So, you don’t think that women have to deal with sexism because you don’t like Laurie Penny. Okay then.
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What an amazing mansplanation!!!
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I read the posts by Laurie Penny and Pete Warden that inspired Cory’s title, and I found them both honest and touching. But Steven Brust’s post is brilliant. I’ve been trying to say something like that for a couple of years now, and I’m not even a communist. Now I can just link to Brust instead of relying on my own lesser literary talents. Thank you Cory!
People who make a point of saying that white males who have had bad experiences really haven’t had it so bad, and it would be far worse if they were black gay transgendered females, always make me terribly sad. This card game of one-downsmanship that @waetherman mentioned is really just a socially acceptable way of saying suck it up, you pussy. It’s unconsciously adopting the tools and mindset of the victim-blaming oppressor in the name of the oppressed. It’s the politics and discourse of dragging people down instead of raising people up. The pain of those people still won’t be really important, we’ll just change who we say those people are.
I don’t want the children of Michelle Obama and Sharon D. Malone to have to give up all the unearned privileges they enjoy, instead I want a sustainable world where the children of impoverished and exploited migrant workers will have the same opportunities for happiness and success as the children of the ruling economic classes. I don’t really care what color or gender you think you are in this context. That’s your own business that you can celebrate or bemoan as you choose. Discourse that focuses on separating groups is a dead end. Solidarity is the key.
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Did you read her piece… because that is really not what she’s saying.
Not what she’s doing…
Again, that’s not what she’s doing. She fully acknowledges his pain, but points out that nerdy girls had all the problems of nerds PLUS the problems that go along with being a woman in a male dominated society.
I think that means acknowledging the struggles of others, not dismissing them, and sweeping them under the rug.
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He was reacting to the Brust essay.
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Oh… that wasn’t made clear, I guess.
So, it’s a problem when women do it, but not men?
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Mindysan, not replying to you directly but to your narrative.
All I know is this: I have never had an African american woman as an interview for en engineering position in SF; I have worked with exactly one over-fifty woman in an engineering position.
If I were debugging this as a subroutine alarms would be screaming. White, male privilege is so obvious it should be taught is CS 95. I will even give tours of startups and fortune 100 companies if you want to see for yourself.
I used to believe SF was a true meritocracy. But after experiencing the nepotism and navel gazing, I abandoned that hypothesis. I honestly love the people I have the privilege to work with… But dayum there are issues.
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There’s a lot of good to be gained from his line of thinking, but I think he blurs white privilege and male privilege together until it obfuscates the real difference between them. Male privilege isn’t as much about economics as white privilege – men and women exist at all economic levels. Which isn’t to say economics doesn’t play a role (standard gender roles of male provider / feminine servant are at play in male privilege), just that “everyone’s poor” isn’t an explanation for why middle-to-upper-class girls still are ostracized in certain corners of tech culture.
It’s actually more a way of saying “stop being so self-centered.”
“Suck it up, you pussy” is actually deeply flawed. Not only does that make you feel less “manly” for not being able to “take it,” it also implies that only “pussies” can’t “suck it up,” which makes that black gay transgendered female pointing out her struggles a “pussy.”
It’s also worth mentioning that sufferbragging is a thing instilled in us by our cultural acceptance of Capitalism, where we all measure our social worth by how much pain and suffering we are willing to endure. Feeling like a “pussy” because you don’t have the biggest “woe-is-me” dick in the room is part of what keeps lower classes from achieving solidarity.
No, the white male who has a bad experience needs to realize that his bad experience and her bad experience are not the same thing.
Step 1 toward solidarity: Accept that of the millions of ways that people are screwed by the system, white males don’t experience them all, and that others’ experiences need to be accepted.
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I don’t know if SJWs realize how they set off people’s trigger warnings with phrases like “rape culture” and “the patriarchy”. These words, while powerful and meaningful to the SJW, serve as an indicator to others that the speaker will most likely have no interest in having a rational discussion.
I’m in full support of the feminist ideal of a society that treats women with respect and provides equal opportunities. But I don’t think this is the way to go about it. SJWs don’t generally engage outsiders in meaningful discussion. Anyone with a different opinion typically gets shouted down.
Telling people that your suffering is worse than their suffering is not going to gain anything. Nobody in Silicon Valley is going to read this and think “gee, maybe I should try to hire more female developers and not just to pay them less and hit on them too.” No, they read “Rape Culture” and immediately glaze over and ignore.
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So how do we address these issues without using the words to describe them. Should women just put up with this shit when it happens and hope that finally people decide to treat us as equals when a light bulb goes off over their heads that we are actually people and not objects for them to put their dicks into?
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I just can’t even.
No, we don’t hire on race or gender. But yes we (the valley) try to get more resumes with diverse race and gender. Ignoring more than half the population just means your engineering talent pool is… Wait for it… Less than half.
So stick your SJW rhetoric somewhere else.
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For the interested, Scott has put up a followup post at http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2119
Among other things, it seems that Penny’s compassionate critique is substantially different than the response on twitter.
I’m not sure if you’re aware that SJW are -your- imagination. They are what -you- invented to blame, when you feel threatened. You label someone SJW… what does that matter? You need to define them… but think they are likely to have a control drama?
It MUST be someone else, it CANNOT be your imagination or unreasonable expectations of others.
But do go on about ethics, and what -others- are blind about.
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Yay you! (seriously, and for the rest of your comment too)
Why is it so hard for so many men to see, and admit the significance of, this basic point?
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It’s hard to take food off your own table.
Perhaps people are just a selfish bunch? With occasional exception?
I don’t know if you realize that the concept of a SJW is a phantasmal bogeyman invented to hide in the closets of ignorant people and scare them into tacitly supporting a corrupt system.
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Yeah. Though I’d amend a bit: “It’s hard to think that someone’s taking food off your own table, when they’re really not.”
It’s not a zero-sum game, privilege only works when others don’t have it, etc.
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You just validated Lewis’ Law, and I just completed MRA bingo! YAAAAAY! Throws confetti
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true. I i think the distinction is the ability to identify with the struggles of another, while struggling with your own.
being able to, in my opinion, is the essense of being a grown up
im not trying to marginalize anyone with a label, i am pointing to developmental milestones, and the peter-pan nature of the ‘other side’, who invent bogeywomen to rail against.
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