Sexism all the way down on both sides.
I've come to understand in life through experience there are a very thorny class of problems that I don't know of a proper name for, but have formulated my own concept of the "non-native speakers dilemma". It goes as follows:
You're on a bus and while listening to two strangers conversing you realise you can't quite understand what they're talking about. As a native speaker you feel perfectly confident that you know the language and you are simply missing context shared only by the individuals talking and hence it isn't possible for you to understand the conversation, and not because you don't know the language. If you are a non-native speaker, and depending on your level, you often start to doubt your abilities, and can never be fully sure if you simply don't understand because you're missing context that's not possible for you to obtain or there are gaps in your language skills that still need to be filled.
I had this realisation on the bus about a decade ago when learning Japanese. But I've often thought back to it in certain situations and these kind in particular seem to crop up a lot.
One example I overheard was a female engineer talking to another female non-engineer outside their workplace just about their experiences in their jobs. I heard the female engineer remark something along the lines of "the Architect often shoots down my ideas because I'm female".
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
In this case I'm a "native speaker" so to speak, so I can be perfectly confident my thinking is accurate with respect to the reason why it's getting rejected. The female engineer is the so called "non-native speaker" where this pernicious dynamic exists making it nigh on impossible to confident that your assessment is accurate.
Curious if that metaphor makes sense to others, or if others ever noticed the same thing?
I sat thinking to myself... That's interesting because the architect shoots down my ideas too (different workplace, so I don't _know_ her situation) but it's certainly not because I'm female, because I'm not female, but it's probably because I'm an intermediate level Dev with lots to learn and the idea has some flaws in it that he can see that I can't.
One of the really good things for me about hanging on HN is hearing "X happens to me too as a man because (reasons) and has nothing to do with gender." That's been enormously helpful to me in trying to find a path forward in my own life.
I hope you get constructive engagement of your points. I don't like the characterization that it's sexism on both sides but that's not intended to be a big attack or something. I think we don't have good language for talking about these issues that acknowledge in a non-blamey fashion that "Gender is, in fact, a factor in outcomes and it's complicated."
So far, we mostly do a sucky job of trying to discuss this at all. It ends up being people on both sides pointing fingers and even if you are bending over backwards to not point fingers, it will get interpreted as such by a lot of people and that tends to go bad places, not good.
Some situations were clear to me that I was being treated a particular way because of my race. But then others were not so clear cut.
For example, one time I was talking in Japanese with a group and someone kept repeating what I said like "He said...". I was getting angry at that as I took it to mean that they were basically "translating" my Japanese for others. But then later, I was watching a Japanese TV drama and the same thing happened on there (with only Japanese speaking). That made me think that maybe this was just a cultural thing that people do and didn't have any reflection on me personally.
Having mentored a female engineer, I've seen that if you are constantly on the lookout for signs of discrimination against you, you will find so much of it. You'll go crazy thinking the whole world is out to get you because of your sex, race, etc. It's tough because there are no doubt situations where that does happen. But there are also situations where a white man would have been given the same feedback or treated in the same way. As a minority though, you only have your own experience to go on. It becomes tough to recognize what is legitimate discrimination vs what is just ordinarily communication.
Instead my head is somewhere else entirely, and I might have been annoyed at myself for forgetting to pick something up at the store or whatever.
We've gotten better at handling it, I try to remind myself to immediately tell her it wasn't her, and she asking me what it was if I forget. But there has been a lot of unnecessary bad times that originated from such episodes...
Yes things can be improved. But at some point will critical thinking and the benefit of the doubt be encouraged in society?
Or are we doomed to the media/twitter blowing up things out of proportion and people looking through prisms of victimhood.
I don't self identify as a feminist. I never have. I generally agree with this criticism.
Was the architect dismissive of my ideas because I am a woman? Because he shoots down everyone’s ideas? Because he has a specific problem with me? Because my ideas are bad?
One of the greatest challenges I had to overcome in my career was not reading too much into the actions of others. When you do you can easily be offended by everything.
It's incredibly hard to keep having an open mind, keep trying to figure out "Is this actually constructive criticism or toxic bullshit?" and keep trying to engage in good faith in the face of certain patterns. It's just exhausting. It takes all your time and mental and emotional energy to try to sort it out, which detracts from putting energy into things that will actually advance your career.
You can spend hours and hours wondering "What did he mean by that?" in an exchange that lasted under a minute. And you may never figure it out.
It's vastly easier to just start erring on the side of "You're all just sexist pigs!" Though, unfortunately, that seems to make the problem more intractable and unresolvable, but it makes is a little easier on a day-to-day basis to cope in the face of a situation that is inherently excessively hard to parse and navigate.
One of the best pieces of career advice I have ever taken was from this TED talk: https://youtu.be/KzSAFJBLyn4
The section on Abraham Lincoln. Perceive no slights. It changed the way I approach people at work.
So if we lived in a world were the concept of sexism was not as well developed as it is now, at least here in the US, you wouldn't have this internal conflict? Is this not enough reason to not engage in discussion and encourage others (presumably women) not to engage in behavior that keeps sexism at the very forefront of thought?
For example, an enormous amount of misunderstanding, bad communication and fraught decision making has resulted from the social activist redefinition of “racism” that has gained prominence in the last decade or so. And there are still so many people talking past each other completely obliviously. A richer taxonomy of terms and ideas could help everyone reach understanding.
It seems like the same dynamic as you’re describing in these dialogues on sexism.
I was interested to note something in the hiring page for the company wiki where I worked once.
It said the biggest red flag, an automatic no-hire, was a candidate confidently "explaining" things he didn't actually know. This was a big enough problem to be called out in the hiring policy. Interviewers were on notice to watch out for candidates who claimed to know something, but whose explanations were pure bluffing. Happens all the time.
The feminist literature, of course, refers to this as "mansplaining", except that mansplaining by definition refers to an explanation delivered to a woman. How is it different from the ordinary behavior? Well, it isn't.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26613161
I don't think I ever accuse anyone of "mansplaining" because I don't think that's likely to be helpful in remedying the problem. But I do think the use case that men can be oblivious to the stuff women are dealing with and can kind of pick on women and can then act like she's just not trying hard enough or something if she doesn't jump on his suggestion as a brilliant solution is a common enough occurrence that it isn't unreasonable for there to be a word specifically for that pattern.
It's a word useful to kvetch to allies about it happening. It's not a word useful to build bridges, explain to the people doing it why their random unsolicited advice to a woman can be actively harmful, etc.
Edit: And I am not trying to pick a fight with you or something. I do realize the context here is you are probably agreeing with me in some fashion. (Turns out I'm still not perfect and I apologize if this reads as fighty. It's not intended to be.)
Intentionally misunderstanding is a tool for accomplishing that goal.
For those perceived as belonging to a privileged class, people feel free to (and in some cases relish in and are socially rewarded for) voicing their sexist opinions. A man has a lot less reason to dwell on whether a particular interaction was sexist against them, because when it does happen it is often overt.
This is not uncommon for men or woman to do, and more commonly expressed as ‘you are looking for things to point out’.
You can run your own little test. Convert the sigh to something similar like shrugging. Consider it debugging with console.logs until you find out the source of the bug.
If all you’ve been doing is fighting for your damn life as a group, then this will define your character until new types of challenges balance out your origins. This is true for a lot of groups that have consistent struggle. I cannot fault them for being combative.
Here's a link to the website for The Red Pill, a documentary by a feminist who talked to men's rights activists. You may not agree with the subjects of the documentary, but the perspective is interesting, and was interesting to the feminist filmmaker who created it.
I guarantee whoever flagged me for recommending it did not watch it himself (yes, it was a dude)