Now who is doing the mind-reading? I’m sorry but people diagnose and dissect 100% of social interactions from the starting point of being unable to read the minds and hearts of others. Meanwhile, people lie, inflect their speech, make self-serving remarks, and do a host of things that mean words can’t simply be interpreted at face value. Solnit picked up a sexist vibe from the totality of the circumstances. Asking people to penetrate the depths of each other’s souls to determine their motivations is a ridiculous standard. Solnit isn’t a robot. She took the totality of the interaction into account beyond things he was saying explicitly.
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This is literally at the heart of the mind reading cognitive distortion. None of those things lets one understand the motivation as to why someone is doing something. Without explicit communication, you are guessing.
Humans are demonstrably bad at this and there is an entire field of psychology dedicated to understanding, identifying and correcting these kinds of cognitive distortions.
I don’t care if SoInit is a trained psychologist, unless she explicitly asked why someone was doing something or was presented with some pattern with other men and women to make a reasonable theory, then she made a guess based on putting herself in their position and what seemed reasonable to her. She might even be right, but it is just as likely that she is wrong considering how truly awful humans actually are at mind reading compared to how good they think they are at it.
Individual motivation has limited value for understanding sexism.
Sexism is a phenomenon better defined by generally unconscious social norms and the resulting sense of entitlement that, for e.g., empowers men to shamelessly lecture women in public on the real nature of sexism.
And male-pattern deafness? I’m sorry but that’s not sexist, it’s hilarious.
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I’d rather not derail the conversation of people trying to defend being psychic to redefine what sexism is.
Can we just state that everyone has prejudices? Overgeneralization and labelling cognitive distortions are near the center of the human condition after all.
Guessing what? Be specific. Am I guessing that someone is in their heart of hearts, sexist? Actually, I don’t care. The impact is what matters. What is the temperature of a particle? Meaningless question. Just as it takes statistical quanities of particles and a scale that quantifies the motion of particles in relation of other properties to get this idea of “temperature” to make sense, the totality of human interactions and their history come together to make “sexism” make sense.
The analogy breaks down where individuals’ behaviors are a function of the sexism generated by society, so the sexism “function” is actually more of a set of intensely complex differential equations I couldn’t begin to untangle if I tried, but the point that individual motivations aren’t fathomable but don’t need to be fathomed to observe effects, stands.
TL;DR: What @hello_friends said.
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Why would commentary on men being interested in breasts or sexism bother me in the least?
If you can’t tell the difference between that and your outright acceptance of bigotry, you’re further gone than I thought.
Well maybe I’m misunderstanding you then. Please explain just what form of bigotry you think I outright accept?
And further, if you please, just where is it you think I’ve gone to?
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Trying to explain it to you would be like trying to explain to Trump supporters what racism is. I’m not Sisyphus and I have no interest in pushing that boulder uphill.
If you can’t understand how labeling an entire group with a negative stereotype is different from condemning just people who behave a certain way independent of any other perceived racial, gender, sexual, religious, class, age, disability or ethnic group, then there is nothing more to say.
[I see you’ve edited since I quoted; whatever, what I say below still applies.]
Enough with the oblique ad hominems, please.
Are you referring to my joke that included the phrase “male-pattern deafness”? If so, that phrase does not refer to an entire group. It refers to a pattern in the group. It no more says that every man is deaf when it comes to listening to women than the phrase “male-pattern baldness” says that every man is bald.
If you’re referring to some other labeling of mine of an entire group with a negative stereotype, I’d like to hear about it. Really, I’ll be able to understand you, I promise!
And further, if you please, just where is it you think I’ve gone to?
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Ok, i’m going to try this as a fellow man who i think tries to be pretty “woke” as the “young kids” are saying these days*.
Because men and women are not equal. The fact is that anybody who has lived the oppression(perhaps a hyperbolic word, but perhaps not) has more awareness of how it happens and, hence, a concomitant ability to tell when it is happening.
And the thing is they can’t tell, absolutely, that it is happening in every case. But when it is stark (when many men still cannot tell) they can be sure, and even when it is not clear-cut their (women in this case, other oppressed groups in other cases) sense of exactly what is happening is probably better than ours.
Also:
the mansplainers and the like generally don’t think they have disrespect for women.
Edited to quote a better way of putting it:[quote=“Mindysan33, post:116, topic:84439”]
What I’m saying is that people may not have the idea in mind that they dislike or think women are lesser creatures, but they can still act in ways that negatively impact others.
[/quote]
*This part is just my usual self-deprecation regarding age and such, nothing to do with you.
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To add to @anon15383236’s and @anon61221983’s answers, what i hear from women is mainly a weariness from explaining this type of thing repeatedly. I think some snark is not only reasonable, but expected in this sort of situation. Because the expected response
is frighteningly common.
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And yet, we all play the odds every day.
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Thank you for pointing that out, that and having to repeat ‘It’s her book’ several times is the key. It seems to me the start of the topic was a perfectly acceptability beginning of a conversation; and that guy turned out to be a jerk who hadn’t even actually read it.
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Sinfest is pretty damn great, and looking at how the author’s attitudes have evolved over the years is pretty interesting.
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Can you just thank him for explaining it clearly, so he can go?
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Not sure if you’re being facetious, or if you genuinely deserve one of these:
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Heh.
(I think he’s already gone. Or rather, perhaps, slunk away…)
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#notallmansplainers
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For eons, minorities and women have had anything negative/dumb they say or do be ascribed as representing their entire subgroup of humanity.
Doesn’t feel so good when the shoe’s on the other foot, does it?
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