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Azathoth123 comments on Link: quotas-microaggression-and-meritocracy - Less Wrong
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I don't know, the presenter didn't say. Although the fact that these were presented as examples of behaviors not to engage in, is telling. Also even if they don't bring a lawsuit, the fact that they make an issue out of these kinds of things is not conducive to a good work environment.
Of course I wasn't there. But it occurs to me that there are several reasons why "marginal" examples might actually be the most useful:
I'd put the examples you give in the category of (not typical examples of sexual harassment, but) things that are frequently harmless but (1) might cause easily-avoided annoyance or upset in some cases and so should maybe be avoided and (2) in some cases might indicate, or be thought to indicate, an underlying bad attitude (women in the workplace being seen primarily as eye candy; women being seen as lower-status and akin to children).
I repeat: of course I wasn't there and don't know exactly what your presenter said about these examples. If s/he said "these things are definitely harassment and you could get in serious trouble for doing them" then I'd regard that as unreasonable; if s/he said "these things may seem harmless, and often they are, but you should still avoid them", I'd agree.
Anyway, I mention all this just in the interests of mutual understanding; it's all kinda irrelevant to the question of whether "greater risk of sexual harassment lawsuits" is a good justification for rating an identically-described person as substantially more "competent" if they have a male name than a female name. Do you really think it is?
The problem is that it causes people to treat it as an archetypical example.
I fail to see why it should be policy to cater to people who are clearly being unreasonable.
For one thing, because being unreasonable is simply What People Do and it seems better to care about outcomes in the real world than outcomes in some imaginary world where everyone is always reasonable. So if doing something predictably results in a bunch of people being upset, then it might be better to avoid it even if it would be better for everyone if they weren't upset by it.
For another, because what's "clearly unreasonable" to one person may be "clearly reasonable" to another. It may seem "clearly unreasonable" for a woman to have a problem with having her appearance complimented by her male colleagues. But if what she's found is that over and over again her male colleagues comment on her (and other women's) appearance, and never on their ideas, while the reverse happens to the men around her ... why, then, I have some sympathy if she gets frustrated by yet another compliment on her appearance. (It might in some sense be better for her to focus not on the compliments on her appearance but on the absence of response to her work. But actual things that actually happen are easier to see and more psychologically salient than absences, even when the absence is the bigger underlying problem.)
Only people who are -- how shall I put it? -- clearly being unreasonable. One might prefer not to make policy on the basis of people who are clearly being unreasonable :-).
Seriously: yes, I agree that that's a potential problem. The obvious solution seems to me to be to make it as clear as you possibly can when you're talking about central examples and when you're sketching the boundaries. Unfortunately, I bet there will always be (clearly unreasonable) people who don't take any notice and either mix the two up or pretend to. I'm not sure much can be done about that.
I mostly agree (and upvoted), but...
Well, complimenting people wearing attractive clothes is is simply What People Do and it seems better to care about outcomes in the real world than outcomes in some imaginary world where no-one ever notices other people's clothes. So if wearing certain clothes predictably results in a bunch of people commenting on your appearance (and it annoys you), then it might be better to wear more modest clothes yadda yadda yadda.
;-)
You say that like you expect me to disagree, but I don't think I do. (But I would generally avoid saying so to the people in question, which I might not on the other side, because it seems more obviously unreasonable to have to avoid wearing nice clothes to work than to have to avoid complimenting people's clothing at work. I'm not terribly sure how much sense that makes, though.)
It seems even more unreasonable to be to wear sexy clothes (how did "sexy" turn into "nice"?) and then object when someone comments on them. Frankly the only way I can explain the woman's actions are that she was either insulted that the complementer was too low status or trolling for an excuse to accuse someone of sexual harassment.
I don't think it did, exactly. I just didn't assume that clothes that could be described as "somewhat provocative/revealing" necessarily belonged in the bucket labelled "sexy" rather than the one labelled "nice".
To be more precise: (1) what is viewed as provocative or revealing is highly dependent on who's doing the viewing (see, e.g., Victorian England or many Muslim-dominated places today; but similar variation occurs at the individual as well as the societal level), and (2) person A may wear clothes that person B finds "revealing" without the least intention of attracting sexual attention of any sort.
I have no quantitative data (and doubt whether any exist) but have more than once heard women complain that their choice of clothing was treated by a man as some sort of attempt to provoke when in fact they were just wearing something they felt comfortable in or liked the look of. (I have a feeling there is pretty decent scientific evidence that men tend to overestimate the extent to which women's behaviour is intended to signal sexual availability or interest, but don't have references to hand. It seems like a plausible hypothesis on the usual handwavy evo-psych grounds, for what little that's worth.)
I don't know what she was wearing, I heard it from the lawyer doing the briefing, but he did mention her undoing some buttons. In any case, if I came to work wearing a suite, we dress casually, I'd expect people to comment on it.
I was about to go ‘sweatshirts for example are comfortable but definitely not provocative’, then I remembered reading that when men talk about comfortable clothes they tend to mean physically comfortable whereas women tend to mean socially/psychologically comfortable (as in this comment, though I don't know if Nornagest is a woman).
(Then again, being comfortable in the latter sense with wearing certain clothes but not with being complimented for them sounds weird to me.)
Sure. It sounds a bit weird to me too, for what it's worth. But the whole point here is that the reasons why something is unpleasant to one person may be far from apparent to another. Anecdotally, it seems that many women have the experience of being persistently treated (so to speak) as ornamental rather than functional, of having their male colleagues pay attention to their appearance while neglecting their work. Someone in that situation may not be glad of compliments to her appearance even if she has gone to some trouble to look good.
An analogy occurs to me. Let's suppose that an important part of your employment is writing analytical reports of some kind. Stock market forecasts, competitive analysis of other companies' products, software requirements, that sort of thing. You write these reports. You hand them over to your boss. And he takes a look and says "Nice choice of font." or "I see you spelled 'accommodate' correctly, well done." A single instance of this is harmless and you'd probably be glad of it. But it happens again and again, much more often than any substantive comment (positive or negative) on the actual content of the reports you're writing. After a while, you might start taking these comments as indicating that your boss either thinks the content is no good, or for some reason simply doesn't much care about the content. You might find that being complimented on your excellent use of quotation marks makes you feel bad, not good, about how valuable your carefully calculated and checked risk assessment is to the company.
And you might feel that way even if, as a matter of fact, you did put some care and skill into spelling and punctuating correctly and presenting the report attractively.
I meant "comfortable" as an attribute of the social situation in that comment, not of the clothes I'd be wearing in it. If I were wearing sweatpants to a wedding, for example, I'd likely find them comfortable but I wouldn't be comfortable.
(I'm a guy.)
Well, that's not obvious to me, anyway...
Well, these aren't mutually exclusive. Can't we do both? Postel's law, anyone?
Postel's law would mean not throwing a fit when someone complements your clothing.
Yes, that too.
I thought that was what I was suggesting is best -- at least if it happens that the women in question can actually avoid having the men focus on their appearance by making changes in clothing. I can't help suspecting (though I have no actual evidence) that in such cases their options are actually "get unwanted compliments from men who focus on their appearance and ignore their ideas" and "get unwanted critical comments from men who focus on their appearance and ignore their ideas", with perhaps a little middle ground where they get both positive and negative comments on their appearance and still have their work overlooked.