[enko]

At the risk of self-identifying as a coward, I never touch anything to do with sexism, feminism or "women in tech" in any kind of conversation except with my closest friends. I wasn't always like this, I used to be quite outspoken, but I got myself into trouble a couple of times (almost into really big trouble once at a conference, I mean career-ending trouble) and well, never again.

Sexism/women in tech is basically the Afghanistan of topics. No-one has ever prevailed and you won't either. The only way to win is not to play. I wish it wasn't like that, but it is.

[ipsin]

I think "the Afghanistan of topics" is a great metaphor, but no reason to avoid the subject.

Here I'm talking not to you specifically, but the generic vocal male "you":

If you have a strong urge to share your opinion, consider where that impulse is coming from. Pause and absorb what's actually being said. Mull it over. It might sting a little bit, but you might also gain a new perspective.

If you're male and privileged, it's hard to think about what it's really like to be not male or not privileged. You can try, but you can't know.

If you've ever observed the dynamic of conversation, it can be uncomfortable to see how men and women are (typically) socialized to interact together.

I have rarely seen women talk over men in the same way as the reverse.

[And yes, I realize that I am not taking my own advice here]

[tragic]

Well, this is more the problem I have with these arguments than the superweapon bingo thing in the OP. In the kind of feminist/SJ arguments that are gaining currency in the tech world, what's put at the forefront is people's feelings.

People are not robots; their feelings matter. But they're the worst possible route to the truth, and thus to effective action to redress injustices. A nice illustration is provided, in fact, by this little exchange - so the GP feels scared to get involved with debates on the women's question. It's perfectly legitimate to argue that men have more power and are socialised in certain ways, etc; but this man's (if it is a man) emotional response will not take that into account. People are as emotionally traumatised by bad break-ups as they are by amputations. The human emotional response has no sense of perspective, and never will. When we discuss matters such as sexism, we are necessarily discussing the greater public good - which has to be indifferent to such things. (For example, we do not allow the relatives of murder victims to determine the sentence of the perpetrators - for good reason.)

So arguments get personalised - eg, "Julie Ann Horvath is lying" vs "Julie Ann Horvath would not lie about this" - and thus depoliticised.

All this "you can't know what it's like" stuff, if it were followed absolutely, simply makes reasoned argument impossible. Indeed, I can't know what it's like. But if everything is reduced to 'what it's like', then my only possible response is to shut up - or to browbeat an interlocutor into doing so. I cannot convince anyone to have different feelings. I can convince people that their arguments, on the basis of logical consistency or empirical evidence, are erroneous - but only if we can collectively agree to forget about everyone's feelings.

And so you end up in topsy turvy world. A classic example:

> If you have a strong urge to share your opinion, consider where that impulse is coming from.

So now the opinionated are supposed to feel guilty about it! It's utterly bizarre. More people should share their opinions (including racists, sexists and suchlike); they should not shut up on the off-chance it might make people feel better about themselves. Otherwise those opinions will go unchallenged, and fester in the dark.

[bdg]

Thanks for adding your voice/thoughts to this.