Will Wilkinson wants more people to be more like Will Wilkinson
Perhaps you’ve read the blog post in which new media thinker Clay Shirky called on women to be more like men in being over-ambitious professionally, and not hesitating to be a little obnoxious in getting what they want. I loved the post.
Will Wilkinson responded by writing that it perplexed him. Because, after all, if men get ahead at least in part by being obnoxious, isn’t the problem with men? Shouldn’t we be calling on men to be more feminine, rather than women to be more masculine? That’s a perfectly valid argument. The only problem is that over here in the real world, that’s not how life works.
Will cites approvingly The American Prospect‘s Ann Friedman, who writes :
Just as self-defense classes are not a solution to the problem of campus rape, self-advancement classes will not, on their own, improve things for women in the professional world.
That’s actually a great comparison. Self-defense classes are like ambition for women in that they actually work.
I don’t know about anyone else, but ever since I got married, I think a lot about women, and the role women play in society. Because of my wife, of course, but most importantly, because of the daughters I will one day (inch’Allah) have.
Every time I think about women, or “women’s issues”, I think about my daughters.
We lived for centuries in a world where technology and culture limited women’s possibilities. But sadly today, in the West, the most limiting factor in women’s economic fortunes is women themselves. For example, women without children have the same salaries as their male counterparts.
The idea that my daughters might, for just one second in their life, think that their potential is less than that of a man, that their horizons might be limited, fills me with a mixture of pain, sadness and fury.
Shirky’s post addresses this by calling on women to level the playing field with men. What I liked most about it is that it’s pragmatic. It doesn’t put forward a grand theory of gender backed by partial studies in neurology or genetics or psychology or cognition or astrology. It simply draws simple lessons from everyday observations: women don’t do nearly as much as men to advance themselves, and they should. EDIT: Nor does Shirky claim that this would solve all the problems women face in the workplace. But it’s a good starting place.
Will’s high-minded response fails at a simple reality test. We can’t ask men to not be obnoxious when advancing themselves for the same reason that Iran won’t give up developing nuclear weapons just because it would be nice.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Bill Gates’ testimony in the case of United States v. Microsoft:
He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words like “compete”, “concerned” and “we”. (…) As to his demeanor during the deposition, [Gates later] said, “Did I fence with Boies? … I plead guilty. Whatever that penalty is should be levied against me: rudeness to Boies in the first degree.”
This is a man who is cornered, who might be lose the company he spent 20 years to build, and he doesn’t give an inch. He fights tooth and nail, to the point of absurdity. Well, that’s not very nice. Perhaps we should make it so that men like that are nicer. But if Bill Gates was a nicer guy, we wouldn’t have a nicer Microsoft, and he wouldn’t be a nicer Bill Gates. He wouldn’t be Bill Gates at all. Some other guy who every once in a while acts like a bastard would be Bill Gates. Maybe this guy.
Will is a stalwart defender of free markets, God bless him, but free markets are based on competition. And the reason why competition works is because the people who win competitions are, well, competitive. That’s what all that stuff about animal spirits is all about. What Will is proposing is a sort of cultural socialism, where those who have more drive are coerced into toning down so that the rest can catch up. I don’t think that would work much better than socialism in other areas.
So yes, actually, women need to man up. You don’t show up with a knife for a gunfight.
And I intend to equip my daughters with rocket launchers.
So…you’re saying that forced castration, blowable xanax, and five more years on the teat (or bong) aren’t practicable solutions to the problem?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 1, 10:58 PM · #
Not at stopping rape. They might make a particular woman less likely to be the victim of a rape, but only by making her a less inviting target (and therefore some other woman more so.)
Ann actually makes a pretty compelling case that it doesn’t matter how “aggressive” or “manly” or how many “rocket launchers” a woman has in the marketplace; there are systemic barriers to the achievement of women that aren’t simply a result of women’s behavior. Saying they need to act more like men is just an opportunity for men like yourself to simply divest yourself of any further interest in the problem. “Well, I already told you what you needed to do, Pasqualina; if you’re getting passed over for promotions at your job, that’s your fault. Cowboy up. I gave you a rocket launcher, what more do you want?”
Ann refutes your argument before you even made it. It’s a pity you couldn’t have been arsed to, you know, read it. Instead you somehow tried to “prove” that ambition is a working strategy for women by, um, examples of successful and ambitious men. It’s hard to believe that you even thought about this subject before you posted.
— Chet · Feb 1, 11:18 PM · #
Seems like a false dichotomy to me. Women should be more assertive, and we should all work to re-norming our society so that ass-holiness isn’t a prerequisite to success. This short-term hyper-competitiveness nearly brought the whole economic system to the brink of collapse last year, and so it is far from clear that selfish disregard for the feelings and needs of others is a desirable trait in a businessperson, manager, or employee. The norms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior aren’t immutable laws of nature, and it certainly isn’t inevitable that Iran will nuclearize. For example, it used to be acceptable to enslave children to make your business more competitive. Now it no longer is so.
— Kirk · Feb 1, 11:25 PM · #
This short-term hyper-competitiveness nearly brought the whole economic system to the brink of collapse last year…
Amazing fable.
— Kino Reticulator · Feb 2, 02:37 AM · #
Right, I mean everybody knows that it was poor black people who wrecked the world economy.
— Chet · Feb 2, 02:43 AM · #
I can’t quite figure out if this post is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, PEG. (No doubt a product of my poor education). I have two daughters and a son and, frankly, I’m not at all interested in any of them being “successful” if successful means doing what it takes to be at the top of the corporate (or political or academic or legal or…) heap. I want them to care for themselves and their families, love and serve God, make the best of the gifts and talents they’ve been entrusted with, and generally flourish as much as one can in this world of ours. What else should a father hope for?
(As for the suggestion that we could “re-norm” our society to make it less competitive, now that’s tongue-in-cheek and darned funny to boot!)
— Bryan · Feb 2, 04:26 AM · #
This is a bit of an ancillary point, but why is it that self-defense classes cannot reduce rape?
I am agnostic on this point, particularly as, at least in Ms. Friedman’s piece she specifies “campus rape” (though Chet does not). I could certainly see campus rape as being more resistant to such solutions, due to the prevalence of alcohol, but I’m not sure a blanket assertion of ineffectiveness is warranted.
— Chris · Feb 2, 04:43 AM · #
I’m been all over professional and academia land and I haven’t seen any evidence of this. Huge grain of salt, of course, anecdote anecdote yada yada. But still, honestly. I haven’t seen it. Where I’ve been, where my friends have been, where my 27 year old girlfriend who’s a top exec is right now (in an historically and currently male-dominated industry) — highly valuable women are highly valued.
And yes, Chet, I know you’re itching to show me numbers and studies and trusty furrowed brows that say that women are Slaves To The Man and raped daily by Big Systemic Penis. Please don’t waste your time; I’m much more interested in experience. Maybe some other women could chime in and enlighten me?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 01:00 PM · #
A girlfriend? You?
— turnbuckle · Feb 2, 02:54 PM · #
I know. I’m surprised as well.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 03:18 PM · #
I posted an earlier reply but it seems to have been eaten (or maybe I hit the wrong button). Let me try to do it again.
Chet: I don’t deny that women can and do suffer discrimination in the workplace. What I do deny is that it is the only reason they don’t get ahead as much as men do. I would even (probably) deny that, when it comes to white-collar work in the United States and Western Europe, it is the main reason.
My example about Bill Gates was to show that you succeed by being aggressive.
I have read Friedman’s post, and I actually agree with her that people in positions of influence should keep in mind to lend a hand to women (and minorities) because they too often get passed over. But that’s not a solution.
Bryan:
Amen. I certainly don’t want my daughters to be President of Fortune 500 CEOs or what have you. What I don’t want is for any of them to make life choices predicated on the postulate that “Well, I’m never going to get to do X or Y or Z because I’m a woman.” And I want to equip them so that if they do want to be President or CEOs they don’t feel held back because of their gender.
Kirk:
I actually quite agree with this sentiment. But which one works today, and which one is pie in the sky?
To get back to the college rape analogy, I do desperately want every 19 year old douchebag out there to realize what it means that every human being has dignity and rights. In the meantime, I’ll feel better sending my daughters to college with a black belt in krav maga.
— PEG · Feb 2, 03:40 PM · #
1. I like the concept of “ass-holyness.” But then again, I like big butts, I cannot lie.
2. PEG, I thought you were some kind of Christian or something. Jesus said, “turn the other cheek,” he didn’t say “go forth and be a dick.” I have had women bosses who were dicks and men bosses who were dicks and both kinds were usless dickheaded human beings. Most of the problems in this world are the result of people being dicks. I can see agressivly defending yourself, but that is different from being a dickhead business(wo)man.
— cw · Feb 2, 03:48 PM · #
Ditto to cw’s #2 – worldly success is mutually exclusive with turning the other cheek. But this is more of a quibble; pre-marital sex is also un-Christian, along with saving money, taking the Lord’s name in vain, etc. Everybody compartmentalizes and ignores the faith when there’s a big enough incentive to do so, which I think is okay. Anything else is rationalization.
— bcg · Feb 2, 04:13 PM · #
Bully for you, I guess, but since absolutely nobody made that argument I’m not sure what it’s supposed to prove.
Right, I’m sure his success had absolutely nothing to do with his talent as a computer scientist, luck, an eye for recruiting talent and spotting trends, and sundry other factors. Yes, the only reason Bill Gates is as successful as he is is because of his personal aggression. If only he’d beaten Boies to death with his bare fists, we might all be listening to Zunes instead of to iPods.
Regardless – that’s an example of a man being successful. Again, the point being made to you was that it may not matter how “aggressive” a woman in the marketplace is, if there are profound structural barriers to the success of women. (One barrier would be the obvious double standard that labels an aggressive businessman “ambitious” or “forceful”, but that labels an ambitious and aggressive woman a “bitch.”)
I’m still wondering why you can’t see the incongruity of trying to defend the strategy of aggression for women with examples of aggressive men. The point being made to you is that it’s a strategy that simply doesn’t work when women do it.
The mark of someone completely unserious about gender equality is that they continue to think of rape as a problem that can only be solved by changing the way women behave.
— Chet · Feb 2, 05:00 PM · #
It is illuminating that the only way in which you care to conceptualize the class “women” is as “possible daughters of mine.” Is your semen the root source of your empathy? If you were infertile, would you cease to care?
— Kerry Howley · Feb 2, 06:01 PM · #
You do realize that there are multiple studies demonstrating that “just man up and be aggressive” isn’t a working strategy for women, right?
A man and a woman using the same strategies get very different responses from the people they interact with.
One example would be this study (there’s a link to the full study at the bottom), in which it’s discovered (to the surprise of men, but not women), that women who attempt to negotiate their salary are considered unpleasant and demanding and fewer people are willing to work with them, while people are neutral to men who do the same?
— MouseJunior · Feb 2, 06:54 PM · #
Back when I was dabbling with employment I came this close to a cushy Baker Donelson job but lost out to a smoking hot, highly motivated girl because I used the word “douchebag” in the final interview three times.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere. I think.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 07:49 PM · #
///It is illuminating that the only way in which you care to conceptualize the class “women” is as “possible daughters of mine.” Is your semen the root source of your empathy? If you were infertile, would you cease to care?///
Whenever a male comments on female issues, it’s helpful that he state his actual stake in the matter. Otherwise, he’s simply accused of not caring actually caring about the issue at hand. The opposite is also true. I have less reason to take seriously a woman with sons that disregards concerns over male college graduation rates than some woman with no sons (and no brothers) who claims to “really care” about whether men are falling behind academically but then takes a position that suggests that men are responsible for their own lack of success and society plays no role in it.
— Trumwill · Feb 2, 08:31 PM · #
When you rock your daughters to sleep, do you play them clips of Gordon Gekko’s speech or Patton’s?
— Cruyffian Coiffure · Feb 2, 09:27 PM · #
Leaving aside Gobry’s future girl’s, what about his wife, their future mother? He’s quick to mention the relatively good salaries earned by childless career women, but surprisingly omits the big earnings hit that his wife is likely to incur should she have children.
If she decides to devote herself to raising kids, fine, but what if she wants to merely take several months away and resume her career? She’s much more liable to be penalized for that decision than is Gobry himself. Do Shirky and Gobry believe the inequity here comes down to a difference in self promotion between the genders?
Shirky’s entire analysis is quaint and unconvincing. Even if we accept that aggressive gamesmanship serves any employee well, regardless of sex— and MouseJunior’s post casts doubt about this— is it really true that women on average are meek about their prospects, unwilling to push their abilities? My experience several years ago in grad school says no. I was in an architecture program, and my female peers seemed no more or less likely to be assertive, arrogant or enterprising. The best designers were both male and female, and while I would dispute that cockiness was a defining trait, confidence and self promotion were in no way scarce among the females. This, I believe, had to do with the atmosphere. About half of the faculty and over half of the students were female. No doubt this helped erase or minimize the subtle/not-so-subtle structural discouragements that female students faced in recent generations. (This university only began to admit women in the 1970’s). So, my female classmates were likely to find older students and faculty who were like Ann Friedman, seeking them out, encouraging their talents. This isn’t to suggest they needed special nurturing, just that the environment was fairly comfortable and open to all.
So my long, anecdotal story disagrees with Shirky’s. In an environment where the hangover of sexists structures had largely lifted, I did not find women selling themselves short. To the contrary, they seemed just as likely as the men to tap their talents and flourish. I dispute the existence of Shirky’s alleged chutzpah gap, so I assume other issues factor into the bad salary break working mothers suffer.
— turnbuckle · Feb 2, 09:32 PM · #
Kerry Howley:
You know what, that’s exactly right. You’ve found me out.
Some things are personal to me for personal reasons. Big surprise. I care more passionately about, say, entrepreneurship, since I’ve become an entrepreneur. I care more about road congestion in Paris than in Berlin because I live in Paris. And yes, viewing myself as a (future/potential) parent makes me view the (future/potential) world differently, or perhaps with a different intensity.
Chet:
You know what, that’s a very good point. To be clear: I certainly don’t believe that for one second. But since we’ve been using that analogy, that point has made me rethink my approach here. (I’m not being sarcastic.) I’m still not convinced I’m wrong, it probably has more to do with the analogy’s limits, but it’s worth pondering.
Cruyffian:
Ha! That would be awesome.
turnbuckle:
It’s precisely because I don’t want her to take such a hit that I want to live in a world where women have equal economic opportunities to men. I do believe that a woman can “have it all”, ie a family, a successful career, a lot of money, etc. I believe that a lot of women don’t get that because of discrimination. But I also believe that a lot of women don’t get that because they just, don’t, try hard enough. And it infuriates me. Because it also helps to perpetuate a status quo that is unjust — and makes men feel justified in promoting men rather than women.
— PEG · Feb 2, 11:02 PM · #
I think you are overlooking the rather obvious matter which is that if women wanted to kick men’s asses, they have had all of history to do so and they haven’t. It’s because women want different things.
— Cobb · Feb 3, 12:08 AM · #
Karate ain’t behavior, mon ami. It’s break-the-glass, last resort hail mary passing to escape a rape already underway. Kind of like a shark suit, but less reliable.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 01:03 AM · #
One more obvious matter: a woman is like a pink balloon— if you find one on your lap taking dictation, don’t squeeze it too hard because it might get away.
— Cobb · Feb 3, 01:09 AM · #
Well, good for you. Who would have known, though, from your sweeping endorsement of self-defense classes as a panacea for rape? (Boy, what if you’re a disabled woman in a wheelchair? Look, I’m not dismissing the utility of a class on personal defense. In a DoJ study, the majority of the half or so victims of sexual assault who used physical resistance against their attacker felt that their situation was improved by doing so. But most often, “oh, you should take a personal defense class” is used as a way to blame women for their own rapes, just as the threat of rape is used to secure compliance from women.
I mean, great, you’re going to have your daughters learn krav maga. What if they don’t want to? Are you going to say “you better, or you’ll get raped”?
Why do you believe that?
Like most things you say, KVS, this is so self-obviously retarded that it’s impossible to know that you’re not joking.
— Chet · Feb 3, 01:23 AM · #
That just blew my mind.
Say not that I am retarded! Were I unable to take comfort in the fact that I make a damn fine living off of What I Say, I might be unmanned right now.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 01:37 AM · #
Fair points, PEG. I don’t think we disagree about the value of assertive behavior in the workplace. You don’t want women to come up short for lack of effort. Likewise, let’s hope that any sons you have don’t impose such limits on their careers either.
What’s not evident to me is that women on average don’t try as hard as men to get ahead. While I probably didn’t make it clear in my earlier reply, Shirky’s specific account did not persuade me that it is representative. My experience of women operating in a competitive environment is quite different than his. But then of course, maybe my experience is not representative, either. While I’m all for swapping stories, perhaps this is the point in the discussion where broader surveys/studies— less dependent on anecdote— would be helpful.
— turnbuckle · Feb 3, 02:43 AM · #
Chet:
First of all, thank you for your constructive comments. (Again, not being sarcastic.)
If that’s how it came off then it’s my fault. As KVS wrote, it’s a measure of last resort, and you’ll find it hard to convince me it wouldn’t have an immediate positive effect. Is it a panacea? Of course not. Does it invalidate other approaches? Of course not. Does it follow from my endorsement of self defense classes for women that if women get raped it’s their fault? That’s absurd.
That’s interesting.
I’ve actually never heard anyone say anything of the sort, but maybe I’m just ill-informed.
That would be a start.
Seriously though, I would do the same as if they didn’t want to do their homework, or eat their veggies: explain to them why it’s a useful investment into their future that will reap benefits throughout their lives. (Now the parents with actual children are scoffing — I know, I know, it’s not that simple)
One of the reasons why I endorse self defense for women is because I’ve studied martial arts a lot, and I know from countless experience that they are a tremendous way not just to be able to defend oneself in a crisis situation, but also to strengthen one’s body and mind, to gain a better understanding of one’s body, and last but not least, to boost self confidence, which would in fact be the ultimate goal, with the capacity for self defense as a useful collateral. I mentioned my daughters because this post and thread is about women, but in fact I intend to have all my children learn martial arts.
turnbuckle:
Amen.
If you have any surveys, I’d love to hear about them.
I think anecdote can be valuable as well.
My anecdotal evidence comes in large part from business school. In b school, the people who want to go into lucrative, fast-track careers like finance and top consulting firms (let alone start businesses) are overwhelmingly male. Meanwhile, a disproportionate number of women want to work in marketing, and advertising, and what have you. If you want to work in marketing at L’Oreal that’s fine. But my instinctive response is: don’t complain when 10 years later your classmate who went to McKinsey or Goldman makes twice as much as you. I have encountered a lot of women who complain that the workplace is unfair to women, and how outrageous it is that women make X% of CEOs and Y% of board members, but then say in the same breath they wouldn’t want to, say, become investment bankers, because oh, the hours are so long, and it’s so competitive. And at this point, my inner voice is like: cry me a river.
I should note, incidentally, that I’m pretty confident our financial sector would be much healthier if it were ran by women which, I guess, depending on who you’ll ask, is either feministic or misogynistic. But a woman who becomes the CEO of a top bank will have a lot of (metaphorical) blood on her hands. She’ll have screwed (metaphorically) a bunch of people on her way to the top. Which is possibly how it should be — and in any case, is certainly how it is, which is what I’m interested in.
— PEG · Feb 3, 02:56 PM · #
I’ve not made any quantum leaps in constructiveness. You’ve just decided to pay attention for once. So, congratulate yourself I guess?
Follow some threads on the internet where rape (say, one that made the news) is being discussed, preferably not at a feminist blog, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. You’ll observe that, even on a blog where you might think of the commentariat as being particularly intelligent and educated, there’s absolutely nothing that can happen to a woman that is so bad, most people won’t find a way to blame her for it. She was “dressed provocatively” (even if she wasn’t.) She was “irresponsibly drunk” (even if she’d had only one drink.) And, yes, she was “heedless of her personal safety” (because she didn’t have a black belt in judo.)
Victim shaming is such an incredibly common and reliable feature of the American response to violence against women that I can’t believe you’ve never encountered it. A lot of it is the concern-troll variety, where victim-blaming takes the guise of “helpful advice.”
I can’t tell if you’re joking. Do you understand why using the threat of rape to secure behavioral compliance from your own daughters is a pretty fucking gross thing to even contemplate doing?
— Chet · Feb 3, 05:56 PM · #
What about using the threat of cancer to secure non-smoking behavioral compliance from your daughter? Both rape and cancer are realworld threats; if you look at the numbers, rape is actually the bigger of the two. (I guess that Surgeon General warning is so “gross” that it’s hard to “even contemplate” it, eh, chochbag?)
And sorry, I call bullshit on the self-defense thing. In internet parlance, that means give me a cite. I’ll send you $2 cash if you can find one person out of all the internets that uses lack of self-defense acumen as a way to blame a woman for her rape.
(Methinks you don’t know what “blame” means? Let me help. Blame implies fault, and fault implies causation. Any form — any form — of blaming a woman for her own rape, however misguided, must, and always does, reduce to analyzing the cause qua signal. Dress, signal. 3am in an alley, signal. Acting like you want it, signal. Getting drunk and passing out on his bathroom floor, signal. How in the world does one signal that you know self-defense? How in the world do men pick up on this signal? Simple answer: they can’t. Unless you’re walking around in a gi, you’re martial capability, or lack thereof, is invisible to the naked eye. You might as well say that a woman’s favorite show can be a cause of her rape.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 06:26 PM · #
But rocket launchers would be an awesome signal.
— kenB · Feb 3, 07:20 PM · #
Well, but cancer is a disease. Rape is something that, primarily, men do to women (exceptions to this are vanishingly small.) Nobody’s saying that we live in a “cancer culture”. But we do live in a rape culture, where the victimization of women by rape not only benefits the rapists, but also the other men who are able to exploit the fear and threat of rape to secure female compliance in other things, and therefore rapists are given a substantial amount of cultural cover for their crimes. For instance, by people who never seem to have any advice on men for how not to be rapists, but plenty of advice for women on how not to get raped. Or by people who outright blame a woman for her own rape – or say it couldn’t have possibly been rape, because she “dressed provocatively”, or “gave mixed signals”, or “didn’t know how the game was played” or even because she worked a certain job.
Taking advantage of rape culture just to get your daughters to go to krav maga strikes me as pretty abhorrent, and indicative of either profound ignorance and tone-deafness or outright immorality. I don’t see how a thinking person can countenance it. As a joke, it’s about as funny as rape jokes usually are – not very.
I don’t think anything “causes” a rape except a rapist. It’s amazing that you can’t seem to help but speak about rape except in the passive voice, like it’s some kind of natural disaster that just occasionally happens to a woman. Rape happens because a rapist decided to rape someone. But, of course, confronting that reality means confronting behavior that men need to change – like, for instance, taking advantage of the threat of rape to get women to do what you want – and so it’s just so much easier to pretend that a woman was raped because of how she was dressed, or something she said, or, yes, even what TV shows she likes to watch.
— Chet · Feb 3, 08:10 PM · #
So you’re saying….uh….what are you saying? The only rape I know that’s not universally condemned is prison rape.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 08:30 PM · #
Hypo for Chet: Your friend is going out on a date with Guy X, who you know on good authority to be an unconvicted rapist. Can you tell her “Don’t go out with Guy X, he’s a rapist,” or is that taking advantage of rape culture to control her behavior?
— J Mann · Feb 3, 10:18 PM · #
The majority of society’s approval of rape takes the form of denying that it even is rape.
— Chet · Feb 4, 02:37 AM · #
This is a very interesting thread. Both PEG and Chet make some good points, that make sense within their own frameworks. But they are quite different frameworks – which is the rub of the matter.
@ PEG What you are basically saying, in a seductively argued round-about fashion, is that “It’s a man’s world. Women who want to make their way in it had better just learn to live with that.” Couching this in terms of hypothetical advice to your daughters is a smart way of doing this because, of course, the individual must always learn to live with the world. No one individual can hope to change social norms on their own.
But it’s a little misleading, because the advice you’re giving is not actually to your daughters, who don’t even exist yet. You’re actually dispensing advice to women in general – to the effect that the ways of men are unchangeable, so it is they who must change to accept this fact. But why should this be so? Why should women (in the abstract) be expected to change but men (in the abstract) are not? Just because patriarchy proves that men’s behavioural strategies are more “successful”? Apply this to the rape analogy and things get really disturbing…
Crucially, why did you not talk about the complementary advice you plan to give your sons, eg: “Don’t rape women”. (You will complain that such advice is so obvious as to be redundant, but how do you know? No offence to you, PEG, but your unborn sons might turn out to be potential rapist douchebags…) The asymmetry was glaring.
If we’re talking about providing individuals with strategies to protect themselves against rape, then it’s all very well to suggest martial arts and so on. But if we’re talking about how we can reshape the behavioural norms that govern society, then it is a bit odd to only talk about how women should change their behaviour – and not talk about how men should.
Kristoffer V. Sargent is not, I suspect, “retarded”. But the fact that he thinks rape is a suitable topic for glib one-liners shows that he is a bit of a “douchebag”.
— Mylne Karimov · Feb 4, 09:17 AM · #
Guilty as charged, comrade! I even suspect that your suspecting is a bit too charitable on the suspecting side.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 4, 05:47 PM · #
I think the people who are talking about being more aggressive in terms of being a bigger a$$hole should take another look at the article being linked to. One of the primary examples is taking a big leap in what you say you can do, then working really hard at making sure you can actually do it. That kind of leap is always scary, sometimes approaching the margin ethically, but often very productive… provided the person is committed to delivering and the leap itself is more or less sane.
That kind of thing doesn’t just apply in the corporate world. It could be a caterer taking on a big event, or an artist accepting a big commission. The questions are, (1) can you take that kind of leap, (2) do you want to, and (3) which leaps are worth taking?
It matches my experience that many (although not all) women are a bit too risk-averse when answering those questions. They may underestimate their abilities, overplay the family commitment thing to avoid professional risks, or undersell the benefit of extending themselves. You see this a lot in very talented female students who melt if they get anything below 98% on tests, and who steer away from hard subjects as a result.
There are men who do this too, of course, and keep their horizons narrow to avoid risk.
On the other side are people with unrealistic expectations, who are all leap and no follow-through. Disproportionately, but not exclusively, male.
The place to aim for is in the middle, and the target actually seems rather wide. If you limit it to careers at the top of the financial field, you’re missing the general lesson.
— M.C. · Feb 4, 10:52 PM · #
Chet: Of course I was joking. Dude. Come on.
(On iPhone. More forthcoming later.)
— PEG · Feb 4, 11:05 PM · #
Because if there’s one thing that’s funny, it’s rape. Hold on, lemme get some popcorn and you can start your monologue of Holocaust jokes.
I think you would have come out looking better if you’d just admitted to not having thought about it all that hard. Ignorance is more defensible than cluelessness.
— Chet · Feb 4, 11:08 PM · #
Chet:
Is that a dare? (Joke joke joke)
In all seriousness, I believe in the maxim “one can laugh about everything, just not with everyone” by Pierre Desproges, the greatest French humorist of the 20th century. And the joke about implicitly threatening my daughters with rape seems to me to be more about education than rape itself.
I will certainly grant that I did not anticipate that we would be discussing college rape to such an extent.
If there was any doubt, let me reaffirm yet again that I think that rape is horrible, indefensible, inexcusable and no good very bad.
And furthermore, that it is absurd (and possibly disingenuous) to suggest that proposing woman-driven (even admittedly partial) solutions to the problem is tantamount to excusing rape or blaming victims for it. And if you look at my endorsement of self-defense from a feminist perspective, it seems to me that focusing only on the men implies that women are helpless to do anything about it, which seems much more noxiously patriarchal to me.
Which is the point of this whole discussion: the narrative of women’s status vis-à-vis men in the society focuses almost exclusively on women-as-victims, women-the-oppressed, which seems to me to reinforce the notion that women are poor helpless little flowers to whom we (men) must magnanimously reach down. I find this at least as condescending as 1950s visions of womanhood, and potentially much more perverse in its deleterious effects.
I think one can acknowledge and condemn the existence of biases and barriers against women while proposing solutions that empower women to help themselves.
— PEG · Feb 8, 09:41 AM · #
I’m not saying that women are “helpless.” But when the problem is one of human predation, which is exactly what rape is, the solution should focus on the predator, not on the prey. But for some reason, that’s never ever part of the conversation. When we talk about rape, it’s always about women “taking back the night”, and never about men giving it back to them. It’s always about women with a fistful of car keys, never about men not hanging out at parking lots. It’s always about women learning to distrust any cocktail they didn’t pour themselves, and never about men not seeing a woman’s drink as an avenue for drugs.
It’s always about a conversation that begins with “look, we all know rape is bad” and ends with “and here’s what women need to do about it.” There are a lot of men (like you, PEG) who it seems like the only thing they know about rape is that it’s bad. The result is a substantial number of men who are completely open to admitting that they’ve raped women. It’s hardly an abrogation of women’s free will and agency to suggest that men stop raping them. Indeed, it’s an affirmation of the agency and free will of men.
Great, but I’m wondering if you can propose a solution that actually works. Your proposal that women simply be more like men was refuted before you even made it, which is the reason why your only example of business success by means of aggression is a man. Telling women to be more aggressive doesn’t empower them; it only further subjugates them.
— Chet · Feb 8, 06:11 PM · #
You didn’t say it in so many words, but the endless repetition of these arguments does create that subtext.
Look — vis-à-vis rape, I think we pretty much agree (thankfully). I find your description of a “rape culture” very far-fetched, but I think on the actual solutions we pretty much agree, we just put the emphasis on different places.
Oh please.
First of all, aggressivity is not the same as aggression.
Second of all, if the point is that women be as successful as men, does it “refute” my proposal that I look at successful men to try to analyze just how they became so successful? It’s like someone in the US in the 1950s being accused of being a Communist by analyzing out how the USSR launched Sputnik.
If you want examples of female success — I spent last night watching YouTube clips of Margaret Thatcher. It seems to me that she was pretty man-like in her tactics, if not her demeanor. What is most striking to me about her isn’t that she was elected Prime Minister, it’s that she won a leadership election of the Conservative Party in 1975 — the Conservatives being the “family values” party and the leadership election then being decided by MPs, i.e. a small cadre of almost exclusively old white men who all went to school together. And of course, she won that leadership election after challenging Edward Heath, after she had supported him while he was Prime Minister, something which he always perceived as a betrayal. Whoops. No matter what you think of Thatcher’s policies, I think we should all be glad that there are also women who also do this kind of stuff to get to the top of (male-dominated) hierarchies.
— PEG · Feb 9, 09:59 AM · #
No, it doesn’t, at least, not to anyone not already determined to pretend that rape is just something that happens to women, as opposed to being something that rapists do to women. (Or, infrequently, to men.)
Indeed. According to the OED, their primary difference is that “aggression” is a word in English and “aggressivity” is not.
Yes! It refutes your contention that the secret to a woman’s success will be in her emulation of men if you can’t provide an example of a woman who found success by emulating men.
Again – the argument being made to you is “aggression in business isn’t a successful strategy for women, because men and women in the workplace react very differently to aggression in men than in women.” And your reply is “but look at this man, who found success by being aggressive!” It’s a completely incoherent response. A total non sequitur. I’ve struggled to communicate this incredibly basic point for 4 posts now, and you keep not getting it, somehow. Do you think you could explicate the source of your confusion? I’m wondering if we’re having some kind of language difficulty. The fact that you’re just making up words now doesn’t fill me with enormous confidence that you’re able to understand mine.
No. It’s like someone being accused of not understanding the argument being made to them, because you’re not understanding the argument being made to you.
Do what kind of stuff? Margaret Thatcher is actually a great example of what we’re talking about – someone who found that employing male-like aggression worked for men, but not for her. Margaret Thatcher was regularly excoriated and called a “bitch” for actions and attitudes that, in a male, no one would have found noteworthy. It’s largely the same with any female politician.
— Chet · Feb 9, 07:59 PM · #