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Alejandro1 comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong
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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!