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Roderick

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From what I remember, there have been plenty of instances of men passing as women and women passing as men, as writers and as gamers, and the experiences are fairly consistent: people who appear to be women have to deal with a lot of shit that people who appear to be men don't.

 

I think this conversation clarified a question I had a few pages back about people playing the race card over the application of regular policy: ask what the racism is. Same with a woman saying that it's sexist: just ask for more details. The problem's that we avoid that conversation instead of having it so much that everyone is on the same page, that we internalised golliwogs and the pink aisle without anyone saying 'yo, this isn't right' alongside of it.

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To clarify, It's not that cheerleaders don't get paid AT ALL. From what I understand it can be awful pay and they are paying out of pocket for tans, professional hair & nails, etc but they do mostly get paid SOMETHING. I believe it's the Bills cheerleaders who got basically no compensation and are considered independent contractors rather than employees. I don't know what the employment agreements are for other teams, but I do know that multiple squads of cheerleaders across the league have filed suits for wage theft. I find that almost more galling, because being paid below minimum wage somehow maintains the illusion to people on the outside that you're a professional and not a volunteer.

 

I missed this news, too. http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/76061588/nfl-cheerleaders-exploitation-lawsuits-for-working-rights-minimum-wage This is a good rundown of how shitty it is.

 

Yeah, technically I know that most of them do receive some compensation, but given the money to hours worked ratio, the chance to lose pay to fines, and the requirements to pay for many business expenses out of pocket, I don't think it's unfair to characterize it as essentially unpaid.  The extra abusive fact is that cheer squads for some teams actually bring in plenty of revenue to pay the women thanks to merchandise sales and events where the team is paid, they just don't bother. 

 

I'm reminded of a restaurant owner I was once talking with, who argued that his wait staff ought to pay him for the right to serve food in his restaurant.  His was a high end place, and it was common for servers to make $50K+ a year in tips.  He believed that he didn't owe them a dime in wages, and thought it made more sense for him to get a cut of their tips, since he was being so generous in allowing them to profit from his business. 

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This is my interpretation, so don't take this as his representation of his own views - I think what he's trying to say is that if there's no semblance of objectivity or a shared sense of what's sexist, you can only apologize from your limited perspective as a male that can't inherently identify his own sexism without the arbitration of a female.

My point is more that if we identify sexism solely as the experience of being discriminated against, rather than the discrimination itself, the only thing you can apologize for is the negative effect you're having on a person, rather than the behavior that creates that negative effect.

 

I'm displeased with the way the conversation has gone overall, though, and don't feel that a lot of what I'm saying has been interpreted in good faith. I'll gladly accept some of the blame in being a poor communicator, but I have no idea how Gormongous is parsing me saying "erasing research, reason, and critical thought from the discussion of what sexism is is an insult to the scholars who dedicate themselves to understanding its boundaries and effects" as me saying "What we need is some men in here to agree with these women!" That interpretation only makes sense if you buy into the idea that only men do research. I specifically stated that most of the work done that we should be paying attention to is done by women, and yet twice he's thrown that interpretation at me. It feels insulting to have feminism 101 thrown at me when I'm trying to drill down on why I believe that one very specific tenet of some branches of feminism is problematic. It's like... inverse derailing?

 

Anyway, sorry to bring it back up since it probably would have been better left lying down, but... but. I think I seized on JonCole's post as a reason to respond, but I probably shouldn't have anyway. Oh well.

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Read the first section of the article and had to stop, because I didn't want to ruin my ok day thinking about that. I'll have to read the rest some other time.

 

Jesus, that is so fucking gross.

 

Jumping back a bit to grab this quote (about the Polygon article), because I had the very same reaction with it and some of the other articles linked in this thread. I think "Ugh, I can't deal with this right now, I'll be so down." 

 

But that's when it really sunk in how these people have to deal with this every single day. They can't just close the tab and deal with it later, because it's everywhere, all the time, in your face, in your Twitter that is supposed to be for you to talk to your friends, it's where you work. And I felt so bad just for being able to dismiss it, unlike them.

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if we identify sexism solely as the experience of being discriminated against, rather than the discrimination itself

 

erasing research, reason, and critical thought from the discussion of what sexism is

 

The thing is, I don't think any of us was saying either of these.  I can't definitely speak for anyone but myself, but I never meant to imply that thinking critically about sexism is bad and that a broader social definition has no meaning at all.  I probably didn't convey it very well, but what I mean is that in a personal, face-to-face situation if a woman tells you the thing you just said was sexist, then it is for her regardless of what any other person or groups of people say.  That doesn't mean the research, reasoning, and critical thought are meaningless.  Likewise the research, reasoning, and critical thought shouldn't render her opinion invalid if they don't agree.  It also doesn't mean she can't later change her mind after a discussion or that the offending person can't have their mind changed by the same discussion.  It doesn't mean that the discussion shouldn't be subject to debate and scrutiny for the better understanding of everyone.  What it does mean is that for her, at that moment, it is sexist and no one except her should have the authority to tell her she's wrong.  It's a complicated topic and using any ONE definition is naturally going to be limiting the scope. 

 

You seem to have interpreted our discussion as "you're wrong, we're right" and I don't think that's what's being said at all.  I frankly agree with most of what you've said, at least in concept if not the specific words.  I think almost everyone is mostly saying the same thing and we're arguing about who's saying it better.

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I don't believe anyone was saying that outright, but in saying that all that men need to do to understand if something's sexist or not is ask a woman that implicitly reduces our understanding to that binary state -- and moreover asks a woman to represent all women, which I don't think I need to explain the problems with. This is to some degree a semantic difference, yes, but semantic doesn't mean unimportant: While the experiences of women are what drive our understanding of sexism, the deeper explanations, painstakingly researched and explained (usually, apparently I have to explicitly mention, also by women), are what actually map that territory.

 

Saying something is or isn't sexist on a person-by-person basis is logically consistent, but if we say that's what sexism is we've eliminated any common ground for debate, since each person's perception is a realm unto itself. I think it's important to make a distinction between something that 'feels sexist to me' and something that 'is sexist', even if we may never know for sure where that boundary lies, because that opens us up for understanding. And yes, I know, shitty men use that conversation to devalue women's experiences and gaslight them, but that means that those men are shitty -- not that it's a bad conversation! I suggest that, instead of focusing on the experience of perceiving discrimination as defining that which is sexist, we focus on the discrimination that that experience perceives and focus in on that, what it is, what it means, where it comes from -- because the shape defined, however hazily, there, that's sexism, and it's our duty to actually try to understand it, rather than just asking women and dropping the burden back on them whenever we're in doubt.

 

No one should have the authority to tell anyone that their lived experience is wrong. I agree with that. Their experience is their experience, and is neither wrong nor right but simply is. What's relevant is that we A) acknowledge and respect that experience and the impact it had on them, and B) interpret that experience in an intelligent way into a greater understanding of the systemic problem. My problem with just saying "that's what sexism is" is, when you make that your definition, you stop at A and never get to B.

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I'm reminded of a restaurant owner I was once talking with, who argued that his wait staff ought to pay him for the right to serve food in his restaurant.  His was a high end place, and it was common for servers to make $50K+ a year in tips.  He believed that he didn't owe them a dime in wages, and thought it made more sense for him to get a cut of their tips, since he was being so generous in allowing them to profit from his business. 

Some hair salons are run this way, with outside stylists renting a chair on certain days. The idea of a restaurant being run that way is...interesting.

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Reading through Problem Machine's post to ensure I'm understanding his argument, it sounds like what he's arguing that people should do is what people have been arguing at Problem Machine that people should do.

 

So I'm glad we've found some common ground here!

 

No one should have the authority to tell anyone that their lived experience is wrong. I agree with that. Their experience is their experience, and is neither wrong nor right but simply is. What's relevant is that we A) acknowledge and respect that experience and the impact it had on them, and B) interpret that experience in an intelligent way into a greater understanding of the systemic problem. My problem with just saying "that's what sexism is" is, when you make that your definition, you stop at A and never get to B.

 

For instance, I don't think anyone actually disagrees with this line, but what got people's hackles up was the idea that you go to B without going through A.

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Reading through Problem Machine's post to ensure I'm understanding his argument, it sounds like what he's arguing that people should do is what people have been arguing at Problem Machine that people should do.

 

So I'm glad we've found some common ground here!

 

 

For instance, I don't think anyone actually disagrees with this line, but what got people's hackles up was the idea that you go to B without going through A.

 

Yeah, I think we're starting to approach convergence here.  What I'm trying to emphasize is what your last line says.  I'm not trying to use any of the hypothetical women in our examples as a representative of all women, that would be absurd.  Nor am I saying that if she says it's sexist, then that's all there is to it.  There's always more to it.  Obviously you want to understand the how and the why.  What I don't see is how my understanding of a single person's perspective does not contribute to my understanding of the entire concept.  Gormongous touched on the idea that the entire "system" is composed of people.  What's the point in solving the systemic problem if we ignore the individuals?  Clearly one person does not represent the whole, but they are still a part of that whole and thus their experience is relevant, even if it's an outlier.

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Nor am I saying that if she says it's sexist, then that's all there is to it.

That's not what you're saying now, explicitly, but my contention is that glibly tossing off "ask a woman if it's sexist; if she says it is, it is" implies exactly that. It might be a narrow difference, but big problems are built on small misunderstandings, and I think the underlying message, whether intended or not, is harmful. If we're on the same page in the greater sense of things, then that's wonderful, but then maybe it's worth elaborating a little more on this one-step-approach to understanding what is and isn't sexist when it comes up.

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...but big problems are built on small misunderstandings, and I think the underlying message, whether intended or not, is harmful.

 

Highlighting that simply because it seems to essentially describe this conversation.  I think we've all inferred things from each other's posts that aren't explicitly stated, and those inferences may or may not accurately reflect the intent.

 

 

Some hair salons are run this way, with outside stylists renting a chair on certain days. The idea of a restaurant being run that way is...interesting.

 

From my limited understanding of hair salons, it is quite a bit different though.  A lot of stylists have their own customers independent of the salon they work out of, and those customers will follow their stylist to wherever she is working.  She's just paying for space and equipment that she may not be able to afford to buy.  Her clients are her customers, and she is the salon's customer (the power dynamic here can vary wildly between who has more power, a popular stylist or an in demand salon).  There are likely certain cleanliness expectations for a booth, but in many ways a stylist has a lot of control (services provided, how much to charge, work hours, etc).  A waiter would have none of those things.  The restaurant would continue to mandate virtually everything about their job, but would just be charging them for access to the restaurant's customers. 

 

There's a fascinating argument that's been floating around for decades about whether or not tipping is even constitutional.  We know that tipping leads to discriminatory behavior on the part of customers, servers and restaurants.  And since restaurants use tips as the primary compensation for many of their employees, they are violating the equal protection clause and various federal employment laws.  This matters to the feminism thread, as women make up around 70 percent of wait staff, and so are disproportionally affected by businesses dodging compliance with federal laws on non-discriminatory pay practices.

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Problem Machine, I know you feel you've been misconstrued through this entire conversation, but understand the same about us, now that you're arguing against our explicit statements to the implications of those statements.

 

Saying something is or isn't sexist on a person-by-person basis is logically consistent, but if we say that's what sexism is we've eliminated any common ground for debate, since each person's perception is a realm unto itself. I think it's important to make a distinction between something that 'feels sexist to me' and something that 'is sexist', even if we may never know for sure where that boundary lies, because that opens us up for understanding.

 

Like I've said before, I feel that, in practical day-to-day terms dictating human interaction, something that "feels sexist" is something that is sexist. You may talk about how, by believing so, I am abandoning reason and understanding, but I think that I have a reasonably adequate understanding of sexism just by having conversations with women about why they feel something is sexist. Those conversations, had over several years, have been amalgamated into a mental model of sexism, not one that is static and absolute, but constantly growing and changing, because I keep having these conversations with women, because I have made it my rule to try always to believe them, at least giving them the benefit of the doubt, when they say that they feel something is sexist. If I were to debate them actively on their feelings of sexism, as opposed to just listening to them actively, I think my understanding would be smaller and weaker, because they would have less space to talk now and less willingness to talk in the future.

 

In short, I hear what you're saying, PM, but I have absolutely no lived proof for the death of conversation that you say is a direct and inevitable result of a credulous stance towards women and sexism. Conversations can be and are had, but women and their experiences should always direct them.

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Problem Machine, I know you feel you've been misconstrued through this entire conversation, but understand the same about us, now that you're arguing against our explicit statements to the implications of those statements.

 

Good intentions are no excuse for bad implications. I'm not telling you what you mean by these statements, but I am telling you how they read to an outside observer, and rather than engaging with how that implication might be problematic, you're just telling me "well, that's just your reading of it." Perhaps, but that's also the literal meaning of the words you've put on the page, and if that's how I'm reading it then that's how other people are probably going to read it. If that doesn't matter to you... well, then I don't see the point.

 

Like I've said before, I feel that, in practical day-to-day terms dictating human interaction, something that "feels sexist" is something that is sexist. You may talk about how, by believing so, I am abandoning reason and understanding, but I think that I have a reasonably adequate understanding of sexism just by having conversations with women about why they feel something is sexist. Those conversations, had over several years, have been amalgamated into a mental model of sexism, not one that is static and absolute, but constantly growing and changing, because I keep having these conversations with women, because I have made it my rule to try always to believe them, at least giving them the benefit of the doubt, when they say that they feel something is sexist. If I were to debate them actively on their feelings of sexism, as opposed to just listening to them actively, I think my understanding would be smaller and weaker, because they would have less space to talk now and less willingness to talk in the future.

 

Exactly! It's based off of their analysis of what sexism is! They take their experience, interpret it, and communicate it to you, and that's fantastic. That's the way it's supposed to work. However, if every conversation you had ever had had ended when you asked why something was sexist, if you'd never gotten an actual answer, what would that mental model look like? Your entire perception of sexism would be "something that makes one of these women I know upset." And that's the extent of the definition you proffer to people who ask how to know whether something is sexist or not!

 

I'm all for listening to women's experiences! I do believe that's how an understanding of sexism is built! But it's not just one woman, and it's not just how she felt at one moment, but an understanding built across different lifetimes of different women, vast and nuanced, and I think it's really shitty to turn that into a yes/no answer from one woman. And if that's not what you meant by what you said, then maybe try saying it in a different way, a way that doesn't literally mean just that.

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I'm all for listening to women's experiences! I do believe that's how an understanding of sexism is built! But it's not just one woman, and it's not just how she felt at one moment, but an understanding built across different lifetimes of different women, vast and nuanced, and I think it's really shitty to turn that into a yes/no answer from one woman. And if that's not what you meant by what you said, then maybe try saying it in a different way, a way that doesn't literally mean just that.

 

I've been saying, the entire time that when one woman says something is sexist, you listen to her about why it's sexist. When another woman says something else is sexist, you listen to her about why it's sexist. You continue to do this, having conversations with different women about different sexist words and acts that they have experienced, and eventually you understand sexism a little better, although never so well that you can stop having those conversations with women. That is a big part of how I try to be a feminist in my daily life.

 

If you think I or anyone else meant that you should literally ask, "Is this sexist?" to one woman, have her say yes or no, and never talk to anyone else about it again, then that explains a lot about how this misunderstanding happened. Hopefully we can move on from it and stop derailing the conversation about gross exploitation of female workers.

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I said it before, but no one is suggesting that one woman represents the whole of women everywhere.  Nothing is absolute, everything is relative.  You're always going to be able to come up with special cases or one time situations.  Perhaps I didn't explicitly state that a single woman's perspective would only represent her and not necessarily all women, but that's because I figured it was a given.  Gormongous and I have repeatedly said that the conversation won't stop with a yes or no answer either.  And I have to say, it seems pretty presumptuous that you assume everyone would agree with your interpretation.  I'm not saying that everyone would agree with me, but a fair number of people have thus far been able to read between the lines here.

 

Edit: And once again Gormongous beats me to the punch.  I agree we should move on because we're not even arguing our original points anymore.  We're arguing about our arguing.

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Aye, different parts of that letter describe different parts of my life. Thankfully, I'm past the worst of it, being married and all.

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I love advice columns, completely and unabashedly.  It used to be something I kept secret, but I finally embraced it.  The little peak into the windows of other people's lives is endlessly fascinating to me.

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I don't usually go in for advice columns, but this one seemed sort of relevant to the past few pages I conversation.

http://www.theawl.com/2014/07/ask-polly-i-want-to-get-laid-but-im-afraid-of-oppressing-women#more-198276

 

Well, that one pretty much describes me I think, even if the situations are not entirely the same.

Thanks for that link. Will have to ponder that a bit.

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The part of the advice where she points out that he doesn't seem particularly interested in any of the women in his examples really stands out to me. When I was single, I defaulted to a similar demeanor as the guy that wrote in. But when I became interested in someone, I became a bit more willing to risk being a potential jack-ass. Sometimes I was, other times it was a necessary step towards a mutual relationship.

Anyway, the dude in that letter would make a great Mr. Darcy if he is presented with a little more confidence in his refusal to contribute to the oppression of women. That would be a sweet obstacle for the main lady to have to overcome in a work of fiction.

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That was an interesting read. I can relate to some of it, but certainly not the more outrageous parts. For example, I never "hit" on girls, I think that whole concept is gross and demeaning to both parties. However if someone was clearly coming on to me, I'd recognise it and act on it immediately. I guess a small amount of confidence makes a huge difference. 

 

Funnily enough, I told my friend recently how every relationship/sexual encounter I've had, the girl spoke to me first (which is true) and he was completely stunned that I didn't have to go out "on the chase" and baffled that a girl would come on to me (he's so complimentary). The idea of actively pressuring yourself on someone feels so weird to me and I think I'd dislike being in that situation.

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Fucking hell NFL.

 

In relation to this, Kieth Olbermann's response is great:

 

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Out of curiosity Griddlelol, what do you see as the distinction between you hitting on a girl and them approaching you?

I'm not asking because I think they're the same, I'm just curious about where you draw the line. I personally only feel interested in dating girls I actually know rather than one I see in passing. Though I did identify with the anxiety of feeling predatorial. Mostly when I catch myself checking out random women on the street I don't like that I have to consciously stop myself.

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