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philh comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong
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Single data point: when I read "I once had a a civil argument with a woman", it immediately felt sexist to me. I think I half-expected something about "how men think versus how women think". The whole thing doesn't feel sexist to me, just that opening.
(I do not necessarily endorse that feeling.)
Yep. It's a matter of what features are salient to mention.
If someone said "I once had a civil argument with a German" it would sound like they were saying that it was unusual or notable for an argument with a German to be civil; or possibly that the person's Germanness was somehow relevant to the civility of the argument — maybe they cited Goethe or something?
(On the other hand, it might be that they were trying to imply that they were well-traveled or cosmopolitan; that they've talked to people of a lot of nationalities.)
If the identity mentioned is a stereotyped group, a lot of people would tend to mentally activate the stereotype.
I did not see a sexist subtext, where I think I would have seen a discriminatory subtext if he had used "I once had a civil argument with a German," because "woman" in this case explains his later pronoun use. If the person had been a man, I would have expected him to say "man", rather than "person", to better clarify his later use of "he."
In retrospect though, I can see why other people would interpret it as having a sexist subtext.
I think this thread is also experiencing this effect.
Quick! Where did your brain put emphasis first?! Maybe we need a poll to see if the distribution is roughly uniform. (Or maybe it's not uniform as shown by existing research I don't know about.)
Also, I really like the German example.
I once had a civil argument with a German. Germans' arguments are usually uncivil, but this one time ....
I once had a civil argument with a German. Most of my arguments with Germans are flamewars and cussin'.
I once had a civil argument with a German. Germans are so civil, even their arguments are civil!
I once had a civil argument with a German. I'm so good at civil arguments (or so well-traveled) I've even had one with a German!
I once had a civil argument with a German. I have such interesting and unusual experiences.
I once had a civil argument with a German. The rest of you have merely heard about civil arguments with Germans.
I once had a civil argument with a German. As opposed to a civil argument about a German.
I once had a civil argument with a German. I'm not trying to generalize the pattern to all Germans.
Trouble is, the default stress pattern is identical to the last. And you don't usually interpret the first sentence of a text with a non-default stress pattern when the following text doesn't force you.
I was primed by reading shminux's comment before seeing the quote itself, so I'll exclude myself from the sample.
Another data point: I had the very same experience (including not endorsing the feeling - I actually was a bit embarrassed).
In response to three data points, I update in the direction of the quote: a) pattern-matching to typical sexist beliefs, and b) possibly causing a reinforcement of sexist biases in some readers. I still don't think the quote was sexist in intent, just meaning to illustrate a relativist Zeitgeist with a personal anecdote that happened to feature a woman, but I recognize that its actual effect can be divorced from its intent.
What should I do? Edit it to include some sort of disclaimer?
The next few sentences, ending with "I think that’s how most of us roll these days. It’s laziness, mostly. I’m guilty of it too" show that this was, in fact, not a case of stereotyping.
I think you could change "a woman" to "[someone]" using those editorial bracket things and the pronouns won't be weird. Just draw attention away from the word and make the quote closer to what you wanted it to say? It makes perfect sense to me that something yanked out of its context would acquire weird connotations that you didn't intend and didn't notice because you read it in context.
(I also feel like you get a similar effect if you change "woman" to "lady" and I have no idea why.)
That's probably what I've done, too.
(I'm not a native speaker, so don't trust me about this.) Using “woman” suggests that the only salient feature about that person was her gender, which is indeed kind-of weird IMO; OTOH, using “lady” (or “girl”) would suggest that her adult (or young) age was also salient, and that would lower my estimate for how strongly the out-group homogeneity effect affects Rod Dreher when he thinks about women. (Also, I'm under the impression that many of the stereotypes about women are closer to the truth in the case of younger women than in the case of older ones (as an ageing effect, not a cohort effect), though this might be due to selection effects in the groups of people I interact with.)
Good idea, I did that. Thanks for the suggestion!