You’re not sexist if you give honest feedback to both genders. But you are at risk of being falsely labeled sexist if you do. It’s a bad situation I agree, but we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled.
In a culture where there are huge negative consequences for being labeled a $BAD_PERSON on twitter, people are obviously going to be more careful with everything they say. To expect them to behave differently is nonsense. You can't expect everyone to want to risk their careers and face painful, public, humiliating backlash for your own benefit. It's normal and healthy for people to want to protect themselves, in the same way that it's normal not to immediately trust strangers.
The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.
No, the real real problem is that in while there is some behavior that is obviously $BAD and others that are obviously not $BAD, there's a large range of behavior for which it's difficult to tell whether it's $BAD or not.
Consider the criminal justice system. Some people are obviously guilty and others are obviously innocent. But in between, there are lots of situations where it's difficult to tell whether the person is guilty or not. Vow to be more "tough on crime", and innocent people spend years in jail (or worse, end up executed). Vow to protect the innocent, and lots of guilty people get away scot-free. And there are criminals who are very good at exploiting this uncertainty.
There was a very insightful essay I saw many years ago which I can't find now unfortunately; but the main point was this: In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies. (For instance, where people are asked to rate the qualifications of a range of CVs, where the gender of the name on the resume is randomized.) Does the investor think A is better than B because of implicit (or not-so-implicit) bias? Or is A genuinely a better fit than B? It's basically impossible to know; even the investor themself may not know.
In the past, things swung very heavily toward "let the guilty go free", which meant implicit bias was allowed to stand unchallenged (leading to more men in leadership, leading to more implicit bias). "Cancel culture" is an attempt to swing things the other way. But it falls victim to the "certainty superpower" delusion: they think they know who the actual bad guys are, and end up taking down innocent people in the process.
What's the solution? In some sense there is no solution: until we have an Oracle of All Truth which we can consult, we will always have uncertainty; which means either punishing the innocent, letting the guilty go free, or some mixture of both. The best thing we can do is honestly acknowledge the situation and try to balance things as best we can.
> So take the example from TFA, where the investor thought male founder A would be a better CEO than female founder B. Implicit bias is a real thing, and has been proven in dozens of studies.
Incredible.
In TFA, this precise same individual did the reverse first. It is hard to argue bias, when someone worked to get a better founder, female, to be CEO...
Yet this is dropped, ignored, in your comment.
So here we see, that even those actively showing non-bias, are labelled as likely biased still?!
If people's prior actions are no longer any remote indication of bias or not, all is lost.
Two examples of his actions with different genders do not show that there is absence or presence of a gender-specific bias.
Decision maker still could have bias towards men or women generally, but in those two cases some other factors could outweigh this bias, even if it actually was present. No way to tell.
The article also mentions this topic, by listing some factors that may influence decision in such situation:
> The degree to which men hold back on their advice depends on 1) how much is at stake and 2) how much they trust you. For example, you’ll be much more likely to get candid advice from an investor who has invested a lot of money in your company and you’ve known for years vs. a panelist at a tech conference giving feedback onstage who doesn’t know you and hasn’t invested in your startup.
I'm talking about how we as normal people, and the public, respond when we see something like that situation. Suppose the investor had asked the woman to step down in favor of the man. Almost nobody who saw that situation -- not the woman, not the man, not the other people in the company, probably not the other investors, and almost certainly not the general public -- are going to know about the other situation.
> Answer: because the bias is, that all men are biased.
So, in a discussion where we're discussing the possibility that women might see anti-woman bias where none exists, we have a situation where a man sees anti-man bias where none exists.
It clearly does. You seem to indicate that a male is “guilty” of gender-specific bias no matter what he does. So a non-murdering male is still a murderer because he is a male?
> we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled.
But we can't fix it by doing otherwise—asking people to stop being "overly" cautious—either. Another comment put it best: that solution is akin to asking people to self-sacrifice, except that at the very least jumping on a grenade gets you a medal; in this case, it gets you vilification.
It's not reasonable to expect the change to come from people without power. The stakes are too high for most and there is very little to win.
You would need someone like Google CEO (with the support of the board) to say: jumping to accusations will get you in trouble. Just because it's criticism doesn't make it sexist. We don't care about your social power pseudo scientific theory and we will not settle in court. Stop making the work place toxic.
Then you need to have this sentiment repeated by other powerful people.
Chances of that happening in US in coming years? In my opinion about zero.
It’s really not though. People can spread any rumors they want. Giving blunt advice or not funding a company or whatever other perceived slight still exposes you. The risk is still there from the first contact to the last.
But in any legal setting this will get shut down immediately unless there’s valid proof.
Outrage mobs don't need a legal setting to ruin someone's life (or livelihood).
Question: Would we, on average, expect an outrage mob response of the same size and magnitude when a man makes such an accusation? Whether or not this is justified by historical injustice is irrelevant here. What's salient is whether or not there is a gender skew.
If there is such a systematic and large societal gender skew, then we should expect people's cost/benefit calculations regarding the exposure to the risk of such accusations to also be skewed in a way that is large, systemic, and gender unequal. In a word, the way our society works around accusations, current day in 2021, is itself highly sexist.
Therefore, if we don't want systematized sexism, then we have to eliminate gendered skew in these cost/benefit calculations. We already know the mechanisms for the way out of this. It's codified in various legal systems, and in the values of historical liberal societies and philosophies. They are called respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. When society applies these principles gender neutrally, the gendered skew in individual cost/benefit calculations will even out, on average. Society will have eliminated another form of sexism, and the world will be a better place.
When one says "believe women" somehow in preference to believing men, this is a contributing factor. To avoid the gendered skew, it would be obviously impractical to say, "believe everyone." Hence: respect for evidence, innocent until proven guilty, and due process. Applied gender-neutrally, this is our way out.
In short, the tremendous power we've given mobs based on accusations not-requiring evidence is itself highly sexist, and this distorts our society to also be more sexist.
What I mean is that if you’re operating out of fear, you’re doing it wrong.
The only way rumors kill careers is if we fear the rumors.
If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But if most people are afraid and one person gives honest feedback and is subjected to a rumor, the one rumor seems significant.
I guess I brought up the legal stuff because I think believing rumors is silly in general. If you’re actually the subject of discrimination, you should prove it in court for the benefit of yourself and society.
I’m not sure that we’re disagreeing entirely. I do agree with what you’re saying as well. Just hoping we can chart a new path.
> If everyone is giving honest, straightforward feedback, then everyone has a rumor about them and it becomes powerless.
But this leads me back to my previous comment: this isn't a feasible solution because it means basically asking people to self-sacrifice until the "rumors" lose power.
Yes, that’s how every successful resistance to oppression in history has operated.
Self-preservation and self-interest is how every single resistance has failed and capitulated.
And if you’re actually kind, fair and decent to women you will have people who rebut the rumors. A tweet against you isn’t an inevitable destruction of your career.
You don't need to violate a law to have your career and reputation destroyed. In today's at will employment environment its just easier for a company to lay off the accused rather than endure the cost and damage to its reputation incurred from keeping someone accused of sexism, racism or any of the isms. That person does not even have had to have done anything wrong, the accusation is enough to torpedo them.
Based on your original post, I guess you could say that if you give honest feedback to men but not to women, you could also be labeled sexist. But the chances of anyone finding out that's what you're doing is pretty low, perhaps lower than getting labeled sexist for giving honest feedback to everyone.
I feel like "giving into the fear of being labeled" doesn't fully capture the risk involved. For many people that labeling means the end of their career, or at the very least a lot of personal and professional embarrassment, plus a big negative mark on their record. I have a hard time looking down on anyone too hard for giving in to that fear.
We won't fix it, but demanding to fix it from the people who stand to lose the most and has the least means to fix it might be not the best way to approach it either. Maybe if we became a little more attentive to the potential of false accusations and less tolerant to people who falsely accuse others of sexism, the balance could start moving back to where people wouldn't be afraid to talk candidly just because they talk to a female.
> we won’t fix it by giving into the fear of being labeled
Individuals will consider their jobs and thus their dependents' welfare more important than risking being publicly slaughtered to fix a mindset that's pretty ingrained now.
The real problem is the cancel culture. That's what needs to be fixed. A twitter mob shouldn't be able to cause as much damage as they do. There should be laws preventing people from being fired because of social media. Maybe everyone who's ever been fired or had negative career consequences due to a twitter mob should get together and bring on a massive class-action lawsuit. Force twitter to fix their toxic lynch mob problem, and let that be an example for any other social media company that wants to capitalize on harmful gossip and mob behavior.