[Kenji]

And of course, I think that a woman should have a chance at leading our country, even if she's not the one that I'd chose typically.

This I find the worst argument for her presidency imaginable. "I am so virtuous and anti-sexist that I prefer the female candidate for being female" It's pure sexism. You stop being sexist when you leave the gender out of the equation. Completely.

[nxc18]

The trouble is that so many people use that argument while completely ignoring their own biases.

E.g. "I don't care that she's a woman, but she just doesn't look presidential."

"I just don't trust her, she's too shrill." "I just don't trust her, she's too quiet."

Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc and you see that she's treated fundamentally differently than a male candidate.

The presidency has been held by a male exclusively for so long that voters don't know what a female president looks like. When so many (shockingly many) people vote on gut, instinct, or just their emotion, taking the time to acknowledge bias is a useful step.

[efvxcgci]

> Look at all the media attention to her hair, her outfits, her skin, etc

Strange comment to make considering the constant articles and social media posts about Trump's hair, Trump's orange skin, and Trump's little hands, plus the widespread coverage of the naked Trump painting and naked Trump statue that were created to mock his weight and body parts.

[smallnamespace]

Trump invites that sort of coverage by being a thin-skinned, narcissistic buffoon who thinks he's above everyone else.

Case in point: The whole 'small hands' thing would've blown over if Trump had ignored it, but he couldn't help himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuSdCXmDOus

[Kenji]

Look at all the media attention to her hair

I am not gonna lie, Trump's hair got much more coverage. She is not treated fundamentally different than a male candidate, except in a positive bias as in "I want to see a woman leading the country!" It is obvious that Hillary leverages gender-based tribalism to get the female vote (and the gentleman's).

The argument that people are unconsciously biased is precisely such an emotionally manipulative argument to give Hillary a gender-based advantage. That does not work with people who are hardened against emotional manipulation though, like myself.

[Dylan16807]

On the other hand, if you use conscious bias to counteract unconscious bias, that might lead you to the best decision.

And it's valid to consider the externalities when you're making a political choice. The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

Still, it's a relatively minor factor with the way the current race has turned out. So we don't need to worry about those arguments.

[Kenji]

The goal is a better future, after all, not maximizing fairness in the short-term.

That's why you shouldn't judge by gender, but by performance of the candidate. That just proves my point. If your goal is a better future and you make performance-based decisions, you will minimize biases like sexism all by itself because what is less discriminating than assessing raw performance?

[Dylan16807]

Before you can have an unbiased result, you need an unbiased pool of candidates. A temporary bias in the last round is an attempt to help fix the clearly-broken funnel that leads there. It might not be the best way of doing things, but the plan is not obviously wrong or anything.

[Kenji]

Affirmative action is destructive. You are setting up people to fail by promoting them into positions they are not fit to take. Either they are qualified or they aren't. End of discussion. It's the same way with marks. Nobody is helped if a black person with bad marks gets into a college when they should not, and they end up not being able to handle the subjects and drop out later.

Not only that - affirmative action is disrespectful. Women can do as well as men. I believe in it. But that is precisely why affirmative action is obsolete. Only those who think women cannot handle the work and cannot perform on par with men favour affirmative actions based on gender. In the German language, there's already a word for women who were promoted into positions they cannot handle because there are certain quotas to fill as required by law. This is called "Quotenfrau" and is incredibly derogatory.

[Dylan16807]

If someone isn't qualified, then a small bump won't be enough to put them in the job. We're not talking about picking a random person off the street to meet a quota.

There are flaws in affirmative action, but doing nothing about disparities that have self-perpetuating attributes is a pretty bad plan by itself. Top candidates don't appear out of a vacuum.

[EdHominem]

This isn't a gift to Hillary, or a matter of fairness between her and Trump. It's an evaluation of her qualities on another (largely before-unseen) metric. If pure sexism got us better presidents the sexist decision would be the right one, but as you'll see, it isn't actually sexist.

Imagine yourself as a sport team leader. You've normally picked large bruiser types and you say "Hmmm, I should try a lighter person with better speed." You don't know it'll work out, and it's "unfair" to the big bruisers, but it's a rational thing for a team leader to do.

Considering that left-handed players often get a benefit from simply being unique, choosing a female president could pay out now even if in the long run there's no real difference.

[pessimizer]

It's rational to say that "all other things being equal, I should choose the one that I'm most likely to be unconsciously biased against."

Forget racism or sexism, that's how I choose software, which movie to go see, or which pair of pants to buy.