In another discussion going on right now, I posted this proposal, asking for feedback on this experiment. The feedback was positive, so here goes...
Original Post:
When these gender discussions come up, I am often tempted to write in with my own experiences and desires. But I generally don't because I don't want to generalize from one example, or claim to be the Voice of Women, etc. However, according to the last survey, I actually AM over 1% of the females on here, and so is every other woman. (i.e. there are less than 100 of us).
My idea is to put out a call for women on LessWrong to write openly about their experiences and desires in this community, and send them to me. I will anonymize them all, and put them all up under one post.
This would have a couple of benefits, including:
Anonymity allows for open expression- When you are in the vast minority, speaking out can feel like "swimming upstream," and so may not happen very much.
Putting all the women's responses in one posts helps figure out what is/is not a problem- Because of the gender ratio, most discussions on the topic are Men Talking About what Women Want, it can be hard to figure out what women are saying on the issues, versus what men are saying women say.
The plural of anecdote is data- If one woman says X, it is an anecdote, and very weak evidence. If 10% of women say X, it is much stronger evidence.
Note that with a lot of the above issues, one of the biggest problems in figuring out what is going on isn't purposeful misogyny or anything. Just the fact that the gender ratio is so skewed can make it difficult to hear women (think picking out one voice amongst ten). The idea I'm proposing is an attempt to work around this, not an attempt to marginalize men, who may also have important things to say, but would not be the focus of this investigation.
Even with a sample size of 10 responses (approximately the amount I would say is needed for this to be useful), according to the last survey, that is 10% of the women on this site. A sizable proportion, indeed.
In the following discussion, the idea was added that fellow LWers could submit questions to the Women of LW. The women can then use these as prompts in their narratives, if they like. If you are interested in submitting questions, please read the guidelines below in "Call for Questions" before posting.
If you are interested in submitting a narrative, please read the Call for Narrative section below.
Call for Narratives
RSVP -(ETA- We have reached the needed number of pre-commitments! You do not need to fill out the form, although you are welcome to, if you like) I think we need to have at least 6 people submitting narratives to provide both the scope and the anonymity to work. So before I ask women to spend their time writing these, I would like to make sure we will get enough submissions to publish. If you are going to write a narrative, fill out this (one-minute) form in the next couple days. If we get at least 6 women pre-committed to writing a narrative, we will move forward. I will PM or email you and let you know. If, in a week, we have not had at least 6 commitments, I will close the form.
Submissions- Feel free to submit, even if you did not RSVP. (that part is just to make sure we have minimum amount of people). Just send me a pm, dropbox link, or ask for my email. I'll add more information to this, as it gets worked out.
Although the discussion that spurred this idea was about "creep" behaviors, please don't limit your responses to that subject only. Feel free to discuss any gender-related issues that you find relevant, especially responses to the questions that are posted in the thread below by your fellow LWers.
The anonymity is to provide you with the opportunity to express non-self-censored thoughts. It is ok if they are half-formed, stream-of-consciousness writings. My goal is to find out what the women on this site think, not nit-pick at the writing style. I don't want to limit submissions by saying that they have to have hours spent on formulating, organizing, and clarifying them. Write as much as you like. Don't worry about length. I will write tl;dr's if needed.
How I organize the submissions in the final post depends strongly on what is submitted to me. Separate out things that you think are identifiable to you, and I will put them in a section that is not affiliated with the rest of your submission.
Submissions are due Sept 25th!
Security- I am willing to work with people individually to make sure that their narratives aren't identifiable via writing style or little clues. Discussions that are obviously written by you (for example, talking about an incident many LWers know about) can be pulled out of your main narrative, and placed in a separate section. (reading the original exchange on the topic will clarify what I am trying to explain)
Verification- Submissions must be linked to active LW accounts (i.e. older than a week, more than 50 karma). This info will only be known to me. When possible, I would like to have validation (such as a link to a relevant post) that the account is of a female or transgendered user.
Call for Questions
Feel free to ask questions you would like answered by the women of LW. To make everything easier for us, remember the following:
1) Put questions in response to the comment entitled "Question submissions"
2)Due to the nature of this experiment, all questions will automatically assumed to be operating under Crocker's Rules.
3) Please only post one question per comment!
Upvote questions you would like to see answered. The questions with the highest amounts of upvotes are probably the most likely to be answered (based on my model of fellow LW Women).
I'd like a policy change:
Due to the widespread elitism or appearance of elitism, I am very concerned. People in the outside world aren't going to make distinctions between a group of people who call themselves "elitists" for harmless reasons versus people who believe they're "better than others" and are therefore entitled to special treatment or to make exceptions to the rules for themselves. It's also a weird surprise because it's in direct conflict with the site's vision - to spread rationality. Spreading rationality necessarily means transmitting it to people who are not good at rational thought, because focusing on transmitting it to people who are already good at it does not qualify as "spreading" it.
Imagine going into a room full of strangers and announcing that you are an elitist. Does this strike no one else as socially inept? Yet here we are in public, and people are announcing to the world of strangers that we are elitists. I don't like being smeared as an "elitist" by these people, I know the world will see me as guilty by association. The rest of the world isn't known for being rational. If they see a group of people calling themselves "elitists" they won't stop to make distinctions. They'll just err on the side of caution by assuming you guys are a bunch of overbearing jerks. This is about as smart, in my view, as going back in time few hundred years and claiming to enjoy casting magic spells. It doesn't matter if you're referring to an RPG game, you just invited a witch hunt.
Maybe you guys figure anybody intelligent will agree with your attitude. No. It's a perfectly constructive use of one's intelligence to take measures to avoid committing social suicide. That this group allows itself to be associated with the term "elitism" - that nobody moderates those comments and that they're being voted up to the sky - is a public relations disaster waiting to happen. At first, it didn't even occur to me that the people here might not realize that. That's such a no brainer to me, I assumed you didn't care because you really do think you're better than them, so you can afford to provoke the outside world and just ignore their ire. Now, I am considering that the people on this website may just be socially inept enough to do that and not realize how crazy it looks to non-elitist intellectuals like me.
As I've said before, maintaining quality does not require you to wear a scary word that is used to mean "overbearing jerk". I think you guys need a no elitism policy which includes: A.) Not letting people behave in an abusive or insulting way toward people who may not have the same education or IQ. B.) Not smearing the organization by using the word "elitist" lightly to describe LessWrong. I don't want to associate myself with an elitist or "elitist" organization. The only reason I haven't quit already is because I still have a sense of possibility that you guys will eventually grok what an assassination you're launching against your reputations and I think that the good things about this group and the vision you're gathered around make it worth continuing to discuss the topic of elitism with you.
Going into a room full of strangers and announcing I was a socialist, or an egalitarian, or a libertarian, or a conservative, etc. would be socially inept. In fact, announcing I was a human or a carbon-based lifeform or a biped would be socially inept too. It's nothing special about elitism.