[Dain42]

I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.

As I understand it from friends and acquaintances, being asked again and again, "So where are you from?" becomes exceptionally irritating over time and can feel isolating. It might be a question that anyone can get asked, but it gets asked much more frequently of people who appear to be "foreign" in some way. It's not a big deal once or twice, but those incidents pile up over time and it can get disheartening, especially when asked of people who are from the US. When they answer, they often get the follow up question, "No, no, where are you really from?" It's a good way to unintentionally make a person feel unwelcome or like an "other" in a group, because after many repetitions, it hammers home the point, "You don't fit in, and I can plainly see it."

And the problem with the math question is that when asked of a woman or a girl, it generally does come loaded with "because usually women suck at math". Math isn't juggling, which is an uncommon talent; math is a basic, fundamental skill in STEM fields. Acting surprised or questioning how a female coworker "got so good at math" is just one more way that people accidentally perpetuate outdated, outmoded stereotypes about women in STEM fields. It's a question that almost nobody would think to ask of a male coworker. Because math skills are taken as a given in these sorts of fields.

These things don't seem like a big deal until you're on the receiving end of them again and again and again, day after day, month after month, year after year. Just like a little trickle of stream will eventually erode a valley where there wasn't one previously, over time all the little slights and knocks can wear people down.

Nobody is saying, "Don't be nice to your coworkers, and don't be social." They are saying, "Be mindful of the things you say, because they can hurt people unintentionally." Maybe you don't see the problem, personally, but if it's something that bothers a lot of people and they ask you to please cut it out, is it really that big a deal to try to cut it out? It's not like it's some kind of major encumbrance upon you.

[camelite]

> I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.

No, what you're doing is inventing a context (bad man hurt woman, bad white man hurting good minority etc), and arguing for a lexicon that implicitly nurtures the contextual penumbra and emanations of left-wing culture warriors. And you're singing a soothing melody of how this tool (it is a tool) will be used to fight injustice. But that's not how it goes. That's never how it goes.

[Dain42]

Given that I'm a man, I'm certainly not inventing any context that involves caveman speak about "bad man hurt woman". I wasn't even really talking about the direct interpersonal context of the remarks, I was talking about the remarks in the context of the larger experience of the person on the receiving end of them.

You can't just ignore the larger life experiences that people have. You can't treat every social interaction in some kind of hermetic isolation. Because that's not how social interactions happen. There's the context of the interpersonal relationship(s) of the people involved in an interaction, their history, their previous interactions. And, as I said, there's the context of each person's life experience that they bring to any social interaction.

Obviously, we don't think about this sort of thing on a deep level all the time. It'd short out every social interaction if we constantly tried to puzzle out every nuance of this context.

But we don't have to, we have short-hands, and we have "models" that we follow that work well most of the time. But when some large portion of a group of people says, "Hey, this part of the social interaction model is broken, and it's hurtful," there's no good reason to not at least reevaluate it and think about it. It's good to spend some time considering the nuances sometimes, even if it's not good to do it all the time.

If you really don't like the academic term "microaggression", then just think about it as "mild rudeness". Mild rudeness isn't the worst thing ever. But it's still not a way you should behave toward colleagues. You should endeavor to be polite, professional, and courteous towards those you work with. Personally, I'd want to know if I was accidentally doing something rude. I'd be a bit mortified a first, but I'd rather know so that I can curtail that behavior.

I think it's kind of absurd how negative the reaction is to, "Hey, can you please stop saying that; it's honestly a bit rude." It's not like it costs people anything. Courtesy is free, and it's no great imposition. And even when the courteousness involves more delicate matters of race, gender, marginalization, etc. it remains free.

[tptacek]

Funny, I don't see him saying "bad man hurt woman" anywhere, nor do I hear any "soothing melodies".