Oh for pete's sake. This is why I swore off commenting on this issue on HN. You can only lose; you certainly can't win. Unless you stick to parroting some feminist line (and good luck picking WHICH line).
Seriously, though, it's really easy, as a member of the dominant group (male, white, able-bodied, you name it) to try to stand up for a minority group in a way that seems really helpful from our own perspective, but is actually really hurtful, dis-empowering, or otherwise messed up from the perspective of the people actually living the issue.
If you're finding it frustrating trying to put in your two cents, then there's no harm in just listening for a while. Sometimes it's important to speak out against really egregious stuff, but if you're not confident you're doing it "right", often it's better to let someone else take the reigns--someone living on the disadvantaged side. It's frustrating to have to do, but sometimes that's best.
However, it's important to remember that when we screw up, that's NOT the fault of the minority group. Yes, they're the ones calling us out when we're trying to help, but if our response is to dismiss their concerns, then there's a good chance we ARE speaking from our own perspective, rather than promoting theirs.
But, yes, you can "win" in these conversations. It sounds like you're dismissing them as totally unreasonable because they didn't always agree with your perspective. Could be they're just crazy, emotional women--shrill, bossy ones, no doubt. More likely you screwed up. A lot. That's what people do. Just don't abandon the idea of supporting minorities because the way you wanted to help wasn't they wanted you to help.
If it's any comfort, every feminist who got mad at you for saying something wrong has also said something wrong to a disabled person, a person of color, someone from a minority religion, someone from a different economic class....we all screw up. Ideally people will be nice when we do, but even if they're jerks, they deserve equality. We don't punish all white men when one is a jerk.
Yes. As I said, we all screw up, and we all come at things from our own perspective. As members of the dominant group, we have the luxury of not having to see others' perspectives. Any movement dependent on legitimizing minority perspectives has an uphill battle in that regard. People who care will provide solutions from their perspective and feel alienated when they're told they're participating in the marginalization of minority perspectives.
Minorities don't need my solutions. They need my support for their solutions.
> Minorities don't need my solutions. They need my support for their solutions.
This is a common but, IMO -- speaking as a member of a minority on one important axis and a non-minority on other important axes -- misguided view.
As a developer, I wouldn't say "business users don't need my solutions, they need my support for their solutions" -- though I might say "business users need me to be attentive to their interests and needs in proposing solutions".
Similarly, minorities don't need blind adherence to their demands from the majority any more than vice versa -- certainly, people who are outside of a particular minority can often have important and useful perspective on solutions to the problems faced by minorities. But a key part of that is really paying attention to the interests of people in the group at issue.
Who, usually, aren't going to be monolithic, and some of whom are going to disagree with any solution, whether its proposed by a fellow member of the minority or not. And, yes, they'll often bring lack of minority status into it if the person they disagree with is outside of the minority (but then, they'll often bring betrayal language into it if the person is a member of the minority -- that's not because either is a valid critique, its because both are convenient emotional attack vectors.)
I guess it's not right to say our solutions aren't needed. It's just that our voice and the sorts of solutions we'll tend to come up with are not underrepresented. Far too often our solutions are "be more white", "stop being poor", and the like: "Abandon your perspective and become a member of the dominant group."
We need solutions that acknowledge minority experiences and treat them as valuable, not solutions that simply impose majority viewpoints.
Thanks for those words in my mouth. Yes, I regard all women as shrill and bossy, and dismiss them and punish them. I'm a bad guy, and that's why I give up trying to be helpful.
It couldn't be that I have reasonable notions, take a balanced view, and help where I can. And get beat up for using the wrong pronoun or whatever.
How many times do you get kicked in the groin before you don't go there again? That's the point I guess I'm failing to make. There's a lot of emotion riding on this issue; if you're a guy, somebody's going to try to make you look bad. Never mind what good you might have been doing; Especially if you're getting some traction, you get torn apart. Because there's points to be scored.
I'm a guy. I get called out on it when I get stuff wrong, but that's about it. I'll accept that there people who will attack any male voice just because they're sick of hearing them, but they're certainly not the majority in any conversation I've been a part of, especially on HackerNews.
"even if they're jerks?" the social-justice-on-social-media movement is a platform to publicly stone people who step out of line, not a vehicle for change. you fuck up and say something "problematic" or "harmful" on twitter just once and as soon as it's mentioned by a social justice person, everyone will try to destroy you because you're now "the enemy".
if you're a white male the best thing you can do is shut the fuck up and watch because you are literally only in the movement to get ripped apart. none of these people have any respect for you in the first place. the currency of the social justice movement is being institutionally oppressed. more oppression directly gives you more authority. you have none.
moreover, the fundamental currency of human self-esteem is in overcoming adversity. but as a white male, you will never be allowed to have a struggle. and if your struggle is denied, then your humanity is denied. you're here to play the role of the oppressor and the privileged. don't think you're a "fellow member" of the social justice movement. everyone already hates you.
I don't think that's true at all that you can only lose. It's not especially hard to be a good ally to women (or any other underrepresented or underprivileged group). But it does require conscious effort to empathize with the issues they face, to speak up when you see unfairness, and--as the subject of the article seems to struggle with--to take yourself out of the spotlight. Give the people you're advocating for a mic to speak with about the issues they experience.
If you find that you as a dude are dominating a conversation about women, you may be speaking over the actual women. Perhaps you even forgot to invite them to the conversation in the first place. I know I've been guilty of this before.
But above all, remember that it's not about you winning.
I don't see how it's that hard to avoid Wadhwa's mistake. Despite what the article asserts, from what I've seen his problem wasn't so much his tone on Twitter as it was that he was putting himself forward -- and being booked to speak at conferences, etc. -- as a spokesperson for women in tech. And the spokesperson for women in tech shouldn't be a man, no matter how well-intentioned he is. It should be a woman. Women are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves; they don't need a man to do it for them.
If you're a man (like I am!), and you want to help women in tech (like I do!), and someone approaches you to speak at a conference about that, the thing to do is to recommend some awesome women you know to speak instead. Instead of talking about how women need support in this industry, support an actual woman in the industry.
Otherwise you run the risk of coming off like Wadhwa did. He looked like a carpetbagger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger) -- someone who had identified a hot trend and jumped on it to raise his own personal profile. And if you're a man who sincerely wants to help women, the way you do that is by helping them raise their own profiles, rather than using their problems to goose your own.
Yet, that's cutting out half the available supporters of equal rights, isn't it? Only women may speak about women's issues, seems reasonable. Until you have something to say, and others aren't saying it. Then what? Do you choose a puppet to speak for you? Do you keep silent, hoping someone will make your point for you? What about venues where there ARE no women?
This is specifically public discouse about gender-specific issues.
Maybe it's okay for a man to be the spokesperson for women's issues, or a white person to be the spokesperson for black issues, but it's important to realize you're speaking for someone else. It's really hard to do that better than that someone. Maybe I'm a better public speaker. Maybe people are more likely to listen to me. Maybe I even have a better understanding of power dynamics and sociology and tech culture. But it's also really, really critical to have an understanding of the perspectives of those I'm speaking for. That's hard. And in this situation, seems like a bunch of those people seemed to feel that wasn't the case.
If I'm being given information about heart attacks, I'd much rather hear from a doctor who is well informed on the scientific consensus than a survivor of a heart attack, even if the doctor has never had a single heart problem. Why is information about the experiences of gender or race so different than all other information, being that for any other information, experience is neither necessary nor sufficient for expertise?
Also, anecdotal experience, even by large numbers of the population, should not be taken as anything significant without a scientific endeavor to interpret them. Consider the numerous parents who will state "As a parent..." when disagreeing with an expert on child development. Even if thousands of parents disagree, even if the expert has never been a parent, an immunologist saying children should receive vaccines is still correct.
In all other fields, the expert lacking personal experience has the better perspective than part of the population impacted with their own personal anecdotes.
Why? You explanation shows why women are perfectly valid candidates; they don't need a man. But why would a man be a bad choice? Why do they need a woman?
> And the spokesperson for women in tech shouldn't be a man
I think this would be more accurate with the "a man" part. The spokesperson for women in tech shouldn't be. Women in tech aren't a monolithic group such that a spokesperson is sufficient.
I think you're right that you can't win, because the entire point of the issue is that we should spend less time wondering whether a guy is winning or losing. There are other perspectives on life.
I think the lesson is clear: if you want to help people, listen to them carefully. Vivek Wadhwa got slammed because he could not take criticism from the very people he was claiming he wanted to help: women. It can't be an ego thing.
I don't see this as very complicated. Women, just like any aggrieved minority, don't want to be spoken for, or spoken to. They want to be heard; they want to speak for themselves.
The goal of engagement is not to get some establishment figure to "parrot some feminist line", it's to listen to women's voices, for a change. The primary work of male allies should not be speaking up on behalf of women, it should be facilitating the voices of women. I.e., mostly, stand aside and listen.
>I don't see this as very complicated. Women, just like any aggrieved minority, don't want to be spoken for, or spoken to. They want to be heard; they want to speak for themselves.
Well, there is a greater issue. Social scientists (or social sciences) have been reduced to a variant of identity politics: who speaks for which group!!
Instead of this (who speaks for which group), these scientists (after all, Wadhwa was (is?) a professor of business) should have produced 'knowledge' about what is going in the tech industry. Here, it requires more than "who speaks for which group": generating non-ad hoc hypotheses to understand phenomena, testing such hypotheses for testable consequences.
When one can't produce knowledge, they end up with arguments. On one hand, one can reasonably argue for any proposition, say P, to an extent. On the other hand, some others can reasonbly argue for the logical opposite of P too. In the end, it boils down to who believes P or not-P.
Read the Amelia Greenhall post and look at the conversation on Twitter about this. The entire "conversation" emanating from people critiquing him is a thermonuclear kafkatrap. None of it is in good faith and much of it is flagrantly abusive, in particular the accusations that he was sexually propositioning a woman by suggesting speaking in person.
28 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 90.5 ms ] threadSeriously, though, it's really easy, as a member of the dominant group (male, white, able-bodied, you name it) to try to stand up for a minority group in a way that seems really helpful from our own perspective, but is actually really hurtful, dis-empowering, or otherwise messed up from the perspective of the people actually living the issue.
If you're finding it frustrating trying to put in your two cents, then there's no harm in just listening for a while. Sometimes it's important to speak out against really egregious stuff, but if you're not confident you're doing it "right", often it's better to let someone else take the reigns--someone living on the disadvantaged side. It's frustrating to have to do, but sometimes that's best.
However, it's important to remember that when we screw up, that's NOT the fault of the minority group. Yes, they're the ones calling us out when we're trying to help, but if our response is to dismiss their concerns, then there's a good chance we ARE speaking from our own perspective, rather than promoting theirs.
But, yes, you can "win" in these conversations. It sounds like you're dismissing them as totally unreasonable because they didn't always agree with your perspective. Could be they're just crazy, emotional women--shrill, bossy ones, no doubt. More likely you screwed up. A lot. That's what people do. Just don't abandon the idea of supporting minorities because the way you wanted to help wasn't they wanted you to help.
If it's any comfort, every feminist who got mad at you for saying something wrong has also said something wrong to a disabled person, a person of color, someone from a minority religion, someone from a different economic class....we all screw up. Ideally people will be nice when we do, but even if they're jerks, they deserve equality. We don't punish all white men when one is a jerk.
Minorities don't need my solutions. They need my support for their solutions.
This is a common but, IMO -- speaking as a member of a minority on one important axis and a non-minority on other important axes -- misguided view.
As a developer, I wouldn't say "business users don't need my solutions, they need my support for their solutions" -- though I might say "business users need me to be attentive to their interests and needs in proposing solutions".
Similarly, minorities don't need blind adherence to their demands from the majority any more than vice versa -- certainly, people who are outside of a particular minority can often have important and useful perspective on solutions to the problems faced by minorities. But a key part of that is really paying attention to the interests of people in the group at issue.
Who, usually, aren't going to be monolithic, and some of whom are going to disagree with any solution, whether its proposed by a fellow member of the minority or not. And, yes, they'll often bring lack of minority status into it if the person they disagree with is outside of the minority (but then, they'll often bring betrayal language into it if the person is a member of the minority -- that's not because either is a valid critique, its because both are convenient emotional attack vectors.)
We need solutions that acknowledge minority experiences and treat them as valuable, not solutions that simply impose majority viewpoints.
It couldn't be that I have reasonable notions, take a balanced view, and help where I can. And get beat up for using the wrong pronoun or whatever.
It takes time to get it right. Dismissing it because you're not welcomed unquestioningly as the savior indicates that you're not.
As I said, sure, we should be try to be nice, but being mean does not delegitimize the movement.
if you're a white male the best thing you can do is shut the fuck up and watch because you are literally only in the movement to get ripped apart. none of these people have any respect for you in the first place. the currency of the social justice movement is being institutionally oppressed. more oppression directly gives you more authority. you have none.
moreover, the fundamental currency of human self-esteem is in overcoming adversity. but as a white male, you will never be allowed to have a struggle. and if your struggle is denied, then your humanity is denied. you're here to play the role of the oppressor and the privileged. don't think you're a "fellow member" of the social justice movement. everyone already hates you.
If you find that you as a dude are dominating a conversation about women, you may be speaking over the actual women. Perhaps you even forgot to invite them to the conversation in the first place. I know I've been guilty of this before.
But above all, remember that it's not about you winning.
If you're a man (like I am!), and you want to help women in tech (like I do!), and someone approaches you to speak at a conference about that, the thing to do is to recommend some awesome women you know to speak instead. Instead of talking about how women need support in this industry, support an actual woman in the industry.
Otherwise you run the risk of coming off like Wadhwa did. He looked like a carpetbagger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpetbagger) -- someone who had identified a hot trend and jumped on it to raise his own personal profile. And if you're a man who sincerely wants to help women, the way you do that is by helping them raise their own profiles, rather than using their problems to goose your own.
Maybe it's okay for a man to be the spokesperson for women's issues, or a white person to be the spokesperson for black issues, but it's important to realize you're speaking for someone else. It's really hard to do that better than that someone. Maybe I'm a better public speaker. Maybe people are more likely to listen to me. Maybe I even have a better understanding of power dynamics and sociology and tech culture. But it's also really, really critical to have an understanding of the perspectives of those I'm speaking for. That's hard. And in this situation, seems like a bunch of those people seemed to feel that wasn't the case.
Also, anecdotal experience, even by large numbers of the population, should not be taken as anything significant without a scientific endeavor to interpret them. Consider the numerous parents who will state "As a parent..." when disagreeing with an expert on child development. Even if thousands of parents disagree, even if the expert has never been a parent, an immunologist saying children should receive vaccines is still correct.
In all other fields, the expert lacking personal experience has the better perspective than part of the population impacted with their own personal anecdotes.
Why? You explanation shows why women are perfectly valid candidates; they don't need a man. But why would a man be a bad choice? Why do they need a woman?
I think this would be more accurate with the "a man" part. The spokesperson for women in tech shouldn't be. Women in tech aren't a monolithic group such that a spokesperson is sufficient.
I think the lesson is clear: if you want to help people, listen to them carefully. Vivek Wadhwa got slammed because he could not take criticism from the very people he was claiming he wanted to help: women. It can't be an ego thing.
Swearing off commenting on this issue...you're doing it wrong.
I don't see this as very complicated. Women, just like any aggrieved minority, don't want to be spoken for, or spoken to. They want to be heard; they want to speak for themselves.
The goal of engagement is not to get some establishment figure to "parrot some feminist line", it's to listen to women's voices, for a change. The primary work of male allies should not be speaking up on behalf of women, it should be facilitating the voices of women. I.e., mostly, stand aside and listen.
Are you a woman?
Instead of this (who speaks for which group), these scientists (after all, Wadhwa was (is?) a professor of business) should have produced 'knowledge' about what is going in the tech industry. Here, it requires more than "who speaks for which group": generating non-ad hoc hypotheses to understand phenomena, testing such hypotheses for testable consequences.
When one can't produce knowledge, they end up with arguments. On one hand, one can reasonably argue for any proposition, say P, to an extent. On the other hand, some others can reasonbly argue for the logical opposite of P too. In the end, it boils down to who believes P or not-P.