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mattnewport comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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Based on what I think are reasonable assumptions: that it is at least as annoying for a male to be referred to as 'she' as vice-versa, that there are many more males than females posting at lesswrong, that the proportion of gender-indeterminate usernames is roughly equal between men and women.
Historically, 'he' has been more commonly used than 'she' when referring to gender indeterminate individuals in English so it doesn't even necessarily imply any gender assumption.
Perhaps interestingly, J.S. Mill tried to argue that "Man" is historically gender-neutral, and so women already have the right to vote in England, since the law refers to "man". He did not win that battle.
My understanding is that "man" is historically gender neutral. Old English used wer (wereman) for adult males and wif (wifman) for adult females. Wif is etymologically related to wife and eventually changed into woman (from wimman). Wer got dropped and all we have left of it is "werewolf".
The use of "man" to refer to only adult males is relatively late, like 1000 A.C.E. -ish.
So a female werewolf should actually be a wifwolf? Excellent!
Or wyfwulf... or something. There was no standardized spelling.
Also, I think woman used to mean wife, in the same way it is occasionally used in casual (grrr) American dialect English today. There might be a different word for an unmarried female (and an unmarried female wolf-person!).
Casual?
With the amount of attention causality gets around here, I have to ask.
Well a language could hardly function if it was acausal, could it?!
Fixed.
If you are talking about a hypothetical or gender-unknown person, using "he" will make it much more likely that people will imagine this person as male. How it's historically been used, and even how it's conventionally used now, are irrelevant if we're talking about its actual cognitive effects.
(For what it's worth, I think this is the best exposition of sexist language I've read. It's fascinating (yet not all that surprising) how some commonplace linguistic patterns become immediately and intuitively appalling to most people if they are simply applied to a different personal attribute.)
(Probably somewhat more so given that referring to each other as 'girls' is a common form of insult among males given that it asserts traits that while rewarded in females are easy targets of abuse in males.)
You don't think females are socially punished for exhibiting "male" traits, or you think it's comparatively insignificant?
This is sort of where I'm at on the issue. I understand that you don't like being referred to as 'he', and I agree that you shouldn't be.
However, my perspective is that 'he' is the default, and if someone refers to me as 'he', that is the only reason. With the handle 'byrnema', I expect people to assume I'm male. Well, it's more subtle than that. I don't expect anyone to make a positive prediction that I'm male -- they shouldn't know -- but since people assign gender in their minds when they consider a person, I expect that assignment to be male.
Does it bother you, specifically, that the default assignment is male?
Or in your case, with the handle Alicorn, that it seems unusual not to update the probability that you're female? If the latter then you really must just ask this person to find out what they were thinking (if they were). Possibly the person is either a little linguistically/socially naive or they were thinking of the name 'Ali' perhaps with an Arabic origin and the 'orn' ending is unclear -- if you don't think of unicorns.
(Why should it be though that a unicorn-associated handle must be a female? Nevertheless, that's the way it is.)
I'd never heard of the word 'alicorn' until I started reading lesswrong and I'm comfortable saying that I am not linguistically naive. It didn't occur to me that it was an actual word until Alicorn posted in a thread that it should be obvious she is female with that user name. Consider that for the same reasons a unicorn-associated handle is associated with being female it might not be an effective handle to signal to males that one is female.
It is probably wise if one is particularly offended by incorrect gender assumptions to pick a username that clearly signals ones gender to the majority of ones audience.
I was not, when I started using this handle, aware of how non-present in popular vocabulary the word "alicorn" is. I thought it was a pretty girly username - maybe not up there with, I dunno, "PinkFlowerPrincess", but perhaps on a par with "Cerise" (a shade of pink), or something subtler like "Purl" (a knitting stitch, also hinting at "Pearl"). It doesn't and was never meant to declare my gender, but I always thought it suggested it. If nothing else, I think "Allison" is a more likely sound-alike than "Ali"-plus-unidentified-suffix, because that actually happened.
It bothers me that there is a default assignment. If one were going to make a brand new default in a situation where none existed, it's my impression that there would be a better (if still very weak) case for making it female instead, but I don't think it's appropriate to make such assumptions.
Thanks for the not-particularly-annoyed-by-"he" datum - but I worry that you imply Alicorn should not be annoyed. Even if this is not your intent, I think it's a good idea to support the right to have a berserk button.
I don't, and here's why: having a negative emotional response to something kills rationality dead. It causes people to forget their well-thought out goals and engage in compulsive, stereotyped behaviors attached to the specific emotion involved, whether it's going off to sulk in a corner, flaming, plotting revenge, or loudly lecturing everyone on proper behavior... ALL of which are unlikely to support rational goals, outside the evolutionary environment that drove the development of those emotions.
(And let's not even get started on motivated reasoning... which, AFAICT, is motivated almost exclusively to avoid negative emotions rather than to obtain positive ones.)
Anyway, if you allow yourself to have a "berserk button" that hijacks your rationality on a regular basis, (and aren't doing anything about it), you're only giving lip service to rationality. Okay, modify that slightly: maybe you don't know HOW to get rid of or work around your button. But you sure as heck shouldn't be arguing for a right to keep it!
(I expect that objections to this comment will largely focus on individual boo lights that people will put forth in support of the idea that some things should be allowed to set off "berserk buttons". But I hope that those people won't bother, unless they can explain why their particular boo light requires them to have a compulsive, fixated response that's faster than their conscious minds can consider the situation and evaluate their options. And I also hope they'll consider why they feel the need to use boo lights to elevate their failings as a rationalist to the status of a moral victory! Lacking a compulsive emotional response to a boo light doesn't alter one's considered outlook or goals, only one's immediate or compulsive reactions.)
With all due respect, I (not at all calmly) disagree. The mistakes that you can make by being emotional are not inevitable, and they are not mistakes because of your emotion - a true emotion is true - they are mistakes because you didn't say, "I can feel my heart racing - did this person just say what I thought they said, or am I misreading?" And so forth.
But if you're right? And if your response is proportionate? Your anger (or ebullience, or jubilation, or bewilderment, if you really want to be rational about analyzing the effects of emotion on rationality) is your power. Do you think Eliezer Yudkowsky works as hard as he does on FAI because, oh, it's a way to spend the time? Do you think that his elegy* for Yehuda Yudkowsky was written out of a sedate sense of familial responsibility? Do you somehow imagine that anything of consequence has ever been accomplished without the force of passion behind it?
I pity your cynicism, if you do.
Edit: I will concede instantly that "berserk button" is a deceptive term, however - what I am discussing is not an instant trigger for unstoppable rage, but merely something which infuriates.
* Edit 2: The term "cri de coeur" was suggested over the message system in place of "elegy" - I think it may well hit nearer the mark as a description.
If your heart weren't racing, you wouldn't have needed to ask the question.
Meanwhile, "true emotion" is rhetoric: the feeling of fear as the hot poker approaches is not rational, unless blind struggling will get it away from your face... and mostly in modern life, it will not... which means you're simply adding unnecessary insult to your imminent injury.
Passion != anger. If it feels bad, you're doing it wrong.
Doesn't matter to my argument: at least a rage trigger is over relatively quickly, while being infuriated over a principle can ruin your life for days or weeks at a time. ;-)
Bad feelings feel bad for a reason: they are actually bad for you.
In regards to the right to have a berzerk button: This depends at least partly on what you mean by a right.
People do have berzerk buttons. I hear "don't have the right to have a berzerk button" as "should make it go away right now-- shouldn't have had it in the first place". On the other hand, "do have the right to have a berzerk button" is problematic in the sense that it can imply that berzerk buttons are a sort of personal property which should never be questioned.
It occurs to me that this is a problem with English which is at least as serious as gendered pronouns. A sense of process isn't built into the language in some places where it would be really useful.
The problem is there in the word "can". Does "you can do it" mean you can do it right now, perhaps if you just tried a bit harder? If you tried a lot harder (and you really should)? After ten years of dedicated work? Something in between?
It is hard to extract that implication given:
You're right - I tried to reread byrnema's comment to avoid that kind of error, but I must have missed that sentence twice. I should not have been so pointed. Thank you for catching my mistake.
Truthfully, it doesn't matter what a person declares in the second sentence if they then negate that sentence with the body of their comment. Perhaps you read for feeling and tone, as I do -- that's why I didn't point to a specific sentence as a defense in my reply.
However, what I was explaining was that while I don't question that Alicorn should feel the way she does, I have a tendency to overly reduce problems (which feels like I'm trivializing them) and that's probably what you were reading. I didn't intend to do that, but since my friends say I always do that, that's probably what I did. (Outside view.)
I would question whether it doesn't count - I believe your statement was sincere, and that counts for an awful lot - but the feeling and tone was definitely what I responded to. On the gripping hand, I was being quite precise when I said "should not have been so pointed" - I think emphasizing the right to be angry is important in several contexts (example), and I would want to have still said something about the right to a berserk button ... but not the slanted "even if this was not your intent".
(Incidentally, I appreciate the degree of nuance you've been employing in your replies - I suspect this is one of the more valuable benefits you gain from your penchant to reduce problems!)
I hope that my comment wouldn't be interpreted that way -- I support how Alicorn feels about the issue even if I don't feel the same way. (I might anyway if my handle name was Alicorn -- or Cerise.)
However, I've been told by close friends that the most annoying trait about me is that I'm a "spin doctor" -- that I think that problems can be 'fixed' just by framing them differently.
Y'know, given the quote wedrifid pulled out, I don't think it should be except by a careless reader - mea culpa.
That "spin doctor" thing makes me wonder, though: is there some substantial variance* in the ability of people to reframe their way away from berserk buttons? It would explain some comments I have received if I personally am lacking in that attribute.
* Edited to add link.
Recognizing that a berzerk button (I had to google that by the way, not everyone is a tvtropes fanatic contrary to what seems to be a common assumption here) is a fact about you and not a flaw in the external world is probably part of it. From an instrumental rationality point of view it is often easier to control or adjust your own reaction than it is to change the world to avoid your triggers.
It's on TvTropes? I just assumed "less stigmatised way of saying tantrum" based off context.
The thing is that these triggers exist only for the purpose of changing the world. The most significant emotions are a way to have a credible precomittment to do a mutually destructive thing if the other(s) do(es) not comply. For example, by damaging one's own body with excess adrenalin and cortisol while causing similar distress to those who defected in your constructed game.
Quite often the triggers are actually well calibrated to serve our interests and it isn't always wise to mess with them.
Fixed that for you. ;-)
I guessed at the meaning but it sounded like a specific reference to me, TVTropes is the first hit on Google.
True, the tactic can also backfire however. I respond badly to such tactics, presumably partially an evolved defense to their widespread use.
I apologize for not defining the term - links to TV Tropes spell trouble for a lot of people.
True - but I prefer to advocate for adaptive behavior, rather than altered emotional response, in many cases. Pronouns is one such.
The problem with that is that the behaviour that needs adapting is that of other people (in this case, to a first approximation, all English speakers). The emotional response is ones own and therefore easier to change.
You might continue to lobby for others to change their behaviour once the emotional response has been brought under control but unless you think the emotional response is actually the optimal way to change the behaviour of others it is not desirable.
And instrumental rationality suggests that a non-berserk advocate is a more convincing advocate... so often the best way to successfully get people to change their behavior is to first get rid of your button(s).
(Being happily married to a fellow mindhacker, I have much experience with this phenomenon, as both the advocate and advocatee. ;-) )
Yes, reframing is a learnable skill. Family therapist Virginia Satir had a reputation as an exemplar of that skill. One book I've read, "The patterns of her magic", goes a little into the details of how it's done.
I think so. It seems to depend on personality (innate emphasis on practical vs political thinking for example), education (cognitive behavioral therapy emphazises reframing things away from awfulising and suchlike) and status ('berzerk button' is a high status only option).
(I should note that I am not trying to label the berzerk button as defective by observing that it is trained away from in CBT. CBT is intended for people who's existing thought process is not working for them. If going berzerk or otherwise allowing things to make you angry gets you what you want then CBTing it away is not advocated.)
It would surprise me if there were some psychological trait which didn't show a lot of variance.
We probably wouldn't even call it a trait.
Really, that's the best way to fix problems. Funny enough, when our brains aren't reacting to something as though it's some kind of threat to our life or status, our higher reasoning actually functions and lets us change the outside world in a more sensible way.
I don't think this makes you a "spin doctor", unless you're attempting to reframe others' problems for your benefit at their expense.
No, I would estimate that to be roughly equal. I don't think females use 'man' or 'boy' to insult other females in the same way as males use 'woman' or 'girl' to insult each other.
The explanation I give suggests only that the use of 'girl' as an insult is not intended to be of the form "You are a girl. Girls are bad, therefore you are bad." It is inteded to be of the form "You have female traits. Female traits on a male are extremely low status. You have status below both other males and females".
It looked like you were using the fact that males insult each other by insinuating that they have female traits to back up the hypothesis that it is more insulting for a male to be referred to with the wrong pronoun. If you think that the reverse scenario is about equal, why would this make it more insulting, rather than just as insulting?
For the same reason that I would take offence at being called a 'bastard' even though I actually couldn't care less that my parents happened to be married at the time of my conception.
If something is commonly used as an insult then that can be expected to cause offence independently of any factual content. So my claim is:
It's a typical insult. Insults bad. That's all.
I think I might be talking past you. Let me try to re-frame my confusion:
Art calls Ben "girly" because Ben has exhibited stereotypically feminine trait F.
Meanwhile, Amy calls Bev "mannish" because Bev has exhibited stereotypically masculine trait M.
It looks like both Ben and Bev should be insulted, by about the same amount, and you seemed to assent to this, above.
Given this background, if Random Internet Person goes on to refer to Amy as "he" and Art as "she", whence your above indication that Art should be more insulted than Amy?
Well put. I'm not myself exposed to what girls do to each other behind the scenes while I know males far better. Would you consider 'mannish' to be a ubiquitous insult? If so then Art should not be insulted more than Amy by 'he'/'she' mistakes.
My impression is that 'mannish' is used less than 'girly' to such a degree that the implied insult (by this specific mechanism) of 'he' is much less 'she'.
I can't think of a way to non-insultingly apply "mannish" to a woman.
And I can't think of 'mannish' being used ever. My impression was that female competition tended to be a little more sophisticated than banal locker room banter.
Speaking as an actual bastard, I'm more familiar with the term being applied at time of birth, not conception.
Good point.
(I wonder about people who divorce during the gestation period.)
If nothing else, priming would put the lie to that.
Probably. But it gets more annoying the more it happens. I have become more annoyed every time it's happened to me. And it happens more to women than it does to men. So this assumption loses validity over time for any given person. And it is just not that hard to avoid guessing!
AAAAAAAAAAAUGH
Ahem. I mean:
No.
Assuming history to be unswayed by politics and the meaning of common words to be determined by their usage wouldn't this be "Yes. But I vehemently object and anyone using pronouns in this way should be punished with unimaginable hoards of dust specks and furthermore be socially disapproved of"?
I actually think 'AAAAAAAAAAAUGH' fits better! :)
I am not so sure "No" is an indefensible response.
"so it doesn't even necessarily imply any gender assumption." may be a false claim. For example, if you were reading something about a generic, ostensibly nongendered "he", and then a mention of "his wife", I imagine that wouldn't be too jarring. But if instead, say, the text went on to talk about him giving birth, I imagine most people would be a little confused.
So there are some assumptions implicit in the male pronoun.
"Doesn't even necessarily" is different from "appropriate in every possible situation including when the gender is not indeterminate". Matthew's claim was:
If you think that is incorrect, you're just wrong. If you disapprove and are distressed by that historical fact then that is a legitimate position of the kind that can be expressed by vocalized but non verbal expressions of distress.
I take the "doesn't even necessarily apply [..]" to be equivalent to the claim that use of the male pronoun is never in itself sufficient to establish some assumption with respect to gender or sex, which claim I disagree with; if the pronoun would be surprising in some circumstances, for reasons of sex or gender, then it carries those connotations everywhere.
Eh... that's not "necessarily" right. The historical usage of "he" to refer to gender indeterminate individuals doesn't imply that there isn't a necessary (to the extent that that term is meaningful in discussions of this sort) gender assumption in modern usage. In fact, that's the problem - the "indeterminate" individual is by default male (white, middle class, straight, cisgendered, whatevs).
Yes, hence the appropriateness of "AAAAAARGH". It is a flaw in the language in an objective effectiveness of conveying information sense. Plus it would piss of Alicorn legitimately.
If you think about it, could be offensive to males too. Why do they get special wordly attention while we get stuck with word that doesn't allow the conveyance of distinct sexual identity while the females can be either? It's a good thing that usage is becoming obsolete ('she' can be used indeterminately too and he less often), otherwise I'd have to care too.
Speaking only for myself here, but in regards to race, I've been moved somewhat from unmarked to marked state (while remaining white, or possibly "white"), and in my experience, being unmarked is a lot more restful.
I don't understand:
The probability that anyone would (non-jokingly) refer to me as "he" while knowing (or even strongly suspecting!) that I am in fact female is miniscule; the probability that I am female (even given locally appropriate priors) isn't; and if I were male and known to be so, the probability that I'd be referred to as "he" would approach 1. Referring to someone as "he" constitutes Bayesian evidence to one's audience that the referred-to individual is male. Be not thou casual with the Bayesian evidence.
That is evidence in favor of that usage of pronouns being undesirable for efficient communication of evidence. It doesn't comment particularly on whether or not that particular usage has been traditionally accepted.
I'm not trying to argue with your objection to that kind of usage. I certainly don't consider using 'he' by default any better than using 'she' by default. I think "AAAAAAAAAAUGH" is a valid response. It is just ironically more valid than 'No'.