Gender & Identity in Online Culture

[Thaurismunths]

Reinforcing a stereotype is something done by members of the stereotyped class.

I'm pretty sure you meant this in a more general sense like "when a person behaves the way I expect, they are reinforcing my beliefs" - and the opposite, "a person needs to behave against type if they don't like that belief".  To me, that comment came across as "poor people are  poor because it's their fault" kinda thing.  Which I very much disagree with - fodder for another thread.

You seem to have taken what I said as I had intended, but I don't see how you're making that connection.
If my view on single moms is that they're all smokers, than I would make the assumption upon meeting a single mother that she is a smoker. I didn't intend to imply that I would go any farther with that stereotype, such as assuming it's her fault*, that she smokes because she's a single mom, or that she smokes around her child. I could guess that these are possibilities, but to condemn someone I just met for ruining her marriage, taking up such a disgusting habit, and risking her child's health is going a bit too far.
(*I say "fault" to imply that she considers it a negative consequence of her actions. I know at least one mother who chose to be single and is quite happy that way.)

If I thought that all geeks online are male, and met only male geeks online, the stereotype would be reinforced. If I thought that all single moms smoke cigarettes, and all the single moms I met smoke cigarettes, then the stereotypes would be reinforced. So, what if I met a geek online, and they never gave any clues about their gender, and their gender never became an issue, how would it matter if I thought of them as a man?
How about if I met a woman on-line who was a single mom, and she never gave clues about her smoking preferences, how would it change things if I never found out and it never became an issue?

This is where I agree with palimpsest and hautdesert - it does hurt in the larger sense that you wouldn't seem to consider that there are women geeks or non-smoking single moms. I pretty sure you are more open minded than that, and that these are simple examples.  But this also strengthens my argument because it shows that without a reason to expand a definition, it stays the same.

Thank you; I am not so close-minded, and I am trying to use simple examples because I'm not so succinct as to keep a complex example from flowing on for pages.
Saying that it hurts in the larger sense only applies if I have met female geeks and do not acknowledge their existence or marginalize them unfairly (such as assuming that a female geek can't be as hardcore or serious as a male geek). If the geeks I've met are exclusively male that would mean I have not been exposed to an accurate sample of the population, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm close-minded. If I haven't ever seen an exception to what seems to be a rule (geek = male) then why would I make a preemptive exception? It'd be like making room in a toolbox for a Psionic Octarine Wave Lamp: I've never seen one before, so how would I know what it looks like?

I think the issue isn't that people impose these generic avatars, I think the concern is when a person refuses to change the features of that avatar.

Not sure what you mean - so now that you know I am a 38 year old man from Canada with Italian and Scottish parents that I should change my handle and pic to a red and white maple leaf playing soccer?.

I'm sorry, I was being too vague. By "avatar" I meant the mental picture we create of someone we don't know, or even of people we do know. Going back to the smoking mom idea: Now that I know you're a 38 year old Male Canadian with Italian and Scottish parents I could guess that you've heard of the Arrogant Worms, know what it's like to wait your turn in a hospital, and your parents held strong opinions. I'd never make the assumption that a Canadian likes hockey. I'm from Detroit and I know more Americans who like Hockey than Canadians however; I wouldn't think its wrong of an American from Georgia to make that leap.

...it helps me gauge the kind of response that is appropriate to the author.

Sure, I turn this a bit and say if the person gives no clues then they shouldn't be insulted if they are treated inappropriately (e.g. if you are 13, and I treat you as though you are a grown adult, don't blame me).

Yes! ...kind of.
There really isn't an excuse for treating someone inappropriately, such as reaming out an unknown poster for their comment. If it's obvious that that person should have known better, such as if I were to go and PhiDry that he doesn't know his ass for a hole in the ground, every time he posts a comment, I'd pretty much have it coming when he tells me just what I can do with my opinions. But if an unknown, or someone who's obviously new/young/ignorant posts something seriously off base, there's no need to over react.
Telling the line between the two is where applying stereotypes comes in.
And making mistakes with those stereotypes is where Steve's "A simple 'Actually, I'm...' and a 'D'oh!  Noted.'" comes in.

And no, I don’t have any problems with PhiDry.

(edit = getting the quotes right0

[SFEley]

I would respectfully submit that if you're thinking of them as a man, then their gender (as you've presumed it) matters.  Otherwise you would think of them as something else - human, maybe.  Opponent.  Friend.  Conversant.  Person.  Irritating little twit.  There are any number of non-gender specific ways to think about people.

I'm with Steve on the idealism of hoping people think of other people as people.  I would never try to force someone into this mode, argue them into this mode, or legislate them into this mode. 

I will not, however, accept the impossibility of it.  Especially not based on the prevalence of stereotyping and making assumptions.

First, great post.  For the most part I'm in 100% agreement with you, but I would like to present another perspective on this part:

(By the way, I'm using first person mostly in order to avoid dragging anyone else into my hypotheticals.)

If you're thinking of them as a man, then their gender (as you've presumed it) matters.  Otherwise you would think of them as something else - human, maybe.  Opponent.  Friend.

I don't think this holds because the mental models are not exclusive of each other.  I think it's perfectly natural to think of someone as male -- and human, and a friend, and bloody annoying when they get on the subject of Harry Potter, and a hundred other things.

I don't think it's sexist merely to have an image of you in my head as male or female.  It's possible that not everyone maintains such images -- I don't know enough about anyone else's head to say -- but some people do, and I don't think it's wrong or unfortunate.  I personally find it much easier to talk to people than to screen names, and when I think of you as a person I end up with a picture in my head.  My pictures aren't usually of cloaked figures with dark hoods, so they're necessarily going to include gender.

It would be sexist and wrong if my image of you precluded treating you as a human being foremost, or influenced my communication such that I ended up talking primarily to the image in my head and forgot about you, the actual person.  It would be equally bad if my holding the image prevented me from seeing the "real" you as revealed in your communication.  (I put "real" in quotes because I don't think anyone fully reveals themselves in media like this.  Still, it's far more real than others' mental models.)  

There are times in conversation when it actually is important to the topic to treat the person I'm talking with as a man or woman.  In such cases I should be especially careful not to address the image, but to rely on fact.  (And if I lack facts from evidence, ask, or keep my mouth shut.)  There are other times -- more frequent times -- when "friend" is the most important attribute for the context, or "Harry Potter snob," or whatever.  The better we know someone, the more our mental image helps us address them properly.  If we barely know them at all, then we shouldn't treat the image as having any practical value.

But simply having the image?  I won't say it has no impact -- I'm not that naïve, everything we think has an impact on the way we communicate, and people do communicate differently based on gender assumptions along with many other factors -- but I don't think it's an affront against identity.  And if it is, then there's not much I can do about it except try to keep my images up-to-date and remember that "person" is the only (mostly) safe assumption.  

Am I making any sense here?  Or am I the only one whose head works this way, or is my foot wedged deep in my throat now?  >8->  (The lack of reply to my prior post has me wondering.)

[slic]

I agree with you and Anarkey - everyone seems to feel that having the image is not the problem, but holding onto it "too long" is bad.

Though, I'm still mulling over my response to Thaurismunths.  The "stereotypes types are ok until I see an exception" I take from his post needs some thinking about.

And, frankly, I'm still waiting on palimpsest or hautdesert to chime in. 

I also want to point out that I haven't seen comments about the impact of androgenous handle. I have no problem with them, but does anyone else think are they, in part, a contributer to this mental image creation/assumption we are talking about?

(The lack of reply to my prior post has me wondering.)

I find that a lack of comment implies agreement - most people only have energy for disagreement

[Anarkey]

How are other people responsible for my thoughts about them?  And how is a group responsible for the opinion I hold about the individual for being a member of that group?

The only real two things I took minor issue with in this post.

First off, what a person does is directly responsible for your opinion of them (though not the only thing)! If I see someone kill someone else, or help someone in need, or rob someone, or eat too much, or whatever - their actions dictate my thoughts about them. Granted, we can control how we express it, but I think that a person's actions are as much responsible for how we view them as our own prejudices.

I'm afraid we're going to endlessly disagree on this point, fiveyear.  Not a one of y'all, despite whatever stereotypes I'm hoarding about each, dictates my thoughts.  You may be informing my thoughts, but unless I'm wrong about the Illuminati's Orbital Mind Control Lasers (Hail Eris!) you will not be dictacting anything inside my head.

Observations of people's actions are just that, observations.  Any conclusions drawn from observations (I saw them pigging out at McDonald's, no wonder they're so fat) are the responsibility of the person that added the therefore, in other words, the person whose head they occur in. 

I'm not on board with "the devil made me think it", even if the devil is another person behaving badly.

Secondly, I think it's more judging a person's willful inclusion in a group than the group itself that determines our opinion of an individual. We can't fault someone for being born a certain way. But as far as group dynamics go - if members of a group show a certain tendency we dislike, and the individual within that group is doing nothing to differentiate themselves from that sort of tendency, then I say we have all the right in the world to judge their inclusion in that group.

As a part of this conversation, I think you're going afield here.  Thus far, we're talking mostly about groups that one cannot avoid being grouped in such as gender, age, race, etc.  I can't pretend I'm fifteen if I'm sixty, no matter what.  I don't think you're actually proposing that all sixty-year-olds act like fifteen-year-olds to show how un-sixty they are, so I'll save us that detour by simply pointing out that it's not always possible or desirable to distinguish oneself from the stereotyped group.

More to the point, though, I'm not buying that as a member of a certain group it's my responsibility to argue that I'm not like them, whether I have joined them myself or am grouped by someone using a stereotype.  Goodness, the declamations would never end!  Every vote, every purchase, every social affiliation would demand a sharp delineation of the exact sliver of the Venn diagram that didn't overlap.  And to whom?  How often?  Maybe you have something else in mind, but your description of every Muslim screaming about terrorist bombers suggests to me an endless litany.  That mental image went SF dystopic on me nigh instantly.

Show me someone who claims to have no preconceived notions, and I'll show you a liar.

In this we most certainly do agree.  I don't know anyone here who has had the temerity to advance the claim that they have no preconceived notions.  I haven't even heard anyone saying they're too good for stereotypes.

On the other hand, as I said before, just because a certain quality of human behavior is universal does not mean it is inevitable, or that it gets a free unexamined pass. 

[SFEley]

I find that a lack of comment implies agreement - most people only have energy for disagreement

In the general case I agree with you.  I just want to make sure it's not a case of "Eley's being an ass, but we're not going to tell him so because he's Eley and he runs the joint."

[Swamp]

I don't think this is hard to overcome if no one inflates the degree of damage artificially.  A reasonable person should be able to correct a mistaken model graciously, and to accept correction graciously.  A simple "Actually, I'm..." and a "D'oh!  Noted." should suffice in most situations.  

Steve is exactly right, here.  It's going to happen.  As long as everybody handles it well, it really is no big deal.

It happened to me:

I understand that my handle doesn't betray my gender, but I still would prefer if you didn't assume I'm male.

Point taken.  I apologize. ::hangs his head in shame::

I was corrected by palimpsest in an approprately polite way that got her point accross, I apologized, and we moved on.  I'm glad something was said because, even though I felt stupid for having done it, it has made me change the way I respond on the forums.

I'm also not sure about using gender neutral pronouns.  I think its fine if others do it, but it feels very awkward to use them myself.  

(Side note:  In his story Dream Engine, Tim Pratt uses the pronouns zie (he/she) and zir (his/her) when talking about a character who can transform to different species/genders.  It was very effective for the story.)

[Anarkey]

If you're thinking of them as a man, then their gender (as you've presumed it) matters.  Otherwise you would think of them as something else - human, maybe.  Opponent.  Friend.

I don't think this holds because the mental models are not exclusive of each other.  I think it's perfectly natural to think of someone as male -- and human, and a friend, and bloody annoying when they get on the subject of Harry Potter, and a hundred other things.

Sure.  And that's fair:  to think of a person in all the different ways you can and to use the way that serves the conversation at hand.  Very practical.  I, for one, have no problem being thought of as that-poster-who-is-pedantic-about-Borges (though it would probably hurt my feelings if I were just that-poster-who-is-pedantic).

But an evolving mental model is not a stereotype.  And what we're talking about here is stereotypes.  The purpose of the stereotype is to save you the work of the evolving mental model.  So feeling obligated to label me male or female right off the bat, before you can really interact with me (and this label can be a visual image or it can simply be the label male) feels like stereotyping.  There's a sort of implicit primacy to that label, in that we cannot function interactively until we've pinned it on each other one way or the other.  That's the part that is a shame, to me.
 

I don't think it's sexist merely to have an image of you in my head as male or female.

No, but I would argue that to need to have an image in one's head as to whether one is male or female, is sexist.  Because people are, as you've eloquently explained, tons of other things outside of their gender.

And I've encountered the inability to deal with people outside of gender contexts time and time again in online media.  People want that question settled.  They'll pester you about it, or make assumptions, or whatever, but they just can't handle a gender question mark.  And why?  Online media is one place where it has the possibility of not mattering, so why can't we let it not matter?

It's possible that not everyone maintains such images -- I don't know enough about anyone else's head to say -- but some people do, and I don't think it's wrong or unfortunate.  I personally find it much easier to talk to people than to screen names, and when I think of you as a person I end up with a picture in my head.  My pictures aren't usually of cloaked figures with dark hoods, so they're necessarily going to include gender.

Part of this may be explainable as a divergence in neurology.  I am not a visual person, by and large, and I do actually work with labels in my head that are formless.  Well, no, formless isn't right...but they aren't people, I guess, in the conventional sense.  Like, in my head, J.R. is angular and steep (and she has her picture right there as her icon, but her picture is not my headsense of her) and palimpsest is like a pair of sewing needles, sharp and shiny.  For you, Steve, I have a strong voice sense (I have an auditory memory) so I don't need other abstract stuff, but your voice translates to warm and evening.  Your wife's voice says cheerful and dark, curly hair, though she may be neither in the flesh.  Perhaps this doesn't work for other people and just confirms I'm a little strange, but there it is.  (apologies, too, if my headsense of you is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  My exposure is limited, after all).

It would be sexist and wrong if my image of you precluded treating you as a human being foremost, or influenced my communication such that I ended up talking primarily to the image in my head and forgot about you, the actual person.

Yeah, and I would argue that the need to settle that before you can "deal" with a person is a way of placing the gender foremost.  And the amount of demanding of avatars that are explicit, that help people not make mistakes and that force people to declare themselves on this thread alone may be an indicator of how strong that need is.

But then, I don't require pictures in my head and I may be crazy for it.  So who's to say?

(BTW, I specifically adressed your first post in my previous one, though I did not quote.  I did agree, though.  We aren't ignoring you, honest.)

[Rachel Swirsky]

Sometimes silence means frustration. In this case, it meant frustration.

I am trained as a social anthropologist. Anarkey is right about the way stereotypes get formed. It's called confirmation bias. It means that if you have an idea that "all gay people are sexually promiscuous," you classify anyone who is gay but not sexually promiscuous as an exception.

My grandfather, who was a KKK member, believed there were "some Jews" who were okay -- invariably, the ones he knew well. The rest -- well, they were trying to corrupt society. (By the by, I'm ethnically Jewish on the other side.)

I am in no way responsible for your stereotypes.

Also, I will just reiterate the point. The idea that people class other people wrong is not, in and of itself, a terrible thing on an invidual basis. People are people. We make mistakes.

But, in aggregate, it creates a system where the default is male, white, heterosexual, and etcetera, and the rest of us are *other.*

Therefore, it's helpful to interrogate your assumptions. Will you never make mistakes? Of course you'll make mistakes. But how can raising one's awareness be a bad idea?

Why are WOMEN the ones who have to mark ourselves with ribbons? The "women are fewer on the internet" thing is a red herring. Women have to mark themselves with ribbons in everything. Animated characters, by default, ar egenerally male. Generally, you mark them as female with ribbons and eyelashes and lipstick. This, again, establishes male as the defalut, and female as the other, the marked state.

Writing could mean "people's writing" rahter than men's writing. Writing by women could also be "people's writing" rather than women's writing. But this is not the way we discuss writing.

When the default is white male identity politics, whiteness and maleness become invisible. Therefore, that writing can be called universal. It can be called canon. It can be elevated. 21 male names can be listed without either the interviewer or the interviewee commenting on it, because male is the invisible state, the unmarked state, the state of assumption. Women, the special state, can be edited out without notice. Cuz they're not writers, they're women writers. (See L. Timmel Duchamp's introduction to the collection of stories by Nicola Griffith published by Aqueduct Press. See her letter to James Tiptree in _Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies_.)

The rest of us get tokenism. Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany put together on panels, not because they wrote in a similar fashion, but because they're both black (This from SD's mouth, by the by). Women writers experiencing the same, even though they're more than 50% of the general population.

I would encourage people to go back to the thread where J. R. Blackwell discussed how men's actions in stories are discussed with what "people" do, whereas women's are discussed about what "women" do.

Women are people.

Check.

[Rachel Swirsky]

So if we are going to have "women's writing" and "black's writing" and "youth's writing" and "white's writing" and "men's writing" and "adult’s writing", doesn't it make sense that something needs to be the baseline? Something should be "writing writing".
So what should that baseline be and how do we choose it?

Human writing? Adult writing? Western writing, when you're in a western setting?

Or perhaps, writing could be writing, and then when it's grouped later, for acadeimc purposes, one could look at "black writing" -- the way one currently can look at "writing by people who were born in povertY" or "writing by Irish-Americans" or "writing by men who had mistresses." These aren't marked groups, but they comprise difference. Othering only takes place on some axes, and those axes generally mark power.

It's not coincidence that the groups that have always been in control are those groups which get to be the default. It's a way of consolidating and reinforcing power.

(Also, ditto Slic.)

**

_Writing the Other_ by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. Amazing book. Can not recommend it enough for anyone who takes writing seriously.

[Rachel Swirsky]

All are equally sexist or racist in the absence of data.

Hi Steve,

I disagree with your proposal.

In order for all traits to be equally racist or sexist or whatever, all traits have to be equal in society. Your analysis leaves out power.

And again, I'm not arguing against mental models, as I believe I've noted several times. I am arguing against assuming your mental models are *correct*.

When I call people out by pointing out that I'm female, this is not "manufactured outrage." The idea that the default person is male is something that affects me in my life. It affects how I am perceived when I walk down the street, or when I enter into conversation with someone, or when I'm paid .75 cents on the male dollar, or when I attempt to publish work under my real name.

Your (generic you) mental avatar of me can be male, and at the same time, when you go to write about me, you can still say he or she. You can acknowledge your mental avatar is based on assumptions.

I have tried to use humor to point out that the default is not always correct. My hope is that it will create a bit of awareness next tiem that when someone wants to use a gender-specific pronoun, they'll be aware that the person they're addressing might not be the default male they're assuming.

Everyone makes mistakes about this kind of thing. Lord knows, I do too. But it's not "manufactured outrage" to call it out as the result of systems and assumptions. Nor is it "persecuting thoughtcrims." (Which, btw, we do all the time -- the difference between murder 1 and manslaughter is what was in the killer's head at the time.)

[CatRambo]

Speaking as a writer, I think it's important to challenge, or at least be aware of, the automatic assumptions one makes.  And nowhere, I'll argue, are we more prone to making assumptions than here in the textual world, where the only signifier of a person is a word and sometimes an icon.  It's (to me at least) important to examine how my notions of gender affect my perception of a person or their writing and how it shapes my writing and the characters depicted therein.  Race, class, and gender are all things that (again, imo) no one -- especially writers -- should assume are unchanging or monolithic entities.

I've been working with computers since 1980.  I run an online game and usually use gender-neutral names online because there is a penalty attached to identifying yourself as female.   It can come in the form of men harassing you because they want to netsex and assume that if you're on a BBS and female, that must be what you're all about.  Or it can come in the form of having one's work, achievements, or coding ability automatically in question because of the lack of a cock.  That's a bummer.  And it's tiresome.  And after a while you get a thick skin and just stop mentioning it because it's wearing to have to stick up for for what's important all the time.  But it's still important.  I don't manufacture outrage.  I have it thrust upon me on a daily basis, and at a guess, I don't say anything 90% of the time because I've learned to choose my battles.

I groaned when someone asked me to read this thread because I've seen this fight fought over and over again, sometimes on my own game boards.  So much of it involves the laborious task of  introducing people to the terms of the discussion.  If the pervasiveness of sexism and gender stereotyping in modern society is something that you find hard to perceive and you can't figure out what the fuss is all about but want to, then I humbly and wholeheartedly and with no snark whatsoever suggest going and reading a basic Women's Studies text and evaluating it for yourself to see whether or not any of it makes sense to you, rather than arguing about anecdotal evidence.

I second the recommendation of _Writing the Other_.  It's a great book if you are interested in this sort of debate or even if you're just trying to work on your technique when depicting characters that fall outside a white male heterosexual norm.

[hautdesert]

But an evolving mental model is not a stereotype.  And what we're talking about here is stereotypes.  The purpose of the stereotype is to save you the work of the evolving mental model.  So feeling obligated to label me male or female right off the bat, before you can really interact with me (and this label can be a visual image or it can simply be the label male) feels like stereotyping.  There's a sort of implicit primacy to that label, in that we cannot function interactively until we've pinned it on each other one way or the other.  That's the part that is a shame, to me.

Right!  Exactly.  See, this is where the semantic difference between statistical likelihood and stereotype becomes really important.

A stereotype is not just something that a member of a certain group is more likely to be or do or have or whatever.  A stereotype is rigid, and doesn't actually correlate with actual reality. Sometimes it does--but sometimes a stopped clock tells the right time, too.

"All Canadians like hockey" is a stereotype when, as anarkey's lazy Mexican example shows above, it is applied to all Canadians by the particular stereotype-posessor.  (That is, the viewer, not the person viewed and being categorized.)  And Canadians who don't like hockey are "exceptions" or just ignored completely.  It may well be that statistics bear out the fact that many Canadians like hockey.  Saying, with real knowledge of it, "That person is Canadian, and so they probably like hockey" is not stereotyping.  Saying "That person is Canadian, so they must like hockey, and if they don't they're just an exception to the rule" is stereotyping.

That level of it is thoughtless but more or less harmless.  But how about this one:  Women talk more than men.

Sure, you say, everyone knows it.  Why just look around you and you see women chattering and men not so much.  Obviously women talk more than men, and the stereotype is just an expression of that statistical likelihood.  But see, it's not true.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003565.html

The thing is, stereotypes are not just statistical likelihoods.  They are frames, perceptual filters that affect the way you organize information about other people, and that lead you to believe things about whole classes of people that are demonstrably untrue.

And yes, reading further, confirmation bias.  Exactly.

As far as it being important to speak up and point out that you're not a member of the default class (insofar as doing so gives the lie to the stereotype), yes, I totally agree, slic. (Though I share anarkey's frustration with the idea that one needs to declare otherness at every juncture.) On the other hand, I think it's a shame that there's one supposedly "neutral" position (white, male, straight, etc.) that I need to constantly distinguish myself from.  I have no problem with the fact that people are going to see my handle and assume things about me that aren't true, but I have a problem with the fact that those assumptions are overwhelmingly going to be "white, straight, male."  And while I don't take offense at any given person's assumptions--I assume, maybe wrongly but I don’t think so, that any given person (in this case the posters here) make their assumptions with good intentions, and without meaning to offend or oppress--there's this thing I think needs changing about society--not about people making assumptions, but about the cultural framework that skews those assumptions--and so I intend to speak up, and make people aware of it.  Because you can't question assumptions you don't realize are there.

It's not my intention to "be offended."  It's my intention to point out something that a lot of people never even consider and that I think is important.  I am not outraged by the members of this board, or outraged by mistaken assumptions about my gender--I know good and well that my gender can't be deduced from my handle, I know good and well that posters here are decent folks who would never dream of purposely offending me.  I am outraged by the cultural conditions as a whole, certainly, and yes, Cat, exactly.  And I want to change those conditions as much as I can.  Pointing out the assumptions is one of the ways I act.

[SFEley]

When I call people out by pointing out that I'm female, this is not "manufactured outrage." The idea that the default person is male is something that affects me in my life.

My actual term was "offense," not "outrage," but I take your point.  And for what it's worth, it was not my intention to imply that taking offense is artificial.  I'm annoyed or offended when people get the wrong idea about me too.  How annoyed/offended depends on their intent, whether they should have known better, how stupid their idea really was, etc.  By "manufactured" (and I am not at all implying that you've done this) I meant magnifying the implied scale of the offense beyond the actual offense taken, and beyond the other person's ability to gracefully rectify.  

Your (generic you) mental avatar of me can be male, and at the same time, when you go to write about me, you can still say he or she. You can acknowledge your mental avatar is based on assumptions.

You're absolutely right.  These are things I try to do.  And when I screw up, having it pointed out to me (politely, as you've done) does reinforce my likelihood of remembering the fragility of those models next time.

I have tried to use humor to point out that the default is not always correct.

I want to address this "default/other" duality for a moment.  I think, when it comes to society at large, you're right.  My observations conform with yours, although obviously you notice it more than I do.  Still, I do try not to be stupid or self-deluded.

However.  Regarding this community -- would it make any difference if I told you that when I see a post from a new figure that really catches my interest, my immediate mental model (in the absence of other data) usually has the poster as female?  

That could be wishful thinking to a degree, a "man I wish there were more girls here" thing; but although it isn't entirely.  The numbers don't bear it out if you sort by pure post volume.  But I have access to more information than most people -- names on contest submissions, for instance -- so I know how many of the really good stories came from women.  I can tell you it's disproportionate to the number of submissions from women.  And I also know that in other writing communities (the Viable Paradise e-mail list, for instance) women are frequently the most active correspondents.  That probably colors my perception.

In any case.  For me, here, on this forum, for people who say things that are really interesting, my default seems to be female.  You can call that sexist too if you wish, and I couldn't argue.  But I thought it might interest you.  

 

(Which, btw, we do all the time -- the difference between murder 1 and manslaughter is what was in the killer's head at the time.)

Minor aside, since it's off the track: in cases such as this, thought is an accessory to action.  You're not actually prosecuting the thought, you're prosecuting the action.  If I simply thought about killing someone, I could not be prosecuted.  (Or at least, should not be.)

[Rachel Swirsky]

You're not actually prosecuting the thought, you're prosecuting the action.  If I simply thought about killing someone, I could not be prosecuted.  (Or at least, should not be.)

You're right. I get used to the thoughtcrimes thing being used to argue against hate crimes legislation, so I pulled out that argument. You're correct that it's different here.

However.  Regarding this community -- would it make any difference if I told you that when I see a post from a new figure that really catches my interest, my immediate mental model (in the absence of other data) usually has the poster as female?  ... For me, here, on this forum, for people who say things that are really interesting, my default seems to be female.  You can call that sexist too if you wish, and I couldn't argue.  But I thought it might interest you. 

I wouldn't necessarily call it sexist, for the same reason that I don't believe in reverse racism.

It does interest me. If nothing else, it's interesting because it operates in defiance of cultural norms. I'll have to think more about a sociological analysis of it. I don't have one off the bat.

I have been thinking an awful lot about what you say here though:

so I know how many of the really good stories came from women.

If my calculations from knowing people who entered the contest whose entries have not yet dropped are correct (and they may not be correct), at least 10 of the 21 finalists are by women. It looks to me, from a superficial overview, like this is a higher proportion of women than submitted to the contest. Which is interesting. Among other things, I don't think it could have happened without anonymous submissions.

There are a lot of questions about why something like that might happen... and why it doesn't happen in other venues. I have some theories (which have to do with how the subbing population self-selected), but I'll hold them for now.

[SFEley]

If my calculations from knowing people who entered the contest whose entries have not yet dropped are correct (and they may not be correct), at least 10 of the 21 finalists are by women. It looks to me, from a superficial overview, like this is a higher proportion of women than submitted to the contest.

I'm pretty sure it's more than ten, or at least it will be when Semifinal 7 wraps up.  And yes, the percentage of submissions from women was considerably less -- probably more around 33%, although I haven't done a methodical count, and it'd be hard to say with certainty since names are all I have to go on. 

Oh, and for what it's worth, our submissions editor Scott has been tracking the same trend in Escape Pod.  The percentage of stories we buy from women is markedly higher than the percentage of submissions.  I don't think that says anything at all about any social trends, because the selectors are too narrow a sample group (i.e., me and Scott) but at least I can produce statistical evidence that I think women are cool.  >8->  How many men can say that?

Which is interesting. Among other things, I don't think it could have happened without anonymous submissions.

I'm not as certain about that as you are -- but then I take a lot of pride in the intelligence of the Escape Pod community, which may incline me towards naïve optimism.  >8->  In any case, there's no control population for this particular experiment, so we can't advance beyond suppositions.  A proper experiment could be constructed, say with the same group of stories presented to different populations of judges (one where the names are kept anonymous, one where stories are given the real author names, one where author names are randomized, etc.) but it wouldn't be trivial to set up.

There are a lot of questions about why something like that might happen... and why it doesn't happen in other venues. I have some theories (which have to do with how the subbing population self-selected), but I'll hold them for now.

I'd like to hear them sometime.  Again, my only hypothesis comes down to "Escape Pod fans are smart and cool," and I acknowledge that's not a theory with much depth to it.  >8->

[Rachel Swirsky]

I don't think that says anything at all about any social trends, because the selectors are too narrow a sample group (i.e., me and Scott) but at least I can produce statistical evidence that I think women are cool. 

You, Scalzi, Mamatas, and Jed Hartman.

Potentailly others.

[ClintMemo]

Since this thread inexplicably was my name as the person who started it, I feel I need at least say something.

For what's is worth, I have seen a lot of barriers and stereotypes breaking down over the last few decades.  I commented in the "Heroes" thread that the show has multiple multi-racial couples and no one cares.  Way back when, there was one on "The Jeffersons" and it was very controversial.  In real life, I've noticed that, compared to when I was young, fewer and fewer of the people I see at work (I'm a software developer) are white guys.  I started going to conventions around 1988. The last one I went to was in 2003.  During that time, I noticed more and more women and more and more minorities from year to year.  Even in internet forums, I notice more and more women (when I'm smart enough to notice gender  )
So societal norms do change, just not very fast.

Just as an aside, here's something else I've noticed changing over time:
When I was young, if you shared an apartment with someone, it was usually someone of the same sex.  If it wasn't, then everyone assumed you were "shacking up" and that was considered somewhat scandalous.   Ten years later, if you shared an apartment with someone, it was probably someone of the opposite sex. Everyone still assumed you were having sex, but nobody cared.  But, if you shared an apartment with someone of the same sex, they assumed you were gay and having sex and that was considered scandalous.  Now, you could be sharing an apartment with anyone you want and nobody cares.

[Rachel Swirsky]

So societal norms do change, just not very fast.

Definitely.

However, I don't think things will *keep* changing if people don't keep talking about it, and we haven't reached nirvana yet.

[SFEley]

You, Scalzi, Mamatas, and Jed Hartman.

Fine company, all of them.  (Although Jed did reject one of my stories for Strange Horizons...  Perhaps next time I should submit under "Stephanie Lee" and see what happens.)  >8->

[fiveyearwinter]

Stephanie Lee.


That's pretty clever.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

I would also respectfully submit that one reason you may not personally see it as harmful is because it isn't damaging to you. (Not to imply that all people in the dominant classes see things one way, or that all people in opressed classes do either, but it's harder to see the system if you're at the top of it.)

When we reinforce "white male" as normal, as default -- and that *is* the cultural default -- then writing that's about women the way most writing is about men becomes "women's writing" whereas the writing that's about men the way most writing is, remains just "writing."

When we reinforce "white male" as normal, as default -- and that *is* the cultural default -- then politics that address the issues of black women become "identity politics" whereas the politics that address the issues of white men, which is most politics, is just "politics."

This is called "othering." It's not cool.

I have only skimmed the rest of the thread, so forgive me if the horse I'm about to beat is dead, but this post said something that really bothered me.  While I don't want to single out Palimpsest (I see similar arguments made in similar settings all the time) it seems a touch mean-spirited for someone who hides behind an obscured identity in a forum like this to jump out and say, "Ah-ha!  You assumed I was just like you, and because you happen to belong to the Traditional Dominant Majority, that makes you culturally insensitive!"

Palimpsest's point about "othering" is valid, but that was not what Slic seemed to be saying.  Rather, when he pictures someone with interests similar to his, he pictures someone who looks like himself.  The reason he doesn't see it as harmful is because in his mind, he is relating to someone as an equal; when that person turns out NOT to be a mirror image of himself, does he treat them any differently?  My impression, based on his comments in this forum, is that he probably does not.

Of course, that's how I would behave, and since I don't know Slic, I'm projecting to fill in the blanks.

But my point is that while there is a great deal of race- and gender-based discrimination in the world, white males are just as likely to be suffering from it as anyone else.  Our ancestors did have some pretty stupid notions about superiority and class and the "way of the world", but most of the white males I know are pretty pleased to have been relieved of the white man's burden, and would just like to hang out with the rest of y'all without having to walk on eggshells all the time.  (We would also like to have as much money as everyone seems to assume we do, but that's another topic altogether.)

As for combating "othering", I think it is more important these days to get away from trying to treat everyone as if they were the same, and start to celebrate our differences.  As SF/fantasy fans, I think we all have an edge on the rest of society in THAT department.  I'm not surprised to see the stats on the numbers of women in the contest, but I have been surprised at which stories were written by whom.  If I recall, one of my stories had a few people fooled with regard to the author's gender.  But I highly suspect that, at least in this arena, discovering the "real" identity of your favorite author falls more into the "interesting side-note" category than the "earth-shattering revelation" category.

_{*Note: While trying to compose a thoughtful and non-inflammatory post, I have developed a new bias against "small humans who insist on screaming at each other while their daddy is trying to write".  I hope that my annoyance with that group has not unduly influenced my tone.  Cheers!}

[ClintMemo]

True confession time:

I "walk on eggshells" all the time. I'm so terrified that I'm going to offend someone (which is the last thing I want to do) either by what I say or do or don't say or don't do, that I find myself avoiding certain strangers just because I'd rather stay away from them then run the risk of accidentally doing something culturally stupid or offensive due to my own ignorance.  Yes, I know that sounds pathetic. It is pathetic, but I have gotten better about it in the last few years. However, it's mostly because my ever-hardening heart of stone cares less and less about what other people think of me, especially people I don't actually know.  And yes, I know it's hard to get to know people that are different from you when all you do is try to avoid them, but it still happens, and I'm making conscious effort to overcome this because I don't want my daughter to grow up with the same anxieties that I have.  So far, she hasn't, but she's a better person than I am anyway.

Now in a text-only online forum, I don't have as much of a problem because half the time I can't get very much information from a screen-name anyway. Some of the screen names I have seen look like they came from a random letter password generator. (I'm sure they mean something. I'm just too oblivious to know what that is.)  It's hard to worry about offending someone when you have no sense of what they are like.  I can say what I think or what I feel and the biggest fear is just that I might sound stupid.  Well, I've been through a lot worse things than looking stupid, so I'm not so afraid of that.

Now back to the topic:
There's two things that always come up in these discussions that always bug me. One is that sometimes people want everyone to be the same.  They aren't. People can be equal under the law. People can be of equal intrinsic worth. People can be granted the same opportunities, but no two people are the same.  Everyone is different. Everyone has different talents and tastes and histories and families and values.  Race and gender are part of what makes a person who they are. Why should we deny that?  I'm not saying we should use stereotypes. Stereotypes make lots of assumptions about people based on just a few facts you happen to know about the individual.  Most of the assumptions are wrong most of the time. (Other people have covered this better than me already, so I'll leave it at that.)

Another thing is when people stand up and claim they are proud of their gender and/or ethnicity.  That's part of the KKK stereotype.  "I'm proud to be a white man!"  Why are you proud?  Do you have anything to do with it? No! I say be proud of what you have accomplished.  Be proud that you graduated from high school. Be proud that you graduated from college. Be proud that you got a promotion or a raise. Be proud that you've been happily married for ten years. Be proud when your children do something wonderful (you did have a part in raising and teaching them). Be proud that you entered a story in the escape pod contest and it made it to the semi-finals. Heck, be proud that you drove to work this morning and made it there on time, but don't be proud of something you had no hand in.  That's like being proud because you bought a winning lottery ticket.

[Rachel Swirsky]

it seems a touch mean-spirited for someone who hides behind an obscured identity in a forum like this to jump out and say, "Ah-ha!  You assumed I was just like you, and because you happen to belong to the Traditional Dominant Majority, that makes you culturally insensitive!"

Tad, to be honest, this offends me. It's mean-spirited of you to assume this is my motivation, especially when I've explained my motivation elsewhere.

Palimpsest's point about "othering" is valid, but that was not what Slic seemed to be saying.  Rather, when he pictures someone with interests similar to his, he pictures someone who looks like himself.  The reason he doesn't see it as harmful is because in his mind, he is relating to someone as an equal; when that person turns out NOT to be a mirror image of himself, does he treat them any differently?  My impression, based on his comments in this forum, is that he probably does not.

Fine. And what's hard about not calling me male, if you don't know? What's hard about questioning your assumptions? That's all anyone has asked.

But my point is that while there is a great deal of race- and gender-based discrimination in the world, white males are just as likely to be suffering from it as anyone else.

Do you have evidence for this? I have evidence to back up that it's not true. Women are paid less than men. Black people are paid less than whites. Asians are paid less than whites.

Women and minorities are underrepresented in government, in top corporate positions -- down to genre magazines.

What systemic prejudice is there against white men? Stats, please.

 

most of the white males I know are pretty pleased to have been relieved of the white man's burden, and would just like to hang out with the rest of y'all without having to walk on eggshells all the time.

I'd love you to be free of the white man's burden too. But in the meantime, we live in a country where infant mortality is fantastically higher if you happen not to be white, and where poverty is a heritable condition through the female line.

White men have privelege. I, as a white woman, have privelege. As a white woman with parents who make much more than the statistical norm, I have even more privelege.

That means my way is eased in many things. It means I can go to college without debt. It means I didn't have to work my way through high school to keep groceries on the table. It means that I can be at this MFA program. It means that I could afford to go to one of the seven sisters for my undergraduate education, and that I could leave to find another school when it became intolerable.

It means that I can look at characters on television and see their whiteness as my own. It means I don't have to be ashamed of my skin, or worry about "paper bag tests." It means I don't have to know that I'm part of a demographic that is least likely to marry in the country. It means if I get raped by a white man, I won't have to worry about people refusing to believe me because "black women aren't attractive enough to get raped by white men." It means I don't have to listen to people call me unhygeinic, or listen to teh racist theories of teh bell curve masquerading under the guise of science to say that intelligence only evolved in European climes. It means if I get raped by a black man, I don't have to fear reporting because of the historical clubs that have been used to hit black men over and over, calling them sexually deviant and animalistic. It means that, because of my race, my presence in porn is not automatically "a fetish." It means that my grandparents didn't have to smile more than the normal population, in order to seem subservient. It means I don't have to worry about inviting white people into my space.

As a man, you get priveleges. You get to not be constructed as a victim. You get to be the default in your gender. You get to see media representations of yourself in successful positions, as three-dimensional characters, scattered everywhere. If you go out drinking, no one will say you are asking for rape. If you do get raped, people will say that it's worse on you than for a woman, as a prominent rape activist recently said about men who are raped. If you go to work and need to take time off for your children, you will be seen as a family man who is responsible, where women who do the same are frequently seen as having their attentions unhealthily divided between family and home.

(We would also like to have as much money as everyone seems to assume we do, but that's another topic altogether.)

No one said individual white men are rich. I said that white men, as a class, make more money and are more represented than women and minorities, as classes.

But I highly suspect that, at least in this arena, discovering the "real" identity of your favorite author falls more into the "interesting side-note" category than the "earth-shattering revelation" category.

I can understand where it's an interesting side note to you. But I live in a world where most of the time when I read lists of people's favorite authors, almost all, if not all of them are male, way out of proportion to the general population, and even out of proportion to the publications. I live in a world where men are more likely to get long reviews in locus, to be nominated for several of the major awards, and make it onto the table of contents of the big three magazines. I live in a world where most publications receive far fewer submissions by women then men, and then *publish percentages even less than that*. I live in a world where Harper's magazine publishes seven men to every woman, where 6 of their last twelve issues had no women writers in them at all.

But, in an anonymous contest, you take our bylines off, and women represent half the final contestants? That's interesting. For someone whose career may be impeded by sexism, it's very interesting indeed.

For someone whose career won't be? For someone whose gender allows them to be the subject of "universal" literature? For someone for whom this is a hobby? Maybe this is an interesting side-note.

But perhaps you can see why it's more than that to me.

[hautdesert]

I have only skimmed the rest of the thread, so forgive me if the horse I'm about to beat is dead, but this post said something that really bothered me.  While I don't want to single out Palimpsest (I see similar arguments made in similar settings all the time) it seems a touch mean-spirited for someone who hides behind an obscured identity in a forum like this to jump out and say, "Ah-ha!  You assumed I was just like you, and because you happen to belong to the Traditional Dominant Majority, that makes you culturally insensitive!"

You are misrepresenting Palimpsest's point.

It is not the mistaken assumption that is being called out here.  It's the fact that without any other markers, a person is assumed to be male.  It is not the fact that you had a fifty-fifty chance to get it right and picked wrong--it's the fact that you theoretically have a fifty-fifty chance, but in reality the vast majority of people are going to assume maleness if there is no other data.

It is not a question of someone assuming that others are like themselves.  It is a question of assuming that others are male, white, and straight no matter what they, themselves are.  You happen to be male, and so you aren't seeing it from that angle.

Once again, the offense is not in having guessed wrong. I'm really not sure how to state it more clearly, frankly.  This is absolutely not a question of someone hiding behind a neutral handle and then jumping out and yelling "gotcha!"

Here, look at it like this.  Pretend I've just drawn a stick figure--you know, standard, default thing, a line for a body, circle for a head, lines for arms and legs.  Now, I go and ask people to tell me about the stick figure.  Is it a man or a woman?  What are most people going to answer?

You and I, and anyone who thinks about it know that the stick figure is genderless, there's no way to know one way or the other if it's male or female.  But most people will quickly tell you that it's male, and will only recognize one drawn with, say, a triangle body as female.

The genderless, unmarked, undistinguished figure is assumed to be male--not just by men.  It's the default, "normal" state.  This carries over into everything, and the end result is that things that are "male" centered are considered unmarked, plain, default and universal, and anything that's feminine is different, particular, not universal.

It is not that your assumption in particular is offensive, it is that it is part of a much larger tendency that sustains a patently unjust system.

But my point is that while there is a great deal of race- and gender-based discrimination in the world, white males are just as likely to be suffering from it as anyone else.

Okay, I'm going to have to be completely honest about this.  No, white males are not just as likely to be suffering from it as anyone else.  This is not to say that white males are all guilty and should be walking around in sackcloth and ashes doing pennance or anything, but really, be aware of the fact that every white male in the US--every single one--benefits from being white and male.  You benefit in ways that are most likely completely invisible to you, so automatic in your life that you take them as completely routine, like the air around you.

I benefit from being white and straight, in the same ways, but every day of my life I run up against the ways I am disadvantaged because I am not male.  I can't make myself not white, or not straight, I can't avoid the privelege those states give me, but I can be aware of the fact that I have that privelege, and not get defensive when I'm called on it.  I can try to be aware of the actions and thought patterns in myself that might serve to reinforce a situation I know is inequitable.

[Rachel Swirsky]

Hi Clint,

I appreciate your willingness to discuss your anxiety in this forum. Thank you.

Race and gender are part of what makes a person who they are. Why should we deny that?  

I'm not sure whether you think I'm arguing this. It's not somethign I believe. If you can point me to places which seem to indicate this is my perspective, I'd be happy to discuss it with you.

Another thing is when people stand up and claim they are proud of their gender and/or ethnicity.  That's part of the KKK stereotype.  "I'm proud to be a white man!"  Why are you proud?  Do you have anything to do with it? ... That's like being proud because you bought a winning lottery ticket.

I think this is very well put.