| > and while as a white man I experienced most likely much less of this I think you might be less confident about this if you examine your framing. Examining your own framing is difficult, so humor me while I examine the author's framing: 'I’m not suggesting that my fellow interviewers were sexist. They weren’t even aware of their inconsistent judgment until I pointed it out. But this incident made me think that subconsciously, people are using another scale to judge women’s ability in tech. Nobody says it out loud because that’s no longer socially acceptable, but I couldn’t help but hearing it in my head: “She’s good for a woman. Even though she doesn’t do as well as that guy, she still gets the same scores because she’s in the women’s league.”' The author is looking at a situation where a man is offered fewer opportunities, and it is framed as sexism against women. This is justified by asserting what was going on in the heads of other people (something she can never know). Situation: Man is denied an opportunity
Framing: This is sexism against a woman
Evidence: Assertion about someone else's inner life Well, we can just as easily make a different assertion, changing the evidence, which changes the framing. Why not assert that the interviewers are really thinking 'I couldn’t help but hearing it in my head: "He did the best, but he's a man. Men don't deserve positions of power because they abuse them to take advantage of other people sexually and economically. He should have a lower score."' This changes the framing. Now the sexism is against a man: Situation: Man is denied an opportunity
Framing: This is sexism against a man
Evidence: Assertion about someone else's inner life Which framing fits the situation better. But now you might say, "Sololipsist, that's unlikely to be the thought process. I don't know if we should make assertions about other people's inner lives." To that I say, "I strongly agree." What SHOULD happen here is that we should see evidence, which leads us to a frame that describes the situation. In both cases above, the frame leads to the evidence, which is wrong. This is a post-hoc rationalization. Claims of sexism are a post-hoc rationalization to justify a claim. In this case, it's to justify a claim that denying an opportunity to a man is an injustice not to that man, but to women in general. Why, oh why, would you want to justify that claim in this particular case, without evidence? Why would you accept invented evidence (the inner lives of others) to justify this claim? I suggest that it's because you've been socially conditioned to accept the frame that women are victims of sexism, but that men are not, and that this frame does not necessarily reflect reality. In fact, I suggest, in this light, that it's no more likely to be the correct frame than the opposite frame, that men are victims of sexism and women are not. Sure, you can justify the former frame with evidence, but is that evidence following from a frame? I'm sure you accept the premise that men in the 50's
lacked the appropriate frame to see how their actions and culture was oppressive to women - one of the greatest achievements of feminism, it is said, is that it provided this frame - after all, women didn't have to take power from men violently, they changed culture to get men to cede power willingly. Maybe, as a white man, you've experienced a lot more racism and sexism than you realize, you've just been denied the appropriate frame to see it. |