Instead of playing semantics by saying that "it is technically sexism" (and I'm not saying I agree with whether it actually is or not), we could choose to at least stop phrasing the situation like that.
But we can't fix it by doing otherwise—asking people to stop being "overly" cautious—either. Another comment put it best: that solution is akin to asking people to self-sacrifice, except that at the very least jumping on a grenade gets you a medal; in this case, it gets you vilification.
But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately unless there’s valid proof.
And those rumors kill careers, as TFA mentions.
> The risk is still there from the first contact to the last.
This is correct, and that's why this problem is very likely only going to get worse... And the people being cautious still won't be the ones to blame.
> But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately
Outrage mobs don't need a legal setting to ruin someone's life (or livelihood).
I feel like we're probably not talking about the same thing.
The only way rumors kill careers is if we fear the rumors.
If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But if most people are afraid and one person gives honest feedback and is subjected to a rumor, the one rumor seems significant.
I guess I brought up the legal stuff because I think believing rumors is silly in general. If you’re actually the subject of discrimination, you should prove it in court for the benefit of yourself and society.
I’m not sure that we’re disagreeing entirely. I do agree with what you’re saying as well. Just hoping we can chart a new path.
But this leads me back to my previous comment: this isn't a feasible solution because it means basically asking people to self-sacrifice until the "rumors" lose power.
Self-preservation and self-interest is how every single resistance has failed and capitulated.
And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors. A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.
I think we're never going to reach an agreement so I'm cutting out.
The last thing I'll say is that there's a difference between this particular situation and historical resistances to oppression: If you were to even call this situation "oppression", it would only lead to further ridicule and ostracism, perhaps would even get most of the few people who might have sided with you to turn on you as well.
Like I said earlier; jumping on a grenade gets you a medal, the people who protested during rights movements are heroes. The ones you're calling now to self-sacrifice would very likely be considered "some more toxic males who finally got their just desserts".
Of course, I hope I'm wrong. In fact, I hope a better solution is found.
I feel like "giving into the fear of being labeled" doesn't fully capture the risk involved. For many people that labeling means the end of their career, or at the very least a lot of personal and professional embarrassment, plus a big negative mark on their record. I have a hard time looking down on anyone too hard for giving in to that fear.
It is irrelevant that the majority does not actually think this way.
What is relevant is if there is a vocal minority who has power over you and your career that does. And any of the majority who steps out of line in opposition to this power structure individually gets destroyed.
You seem to be mistaking your desire for fair and righteous social dynamics for what actually is today: a Kafkaesque environment perpetuated by fear of anyone speaking up and then becoming a target for the mob and ruination.
Maybe you don't believe this, or maybe this isn't your experience, but take it from many of hundreds of commenters here, this article, or countless stories just like it that this is very real and justified fear.
I think the difference for this particular case is that the people who have to stick their necks out are the people who generally don't have much to lose if the resistance fails. (Obviously this isn't the case for the larger discussion around combating sexism, where individual women bear the brunt of the risk, but for this particular advice-giving bit, it is.)
Question: Would we, on average, expect an outrage mob response of the same size and magnitude when a man makes such an accusation? Whether or not this is justified by historical injustice is irrelevant here. What's salient is whether or not there is a gender skew.
If there is such a systematic and large societal gender skew, then we should expect people's cost/benefit calculations regarding the exposure to the risk of such accusations to also be skewed in a way that is large, systemic, and gender unequal. In a word, the way our society works around accusations, current day in 2021, is itself highly sexist.
Therefore, if we don't want systematized sexism, then we have to eliminate gendered skew in these cost/benefit calculations. We already know the mechanisms for the way out of this. It's codified in various legal systems, and in the values of historical liberal societies and philosophies. They are called respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. When society applies these principles gender neutrally, the gendered skew in individual cost/benefit calculations will even out, on average. Society will have eliminated another form of sexism, and the world will be a better place.
When one says "believe women" somehow in preference to believing men, this is a contributing factor. To avoid the gendered skew, it would be obviously impractical to say, "believe everyone." Hence: respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. Applied gender-neutrally, this is our way out.
In short, the tremendous power we've given mobs based on accusations not-requiring evidence is itself highly sexist, and this distorts our society to also be more sexist.
This is very naïve. For this to work, either people would have to be omniscient, or some karmic mechanism is ensuring that "justice always prevails." Let me assure you that neither is the case. I know this, because being different and being a minority, in various times and places, was enough pretext to let people attach falsehoods to you, and have it widely believed. We know this from false accusations in the Jim Crow US south. I know such things from my personal experience.
However, those mechanisms aren't the only ones. No-one is completely immune from such accusations, except for fleeting periods of extreme popularity and societal goodwill. A lie will get seven times around the world, before the truth laces its boots. This, too, I know from personal experience.
The question is this: Do we want mob mentality to be the arbiter of justice? Nearly a millennium of jurisprudence would firmly tell us: NO!
What's more, the mob mentality is clearly sexist! And it's the mob's sexism which is the root of the problem. On average, isn't there a much stronger mob reaction from a woman's accusation of sexism over a man's? It's this difference that gender-skews the cost/benefit calculation. This difference is itself sexist.
Justice doesn't come reliably from the mob. Instead, what we get is bias that results in more sexism. Funny that.
The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.
This is quite literally exactly what has been happening, and it seem like it will continue happening because the loud minority has everyone else by the balls.
You would need someone like Google CEO (with the support of the board) to say: jumping to accusations will get you in trouble. Just because it's criticism doesn't make it sexist. We don't care about your social power pseudo scientific theory and we will not settle in court. Stop making the work place toxic. Then you need to have this sentiment repeated by other powerful people.
Chances of that happening in US in coming years? In my opinion about zero.
No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.
Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.
There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.
In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.
What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.
Incredible.
In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...
Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.
So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!
If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.
Individuals will consider their jobs and thus their dependents' welfare more important than risking being publicly slaughtered to fix a mindset that's pretty ingrained now.
Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.
The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:
> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.
Precisely. Yet one of these two was being used as an example for unconscious gender bias.
Why were both examples not used, or conversely, one showing a bias benefiting women?
Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.
"even the investor themself may not know"
The above fragment is what really 'got to me'. I agree that some people may have an unconscious bias. Yet from a few studies, showing some have this bias?
I hear this now spoken of as gospel. As if the very fiber of the male being, is to have this bias. So to this:
"a man sees anti-man bias where none exists."
I say -- I don't think so. Because this 'unconscious bias' theory is a bias in itself. It's like claiming all women have victim mentality, or all women are 'queen bees'. It just isn't so.