[bvc35]

Why write about women specifically unless your intention is to emphasize the accomplishments of their sex in the field? This sounds a lot like "write about women more, but don't say you're writing about someone because she's a woman."

[munchbunny]

That's exactly the point.

If you take it out of the context of gender issues, it makes sense.

Want to destigmatize homosexuality? Write about people going about their lives normally, who happen to be homosexual. Make TV shows of "two dads" or "two moms" where they're just like any other TV couple. Do it for a few years and people become more comfortable with the idea, as if the new default was always the case.

With gender stuff, in my experience no matter how you do it someone will always have a beef with any active effort to correct subtle gendered dynamics in a field. If you believe that correction is needed, then what's left is choosing which potentially objectionable (to certain people) way you're going to do it. If you don't, then the debate isn't about how to do it, the debate is about whether there's a problem that needs a solution.

If you say "hey look she's a woman and she did this amazing thing!" someone will complain that you should be celebrating that a person did it, rather than pushing a woman-specific agenda. So instead, another way to do it is to not call out the woman part, crank up the frequency, and get people accustomed to "Oh, yeah, she's a woman too." Someone who knows that's what you're doing might accuse you of intentionally skewing representation. That's a valid objection, but that's a tradeoff. The benefit is that this method is more more likely to work in the long term on people who already have their guards up.

Over time, the hope is that turns into "What do you mean? Of course women are capable of that, what's the big deal?" Pretty sure that's an end state most people would want.

[AnimalMuppet]

I thought about this when Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court. I think that there's a four-step process society goes through:

1. She's female and hispanic. She can't serve on the Supreme Court.

2. She's female and hispanic, but she's nominated for the Supreme Court anyway! (See how enlightened we are?)

3. She's nominated for the Supreme Court. Nobody bothers to mention that she's female and hispanic.

4. People mention that she's female and hispanic, but only in the same way that they'd mention that she once did ballet or that she's an amateur fencer - as personal interest, not as a statement about her qualification to serve on the Supreme Court.

When Kagan was nominated, we were at step 2. (Which is progress - a generation earlier, we were at step 1). But we should be moving on to step 3, where nobody talks about such stuff because it's irrelevant. Ideally we should wind up at step 4, but I'm not sure that we can without going through step 3 first. And when we do start going to step 4, people are going to get uptight, because mentioning gender and race are going to raise fears that we're going back to step 2...

[bvc35]

If I were reading that article, I would want to read that she is female and Hispanic because the personal story of a Hispanic woman (probably) overcoming unique challenges to reach that position in the country is very interesting and notable.

[bvc35]

If you crank up the frequency of mentioning women, you are still pushing a woman-specific agenda and tacitly admitting that women still need your help to succeed.

[jordigh]

Yes, I'm saying what it sounds like. The reason you should do that is because there's a sexism problem, and by talking about women without talking about them being women, we can normalise their presence.

Let me add: there's no point in saying "I didn't do it!" or "don't blame me!" or "don't blame men!" or whatever. Blame and guilt are pointless and sexism exists no matter whose fault it is. Fix the problem of sexism, forget the blame.