Sayeth the Girl

Alicorn

Disclaimer: If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.

For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says

As far as I can tell, I am the most active female poster on Less Wrong. (AnnaSalamon has higher karma than I, but she hasn't commented on anything for two months now.) There are not many of us. This is usually immaterial. Heck, sometimes people don't even notice in spite of my girly username, my self-introduction, and the fact that I'm now apparently the feminism police of Less Wrong.

My life is not about being a girl. In fact, I'm less preoccupied with feminism and women's special interest issues than most of the women I know, and some of the men. It's not my pet topic. I do not focus on feminist philosophy in school. I took an "Early Modern Women Philosophers" course because I needed the history credit, had room for a suitable class in a semester when one was offered, and heard the teacher was nice, and I was pretty bored. I wound up doing my midterm paper on Malebranche in that class because we'd covered him to give context to Mary Astell, and he was more interesting than she was. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary. Given the choice, I have lots of things I'd rather be doing than ferreting out hidden or less-than-hidden sexism on one of my favorite websites.

Unfortunately, nobody else seems to want to do it either, and I'm not content to leave it undone. I suppose I could abandon the site and leave it even more masculine so the guys could all talk in their own language, unimpeded by stupid chicks being stupidly offended by completely unproblematic things like objectification and just plain jerkitude. I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended. (In general, I'm very hard to offend. The fact that people here have succeeded in doing so anyway without even, apparently, going out of their way to do it should be a great big red flag that something's up.) If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.

So can I get some help? Some lovely people have thrown in their support, but usually after I or, more rarely, someone else sounds the alarm, and usually without much persistence or apparent investment. There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments that perpetuate the problems, which does nothing to disincentivize being piggish around here - some people seem to earnestly care about the problem, but this isn't enforced by the community at large, it's just a preexisting disposition (near as I can tell).

I would like help reducing the incidence of:

Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being. (Non-women can also be objectified, and that too should be stopped.)
Casual use of masculine and/or heteronormative examples in posts and comments that aren't explicitly about gender. It's just not that hard to come up with an unsexed example. Be especially careful when using the second person. If you need to use an example with a gender, there's no reason to consider male the default - consider choosing randomly, or you could use a real person as an example (who isn't presumed to archetypically represent anyone in the audience) instead of a hypothetical one (who might be).
Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data (responsibly gathered and interpreted). The cost of being wrong about this sort of thing is high, even if the culprits don't bear it themselves, and extreme care should be taken.
Fawning admiration of pickup artists who attain their fame by the systematic manipulation of women. If it is necessary to refer admiringly to a pickup artist or pickup strategy (I'm not sure why it would be, but if), care should be taken to choose one whose methods are explicitly non-depersonalizing, and disclaim that specifically in the comment.

We could use more of the following:

Thoughtful use of qualifiers and disclaimers in talk about sex and gender. Robin is not right.
Attention to the privileges of masculinity and attempts to reduce that disparity. (Note that of course there are also female privileges, but until Less Wrong hosts custody battles or we start suspecting that some of us might be violent criminals, they are unlikely to come into play nearly so much in this location.)

Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.

For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says

I would like help reducing the incidence of:

Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being. (Non-women can also be objectified, and that too should be stopped.)
Casual use of masculine and/or heteronormative examples in posts and comments that aren't explicitly about gender. It's just not that hard to come up with an unsexed example. Be especially careful when using the second person. If you need to use an example with a gender, there's no reason to consider male the default - consider choosing randomly, or you could use a real person as an example (who isn't presumed to archetypically represent anyone in the audience) instead of a hypothetical one (who might be).
Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data (responsibly gathered and interpreted). The cost of being wrong about this sort of thing is high, even if the culprits don't bear it themselves, and extreme care should be taken.
Fawning admiration of pickup artists who attain their fame by the systematic manipulation of women. If it is necessary to refer admiringly to a pickup artist or pickup strategy (I'm not sure why it would be, but if), care should be taken to choose one whose methods are explicitly non-depersonalizing, and disclaim that specifically in the comment.

We could use more of the following:

Thoughtful use of qualifiers and disclaimers in talk about sex and gender. Robin is not right.
Attention to the privileges of masculinity and attempts to reduce that disparity. (Note that of course there are also female privileges, but until Less Wrong hosts custody battles or we start suspecting that some of us might be violent criminals, they are unlikely to come into play nearly so much in this location.)

Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.

So, was searching "Jezebel" on Lesswrong after seeing that one reddit poster who posted a comment got featured on that site. Then searched "Jezebel" on LW and got here.

A few things I'd like to address, despite this article being rather old:

Most important of all, actually. Have your view changed? Because otherwise, I'm afraid the answers I'll be getting will be somewhat different, at least that's what I feel when I think about it. If you have a quality record of Alicorn 2009 then it would be nice but Alicorn 2015 is fine too (sorry, I know how women fret over how old they are)
Can you say what makes this post any better than any other post about women saying they feel uncomfortable? This post seems quite generic. I've seen women do this sometimes and it's always the same thing, almost as if they're saying they want to be treated better. It's okay, but at the same time there's many things involved. Are you sure your feeling is the same as what other people feel? I personally do not feel any reason to treat you any better than other posters. But I really do wonder if there's some phenomenon that women suffer some sort of self-discrimination, or maybe inadequetness. Have you ever felt like that?
There was supposed to be a question here, but I decided PM is a better way to do it. Despite how amusing a flamewar on an old thread sounds like.
Have you ever thought that it cannot be changed? And if it could be changed, your method is ineffective? SPOILER ALERT: I'm male, and only 160cm tall (5'3 for you imperialists) and I can't say I'm perfectly fine with my height. You probably never thought of how it feels to see so many women who are either taller than you naturally or taller than you once they put their heels on. This doesn't feel nice. You might say I'm comparing your (or the female hive-mind, or whatever else) uneasiness to mine, but I'm short enough that it heppens almost too much. Now, there are clear differences between us. I guess we can let it slide for one person. An exception, and not the rule, or whatever. But at the same time, this isn't the first time I see this and probably not the last. Certainly the first time on a place where rational discussion is encoureged more than others, but when you see somme things happen in a variety of places you just have to wonder what's really behind it other than "this and that repeating patterns". And back to the first two sentences.. I personally cannot cut all women 10cm in height (that would only compensate for the heels anyway) the same way as you cannot alter, artificially or naturally or in any other way how men behave. You can say you're feeling uncomfortable all day, but I doubt you do it. I do honestly feel that my height isn't satisfactory quite often. But will crying (and yes, I don't care for your first paragraph at this point) about any of those two things solve them in even a fraction of them? No. You can only make your presence known here and if you feel attached to this pace as you say you are, recruit some more women here and ruin the equilbrium, or whatever you'd think makes sense (women, making sense, haha!). The same way as the only way I can stand out (oh, the irony) is to make better jokes, to dress better, to have more money or more impressive skills or whatever. You do not start at the goal; you work yourself there with great effort and tsuyoku naritai. Can you eat fruit and see flowers blooming without even planting a seed? There is no logic there. So now back to the original questions. Do you think it can be changed? And if so, do you think you're doing it the right way? I'll expand a bit on the second question at question number 6.
Have you ever felt those gender wars to be silly? Maybe I'm too selfish to consider other views but sometimes I can't help but think "these views are dumb and your ignorance is absolutely not as good as my knowledge". Again, I wouldn't discriminate or anything because the other person is a woman. But I often see women doing XYZ. Is it offensive to say "oh, women" when I see XYZ? Now that's stupid. Once again, I treat people as individuals, I have nothing more to say other than "don't shoot me because I'm not in your yard".
I say posts like these aren't really the way to do it. Why? Because it makes me feel like "shh, there's women in the room, you can't say that" and now that's bad for rational discussion. For general social gatherings it's okay though. But not on LW or any place that emphasizes rationality. Nobody said rationality is gender-bound either. I don't care for research nor ancedentals or whatever. No flowers without seeds. You cannot come in to a man-dominated community and just say "I'm a woman, this and that topics aren't very comfortable for me to see, please don't talk about them, mmkay?". It's already too straining to think that if you make some silly remark or make a mistake or whatever some Lesswrong Police Departmant Officer Psuedkowsky would be there to eat me alive. Well, that's an exaggeration but you don't want to appear too dumb in places where intellect is valued. Wouldn't want Miss Alisoccer to bat me in the head, either. Bottom line: I think you're doing what you want to do the wrong way. What do you think?

PSA: I'm posting this only because you've been particularly nice on me on IRC. You can ignore this message or whatever if you want, I'm sure some other poor soul will take arms in the illusionary gender wars and as usual, die on the battlefield of a zero-sum shootout. P/S/A/2: I might be a little bit biased after seeing so much "women in tech" bullcrap. You're also free to ask me anything you'd wanna know if you think it would clear the fog up a bit. P//S//A//III: I'm reading the comments and looking for some new ammo for my next fight in the gender wars.

I'm posting this only because you've been particularly nice on me on IRC.

I don't really hang out on IRC except for a private channel in which my beta readers assemble. Are you sure that was me? I wouldn't want to respond to a post that was composed in error.

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