about it is pushing back. And you whine about it right now.
Did you even understand that sentence? Let me clear it up.
The "not standing up for themselves" is in the actual situation, against the actual person they need to stand up against.
The "complaining afterward" is after the situation has passed, and complaining to a completely different person not involved in the original interaction.
That is the exact opposite of "standing up for yourself", and it is also not "pushing back", because in order for it to be a push "back", it has to be a push against the original force, not against some random other person.
If I got berated by my boss, which I just let happen, and then reacted by, a while later, berating you, a completely uninvolved third party, would you consider that "standing up for myself" and "pushing back"?
They don't stand up for themselves because they are often outnumbered and/or outmuscled and habitually don't believe that we have their back, for various reasons.
If you stand up and get punished and ostracised/mocked as a result then standing up did you no good. You will learn not to do it.
Stand up thing worked great in this story. I trust you that your relative could suceed in standing up instead of being treated as crazy bad women. A lot of it is residuum from old times when gender roles were different and some of both genders keep going old way.
Her existence does not excuse dudes who attempt to dominate women more them men. I did won those fights in the past, but the older I am the less I care about whether it was intentional or subconscious. It affects me all the same.
That is why stories like this are good to hear about - it is good role model for women lime your relative - to see that she can stop the dude, not to consider his interest and win.
Maybe you could show her the story to make her inspired for that.
This "push to Hubeny's field of expertise" seems to start at 1:02:00, "let her speak" is at 1:05:35.
The OP's account is overdramatized and sometimes plain wrong, like the suggestion that Holt didn't let Hubeny speak at all for these three minutes (she had two long blocks) or that there was a dead silence after the OP spoke up (there wasn't). And that's a part of the problem: feminism is routinely being represented by individuals whose subjective perception of events seems to diverge from what others see. FWIW.
Exactly. And when that is pointed out, they chalk it up to "oppression", like any other kind of criticism. Nice little self-reinformcent mechanism that easily leads to completely decoupling yourself from reality.
You don't appear to understand the concept of "standing up for yourself".
It fundamentally includes "in the face of adversity". And that means that you do it well knowing that there can and likely will be negative consequences. If you only do it under a guarantee of no repercussions, then you're not standing up...for anything, really.
Everybody knows what it means, but there are people who are too scared to try. Nobody should really have "a guarantee of no repercussions" when throwing accusations around but at the same time there exist people who could use more support to deal with situations when bad things are happening to them.
Nope it does not. Standing for yourself in those situation is about hurting opponent so that he does not try again. That is what men actually do - they are surely as hell less likely to stand up to the boss - such behavior is quite rare. If you succeed, you successfully stood for yourself regardless of whether there were risks or not. It is also a lot about acting aggressive before there was the actual need, to prevent the situation from even happening.
If women have to learn to stand up for themselves as you imply they should, they need to find a way to hurt people who treat them the way they don't like.
No, it isn't ridiculous. It is exaggerated and that is intentional. The intent is to make it clear that when the social environment is sufficiently hostile, it is ridiculous to act like it is the victim's fault for being victimized.
I already said above that I was rate limited. I believe this was essentially because when I first joined, I would get dog piled simply for being a woman opening her mouth here. You ignore that and accuse me of misbehaving as the reason I was concerned that I might wind up banned, no matter how hard I tried to behave. Thankfully, I no longer worry about that like I once did.
Totally, this is her political perception grid overlaying reality. If Jim Holt or whoever thought that her theories were contradictory, then likely he would've talked over whoever was sitting there, regardless of sex. It could have had as much to do with his condescension to what he perceived as an inferior theory as anything.
That's actually a desirable quality. It means that you are not emotionally attached to your theories (you shouldn't be, it's science not religion) and are willing to contradict them. Still, most people would think that a bad thing.
Yes they do Ryan. And it's something we need to stop. In this particular case though the female expert was asked a question related to her own very specialised area of expertise by the male host, AND then the person asking the question (a) answered on her behalf, (b) then talked over her when she tried to answer, and (c) then made fun of her when her response was to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Truly appalling especially when for over an hour the other all male members of the panel had spoken at length without interruption.
what you describe matches my observations too: i see it happen in both directions, with the most pushy example being, in what i see, certain women talking over everyone regardless of gender. it's just a personality trait, perhaps?
My suspicion is that it is based largely upon context.
I would postulate that academia and journalism are still pretty sexist compared to the 'tens of businesses' you observed.
Potentially in support of your perspective: I see the overspeaking roles inverted in the context of reality TV shows, though that could potentially be seen as a counter-action to normal social roles which develops as structure of society is removed... which would imply the sexist paradigm is the prevalent one.
> I would postulate that academia and journalism are still pretty sexist
Two industries I have not had the pleasure of engaging with. My coaching experience has been around healthcare, insurance, banking, transportation, energy, construction, software, audit, and a few other random things.
Reading the comments here I am surprised at all the people who are claiming that people get talked over by other people all the time and it has nothing to do with sex.
I mean, yeah there's no denying that there exist pushy jerks who are jerks to everyone but guess what? those kinds are more likely to be even greater jerks with women.
So either this guy was a regular jerk talking over her because she was a woman or being that special kind of jerk who normally talks over some men but talks over most women. Why is there an difference of opinion about this?
Does anyone really think there is a breed of jerks who talk over some/most men but will never do that/will do less of that to a woman?
That precludes the breed of jerks who will talk over anybody that will tolerate it.
What makes you think there aren't women who also like to claim the center of attention, regardless of other men OR women around them?
I don't understand this need to idolize one sex over the other, when the issue is that some people (like this moderator) are just more tone deaf or inconsiderate than others.
Equality between sexes implies treating everyone as a human rather than assuming that this moderator is a stand-in for men in general.
> That precludes the breed of jerks who will talk over anybody that will tolerate it
So are you claiming that those sort of jerks are not going to be extra nasty to women that will tolerate it? That they are going to be equally nasty to people of both sexes?
If that's what you're claiming, I'll humbly disagree but won't engage any further.
> What makes you think there aren't women who also like to claim the center of attention, regardless of other men OR women around them?
I never claimed that there aren't such women. Indeed there exist women who behave worse with other women than they do with men. But then what's your point? Women being sexist doesn't make it okay for men to continue to be so now, does it?
I think his point was that this is not an example of sexism because such people will talk over any gender. Now perhaps these types of people will talk over women more, but in this case it seems this guy is just a jerk talking over either gender.
This has been my experience. My wife claims the opposite experience; people (male or female) who are usually rude to men are less prone to be rude to her or other women. Of course, being more of a jerk to men than to women is, apparently, the worst kind of sexism and the very reason women need feminism. Or something.
> So are you claiming that those sort of jerks are not going to be extra nasty to women that will tolerate it?
That is also my observation. We are just vastly more sensitive to aggressive/jerk behavior against women ("protect the women"), and this is highly emotionally charged for most people.
For a rough intro into the phenomenon, check out the youtube videos comparing bystander reactions to the exact same behavior in a woman -> man vs. a man -> woman setting.
thank you for saying this, and be willing to be downvoted by the PC hivemind. I've personally long given up trying to share a non-PC-orthodox view here on this topic
Journalists definitely like to hear themselves talk, even when formulating questions while moderating a discussion. But if he, as a relative layperson in science, felt that comfortable interrupting Dr. Hubeny and riffing off of her area of expertise, imagine what he's like in a topic in which he doesn't think himself a relative amateur.
Today I met a journalist who gave up on his job because it was all about his interpretations of other people. He instead started projects to empower others to speak.
If he isn't aware that he's an amateur when it comes to string theory, he definitely shouldn't be put in charge of interviewing a string theory expert.
> Journalists definitely like to hear themselves talk, even when formulating questions while moderating a discussion.
slightly off topic, but with the rise of ubiquitous audio/video and the interview/discussion/panel format, it is infuriating how many hosts just blatantly speak over their guests, over and over and over. it's one of the biggest tells between a professional interviewer and a rank amateur. i can barely make it through my weekly playlist without cringing at half the dialogue.
i completely stopped listening to charlie rose because of this. it's absolutely atrocious. it's not helpful, and makes me anxious when i'm trying to unwind. some guests simply continue speaking, and the entire discussion devolves into little more than a god damn shouting match.
sexism or not, i hope this public assassination at least makes one loudmouth blowhard reconsider his default modus operandi. just let your guests speak! for fuck's sake, it's not that hard.
Charlie Rose has been an absolutely abysmal interviewer his whole career, which is a tragedy considering how good they are at booking great guests. He asks long leading questions, proceeds to answer them himself, and then tacks on an “isn’t that right?” at the end. When the guest inevitably says “that’s not how I think of it, Charlie, let me explain ...”, he then interrupts and repeats his original claim again. Ugh, drives me crazy.
He also kisses up like mad to a few people (Tom Friedman? Yuck.) while stomping all over experts he doesn’t agree with, often because he doesn’t understand their point.
My favorite was when at some point maybe 15 years ago he was interviewing I think Bill Joy, and asked one of his long multi-sentence leading questions. To which the response was ... pause ... “well, duh.”
* * *
Thankfully Terry Gross single-handedly makes up for all the bad interviewers in the world.
Can't agree more with this assessment of Rose. I don't understand how he got or keeps his job.
I wish they'd give that position to Alec Baldwin. His work on "Here's the Thing" has proven him to be an adept interlocutor. While he also has a tendency to talk over his guests it's usually to help enlighten or at least to say something funny.
I feel like he was a good interviewer when he was younger. I'm just into my 40s now and I can see how you could get worse with age as you start to assume you already know the answers. It's why I've stopped listening to the "In Our Time" podcast in the past few years: all of a sudden Melvyn Bragg talks to the panel like he's double-parked.
I haven’t watched much Charlie Rose in the past 5–10 years, because he was so infuriating to watch before that. So I disagree with your assertion. If you go back and watch his older interviewers I suspect you will change your mind.
I get talked over all the time. I usually chalk it up to being an American living in America, but with a more Scandinavian/Minnesotan conversational style.
That is, I will pause while speaking, spooling my next thought out to the phonological loop, to review and filter it, before streaming it out through the voice apparatus, but then some jackass will use that break to assume conversational priority when I haven't yielded it yet. So when I resume speaking, they are already talking.
It is practically impossible for me to engage in a conversation with such a person constantly ruining it for me, so I usually just keep my thoughts to myself and regret even showing up for the party.
Even my spouse does this in a 1-on-1 conversation. And then I am the one accused of interrupting, as though it is acceptable to jump in between two sentences of a paragraph. It's like I need that stupid conch shell from Lord of the Flies in order to say everything that I want to say. And I get so irritated when people spew out a stream of content-free babble, for the sole purpose of maintaining priority, to the point where I forget what I have been wanting to say for the last 5 minutes.
It might be a sexist thing, but I think it's more likely that the people with the least latency between brain and larynx--and therefore the fewest speech filters--are the ones that never learned that conversational priority isn't just about refraining from talking while sound is still coming out of someone else's mouth. And, of course, there are also the people who simply decide they are the most important person in a conversation and act like they're the lead actor giving a monologue, and everyone else is the chorus.
So please, have a care as to whether a silence in the conversation is a pause or a yield. You may be interrupting someone giving due consideration to what they will say next.
This is my experience as well. I am from Scandinavia and now living in Canada and I have only met a handful of individuals who do not interrupt others while speaking. Unlike you I tell them to shut up, which is the way it is where I come from but doesn't translate well.
Furthermore, I have never seen any american interviewer not interrupting their subjects.
This is my bias, so I never see sexism nor racism in this context. I only see idiots who think more of themselves than they should.
In this particular case and in regards to sexism, however, the voice that should be listened to most, in my opinion, is the voice of the subject. If we don't consider her voice the most important voice we put her in the subaltern and that is the worst position you can have. The subaltern being women in the context of patriarchal history.
The person who said 'Let her speak please.', should also be heard, regardless of her motives. The interviewers should shut up and let their subjects speak at all times, so we need more of this social courage.
For me it is disrespectful to interrupt someone speaking, so that is why I find it "weird". But it is most probably a matter of preference. I don't think everyone should have discussions on my terms.
In the context of interviewer<-->interviewee, though, I think it is generally more interesting to listen to the interviewee than the interviewer. It seems to me that the whole premise of the interviewer<-->interviewee is for the interviewer to get the interviewee to talk.
This is just a cultural difference, and depends on what kind of family a person grew up in. It’s not intentional, and not a sign of disrespect or incompetence.
If you want to get the most out of those conversations, you need to meet the other person halfway: be more assertive about your time to speak, while also letting them know that they’re trampling you and need to back off a bit. If you don’t tell them they’ll just think you’re a shy person with nothing to say.
Other cultural differences cause similar problems. If someone I don’t know is mad at me and just silently stews with a vaguely grumpy neutral expression on their face, I’m not going to have any idea they’re mad, because in my culture we just come out and tell people what we’re thinking. By contrast I know people who are deeply humiliated by (what seems to me like) light criticism, because it is huge faux pas and therefore never happened in their culture. Similarly, I know people who simply don’t understand the concept of teasing, at all, and others who are almost cruelly biting in their teasing: when those two collide it’s not pretty.
Or if I’m listening while someone tells one thing to one person, and something contradictory to someone else, I will consider them to be dishonest/untrustworthy and start discounting everything they say. But in some cultures, it’s normal and expected to say what you think the listener wants to hear, and listeners just have to learn to read between the lines and interpret subtle distinctions in presentation style.
I realize this sounds silly, but maybe having a conch, or similar talisman of "I'm not done yet, please listen" might be handy.
I find myself interrupting my children a lot more than I like (and while it often feels like it's because they're interrupting me as well, I'm certain that's usually not true). Having a stuffed animal or similar "conch" talisman might help us actually listen, because each of us could point out who has the conch.
As a tiny, girly looking feminine man who crossdresses half the time, I have to say that everybody- male or female- is at risk for being "talked over" and not given a fair chance. That's just how the world works.
You can be upset about it and say that people were unfair, or you can make yourself a better person by learning from others mistakes.
The world would be a better place if people put less energy into being upset, and more energy into mutual empathy between sexes.
This is a real problem in the business and tech communities. I have seen few people "at the top" acknowledge it.
Leaders, make an effort to listen and clear the air for others to speak up. Don't beat them up if they don't articulate brilliantly right away -- it takes practice. You'll be surprised at the rate of improvement.
For individuals, I use this trick when people cut me off AND it's unjustified: saying "hang on, let me finish" and then driving my point aggressively. It has mostly worked though I am male.
If you watch the rest of the video you will find the moderator imposes himself and cuts off the panellists and talks over them multiple times, seemingly regardless of gender. This makes me strongly inclined to believe that this incident had nothing to do with sexism, but rather with the annoyingly dominant and imposing personality of the moderator.
Maybe you think otherwise. Why would you say this incident is a "painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men"? Surely you can't construe this incident to mean that when all panellists alike suffered the same treatment? What's your take?
> If you watch the rest of the video you will find the moderator imposes himself and cuts off the panellists and talks over them multiple times, seemingly regardless of gender.
Honest question: Did you watch the rest of the video?
I did and completely disagree with your assessment.
I watched much of the video and he does interrupt other panelists frequently. He also gives a less obtuse lead-in and allows her to speak uninterrupted at around 27 minutes. Following that, other panelists acknowledge the importance of her statements.
Also, the panelist herself wrote that she thought it funny that the guy was asking and answering a question at the same time; she didn't feel she was targeted or silenced during the event.
This guy just likes to dominate conversations and lacks self/social awareness. I bet he's like that all the time. Does he do it more to the woman in the video? Yeah, you might have a good argument that he does.
But I've met plenty of these people in management-level meetings and they do it to everybody; it's soooo annoying. Very hard to assert yourself without making things awkward. Impossible to assert yourself when it's a woman who's overriding everyone else.
The solution is usually to appoint a meeting moderator that everyone knows to be fair beforehand (obviously, this isn't always viable), but we found it shortened up our medical practice meetings quite a bit. The guy who likes to hear himself talk still goes overboard from time to time, but we have a third-party moderator who can cut him off without worrying about upsetting a supervisor.
To be completely fair, it's not so simple. Opinions may differ in what constitutes an interruption, what's the threshold for considering someone tried to speak up and was cut off, about whether the attitude towards women was more forceful than towards men, etc. It's difficult to quantify these things.
Note that behaviours which tend to have disproportionate impact on one gender over another are still sexist, and women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did.
Nonsense. By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.
In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men. Perhaps you might merely argue that he should not behave that way to anyone simply because of the disproportionate impact. But even if that's the case, you are still saying that women are incapable of speaking up for themselves the way the men did to gain their voice back from the moderator. How is either of those scenarios not sexist on your part?
> By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.
No, the effects of deliberate, targeted differences in socialization by gender aren't the fault of the people experiencing adverse impacts because of the intersection of those with social structures that respond better to people socialized in the manner which is targeted at the other gender.
> In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men.
It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism.
>No, the effects of deliberate, targeted differences in socialization by gender aren't the fault of the people experiencing adverse impacts because of the intersection of those with social structures that respond better to people socialized in the manner which is targeted at the other gender.
I've heard this argument before - that women are deliberately socialized to be subordinate.
Personally, I believe in the strength & agency of women.
>It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism.
I don't understand how using a persons gender for gauging ability to cope with forceful men isn't sexist.
It is possible for both things to be true at once:
* For women to have strength & agency
* For external circumstances & socialization to have impacts on individuals
But what I don't understand is how you can maintain simultaneously that women are strong & have agency, but must receive corrective action sensitive to gender-differentiated effects.
Are the strong women you're thinking of incapable of overcoming societal pressures without gender sensitive treatment?
When I was little and my brother was hitting me, I was always capable of moving away from him so he couldn't hit me. The right thing, though, was for him to stop hitting me.
Sorry that happened to you. What you've said is true - your brother should not have hit you in the first place.
Apples and oranges, though.
Physical violence, threats, and calls to action must not be equated to expression. The urgency & rigor needed to address violence would be inappropriate applied to expression.
As an aside: it's not always possible to take action to defend yourself, but this does not necessarily mean that passive or defensive actions are all that you have.
Thank you. It wasn't severe abuse, it was just annoying sibling bullying. My point, made obliquely, is that the one's agency is independent of how others should behave.
> Are the strong women you're thinking of incapable of overcoming societal pressures without gender sensitive treatment?
Strength and agency are relative, and different in principle and in fact. All women (and men) are theoretically capable of asserting themselves even against an expressive bully (which is what I think you mean when you say " I believe in the strength & agency of women"; in practice many are not for a variety of circumstantial reasons--bad day, bad upbringing, cultural background, misinformation, fear, insecurity.
Whether men (especially conference organizers and panel moderators) should do something differently in light of received knowledge about sexist patterns of socialization, there's no contradiction with believing in the agency of women. Affirmative action might be problematic at the legislative level, but strongly indicated at the social level.
In other words, Jim Holt could be conscious of the fact that sexism against women in science is a real and ongoing problem, and make a point of being deferential to female speakers; at the very least, he could avoid actively preventing them from speaking more than he was preventing the men. The first would be a positive good; the latter a basic expectation. Neither is an infringement on Holt's expression, nor is a social backlash against Holt for failing to meet even the basic expectation of civility.
From a societal perspective, it would be honorable to right a wrong on behalf of the victim. Sure they may lift themselves up out of their own predicament, but it may not be necessary.
It may not be the fault of the people experiencing "adverse impacts", but they still make a choice on how to respond to them. The commenter claimed that women find it more difficult to respond in the same way as men. To me, that's sexist because they are saying women are essentially less capable of standing up for themselves. I don't understand how anyone doesn't see it that way.
"It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism."
True, but if the corrective action is treating women differently, then yeah, that's sexist. You can't say this guy is being sexist because he acted differently toward her and then say that we need to treat women differently than men to correct past sexism, but that different treatment is somehow not sexist.
Nice victim-blaming, bro. Just because some people push back against misbehavior doesn't mean the misbehavior is right to continue wherever it's not checked.
> In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men.
No - the "correct" response is to avoid talking over everyone. Helps everyone, overall helps women (as a group) a little bit more.
> But even if that's the case, you are still saying that women are incapable of speaking up for themselves the way the men did to gain their voice back from the moderator.
Nope, I'm saying that there's a sort of cultural training against interrupting people, and women are more severely affected by that cultural training since it ties in with a lot of "be nice/the good girl" pressure that women get while men are pressured to be more competitive. What I'm specifically not saying is that this is something inherent in being female - it's a cultural issue, not a female one.
Or, in other words - it's easier for men to interrupt people because it's the norm for men to interrupt people and so they have practice at it. It's harder for women to interrupt people because it's not the norm for women to interrupt people and so they have less practice at it. Doing something you don't normally do is hard, even if you have the knowledge on how to, and it's especially hard when you know you're going against the norm to do it.
I'm sure most people go against the norm sometimes - but we should really be creating social environments in which people don't have to go against the norm to get the same result as their peers.
> By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.
Saying "women should just act like men" is actually pretty sexist.
Pulled a quick definition of sexism from the web (they all seems more or less the same - "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex."
And the commenter said - "women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did"
At minimum, that fits at least the stereotyping requirement of the definition.
"pulled a quick definition from the web" is virtually never a useful way to engage something like this. It's like quoting a statute from the law books and ignoring a long history of case law that defines how that law actually works in practice.
I'll strengthen my position this way instead. Let's assume the definition is garbage and ignore it. Are stereotyping examples things that fall into the category of sexism? I think they absolutely are. And I think most people would agree.
"Women aren't as good as men at [whatever]" - sexist? Yep
"Women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did" - sexist? Sure sounds like it to me.
You're doubling down on your quick definition by pushing a simpler, even broader definition that's more trivially satisfied. This isn't an issue of categories and word use, it's an issue of history and culture and every incident is tied up in a large amount of context. This is exactly why simplifying terms and definitions fail here. It's not the land of referential transparency.
I can't say whether either of your statements are substantially sexist because they only have real meaning once you get at what underlies each one. "Women aren't as good at men at critical thinking because they're genetically programmed for motherhood while men are programmed for leadership" seems very sexist because it's talking about essential traits of men and women. "Women aren't as good at interrupting as men are because they're socialized to be deferential while men are socialized to dominate" seems not sexist because it's describing an accident of history that could as easily be the other way.
This seems to boil down to the same old question of whether we're really asking for equality or equity. Attempting to guarantee equal outcomes is a dangerous path to head down.
I read the facebook post and did not see a video link anywhere. I came to the comments to find the video. You could have actually been helpful and linked to the video.
Watched the related part of the video. I don't know if it was because of sexism, but it was clearly rude and annoying. The excited native, faster and louder speaking moderator taking over a kind, non-native, slower and smaller speaker. Since as a non-native male, I have seen this kind of taking over whatever the gender is and this might happen to any person which has those characteristics.
I can't find the study, but men interrupt women much more than they interrupt men. Also, women interrupt other women more than they interrupt men as well.
I don't think this informal study presents as strong of an argument as you may think it does. As the author themselves admitted, seniority was strongly correlated with rate of interruption, but they didn't control for that in their overall gender comparison. The top three out of four interrupters were women. As it turns out, that particular set of people had a lower number of women in positions of seniority. Is that not a plausible explanation, or at least a confounding factor that you would like to eliminate, before you declare that men interrupt x3 as much?
It's funny that you linked to that as I was about to dig up a more recent episode, http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2017/0.... Which is in no way to diminish the fact men talk over women but to point out the idea of different conversational styles and how they can each frustrate the other.
If men are 3x as likely to interrupt women, is it sexism or simply a biological tendency? And if it is a biological tendency, is it not sexist to shame men for their more assertive tendencies?
I'd put the emphasis on the outcome: women being able to express their opinions and contribute to the conversation / problem. Being interrupted (while speaking less in the first place) seems counterproductive to that end.
If men are 3x as likely to engage in violent behaviour, is it sexism or simply a biological tendency? And if it is a biological tendency, is it not sexist to shame men for their more assertive tendencies?
Interrupting somebody else isn't physically hurting anybody. This is a real argument that affects lots of people. Don't dilute it with your sarcastic strawmans.
You didn't. I don't think you did. It was just a reverse moving goalposts argument to suggest that both propositions were wrong.
But "if men are 3x as likely to interrupt women" is literally an example of sexism... the likelihood of interrupting a woman over interrupting a man.
Sexism IS a biological tendency. There is no rational basis for it when scientists are contributing to something as esoteric as string theory. This story overwhelmingly demonstrates how absurd sexism can get.
In any case it is perfectly acceptable to shame someone when they are being rude and excluding someone one from contributing. Especially when that someone is an expert.
The reason why I think she did not take any affront is because she already understands the subject matter. She's motivated not only in understanding herself, but in determining and helping others to comprehend. She can't actually engage in a proper discussion until she realizes that her counterpart also understands the material. When things get complicated, you have to continually establish a common basis for discussion which requires fostering patience.
sexism is believing that women cannot do something because women are inferior by design, not thinking that they are generally weaker (biologically true) and it's probably best if it's the man who carries the heavier luggage
You've been posting unsubstantive "so what?" dismissals, which is trollish when it comes to a divisive topic. Worse, you've crossed into personal attack. That's a bannable offense on HN, so please don't do it again.
I'm just saying you are not a man because you are clearly pushing an agenda when you don't want to accept all the evidence that disprove your belief that men are worse than women in conversations
so you're just like my dog, you don't listen, bark and don't care if you're right or not
you just wanna bark for the sake of barking
and threats of ban are laughable
if they ban me, I can create another account
it's not really important what HN commenters thinks of me or what I write
Well, in this instance, if you watch the video, males were treated differently.
Yes, hypothetically, if women acted the same (or interrupted only males), she would be as bad as he was. Yes, hypothetically, if he treated males and females the same, he would be just equal opportunity asshole.
Nevertheless, in this specific case, the only women was treated differently.
Do you believe that it is as common? Do you believe that the person you are replying to doesn't believe that it ever happens? Does excluding a full disclaimer invalidate his thoughts about trying not to talk over women or dominating conversations?
I don't believe it is always necessary to counter-exemplify what you experience as a general trend.
My personal experience, especially through family and to a lesser extent through other acquaintances, is of women dominating conversations and talking over men. I (a man) can't tell you how many times I've had a woman ask me a question and then talk over my answer, or repeatedly interrupt me when I try to participate in a conversation. And I see the same thing happening to other men I know. The men just kind of give up and fade into the background as they realize they are simply not going to be allowed to speak.
Now I'm perfectly willing to believe that other people find the opposite experience more common. But I have to admit my initial reaction to statements like "this is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men" is not positive, and I really do wish the conversation could be about people dominating conversations rather than men dominating conversations.
And what you are writing here is a nuanced comment about differing experiences. Perfectly reasonable.
I'll grant that I've seen both in casual social circumstances. But in this kind of situation, fairly serious and focused around competence/status, I'd say I see women get less space.
This is an interesting study but it has at least one incredulous assumption:
> Extraordinarily, we do not know how listeners actually assess how much is
spoken. Common sense tells us that someone who drawls a sentence slowly
is not considered to have said more than another person who gabbles the
same sentence twice in less time than the first person took to say it once.
That is, we normally make allowance for speaking rate in judging who says
most; amount of linguistic material produced is what really counts.
They do not analyze this issue at all in their paper and I don't see how they can just handwave it away with "common sense tells us". My common sense understanding is that our assessment of speech vs talking speed would be some kind of curve, with the extreme ends ending up with underestimation(spoke too fast, could not remember all the words said; spoke too slow, lost track of conversation) and the rest trending as slower -> overestimated and faster -> underestimated. But we both only have our "common sense" to put forward for this conjecture. Either way, it would have helped if they measured the talking speed of the speakers, so we could at least see if there was any statistical difference.
Eisler brings up that frame in "The Chalice and the Blade" -- it was often assumed in historical scholarship that non-patriarchial societies were matriarchial. Instead, she reframes it as "dominator" vs. "cooperator" societies. In other words, wrestling over which gender has dominance is not as helpful as shifting over towards cooperation in general.
This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men. It's one thing to have one panelist talk over another, but to have the moderator, who is explicitly in charge of facilitating a panel discussion, be the one to drown out a panelist is just unacceptable. Yes, "not all men" do this, but the fact that this continues to happen in such visible and public settings, where presumably people are on "their best behavior", would suggest that it happens even more in more private situations. Research has shown that groups where speaking is more distributed are more successful at solving problems, and explicitly teams with more women are more successful: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/the-sec...
I will take this story as another reminder to be aware of situations where I might be dominating a conversation, and I hope you will too.