How can women disrupt male speech domination?

general topics
29

Knee-Jerk is 'christ that’s somethign a tumblirina would come up with going off the idea that women are innately better/kinder/whatever positives you wish to use than us dumb knuckle dragging men.

However it IS a very valid observation. If a person’s group keeps getting trod on. Bump them to the front of the line so you at least HAVE to let them speak and keep your mouth shut. I wish that weren’t the best sounding idea I’ve seen but it at least is a productive looking one.

Question I have is how do you keep ‘Ok missy you had your turn now i’m gonna tell you why you’re a fucking moron’ for the next five hours.

Or rather ‘I am a guy. I am opinionated and tend to bulldoze in a conversation because I will often get shushed by those around me. I realize this can have the effect of me doing the same to other people that should talk and be heard. What can I do?’

4 Likes
30

This topic was reopened at my request by @codinghorror. I’m not sure what @singletona082 is doing dragging crap from the other thread into this one with out following from the top.

This is @ChickieD’s thread.

6 Likes
31

I followed from the top. Then again this thread apparently got closed and VASTLY truncated. I just saw an early comment and ‘huh that… ok that ANNOYS me, but stop and think for a couple tics and that isn’t the worst idea I’ve seen. It feels somehow degrading because I can think of a lot of ways that will derail and cause other problems because people are asshats, but… it at least puts forward a solution instead of screams in a new way WE HAVE PROBLEM!’

1 Like
32

Dumb mistake on my part. I’m tired, and a bit angry it took this long to get back to an active thread after we “resolved” the issue with someone who just wanted to call names. sorry.

2 Likes
33

WELL AS A MAN LET ME SHARE MY IMPORTANT OPINION WITH ALL OF YOUSE

One thing that might be fair is to have a few ground rules that

  • everyone (that wants it) has roughly equal speaking time, e.g. no one person dominates too much

  • everyone (who wants to) gets a chance to speak

But getting back to the original post – if “the boss” is the person setting all these uber bad examples, uh, that’s kind of the end of the story. Time for another job, basically.

p.s. interesting fact, you have probably seen this, but Discourse will nag users who dominate a topic (20% of all posts in a topic is the default threshold number) and at the time that person presses the reply button again, “invite” them to make sure everyone else has a chance to share. It is very, very true that a topic strongly dominated by replies from 1 or 2 people is likely to be… shall we say… problematic. The topic summary stats illustrate this quite neatly.

9 Likes
34

I think some of the problem can be when the “rules” make the loudest, most dominant voice into the winner. Even if women manage to come out on top, they won’t necessarily be the ones with the most important things to say, and many women will be discouraged from trying. One more gender-neutral way of doing things if this isn’t acceptable would be for everyone who wants to make a point on a topic to pick a number; a random number is chosen and that person gets a set time to make their point without interruptions. Repeat as often as necessary. Some people won’t get to speak at all, but it won’t always be the same people and interrupting anyone is not allowed.

4 Likes
35

p.p.s. Discourse will nag multiple sequential replies by the same person, for the same reason. Talk, but make room for others to speak too.

p.p.p.s. we’re thinking of a new “get a room” nag when someone consistently replies to the same person in a topic over and over.

I guess my point is, diversity in discourse is a very good thing.

14 Likes
36

interesting fact, you have probably seen this,
but Discourse will nag users who dominate a topic (20% of all posts in a
topic is the default threshold number) and at the time that person
presses the reply button again, “invite” them to make sure everyone else
has a chance to share. It is very, very true that a topic strongly
dominated by replies from 1 or 2 people is likely to be… shall we say…
problematic. The topic summary stats illustrate this quite neatly.Reply as linked Topic

I don’t want to derail from the original post, but have you ever seen this happen? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a thread where people dominate by percentage more than language.

1 Like
37

Hey no worries I know how it goes. Peace unto you.

2 Likes
38

Sure search for the phrase you see here. People have run into it.

1 Like
39

I was waiting for more input from the womenfolk.

4 Likes
40

I get it all the time, cos replies to multiple people where I wanna say different things to each one makes something on my brain itch, so I won’t do them (and you can’t make me, so there).
Apropos the 'splainin, that’s a hard one. I try to notice when I’m getting The Look, and apologise then shut up and listen. Getting everyone to at least do that, for fucks sake, is, well, it’s gonna be a tough slog.

3 Likes
41

I’ve had it happen to me ironically enough. :slight_smile:

Discourse will gently say “you have made X% of the comments on this thread are you sure you’re letting other people have their say” or close enough.

11 Likes
42

It’s an interesting article - I suppose the stereotype of talkative women doesn’t really relate to a formal setting like a meeting or classroom, but more the way that women often talk more in informal situations and on topics that men can consider to be unimportant. “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Ironically, this is a quote by a woman (Eleanor Roosevelt), but it seems to reflect a sexist idea that talk that supports social structures is unworthy (and therefore the gender associated with such talk is less worthy of being listened to). I don’t have any answers either, but I think a lot of it has to do with cultural expectations - from an early age, women’s voices are marginalised in mixed settings that are related to ideas and considered to be significant to status. I have to conclude that these settings need to have data showing this effect in action in their environment and need to introduce structured measures to counteract it.

Of course, it could just be that [men hear women’s voices as music] (Male Brains Aren’t Designed To Listen to Female Voices – StyleCaster):

Apparently, the vibration and number of sound waves in our voice makes it harder for men to decipher what we’re saying. When it comes to processing a woman’s voice, they use the more complex auditory part of the brain that processes music, not human voices. But the guys in the study could easily hear and understand other mens voices as speech because that uses a simpler brain mechanism at the back of the brain.

So, next time you want to get angry and yell at a guy for “not listening,” cut him a little slack his brain just wasn’t made to hear you. My suggestion would be to speak slowly and get to your point fast.

(Yeah, probably not. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: But I’ve found it interesting to hear a number of people lower their voice significantly in order to reach the “authoritative” frequency.)

3 Likes
43

Stop.

Listen.

4 Likes
44

Woman folk input. Yeah… Have been thinking the whole day about it. (not constantly off course, lots of gardening things to do etc). And I’m afraid my input is not that helpful.
Working for 20 + years now in, let’s call it IT.

And a period I was young and fightfull, but that never made friends and big things made to be done without friends, noop, does not work. (luckily I’m a soloer, so the small things got done).

A period went like this: ‘a meeting’: I talk about an idea for whatever (testing, growing, new OS, machinery, code, you name it). Everybody at the table ignores the idea/me. At the end of the meeting some male colleague comes with the same idea, everybody is listening, and it gets a follow up.
A period I could live with that, the idea is more important than personal gain or honour. Free, open source, etc, the idealistic dream world I was living in.
But than, I was marginalised, forgotten with raises or position, you know what happens in companies. And that was not a good feeling.
I could have stayed there, reasonable cool job, master of a lot of Unix and a few Linux boxes. Think about Cray, Silicon Graphics, Sun, IBM, etc. And sometimes I wonder why I left, sure paid, comfortable, only mention extra work, and other peeps got away with it. Literally :wink:

But I did not. Started at another company, turned out it was all (no joke) mysoginist. Really, bad time. The field of work was interesting, some people over there also, but noop, again.

At that point I started to realise it was me in combination with the whole mostly man IT crowd who made it into a problem. Not being able to do what I wanted to do professional. Not able, and not having the (social) skills to make my self heard.

So I started my own one person company, working at project base. If people want something from me, they have to be listening. And I also need to be listening. It’s not always easy, keeping yourself on your own. But maybe for me the best solution.

25 Likes
45

Right? This shit was novel and almost bearable in our 20s. I’d stop and try to educate try to engage in ways that didn’t bruise egos or hurt feelings. But this was old in 80s and it’s OLD now and I’m fucking tired. Tired of fighting to be heard to be seen to be a person. Tired of trying to be nice.

Feel like this is apt today. :wink:

http://scorsese-lady.tumblr.com/post/139932583375/caffeinedeathwarrior-fisadeepforestgreen

16 Likes
46

Even when teachers know they are being monitored for gendered talking in class both male and female teachers give more talking time to male students. Even when they try to correct the imbalance the boys still talk more.

It’s almost like this shit starts super early.

(Have you seen the recent reports about girls not being diagnosed with autism correctly for years? Because quiet in young girls is not a symptom, it’s expected.)

13 Likes
47

I have - they’re underreported for ADHD too, because they don’t tend to disrupt the class as much. In both cases they’re often able to disguise symptoms better than boys, although it can have serious effects on their ability to function well or confidently. I think it was Finland that had a recent series involving a female detective with autism, and this has helped a number of women to recognise symptoms in themselves or family members.

9 Likes
48

In some weird feat of association, your post made me think of what symphony orchestras had to do around the world to become truly gender-blind: first they put up a screen so that the evaluation team couldn’t SEE who was about to audition, but over time people realized that they could still HEAR the difference between women and men walking to the audition chair because of heels…once a thick mat or carpet was put down to muffle that difference, symphony orchestras magically started become more 50/50 with regard to gender.

So what if we use technology to allow everyone to type their questions/statements into the system, and those are then brought up on a screen, perhaps with some organizing according to keywords? No one would know who instigated the topic, so they could be discussed first based on relevance and only afterward claimed by the responsible party (if they want the recognition).

Not a workable solution in many cases, but it could be one possibility.

17 Likes