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The problem is real. I am a 21 year old woman and an aspiring rationalist, and my friends are mostly women and some are also aspiring rationalists. We find much of the conversation about women on this site so off-putting that I for one have never commented before. I read Eliezer's work and enjoy it very much indeed, which is why I stick around at all.
I am simply astounded at the men here confidently asserting that they aren't alienating women when they talk about "getting" "attractive women" and speak of women as symbols of male success or indeed accessories for a successful male. This reduces me and other females (including female rationalists) to the category of a fancy car or a big house, and I feel humiliated when I read it.
I am fully aware that some men think this way, and that in certain social scenes almost all the "players" in the social "game" see it this way. If getting ahead in a social game like that gives you loads of utility then thinking of women in this way might be rational. But if you would derive more utility from having long and close relationships with female rationalists, you might like to know that female rationalists will be less likely to seek out your company and attention if you persist in that attitude.
The whole point of this website is that we can do something about big problems. Like dying!
I feel like not treating each other like crap should be a much easier problem to tackle than dying. Your comment smacks of System Justification.
Another interpretation of his point: “It's hypocritical for women to complain about being objectified by men, because they also objectify men themselves.” That's only a valid point if the women who resent being objectified are the same women who objectify men, which is probably not the case.
Other examples of this failure mode are “Jerusalemites hailed Jesus as a deity when he came back, but five days later they were shouting for Pontius Pilate to crucify him” (maybe he had both supporters and opposers, who weren't the same people?) and “people are always protesting about that politician, but he keeps on being re-elected” (maybe young people protest and old people vote for him, or something like that).
It seems to be a bit more than that. Sometimes sexual objectification seems to include wishing a potential sexual partner were nonsentient — treating people as if they ought to be automata to serve your wishes, and that it's an outrage that they don't act like it.
It's one thing to say, "I wish I had a sexbot." It's another thing to say, "You shouldn't exist; instead there should exist a sexbot in your image, for me."
Yeah, I was the annoyingly sentient one. The conversation went something like
I want you to do [thing].
Okay, but you know me. That's really not part of my personality.
But you're my girlfriend.
In that context, if you solve for the taboo meaning of the word "girlfriend", it basically comes out to nonsentient sexbot. But he wasn't trying to be evil, he was just quite innocently incredulous and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the world.
Were you a mono couple? Members of mono couples sometimes have ideas about an obligation to fulfill all the other person's sexual and romantic needs since the partner can't go anywhere else. Perhaps he had asymmetrical ideas about this and would not have obliged if you'd made a similar request, but if the notions were symmetrical then it's not a sexbot thing. One reason I'm careful not to date women who aren't dating any other men is that my life is full of other and overriding demands, and I don't want to be someone's only boyfriendly recourse.
If I have a trophy husband but don't know it, I'm judged morally kosher. But if I realize this, and change nothing else, the arrangement becomes sin - I'm punished for my introspection.
If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.
I sincerely doubt it. This site is hugely less sexist than society at large. The comments at very high traffic sites are regularly flamed by many, many trolls who are explicitly, obnoxiously sexist, and yet these sites have a much larger percentage of women. As far as I can tell, the "misogynisitic comments" here are sincere, if somewhat indelicate questions or statements of opinion.
In fact "Roissy in DC" (a blog written by an openly misogynistic male "pick-up artist") has a much larger percentage of female commenters than Less Wrong. If you are looking for a culprit for why there are more men than women here, I suggest you start here.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm
Its just a start, (and the poll is sort of old) but twice as many men believed in evolution without divine intervention. Combine that with the fact that less women spend less time on the internet and I think we have a good start when it comes to explaining the dearth of female commenters.
I think my point still stands. The women aren't always posting supportively, but they are posting. They post because they are interested in the subject matter: dating relationships, sex, etc. These are topics of broad appeal.
This site, however appeals to a group of self-identified rationalists who are interested in obscure topics like Newcomb's problem and the possibility of strong AI. This mindspace cluster is small and overwhelmingly male. Obviously, this is not a criticism of women. Enjoying these topics (or not) is merely a matter of preference.
Women aren't avoiding this site because of occasional comments alluding to the fact that men like having sex with attractive women.
This is what I'm talking about in my other comment. "Women" are interested in "dating, relationships, sex" and "self-identified rationalists" are interested in "newcomb's problem, and the possibility of strong AI". Do you know what most men are doing tonight? Not hanging out here.
I'm interested in the possibility of strong AI and am slowly but surely obtaining and reading the necessary foundational material (starting off with SIAI core reading). I'm perfectly able to love and understand Newcomb's problem and similar. Whether you meant "the average woman" or what, it's careless of you to say this.
Though I agree with you that it is unlikely that women are not participating because of perceived sexism.
Edit: I'd like to mention that I've tried my hardest to get my boyfriend to read this site more often, but he refuses, because he thinks some of the stuff we talk about is ridiculous and irrelevant to life.
Edit: deleted female anecdote, but leaving male anecdote, because it is still necessary to provide support for my point.
This is what I'm talking about in my other comment. "Women" are interested in "dating, relationships, sex" and "self-identified rationalists" are interested in "newcomb's problem, and the possibility of strong AI". Do you know what most men are doing tonight? Not hanging out here.
What part of my comment are you disagreeing with? You seem to think I was claiming "men like rationality topics" and "women like dating/relationship topics". This is not at all what I was claiming.
I was stating that almost everyone, male and female, is interested in dating/relationship topics and there is only a tiny set of people interested in LW-style rationality topics. For whatever reason, this set is mostly male. I don't know what your anecdote is supposed to demonstrate, except that there are some men who aren't interested in LW and some women who are (which is totally compatible with my comment).
With the new information from your second comment, I read your original comment in a different way. We have no disagreements.
"Rationality is basically the art of not censoring thought because it hurts your feelings."
And driving is basically the art of turning a wheel back and forth.
Roko, I've read through a lot of your comments and we agree on a lot. I think you're bringing very important ideas to the table, including your politics comment down the page, which I upvoted.
I would never advocate the censorship of language, but I think that a lot of what is potentially offensive to females results from careless thinking about gender that could be corrected with the appropriate information. I don't care about my feelings being hurt, I care because I think that their current perceptions about females that are showing through in the posts result from a lack of information which I have, and that they would probably appreciate receiving.
Anyways... no one is actually censoring anyone because no one is keeping anyone from saying anything, right? Someone is just calling to attention what I think most gender sensitive people (which would probably be the majority of the people here!) would avoid anyway if they considered it for a moment.
I would like to say again, that I can see why you would be concerned. We should continue to promote things based on scientific or rational merit and not take the easy way out using political-like appeals.
My main problem with this post is that it attempts to impose social norms based on nothing more than your personal feelings, Alicorn.
I found your "Disclaimer" very off-putting. Though I'm sure you will say that you were either trying to be as straight-forward as possible or that you are just being cute and charming (taking these assumptions from comments you have already posted), I immediately read this disclaimer as saying: "Anyone who disagrees in the comments with what I have to say in this post is almost certainly going to be labelled as sexist." This casts a pallor over the entire discussion.
Imagine if I wanted to post something controversial on AI, something that I knew from past experience with the community was going to get me a lot of challenges in the comments, and I prefaced it with "If you are a stupid person who doesn't really understand AI the way I do, and who can't really do math as well as I can, this post is unlikely to interest you." I'd be laughed off the board, and rightly so.
In fact, one might consider it an excellent piece of evidence of one's own yet-unseen bias if one feels the need to preface a discussion with all-purpose dis...
My main problem with this post is that it attempts to impose social norms based on nothing more than your personal feelings, Alicorn.
If the evidence linked to in the post didn't persuade you that I'm not alone in those feelings, I'm afraid I don't have any more handy to offer, especially since as I write this comment the site is down and I can't do searches.
I found your "Disclaimer" very off-putting. Though I'm sure you will say that you were either trying to be as straight-forward as possible or that you are just being cute and charming ... I immediately read this disclaimer as saying: "Anyone who disagrees in the comments with what I have to say in this post is almost certainly going to be labelled as sexist." This casts a pallor over the entire discussion.
When I try to be cute, I usually do a better job. There exist people who assume that if there were sexism around, their keen sexism senses would have detected it; therefore, in the minds of these people, anyone who points out sexism they didn't notice is making it up. Mockery of the "whiny girls" typically follows. The existence of those people and the fact that they are idiots does not m...
Thank you for this lengthy and thoughtful reply. I, too, am encouraged to notice the points on which we agree or are not that far off.
I don't really think you are the "thought police," and I didn't mean to imply that. But I do stand by my assessment of your post as vaguely coercive. There is such a thing as coercion by public shaming. I think this is what Roko might have been getting at in his recent post. If you do not see how this is a legitimate concern, then perhaps I can pull an "Alicorn" and just insist that if you were a man, you would know what this feels like. And if you think I am being overly sensitive, well you are just swimming like a fish in a sea: a world that favors your right to say anything you damn please about any gender without automatically questioning your self-awareness, your motives, the amount of serious thought you have put into the issue, and your fish-not-knowing-water-tude.
"I'm sorry you feel creepy. It would be nice if it were possible to confront privilege without feeling creepy." Obviously I'm not saying it feels creepy to confront privilege. That seems like an almost deliberately obtuse statement on your part... thoug...
"The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes" is not the sort of thing that I feel should have a word for it. So I prefer not to identify as "a feminist" on those grounds.
"Abolitionist" and "suffragist" referred to groups who advocated specific well-defined policy changes. "Feminist" does not so refer.
If it's so tiny, it shouldn't be such a struggle to get people to accommodate the wish. I have less trouble getting my roommate to drive me to another city an hour away and back.
You probably don't ask your roommate in such a way as to imply that it's his or her fault that you have no way to get to the city, and that their failure to comply will be considered unethical and/or harm-causing by you. Nor, I presume, have you called upon other residents of your building or block to denounce any other incidents of non-ride-offering, and professed surprise that they have not already repudiated such incidents.
Many people, including myself, do not object to what you're asking nearly so much as to the way in which you asked it. By depersonalizing the issue from being about you and your hurt feelings to some sort of ethical issue, you created a perceived requirement for people to start taking sides -- i.e., signaling their ethical position.
But if you look back to previous calls for inclusive language on LessWrong, I didn't object to them; in fact, I argued in favor of one of them. (I remember it because some of my comments in that thread brought rather large doses of karma.) I believe ...
To prohibit generalizations about gender without overwhelming hard data is usually to in effect silence the topic. We are all very interested in gender, and many of us have made interesting and relevant observations about the gender we see around us, but few of us have much in the way of overwhelming hard data. This post seems to be making generalizations about gender aspects of LW posts and comments without itself offering overwhelming hard data - why hold this meta gender discussion to a lower standard?
We already hold discussions of politics to a higher standard - I see the reproof 'politics is the mind-killer' relatively often. And this without any particular post arguing that we're so hideously biased about politics that we need to hold ourselves to a much higher standard than on just about any other topic. And given that the long and very well-documented history of sexism and discrimination against women suggests that enormous masses can be completely wrong for long periods of time (both us and the ancients can't be right about women), we already have arguments that we specifically are massively biased about gender issues and should hold ourselves to unusually high standards.
Or, if the relevant comments Alicorn cited were about blacks, I don't think anyone here would even question the need for a higher standard. We all understand intuitively the appeal of racism, its long, hateful, and entrenched history, and that if we're going to make arguments like blacks are stupider, we'd better have damn good evidence - and merely anecdotal evidence like we see in the cited comments, which boil down to 'in my experience' and 'according to my armchair theorizing', will cut absolutely no mustard.
Gender bias is not some objective feature of writing; it is determined and defined by our perceptions. Men seem extremely likely to perceive it differently from women (see almost every sexual harassment lawsuit). Alicorn has never been super outspoken on this issue and has never been confrontational about it. As one of the most active female readers of this site, if she perceives a gender bias in many posts/comments here that she believes warrants a top-level post, that seems to me to be very strong evidence that something is wrong. That fact combined with the data she did provide seem to me quite convincing that this issue is at least worth thinking about.
Also, if I understand her correctly, her objection is not to making generalizations without overwhelming hard data, it is to making generalizations without the humility appropriate to generalizations not supported by overwhelmingly hard data. If some little study fits a pre-existing belief about ev-psych and how the genders work, posters shouldn't be super-certain that it's correct simply because it conforms to their pre-existing beliefs. After all, being human, they may well dismiss a similar study showing the exact opposite effect without second thought.
many of us have made interesting and relevant observations about the gender we see around us,
...observations of a sort which are, in my experience, quite likely to be extemely inaccurate. Since we're doing anecdotal observations, I've observed that people's thoughts on gender differences, when not backed up with hard data, are maybe 90% likely to be seriously off base. For whatever reason, these sorts of perceptions seem to be subject to extreme effect from all the usual biases to the extent that I don't even trust people around here to have reasonable intuitions on the matter.
Also, I'd like to note that the post here included nigh-Yudkowskian levels of cross-linking to other material on LW. When we're talking about "conversation norms on LW", how is that not solid data?
I have to concur with the overall sentiment of this post. It bothers me more than a bit that sweeping generalizations about gender behaviors are made using armchair "just-so" evopsych stories. I even consider myself a relatively ardent supporter of evopsych in general, but a lot of the discussions of gender relationships seem to be motivated by an undercurrent of bitterness rather than an objective desire to understand the reality of gender differences. I realize that this is a vague ad hominem critique, and I could probably attempt to back this up by specific examples and analysis, but.... I think it's just more imperative to call this stuff out as it arises.
I remember Razib on GNXP making fun of the demographic poll done here, that this is a community of young white male nerds. Oftentimes it shows... I often wonder what would happen if a Jezebel blogger stumbled upon this place.
Alicorn, perhaps you've changed the wording on this post since I originally read it, because though my initial reaction was negative, upon writing a reply I have very little disagreement with your actual prescriptions in this post. I do have some disagreements with your framing of the discourse on LessWrong.
Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being. (Non-women can also be objectified, and that too should be stopped.)
"Objectification" can be a difficult term due to people defining it in different ways. Yet given the way you define it here, I agree with advocating against talking about or treating people in a way that denies their autonomy or depersonalizes them.
Whether particular examples exhibit objectification is another question. I don't think that phrases such as "getting women" necessarily implies objectification, but since it is often used in that way, I think it's worthwhile to expend a little bit more effort to avoid it.
I agree on the issue of pronouns. "They" isn't rea...
This post (and the comments on it) made me finally to register in here, partly because I had few discussions about similar topics just a few days ago.
As knb said: "This site is hugely less sexist than society at large." While this might be true, it only means that most people in here are "less wrong" than society at large. This does not mean that they are right. It also has the same ring to my ears as "Some of my friends are black/jewish/".
Gender bias is rampant even in the internet where it should hold no sway (there are no visual clues, no pheromones etc.), and denying its excistence only enforces it. If you want to see it, just try using feminine nickname for few weeks.
On the topic of objectification and PUA, I have decided to read "The Book" because I know that I hold a bias against it.
Heteronormative examples actually bother me more than masculine ones, and this might be because there are no gender specific pronomins in my native language. My brain just seems to skip over the usual "he/his/him" and interpret it as a gender neutral version.
Generalizations of certain type of either sex are very annoying. By this I refer to thing...
Basically, assigning certain attributes to either sex effectively prohibits those attributes in the other sex. That is not useful or rational, that is just limiting the potential.
Upvoted for this but... in a way this reminds me of the Tversky and Edwards experiment mentioned in the Technical Explanation where participants are shown a sequence of red and blue cards and asked to guess the next in the sequence. Since 70% of the cards are blue the best strategy is to always guess blue, but participants irrationally guess a mixture of blue and red as if they could predict the sequence.
So, if you are confident that a group exists (confident that you are 'carving reality at its joints'), are confident that an individual is a member of that group, have good evidence that more than half of the members of the group have Trait X, and no further information about a member-of-the-group and you must make a decision based on available information with no opportunity to gather more information (or it is prohibitively expensive to gather information), you should assume that member-of-the-group has Trait X. In all other cases it is not rational to operate under the assumption that the individual...
"I would like help reducing the incidence of:.. "
"There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments ... "
"Fawning admiration of pickup artists ... "
So, this seems to be the start of a dangerous politicization of Less Wrong. Politics is the mind killer.
People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed. Being on the right side of the argument could let you kill your hated rival!
I am sympathetic to your concerns about women feeling unwelcome, but it seems that LessWrong is a place for rationality, not for arguing about object-level ethical statements. I think that the group rationality of the community might be increased if we had a few rational racists, rational deep-green environmentalists, rational sexists, rational communists, rational libertarians etc, as long as everyone agreed not to argue object-level ethical statements.
Despite being female, I generally find I could not give a damn about alleged 'social' pressures on women, since people who get all weepy because everyone doesn't treat them nice are (in my opinion) laughable, regardless of their sex.
"Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. " Human beings ARE objects. All of them. Whatever an 'autonomous being is', if it exists it is still an object in both the grammatical and ontological sense. I objectify everyone, and it seems absurd not to.
"If you need to use an example with a gender, there's no reason to consider male the default - consider choosing randomly," This just seems silly to me. A total waste of effort. I can't imagine being bothered by the gender of hypothetical people, and especially not by casual use of words which are unisex anyways (such as 'man' for 'human').
"Sweeping generalizations about women" Most sweeping generalizations are flawed, but the amount of stupid things people believe about women is far less ridiculous than the stuff they believe about people they have literally no experience with - such as the Japanese, or Mormons.
"Fawnin...
While I appreciate and share your brash disregard for social pressures, I don't think it's inappropriate to expect a modicum of politeness and tact in how people present ideas. Not everyone is immune to such pressure and I don't think saying what amounts to "HTFU, noobcake" is a reasonable way to improve the level of discourse.
Resistance to social pressure is, within reason, largely orthogonal to the ability to contribute useful information to an informed discussion, or cooperate with others on productive tasks.
If you really want to limit the set of people you can usefully interact with, be my guest, but it seems a tad suboptimal.
'Suboptimal' for what? There is no such thing as 'general efficiency', success and failure (and their degress) are meaningless without an actual framework of goals and preference. I simply do not enjoy socially interacting with people like that. I am aware that this includes most of the human race. I happen to find most of the human race useless beyond the buy-sell relationship.
Because it's easy enough to ignore people who bore me, and there are a handful of you on here who are worth interacting with. What's more, sometimes 'normal' people do produce something worth reading, I just wouldn't want to share an apartment with them.
Not at all, as this isn't something specific to women. I think most people are 'whiners' who complain as though somebody owed them something. They do not. Not appreciation, not respect, not deference, not friendship, not the time of day. People who get 'offended' because someone didn't say what THEY wanted, or because someone doesn't care about their feelings just annoy me.
"What are you, a Randian?" Certainly not. I'm just amoral and not very keen on some of the typical elements of our primate tribalisms. On top of that, I think most people's social 'problems' are self-inflicted.
"In my experience, most people aren't' 'whiners', though that might be subjective." By 'whiner' I mean simply what I said above. It's not someone else's fault you get offended or otherwise react emotionally, that's your deal. If you can do something about it, do so. If not - what of it? Obviously if the other person thought they had a reason to treat you differently they would, and if they don't - well, there is no higher authority of values or norms.
"Rather, we'd like to have the best community we can, and it's pretty well-established that we're in favor of community norms that serve that end." I'd just rather not deal with people who suffer from the sort of self-inflicted 'problems' outlined above, and do not sympathise with their 'plight'.
What sort of masculine privilege is appearing on LW that isn't covered by the sort of blundering myopic obliviousness already mentioned in the lines above that? The notion of "privilege" is one that I regard as dangerously general (and generally dangerous), so a bit more narrow advice might be helpful here.
I don't understand what "objectification" means. Even pickup artists can't think of women as objects, since the only way they can be successful is by interacting with women in accordance with a certain model of the female psyche. Objects don't have psyches.
If the pickup artist somehow deceives a woman to achieve his goal, then what is morally wrong is the deception. How does objectification fit into this?
The more significant issue is the lack of respect for autonomy and the other individual's goals. It is, shall we say, "unFriendly".
It's perfectly possible to have excellent models of other people's psyches but no respect for their autonomy; in fact it's a useful skill in sales and marketing. In the pathological extreme, it's popularly called "sociopathy".
The more I think about it the more I suspect that it's actually the best description yet of the underlying complaint, at least from my perspective.
The term "objectifying" has a lot of additional implications and connotations that distract, cf. the "I objectify supermarket cashiers all the time" type remarks with the "yes but that's not really wrong" replies.
In this specific case, the disregard for volition. In the more general sense, stretching the term by analogy to describe any behavior from an agent with a significant power advantage that wouldn't be called "Friendly" if done by an AI with a power advantage over humans.
The implicit step here, I think, is that whatever value system an FAI would have would also make a pretty good value system for any agent in a position of power, allowing for limitations of cognitive potential.
So to objectify someone is to think of him in a way that doesn't include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood?
According to this definition, I objectify the bus driver, the cashier at the local Walmart, and just about everybody I interact with on an average day.
OK, well given this clarification, it seems to me just fine to objectify people, and in fact I recommend doing so when what one is trying to do is neutral analysis about the facts of some matter. Objectify your teacher when deciding if school is worth the effort, and objectify your doctor when deciding if medicine is worth the cost.
The answer you probably want is "they're getting paid for it".
Well, no. I happened to pick a bus driver and cashier as my examples, but I could just as easily have picked my next door neighbor. I don't dislike him, but I couldn't care less about his goals or interests or personality.
Furthermore, as I said elsewhere, wanton disregard for the autonomy of such people is still frowned upon in the extreme cases. Noone likes the boss who treats employees like cogs, or the demanding customer who pushes around customer service staff because they know they can.
Treating people in a certain way goes beyond mere objectification as Alicorn has defined it: "Thinking of a person in a way that doesn't include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood."
I'm still trying to obtain a coherent definition of "objectification" that is both morally reprehensible and independent from any harmful action, such as deceiving a woman to get her into bed or treating one's employees like cogs.
Am I right in thinking you don't respect the goals, interests, or personhood of the pickup artist? Consider a scenario in which there is a PUA who desires sex and a woman who does not. Which outcome do you prefer, one where the PUA changes her mind and they engage in consensual sex, or the woman turns him down and he goes home alone? If you think the first outcome is negative, why? Would your answer be the same if it was a woman trying to pick up a man? Is it morally objectionable to change someone's mind? Is it only so if manipulative techniques are used? Is it possible to change most people's minds without using manipulative techniques to some degree? If you asked someone to help you move a sofa, would you do so in a monotone voice or would you do so cheerfully with a smile? If these questions seem unnecessarily antagonistic, I apologize. I simply want to understand your position.
For the record, I have a deep personal dislike of pickup artists, especially those who employ NLP. I do not, however, find their methods morally questionable.
Am I right in thinking you don't respect the goals, interests, or personhood of the pickup artist?
We are in grave danger of equivocating the word "respect" here, so let me clarify: when I define objectification, the kind of "respect" I mean is an acknowledgment of those things and recognition of commensurability with one's own corresponding goals, interests, and personhood, not an approval. I acknowledge the goals, interests, and personhood of pickup artists, and recognize them as similar to my own in many ways (in structure, not content). I don't approve of the goals and interests they seem to share as a group (although I do approve of their personhood).
Your question is vastly too broad for me to say which outcome I prefer. If you made it more specific - if I knew something about the method of the PUA, the reasons behind the woman's initial reluctance, her typical dispositions with regards to casual sex, etc., then I might be able to answer you. The same goes for the situation where the woman is attempting to pick up the man.
...Is it morally objectionable to change someone's mind? Is it only so if manipulative techniques are used? Is it possible to change
I don't approve of the goals and interests they seem to share as a group (although I do approve of their personhood).
Isn't it actually their methods you disapprove of? Disapproving of a pretty innate male desire to engage in frequent intercourse seems unfair at best and Puritan at worst. Their goals do not involve manipulating women any more than my goal of driving to the store is also a goal to drive my car. If a man can pick up a woman simply by talking honestly to her about his romantic feelings, do you still disapprove of his actions because he may share the same goal as the pickup artist?
...My favored outcome is usually just transparent, bald-faced announcement of all my intentions. I actually go about saying things like "I did work today and seek praise!" or "I have the inexplicable urge to make you jealous, so I'm probably going to talk about my ex in a minute" or "I don't like your friend and you should probably take anything bad I say about her with a grain of salt" or "I'm going to spend the next ten minutes trying to convince you to help us move next week unless it doesn't take that long". Of course I accompany these things with
If saying "I did work today and request praise" (an example of something I actually said today) doesn't promptly yield praise, I (actually did) follow up with "You are not fulfilling my request. You should fix that." If that hadn't "worked", I probably would have gone and talked to somebody else, and refrained from seeking praise from that person in the future, on the assumption that they had no interest in praising me for doing work.
Did you offer your conversation partner anything of value, other than an implied threat of disapproval if they failed to accede to your demand? Were you thinking about their goals, other than how they related to your desire to receive praise?
It seems to me that, by your definitions, one can objectify, or manipulate, but not both. If you took your conversant's goals into consideration and offered something for what you wanted, then you manipulated. If you didn't take them into account, then you objectified.
Or do you claim that there is a third category, in which you thought about their goals, but didn't allow this to affect your choices in any way? Then this seems like even worse objectification, since you knew they ...
Attention to the privileges of masculinity
For a balancing perspective, female privilege checklist.
Robin is not right.
On the other hand, Robin is right. This post is not about gender inequality.
I have the same problem with this post that I would have with a member of an ethnic minority speaking "for" their group here. the type of person who posts on less wrong is a statistical oddity, belief and action wise.
I think what the original poster is really saying: I am made uncomfortable by certain types of recurring posts. Since an individual has little leverage, I will borrow the theoretical support of others.
Note: not trying to completely dismiss the concerns noted in the original post, just my initial reaction to it.
Is it me, or was this post a little heavy on the other-optimizing? Yes, there's been a bit of talk about wanting more female posters here, but I haven't even seen an agreement that that's a priority, much less a request for advice on the topic. (Did I miss one? I'll admit I haven't been following the comments that closely recently.)
Well, there's been nothing like a vote on it. But I've definitely gotten the impression that we're doing community-building here, and attracting potential rationalists was one of Eliezer's stated goals. So it seems that a community norm against repelling potential rationalists would be a good one.
I'm in an interesting/weird(?) position with regard to the problem pointed out in this post in that I have (self-diagnosed, peer-confirmed) gender dysphoria, and in a number of ways do not think "like a guy".
For example: Without going all TMI, I'll just say that I don't relate to the whole heroin analogy, despite having (as far as I can tell) more-or-less normal levels of male hormones running around in my brain (not something I'm at all happy about, mind you, but nonetheless it doesn't seem to compel me that way). I'm not completely unsympathetic; I just don't experience it.
Furthermore, my own observations of more-or-less-normal men suggest that they do not universally see things this way. It is quite possible to be normally-male and heterosexual and yet still be more interested in building a solid relationship (of which sex might become a part) with a person who is a woman than with arbitrarily seeking out women solely for the purpose of obtaining sex as if it were some sort of commodity. (Not that I know how this is done, because I'm not normal.)
On the other hand, while I don't make such remarks myself (because it isn't how I think), I tend to be somewhat oblivious to ...
I concur. I agree with a lot of what you say... I get upset frequently because of things said about women, many just offhandedly.
I am here, I've been reading for over a year and am a huge advocate of this site, but was not counted in the survey. But I'm 20 years old and rarely feel like I have anything valuable to offer the community... and because of that actually feel hesitation to respond to these kind of things. I also don't live a life about feminism or being a girl and would hate to be perceived that way.
Ah. Interesting... I guess I should stop making excuses then... I have occasionally felt like posting things but... I'm so nervous! Everyone here impresses me so much generally.
User Chronophasiac lives near me, and I've talked to him about some of my concerns about the conversations about gender we have on lesswrong/OB. My concern is that because of the lack of female presence in rationality forums, that perhaps males have to generalize on a small sample. Rationalist males are noticeably different from the average male, and rationalist females are probably comparably different from average females. I guess I often have a bit of a negative response to how rationalist males talk about females... because even though they might be making correct decisions about most females, they're certainly not right about me. It's possibly irrational- but I guess I have a strange worry that they don't know that. Ah, I remember that these feelings were triggered when they were discussing why there aren't more women here. But I have no reason to think they haven't considered it, in fact, I remember Eliezer mentioning that... I should link but I'm lazy.
I'm not mad at the males here for trying ...
In the meantime, just consider what it would possibly be like if lesswrong was ran by women, and we were trying to figure out how to bring in more males, and we wondered if we should consider how males liked hunting, and let that inform our decisions. I mean, you'd know we were trying our best, but those of you who don't really care for hunting would be like "we really have to let them know we aren't all like that, and we wouldn't appreciate it as much as they think".
LOL'd and upvoted. I will be tempted to cite this comment every time I see a discussion anywhere by a bunch of men trying to figure out "how to bring in more women" to some group, without actually asking any women.
This is a pet peeve of mine in IT forums, where guys often have no idea how offensive their special treatment proposals are to precisely the sort of women that they'd want to have participate, and are bemoaning that no women apply for IT jobs, when I managed to run a gender-balanced IT department for over five years without any "affirmative action" hiring. (i.e., it fell naturally out of our choosing to evaluate based on group fit and potential, rather than out of any need to have a gender balance.)
I would like help reducing the incidence of:
- Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women. "Objectification" is what happens when a person is treated or discussed as an object, not as an autonomous being.
I believe that, to a first approximation, one factor of my utility function can be represented without a token for the woman's autonomy. Or, if this cannot accurately be said of my utility function, it can be said about world states of high instrumental value.
I believe it's in my best interest to fuck.
When Alicorn wrote, "some people seem to earnestly care about the problem", she accompanied it with a link to a comment made by me, in which I said that "I want to increase the female: male ratio [here]. So if you ever see me using language that objectifies women or that alienates you, please let me know."
Let me clarify that although I want to hear Alicorn's objections to my statements about women (especially since she is better than most feminists at explaining the grounds for her objections) I might not be able to cater to all her obj...
I have never heard that seduction is much studied outside male-wants-female.
What? Clothing lipstick fingernails haircut tan waxing liposuction diet aerobics... Women strive to improve their seduction abilities much more than men.
Overall, F2M seduction and "focused self-improvement" are still woefully underexplored.
Great point. Since women have an easier time finding partners than men due to greater female selectiveness (at least when perceived choice is high, which is the norm for typical dating), women may more easily reach a basic level of satisfaction with their abilities to attract and relate to the opposite sex. Or conversely, women may be less likely to reach a level of dissatisfaction that they are motivated to engage in systematic programs to improve their attractiveness and relational abilities, other than in societally typical ways such as improving physical attractiveness.
Yet I do think women would benefit from improving their ability to attract and relate to men, analogous to what pickup artists are doing. Pickup artists often study men who are "naturals" with women. Likewise, I think there are female "naturals." I've known some women who do very well with men, both in the sense of attracting men, and in fulfilling their goals (typically, long-term romantic relationships). These women take care of themselves physically without being incredibly high maintenance, ...
Comments and posts that casually objectify women or encourage the objectification of women.
There's a distinction I draw between objectifying a particular person and a class of people. I think what drew you (Alicorn) into the argument which sparked this post is the idea of "getting attractive women". Women should not, conceptually, be "got", you say. Well, if you mean a particular woman, who one sees in a club or on the street, then I agree with you. If you mean that a man should not talk about the modal preferences and cognitive sty...
Upvoted because as aspiring rationalists we are presumably intelligent, and should act as though we are enlightened.
See Hofstadter's article in Metamagical Themas on using gendered pronouns (preview here). I was sympathetic to its conclusions before I read it, but it gives good ideas to consider.
I trace the treating of women as status objects to be acquired to the recent surge in popularity of Ev. Bio.. In particular, proponents of PUA and allied schools of thought tend to draw direct lines from lower-primate societies to ours. (They also assume that if a technique works, it must be okay to use, but that's a somewhat different issue.)
I'm still not sure that the problem is real or at least worth the fuss. It might be, but I'm not convinced. It might be more like the name effect, for example: real, but tiny. The first step before trying to do something about the issue should be to make sure the issue isn't illusory.
So far, I see Alicorn complaining about her aesthetic preferences not met by the prose on the forum, but how typical is it? Some people agree that the writing decisions made by some of the posters are not that great, but how much of it is support of hypothetical preferences o...
Hello all,
New rationalist/reader/commenter here.
I originally wrote a rant against PUA culture and then a summation of that rant to post here, but I realized that most, if not all, of my objections to what I perceive to be negative in the PUA community and practice are derived from my biases [and insecurities] rather than a truly rational foundation.
I can object to the PUA sub-culture out of personal distaste, and maybe from a weak ethical point of view, but besides parts of the body of PUA doctrine and rhetoric, there is really nothing irrational about the...
Upvoted because I appreciate Alicorn's efforts and would like to hear additional rational presentations of views in the same neighborhood as her's.
I would bet I also upvoted some of the comments Alicorn is referring to as comments that perpetuate the problem.
As a long-time female lurker on LW, encountering this post convinced me to finally make an account. I suppose it is a bittersweet post -- good news: there are LWers who care about this, bad news: there are LWers who don't -- but it worked to get me to comment here, anyways. I hope that the community has improved since. Thank you!
Girly username? "Alicorn" strikes me as pretty gender-neutral. The first mental image that popped into my mind before I learned about your gender, ironically, was a male, although not decidedly masculine, fantasy elf.
But yes, invisibility is a common problem online. I don't myself assign any prior probabilities to any given person online being a certain gender, unless the community is explicitly designated, for example, as "meant for women". But many communicate from a "male as default" standpoint, and maybe the only real way ...
I object to speaking unlike ordinary people do in ordinary life. Your suggestion would make this community even more insular.
I have an idea. We can say things like "satisfy sexual urges" rather than "get a man/woman." That way our language doesn't objectify anybody, but we don't have to ignore the irrational parts of our brains.
Why is sexual desire irrational? If such a major feature of human psychology can be written off as irrational, what remains? Sexual desire is an enormously important human motivation, perhaps even the most important of all. Lust is every bit as important a feature of our minds as kindness, hunger, fear, or love. Indeed, these parts of ourselves are exquisitely and intrinsically intertwined.
I'm voting down because I see this comment, the top-level post, and the ideology behind it, as a futile attempt to pathologize a very healthy kind of human desire.
I've tried to avoid being the 'feminism police' around here too, despite apparently having a stronger background in it than you do. I'll try to pay more attention.
This is perhaps an obvious case of "don't be rude or marginalize any groups" that seems like a good rule for inclusivity. But it is worth bringing these things to attention specifically; the places where people are often biased are worth being reminded of.
Sweeping generalizations about women, if they are not backed up by overwhelming hard data (responsibly gathered and interpreted).
Sorry if this has already been said, but, to quote a friend, what would constitute a sweeping generalization varies widely. Some people would read this as being close to equivalent to saying 'Don't use heuristics when dealing with stuff related to women', which is impossible and imposes major costs. You can't engage in discussions if you're not allowed to use heuristics.
First of all I must say that I do not know if there is in fact a problem on LW, and it is not my goal to definitely say so, I only ask for introspection. There are not enough women on this site to make a proper analysis of how the (obvious) male orientation of some language used generates negative sentiment. However, I think that the simple fact that one person thinks there is a problem is a big indicator of a problem. It takes a great deal of courage (or, I admit, contrariness) to go against an established group consensus, and as far as I can tell, al...
I am not female, and I find some of the language and PUA-related content here to be extremely off-putting. If you really want to refine the art of seduction, I would suggest reading Greene; this blog, on the other hand, is for refining the art of rationality.
I find his stance in this regard to be absolutely correct; if you're going to write a book on methods of manipulating people, you may as well call a spade a spade.
On PUAs:
Originally, I had a long rant I had typed out in a fury after reading some of the posts on the previously linked, "Roissy in DC" PUA blog.
My comments were originally directed towards some of the irrationalities and inadequacies present within the rhetoric of greater PUA and "Pump-&Dump" culture. But as I continued to write, I found that I wasn't able to separate my own biases against the PUA rhetoric and convey my comments rationally.
So I figured it may be best to just sum up a few of my thoughts on the matter in the hopes ...
I upvoted because I agree on the meta level that it would be nice to have more diversity of ideas in this and most other communities. And I read all of the comments, so it obviously triggered a discussion that interested me.
I agree with Robin, however, that generalizations need not be prohibited--that is going too far. However, generalizations should whenever possible be made falsifiable.
I don't think any of the comments you cited warrant going meta, but I can certainly understand why discussion of picking up physically attractive women might annoy you. Presumably there are more appropriate forums for that.
I've been annoyed at people who grab attention by strutting/flirting in what should be a nonsexual context, but upon reflection, I've decided that usually such disapproval is best kept to oneself.
Downvoted due to trying to shame people into obedience to your norms and complete misunderstanding of what PUA is about.
Disclaimer is definitely off-putting. It comes off as implying that you consider criticism to be unwelcome. I can understand the desire to exclude unreasonable people from the conversation, but posting a sign, "No idiots allowed" doesn't accomplish that. It may discourage people who disagree with you from posting, but only because they will assume from the disclaimer that you've made up your mind and that it is therefore not worth their time talking to you. This will occur independently of how intelligent their feedback is, in fact, I wouldn't be...
An Alicorn:
Also, I think we should be persons before humans before genders before races before cultures, at least morally. Notice how each category is smaller than the preceding.
Honestly, I am probably a feminist. I see the problem of, say, difference in wages, between genders, but also how (here in Denmark at least) magically passing the 18 year line increases the wage you can rightfully demand. A 16yo can stock shelves just as well as a 19yo, thank you, that doesn't mean the 16yo should get ~9 euros/hour and the 19yo twice that. Similarly, but subtler, m...
"If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you."
The above does not apply to me per se, but this post neverthless doesn't interest me for its content. The poster of this article certainly looks like an immature feminist who is incapable of separating rational inquiry and the asking of hard questions, when they get close to her value system.
I have found Anna's posts way more mature and taWhat percentage of the posts exhibit these problems, would you estimate (or just guess)? Thanks.
ETA, it might well be that potential female contributors would find themselves drawn to topics which are more likely to lead to sexist discussions.
I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary.
I am not American, but still I had the impression that, as a white male, if I had rooted for Obama some people would have called me sexist and if I had rooted for Clinton some people would have called me racist. (Not that I gave a damn about that -- IIRC I rooted for Obama for reasons not directly related to his opponent's gender, which is enough to count as non-sexist by my definition.)
::clicks links::
Wow, I go away to Otakon for a 3-day weekend and LW decides to go throw a flame war. (And my very old grandmother is sitting on our couch refusing to go home, but that's not relevant to the discussion here.)
::sigh::
Don't make me take matters into my own hands.
OB/LW readers/writers are overwhelmingly male. If men and women have different perceptions of gender bias in writing, which seems overwhelmingly likely, the fact that a woman (who is by no means confrontational or overly outspoken on this topic) feels this issue is worth a top-level post seems like strong evidence that e should worry about it.
How about using LW to collect the data to answer this question?
For example by introducing tags to mark comments as sexist/racist/otherwise offensive, and few months period to collect data.
After that period there could be another thread to analyze the data and collectively decide how to continue?
If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.
The above does not apply to me per se, but this post neverthless doesn't interest me for its content. The poster of this article certainly looks like an immature feminist who is incapable of separating rational inquiry and the asking of hard questions, when they get close to her value system.
I have found Anna's posts way more mature and tackling iss...
Disclaimer: If you are prone to dismissing women's complaints of gender-related problems as the women being whiny, emotionally unstable girls who see sexism where there is none, this post is unlikely to interest you.
For your convenience, links to followup posts: Roko says; orthonormal says; Eliezer says; Yvain says; Wei_Dai says
As far as I can tell, I am the most active female poster on Less Wrong. (AnnaSalamon has higher karma than I, but she hasn't commented on anything for two months now.) There are not many of us. This is usually immaterial. Heck, sometimes people don't even notice in spite of my girly username, my self-introduction, and the fact that I'm now apparently the feminism police of Less Wrong.
My life is not about being a girl. In fact, I'm less preoccupied with feminism and women's special interest issues than most of the women I know, and some of the men. It's not my pet topic. I do not focus on feminist philosophy in school. I took an "Early Modern Women Philosophers" course because I needed the history credit, had room for a suitable class in a semester when one was offered, and heard the teacher was nice, and I was pretty bored. I wound up doing my midterm paper on Malebranche in that class because we'd covered him to give context to Mary Astell, and he was more interesting than she was. I didn't vote for Hilary Clinton in the primary. Given the choice, I have lots of things I'd rather be doing than ferreting out hidden or less-than-hidden sexism on one of my favorite websites.
Unfortunately, nobody else seems to want to do it either, and I'm not content to leave it undone. I suppose I could abandon the site and leave it even more masculine so the guys could all talk in their own language, unimpeded by stupid chicks being stupidly offended by completely unproblematic things like objectification and just plain jerkitude. I would almost certainly have vacated the site already if feminism were my pet issue, or if I were more easily offended. (In general, I'm very hard to offend. The fact that people here have succeeded in doing so anyway without even, apparently, going out of their way to do it should be a great big red flag that something's up.) If you're wondering why half of the potential audience of the site seems to be conspicuously not here, this may have something to do with it.
So can I get some help? Some lovely people have thrown in their support, but usually after I or, more rarely, someone else sounds the alarm, and usually without much persistence or apparent investment. There is still conspicuous karmic support for some comments that perpetuate the problems, which does nothing to disincentivize being piggish around here - some people seem to earnestly care about the problem, but this isn't enforced by the community at large, it's just a preexisting disposition (near as I can tell).
I would like help reducing the incidence of:
We could use more of the following:
Thank you for your attention and, hopefully, your assistance.