A statistic
Jul. 18th, 2011 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livThere's a thing where women go to technical or fannish conferences and experience creepy, sexist behaviour. There's a thing where they write about it online and suddenly the entire internet hates them. (Rebecca Watson and the atheist blogosphere is just the latest example, it's a pretty common pattern.)
So the first thing happened to me last week, and I'm sitting here hesitating whether to post about it unlocked, because I don't particularly want the second thing to happen. I think the risk is low because Dreamwidth isn't really noticeable to the blogosphere, and because the community here doesn't overlap with the community attending the conference, (unlike the situation of conferences about the future of the web or fannish topics). Anyway, I think there's some merit in telling the world when something like this happens, and also I'm pretty angry about it, though it was fairly minor in the scheme of things.
This year's ASME conference was on the theme of diversity in medical education. There were lots and lots of good things about it, and I had a very enjoyable time overall. The one sour note was a slightly pompous, middle-aged American attendee who approached me. I was wearing my hair in its usual long plait which had fallen over my shoulder. He reached out as if to grab my hair, which meant reaching towards my breast underneath, and said "That's a great ponytail you have there, you're beautiful!" He was moving past me at the time and was the other side of the room before I had time to recover from my initial goldfish state.
I don't think he was being lechy, otherwise he would have stayed around for a reaction. I didn't feel threatened: it was right in the middle of a crowded room. No, the only reason I'm angry is the breathtaking arrogance of his assumption that I wanted to know what he thought of my hair and appearance. I was taking part in a professional conference, I was enjoying a coffee break and networking opportunity. I wasn't there for his aesthetic enjoyment, just because I happen to be younger than him and new to the medical education community and female. He probably read me as even younger and less influential than I am; the big selling point of the ASME conference is that it's a chance for everybody to mingle, from first year medical students to international Med Ed superstars. I know I look young for my age (the long hair contributes to this), and even if he guessed that I'm a junior lecturer rather than a student, I'm a complete newbie in the field of medicine and medical education.
It's a little thing, certainly, and it's hardly going to drive me out of my chosen career! But there's something incongruous about a three-day event in opulent surroundings set up for middle-aged, influential, mostly white men to air their opinions about how to make the medical profession more diverse, and then they turn round and treat their younger female colleagues like that.
The keynote speaker, another middle-aged, highly successful, white-appearing, middle-aged doctor and academic, annoyed me not by overt sexism but because he kept contrasting "diverse students" with "less diverse students". Apparently when presenting his research about the experiences of black and minority ethnic medical students, he was too embarrassed to use the term "white". Less. diverse. I've always rolled my eyes a bit when I see studies discussed that suggest many white people have negative associations with concepts like diversity, access, multiculturalism etc. But if someone who's enough of an expert to be invited as a keynote speaker at a conference on diversity talks as if "diversity" is a characteristic that individuals have to a greater or lesser extent depending on how many oppressed groups they belong to, the problem starts to look explicable.
And circling back to my opening paragraph, I wonder if there isn't something similar going on when a comment as carefully neutral and mildly stated as Watson's
Anyway, I will soon get round to writing more about all the cool things that have been going on this month! Just wanted to get this story off my chest.
So the first thing happened to me last week, and I'm sitting here hesitating whether to post about it unlocked, because I don't particularly want the second thing to happen. I think the risk is low because Dreamwidth isn't really noticeable to the blogosphere, and because the community here doesn't overlap with the community attending the conference, (unlike the situation of conferences about the future of the web or fannish topics). Anyway, I think there's some merit in telling the world when something like this happens, and also I'm pretty angry about it, though it was fairly minor in the scheme of things.
This year's ASME conference was on the theme of diversity in medical education. There were lots and lots of good things about it, and I had a very enjoyable time overall. The one sour note was a slightly pompous, middle-aged American attendee who approached me. I was wearing my hair in its usual long plait which had fallen over my shoulder. He reached out as if to grab my hair, which meant reaching towards my breast underneath, and said "That's a great ponytail you have there, you're beautiful!" He was moving past me at the time and was the other side of the room before I had time to recover from my initial goldfish state.
I don't think he was being lechy, otherwise he would have stayed around for a reaction. I didn't feel threatened: it was right in the middle of a crowded room. No, the only reason I'm angry is the breathtaking arrogance of his assumption that I wanted to know what he thought of my hair and appearance. I was taking part in a professional conference, I was enjoying a coffee break and networking opportunity. I wasn't there for his aesthetic enjoyment, just because I happen to be younger than him and new to the medical education community and female. He probably read me as even younger and less influential than I am; the big selling point of the ASME conference is that it's a chance for everybody to mingle, from first year medical students to international Med Ed superstars. I know I look young for my age (the long hair contributes to this), and even if he guessed that I'm a junior lecturer rather than a student, I'm a complete newbie in the field of medicine and medical education.
It's a little thing, certainly, and it's hardly going to drive me out of my chosen career! But there's something incongruous about a three-day event in opulent surroundings set up for middle-aged, influential, mostly white men to air their opinions about how to make the medical profession more diverse, and then they turn round and treat their younger female colleagues like that.
The keynote speaker, another middle-aged, highly successful, white-appearing, middle-aged doctor and academic, annoyed me not by overt sexism but because he kept contrasting "diverse students" with "less diverse students". Apparently when presenting his research about the experiences of black and minority ethnic medical students, he was too embarrassed to use the term "white". Less. diverse. I've always rolled my eyes a bit when I see studies discussed that suggest many white people have negative associations with concepts like diversity, access, multiculturalism etc. But if someone who's enough of an expert to be invited as a keynote speaker at a conference on diversity talks as if "diversity" is a characteristic that individuals have to a greater or lesser extent depending on how many oppressed groups they belong to, the problem starts to look explicable.
And circling back to my opening paragraph, I wonder if there isn't something similar going on when a comment as carefully neutral and mildly stated as Watson's
...don’t invite me back to your hotel room, right after I’ve finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that mannercan provoke such huge outrage. Somehow women are saying "I'd prefer not to be sexually harassed, thanks", and some men are hearing "men are all evil and disgusting and probably rapists". There are lots of reasons for this phenomenon, and one of them is probably genuine defensiveness by actual misogynists. Still, a contributing factor may be that objecting to harassment is considered a feminist position (as opposed to, you know, a decent human being position!) and feminism is tainted by all kinds of negative associations.
Anyway, I will soon get round to writing more about all the cool things that have been going on this month! Just wanted to get this story off my chest.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 03:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 03:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:08 pm (UTC)Incidentally, was he talking about increasing diversity for its own sake, or because it's better for the patients when they can find a doctor who makes them feel comfortable because they're from the same culture, or who speaks their native language?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 04:58 pm (UTC)The plenary speaker, Prof Siddiqui, someone I admire very much, made a powerful and somewhat controversial argument that there's no reason to assume that having a doctor of the same ethnicity is going to be beneficial for a given patient. For her, people should be treated as individuals not as exemplars of a particular ethnic group, and it's harmful to assume all Asians or all Muslims or whatever are a monolith. She also pointed out that ethnic groups are not homogeneously distributed across the country. So having a decent number of Asian doctors reflects the population of the UK as a whole, but may be a bit uncomfortable in parts of rural Scotland where basically all the local patient population are white.
Dr Keynote was primarily addressing the issue that students enter medical school with comparable educational backgrounds, but white students graduate with much higher marks and better opportunities than BME students. His particular thing is social self-segregation, but in general if you start out with fairly evenly distributed abilities on intake and the group ends up stratifying along ethnic lines, this is potentially a pretty serious problem for the way medical schools are operating.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 05:05 pm (UTC)just a thought
Date: 2011-07-18 05:17 pm (UTC)YAB
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 05:35 pm (UTC)Still, a contributing factor may be that objecting to harassment is considered a feminist position (as opposed to, you know, a decent human being position!) and feminism is tainted by all kinds of negative associations.
Yep: much discussion on the Internet is desperately precious and irrational. For instance, your top link contains "trigger warnings" not only for sexual violence (which is fair enough) but for people who have the temerity to disagree with feminists or who (sensibly) don't have much time for Islam (or "misogynists" and "Islamophobes", as they're called).
Your conference guy was wildly inappropriate, of course, and Elevator Guy was too, so I'm not going to argue about that.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 05:42 pm (UTC)I also do not understand drive-by harassment. When I get whistled at from a passing car, or have something whispered in my ear as I cross the street, it seems the only purpose of this is to make me feel gross. Because it can't be legitimately a pass (that would require stopping and speaking to me). It seems the only purpose of it is to make me feel like an object--and I don't understand the purpose of that. (I mean, I do--it just mystifies me, because it's horrible.)
I'm glad you spoke up about it. And I hope you don't get crap for it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 06:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 06:17 pm (UTC)I think there's a whole lot of confusion and discussion policing to do with triggers and trigger warnings. I know quite a few people people who have suffered from post traumatic stress and what becomes a trigger isn't necessarily obvious. For example, you might not feel comfortable watching anything containing a particular actor because he looks to much like your attacker. If you've been traumatised by misogynistic or Islamophobic violence or abuse, it is quite possible that misogynistic or Islamophobic comments will be triggers to you, even if not everyone regards them as misogynistic or Islamophobic.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 09:26 pm (UTC)There may be some issues with less good patient satisfaction if all the doctors are white middle-class conventional types, though. I think the main thrust of the diversity initiative is that doctors are one of the most respected professions, as well as being guaranteed both job security and decent salaries. Currently something ridic like 90% of doctors come from households in the top three socioeconomic groups, and it seems obviously unfair that poorer people don't have that career option.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 09:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 09:56 pm (UTC)And I definitely do think that the political jargon stuff can be obstructive as often as it's helpful. In some ways it's easier to talk about a topic when you have a concise, common way of expressing complex political issues. But they are complex, and quite a lot of people don't in fact share the background (I think mainly this kind of language comes from American academia and people who are influenced by that approach), and keep getting distracted by the everyday meanings of the technical words. Or, as you say, rejecting the political agenda that gave rise to the jargon and tending to resist anything couched in those terms, even uncontroversial stuff like "sexual assault is bad".
I'm not honestly a great fan of the online atheist community. They are mostly loud and stupid, and the slavering adoration of Dawkins really doesn't help. But I only mentioned Watson because she's topical at the moment, I've seen this pattern play out loads of times before, pretty much whenever members of an online or technical community get together in person; it's really depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 10:22 pm (UTC)The incident that drew the attention of the wider blogosphere, including the feminists, was Richard Dawkins being utterly vile in the comments at Pharyngula. I think people, whether or not they started out as Dawkins fans, were shocked at just how crude his response was, because although you certainly expect him to be vehement, he usually expresses his strong opinions in fairly refined, intellectual language. And because he usually attacks the religious establishment, a legitimate target, rather than individual fellow skeptics! It's not merely disagreeing with feminists or expressing reasoned criticism of Islam to describe in graphic detail how Watson might have been tortured or killed if she lived under a fundamentalist Islamic regime. There is room for reasonable debate about the issue of trigger warnings, sure. But in this case it's not people having hysterics about dissenting opinions, it's people wanting to warn eachother before they click through to a graphic torture fantasy being used to score rhetorical points.
With the usual internet telegraph thing, some people have picked up the impression that Watson and her supporters are disproportionately angry at the elevator guy, or possibly at McGraw. So several have pitched in about this supposed over-reaction, while actually the issue is that Dawkins massively over-reacted to Watson's fairly mild complaint. If you don't know that piece of the story it's a bit bemusing why anyone is so upset!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-18 10:26 pm (UTC)And yes, this is a socially slightly more sophisticated version of drive-by harassment. It was meant to remind me of my place at the bottom of the social hierarchy, not to flatter or attract me! I mean, I think most of these kinds of dominance displays aren't that consciously calculated, but nobody could imagine for a second that they're going to get anywhere if flirting were the aim.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 06:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 08:14 am (UTC)As part of my Psych degree, I chose to study male rape as part of a course that had participants with a strong anti-male slant on rape. It helped to clarify some of the issues, but did not change my own stance on men who think it is OK to touch without permission or to treat women at conferences as if we were just there for entertainment.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 04:25 pm (UTC)Assuming that Josh's experience in The West Wing is a good portrayal (and apparently it is), PTSD suffers can get triggered by all sorts of things which may not be obviously related to the original trauma, so the question is where you stop with the warnings.
In this case, the "Islamophobia" and "misogyny" in question aren't describing or advocating violence against Muslims or women, but are merely identity politics jargon for "people who disagree with us". That seems closer to the "music reminds me of ambulance sirens" triggers than the obvious "descriptions of violence remind me of the time I was a victim of it".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 05:07 pm (UTC)I am wrong: Dawkins is describing it. But that seems to come under the existing warning about sexual violence (it's not that the violence is Islamophobic, done by non-Muslims who hate Muslims, say).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 05:31 pm (UTC)If the comment is vile because of his description of the treatment of women in some Islamic societies, then I'd argue it's that treatment which is vile, not Dawkins's description of it. The misogyny of much of Islam is to blame for that treatment, not the misogyny of Dawkins (if any: apparently the Richard Dawkins Foundation is going to pay for childcare at future conferences, though I'm not clear whether that was a sort of apology for this business or already planned).
I don't think Dawkins would have got involved at all if it hadn't been for the Watson/McGraw blog war being picked up by PZ Myers: the thing was originally about that and continues to swirl around that, as well as Dawkins's silly comments. I don't expect anyone will approach a women in a lift again at one of those things, so it's possible it's done some good.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 09:47 pm (UTC)I agree that people on the internet can say really awful things in response to women complaining about sexism. It's not everybody, by any means, but it is depressing just how absolutely predictable that kind of response is.
Really interesting that you have studied some of these issues from a psychology point of view. I think the thing with men thinking it's ok, not actual sexual violence, but the whole thing of expecting women to be there to entertain them, well, in some ways it is "ok", in the sense that it's very accepted in most social circles. I don't think that excuses it, exactly, but if most of the world is so much harsher on women who complain about such behaviour than men who perpetrate it, it's not hard to see how some guys could end up with wrong expectations.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 09:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-19 09:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 05:20 am (UTC)It's a sad statement when we have to quantify violations of our personal autonomy as "well it's not that bad really".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 05:26 am (UTC)Yes. Very.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 08:38 am (UTC)It is definitely a controversial issue, particularly because people can be triggered by all kinds of stimuli that are not obviously problematic. My take on it is that I try to label what it is that I'm linking to so that people can decide for themselves. I mean, obviously there is some degree of judgement involved, but I try to be as neutral as possible in stating what the content is, rather than referring to warnings or triggers.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 09:21 am (UTC)A friend of mine works for the British Humanists Association and apparently RD appears quite snappish, angry and unhappy most of the time. I wonder if
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 09:22 am (UTC)It's misogynist because it implicitly says, don't ever complain about sexist treatment or I will confront you with images of horrible violence. It's Islamophobic because it blames all Muslims for the practices of a few East African tribes. Also because it trivializes the suffering of actual Muslim girls and women by treating this issue as a rhetorical point.
Now, it's possible to argue that genital mutilation is so incredibly evil and unforgivable that the whole religion should be condemned because of it, but there's still such a thing as context. Graphic descriptions of the practice may be appropriate in discussions of how to end it, they're not appropriate as a response to someone complaining about a more minor example of sexism. I agree that genital mutilation is itself deeply misogynistic and this is not Dawkins' fault, but the trigger warning could equally have been applied to following a link to a discussion of sexist behaviour at a conference and suddenly coming on a description of misogynist violence!
Honestly I'm not that much attached to defining Dawkins' behaviour as misogynistic rather than merely sexist. I will note that I've never seen this response to male bloggers complaining about unpleasant experiences. People may call them all kinds of idiots, sure, but men don't get several hundred internet randoms piling on to tell them that they should consider themselves lucky that they weren't horribly tortured in ways the commenters take great glee in describing. Whereas that is a really frequent occurrence any time a woman mentions sexism on the internet.
I completely accept your analysis of the issue as originally a blog war between Watson and McGraw that Myers and Dawkins got involved in. I didn't know that until you joined in the discussion, because it was discussion of Dawkins' disproportionate response that I had noticed, I don't normally read Skepchick or Pharyngula. Paying for childcare and not chatting up women in lifts are both things that would definitely help make the atmosphere at atheist gatherings less sexist. It would be even better if people generalized to "don't chat women up when they've explicitly said they don't like being approached in that way" rather than merely "don't chat women up in lifts", but, you know, baby steps.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 09:31 am (UTC)I don't think it's a good explanation for thinking that "ha ha, genital mutilation" is any part of socially appropriate conversation, that's beyond just being rude and entitled. Also my Dad is white (at least according to internet race discussion conventions) and middle class and only a handful of years younger than Dawkins. I can't imagine him or any of his friends making online comments like that; some of them might be sexist or rude to waiters or whatever, but they still have a vague sense of normal behaviour.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 09:52 am (UTC)I know this puts me somewhat at variance with conventional feminist wisdom, but I do feel it's important to be able to consider the scale of sexist incidents. Some guy making a grab for my hair and giving me a backhanded compliment is, honestly speaking, not all that bad. Having to put up with a constant barrage of sexist interactions throughout the conference, or dealing with overtly creepy and threatening behaviour (let alone, God forbid, an actual assault) would be much worse. I don't think it's necessarily helpful to lump everything together as "violations of personal autonomy = evil".
Yes, minor sexist violations are still bad, that's why I bothered to make this post in the first place. And yes, there's a definite microaggression aspect to it, if this kind of thing is ubiquitous it can have a really harmful effect on women's general happiness and ability to thrive in the professional environment. Even so, I don't want to blow it out of proportion. There is a problem in internet discussions of sexism where you can't win: if you mention something relatively minor then people can't see what you're complaining about, and if you mention something major you are disbelieved or people assume it's just a one-off attack by some kind of utterly horrendous monstrous sociopath and not part of a systemic problem. But I'm not sure that making a big stink about little rudenesses is really the best way to address that issue.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-20 03:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-23 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-24 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-25 10:02 pm (UTC)I am deliberately avoiding the Richard Dawkins business. Life's too short to go back through half an hour of transcripts for one old man saying something pigheaded. Instead I will eat more chocolate. Mmm chocolate.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-26 02:40 pm (UTC)So I wouldn't say that scientists have better manners; scientists at conferences behave in ways that the general public would consider rude, such as the tearing eachother's research to pieces that I mentioned in my other post. But they're not usually more rude to low-status than high-status people, they're just generally rather blunt and socially unaware towards everybody. It's interesting that I prefer the atmosphere at scientific conferences to this medical one, but many other colleagues from a similar background were very much impressed by how the medical environment is much more supportive and socially lubricated than the academic one they're used to.
And yeah, avoiding the Dawkins / Watson contretemps is very wise, it won't bring you any benefits or tell you anything you don't already know!