[unidentified103]

I don't quite understand how a corporate policy like an "intern buddy" can be compared to a ghetto or even how it remotely hurts you in the same way that an unspoken "boys club" office setting would. A corporate policy like that is pretty clearly an impersonal management-type fluff program that does not solve every problem that could possibly arise from sexism, but that serves a resource for a few people desperately in need of it (and pretending that there are not people desperately in need of it is part of the problem). Furthermore, refusing to participate in a program that could give you connections and special insight out of some misguided principle that we must maintain the appearance that everyone is treated equally is very strange to me. While you were refusing assistance out of principle, your colleagues were offered opportunities, encouraged into management, etc. at varying rates based on process that can in no way be described as meritocratic.

[tomc1985]

The mere offering of assistance to people who do not need it, and feel they should not need it, can be construed as insulting.

EDIT: As mentioned to in another comment, "Special treatment feels condescending."

[unidentified103]

Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto? Is your pride really so hurt that someone wanted to help you out around the office that you refuse to believe that you could have learned anything useful from it? You can't even come out of it with another friend, a future business contact, an interpersonal skill, deeper knowledge of a workplace tool? It's great if some people don't think they need help overcoming sexist barriers in the office, some people do. No need to over-complicate it.

[wutbrodo]

> Honestly, why take things like that personally? Why liken it to a ghetto?

Man, it's beyond irritating to see this kind "what's the big deal? just chill" type rhetoric used in this context. Particularly because it's a hard-fought (and ongoing) battle to stop this _same exact logic_ from being used to deflate complaints about what it's like for underrepresented minorities in the workplace.

[unidentified103]

The argument here was that being offered assistance is personally insulting. In this case, I think the "same exact logic" holds. Yes, the line of questioning is a bit of an abrasive way of putting someone on the defensive, but I wanted to have a clear and direct answer for why the ghetto comparison held.

[wutbrodo]

My point is that all the arguments used to rebut this line of thinking when applied to more conventional complaints from underrepresented people apply just as well here. If "the same exact logic" holds, what exactly makes the same exact rebuttals magically invalid?

[unidentified103]

What are the rebuttals?

[Mithorium]

I wish more people were like you. If everyone tried to assume the best of others until proven otherwise instead of assuming the worst we would all be much happier as a group

[Doxin]

Sure, but that buddy system sure sounds a lot like pushing someone in a wheelchair, them asking you to stop, and you going on regardless. Unwanted help is unwanted.

[weberc2]

"why take things personally?" The same could probably be asked of many of the "sexist barriers" you allude to. Intentions And pragmatism have never been relevant with regards to inclusivity; why should they now be? Because the offender has the right politics?

[dilemma]

You're clearly not part of a minority group.

[unidentified103]

That's a confusing reaction to what I said and what I'm arguing against.

Edit: For the record, I'm a bisexual Mexican woman. Of course there are times when I perceive people as holding my hand too much and I know it can feel condescending. When I reflect on it, though, no, it's not the same brand of condescension that made my middle school teacher tell me I had no future in math. There's something strange about victimizing yourself out of fear that people are victimizing you.

An internship program for women at Microsoft isn't a ghetto; it can only come from a place of extreme privilege and ignorance to believe so.

[abduhl]

Aren't your posts here telling the GP how important and useful a specific group for females is despite them explaining why they didn't want want to be a part of it a form of mansplaining?

[unidentified103]

Why are you assuming that I'm a man? Either way, these kinds of programs are useful for certain people and there are lots of other articles in defense of them. Just because one person didn't want to participate doesn't mean that other people aren't happy that they exist.

[tracker1]

But why single out a given group? Why not offer everyone an "intern buddy"? Also, why change from opt-in to opt-out?

[unidentified103]

Do you believe decisions like this are randomly made?

> "Why not offer everyone an 'intern buddy'"

Female interns could have complained about sexual harassment, female interns could have had lower rates of accepting return offers, etc.

> "Also, why change from opt-in to opt-out"

The program had been going on for a while. They could have had data that suggested that female interns would be interested in such a program but had fears about bringing it to the attention of their managers or had fears of the repercussions of being one of the few who accepted.

[tomc1985]

Because it implies an opinion of weakness to the party offering said "help". Many people do not need or want help and forcing it on them only serves to enforce hidden power dynamics on behalf of the requestor.

What I really don't understand is how we men can act so innocent about all this. "Oh, I was just asking a question," "I didn't force her to do anything," "she was free to decline," "what, how could you not want help? Think of all the [rationalizations]!" and so on....

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Intentions are as clear as the sky on a sunny day...

People who see others as equals treat people differently than those who think they see a potential partner, or victim, or lackey...

EDIT: Also, "mansplaining"

[michaelmrose]

You are super angry at something. Maybe that something is perfectly valid but it does not seem a reasonable reaction to the situation at hand.

You sound like the kind of person I would avoid interacting with at all costs because anything could result in non productive conflict. Have you considered people might be reacting to your hostility not your gender?

[OJFord]

> You sound like the kind of person I would avoid interacting with at all costs

And yet...

[michaelmrose]

There is limited risk in talking to strangers on the Internet unless you say horrendously racist things then become Internet famous for it.

[tomc1985]

I am. Technology was in such a good place; the internet was a buffet of information free and available perused mostly by nerds, the clueless, and the occasional asshat. Now that all this crap's gone mainstream, the best info was bought up, and positivity-sucking muggles have ruined all that's left.

[unidentified103]

So am I supposed to feel equally condescended to by the man in upper management who calls me "sweetie" and the woman who has organized some person to show me around the office and introduce me to people? Okay.

[weberc2]

Why interpret one charitably and not the other? I survived being called "honey" by a woman in management; I didn't take offense because it would never occur to me to spin a well-intentioned comment for victim points. I fully realize that cute nicknames can be used in condescending tones, but then the issue is being condescending, not the nickname. I also realize that the genders are reversed, and that's supposed to make the nickname more offensive or invalidate my opinion or something; just to head this one off early--it doesn't.

[arkh]

Do they do it for everyone?

Benevolent sexism is still sexism.

[tomc1985]

As if condescension was a binary thing...

...and as with much of this stuff, much of it depends on context -- body language, situation, phrasing, intonation, and so on. A perfectly routine request or offer can quickly become patronizing depending on the manner in which it is asked, or by who. The vibe that I got from the original article was HOPPERS was one of those things -- help, ostensibly, but unnecessary and patronizing. Not in the same category as Mr. Sweetie Manager but still offensive.

[joe4353444]

Thinking humanity from first principles we need to help each other in order to help ourselves.

[specialist]

Good answer to a good (sincere) question. Thanks.

"Paternalistic" is the word that pops into my head. I really like "condescending" too.

Projecting the belief that we know what's best for other people, the arrogance, is why so many hate "liberal elites" like me. Whereas I'm trying to figure out ways to empower others, many of my cohort continue to unwittingly disempower others.

I definitely don't have any useful answers, insights.

(Aside: "liberal elites" are the mirror image of the "fundamentalists", for lack of better terms, who also know what's best for other people. This is not a left vs right issue.)

[meej]

I'm not sure "corporate policy" is the right way to characterize it. This wasn't a policy adopted by HR or anything like that. An internal employee group took this upon themselves, and in the years before I did my internship it was completely voluntary. They changed that the summer I was there.

As for the word ghetto, that is what came to mind when I read the part in Maria's post about special awards for women in tech.

It would have been fine if I had gotten an email describing the program and inviting me to participate. Instead, I got an email from a stranger, completely unannounced, saying "Hi, I'm your intern buddy!"

It was the assumption that I needed help because I'm a woman that I found condescending. I'm not saying programs like this aren't good, or that nobody needs them, it was the blanket application to an entire group without consulting them first that I took issue with. The difference between a safe space and segregation is whether or not your participation is voluntary. Had it been offered as an invitation I might have even taken them up on it, but nobody bothered to ask first. It was just assumed that because I'm female, I needed help. I disagreed.

Nothing can be described as meritocratic because meritocracy is a myth.

[unidentified103]

Yeah, I can see how such an e-mail wouldn't exactly feel so welcoming if your participation was assumed and suddenly thrust upon you. But I don't necessarily think that it makes sense to believe that they wrote the e-mail that way because they thought you were helpless. Whoever wrote it could have been excited about the program and assumed everyone else would be too.

[meej]

Well I'm paraphrasing and omitting details for reasons of brevity and memory (this was almost 20 years ago, after all). I do recall the email was lengthy and made the point more than once that I needed extra support because I was a woman. I was at least halfway through my internship, which had been going very well, when I got it. It wasn't my first intern-like role, either, I'd done an 8-month co-op at another company the year before, which also went very well. The word that Maria used in her post, and that I quoted above, really does match how I felt -- I felt like I was being told I was a victim when that didn't mesh at all with my experience.

[nichtich]

Could it be they are not merely offering you help but also asking you to help others in this "buddy" program? Help can go both ways.

[Dove]

I don't have special knowledge of the particulars of the internship, but characterizing the effect as creating a ghetto makes sense to me, and I can try to explain why.

Have you ever heard the argument that donating free clothing to Africa is actually bad for Africans? The idea is that by providing free clothing, you destroy the local industries which allow Africans to create clothing for themselves, eliminating jobs, introducing dependency, and eliminating the possibility of a native African-style clothing industry flourishing and eventually exporting products and enriching the community. [1]

Charity comes with a counterintuitive hazard: any time you do something for someone that they could do for themselves, you make them weaker. You deprive them of the independence and control that doing it themselves would offer them, and you reduce the development of their own infrastructure for doing the task the next time.

Charity must attempt to make people stronger. Reduce the impact of a crisis while people recover. Give otherwise unattainable support while the person develops in ways they couldn't without it. Philosophically, funding startups, not donating products.

I'm not saying donating things is always bad . . . it depends on the effects. Charity is hard, I think more because it's hard to figure out how to help people, than because it's hard to be unselfish. I think there are a lot of cases where it's hard to anticipate what the effects will be, which is why it's so important to study what you're doing and see if you're actually helping. It's very easy to do harm while intending to do good. But the rough criterion I use comes from an old song about charity in Africa, and argues that the right attitude to have is, "I want to see you shine / See your light not mine." In a charitable effort -- is the focus on the generosity of the giver? Or is it about what the recipient can achieve and become, with the giver's help being a footnote?

A formalized mentorship seems like a marginal case, one you could argue worked either way. It's giving the new employee knowledge and extra help about the firm, a running start, if you will. Where's the harm in that?

The harm is that the new employee would normally acquire these things herself by asking coworkers, and in the process would learn who she could ask about what, and would begin establishing peer relationships that she will use throughout her career. The implication that she cannot do this for some reason isolates her, and giving her an artificial source of support weakens her ability to find her own support. This would be a bad thing if that artificial support ever went away, but in a way, it's almost a worse thing if it sticks around, because the result is the new employee relying on an inferior network to the one she would have developed herself.

The term ghetto to me implies that all the capable and competent people moved away, leaving the poorest ones stuck with just each other. A targeted system which isolates and coddles new employees will have just that effect -- they'll have the impression that it's the system and each other they can talk to, leaving them with a much, much poorer network than if they had just been introduced to the veteran coworkers as if that were perfectly normal which it is.

I'm right there with you in that this sort of thing shouldn't be taken personally. People intend it helpfully, and that charitable impulse should be honored (if perhaps gently educated, too). But I myself have always been very suspicious of programs targeting women, because there are a lot of people in the world who want to Help Women and I always suspect those programs are about their glory and pro-womanness or whatever, and more likely to harm me than do me any good, even if I can't see right away why that might be. I think my chances are better on my own, and anyway -- I'd prefer to have a similar experience to others in my field in the ways I can, to help me integrate into the new group.

Helping people develop and become stronger is difficult, even in the most concrete cases. It's not dissimilar to raising a child -- you argue one minute that relieving their frustration by making a task easier will give them the boost they need to do something even greater, and argue the next that letting them fail will make them stronger and they will eventually succeed on their own. It's an art more than it is a science, but I think as long as you are teaching something you understand and guiding someone toward mastery, you are pretty safe. But I definitely think it is much safer to devise solutions to help concrete cases than to help statistics. If I see you need help finding the break room, it is easy to conclude that giving you directions will be helpful. Providing you a buddy preemptively because certain classes of employee are less likely to ask for directions easily . . . seems more dubious in its effect. I understand the impulse, but I really think it is safest to stick to the concrete, and to help the people around you and solve the problems you can clearly identify directly.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-griffinangus/africa-char...