[wpietri]

I would encourage you to think more about the social use of "jokes". Once we get past the level of knock-knocks, jokes very often have social meaning. Look at people like George Carlin, for example. His "7 dirty words" routine was deeply political. It was a full-on assault on American government censorship and the cultural elements that demanded it. And looking at history, he's won. Humor can be very powerful.

Jokes can also be used the other way, for social control. Growing up, I heard a lot of racist and sexist jokes, the practical effect of which was to demean: to create a place and put disfavored people in it. I'm old enough that nerds were a similar group, and I remember being the butt of a lot of jokes. When that happens, you're just supposed to take it; any objection to being demeaned is met with, "Why so sensitive! It's just a joke!"

So in the case you cite, the problem wasn't him telling a joke. There are whole books full of jokes for speakers he could have used. It was him invoking rank sexist stereotypes and suggesting the solution to his inability to manage his feelings was to push women out of the labs that they've been working for decades to get equal access to. And indeed, are still working on. At my alma mater, just this week a CS professor was just pushed out after dozens of women complained about sexual harassment in recent years. [1] It took dozens because early complaints were dismissed. And there are far more stories of professors like that then there are of ones being booted for "joking" misogyny.

[1] https://www.michigandaily.com/news/walter-lasecki-resigns-ef...

[zpeti]

Unpopular Opinion: people making these sexist jokes do actually think they are jokes. They aren't using them to push people down. Most people are nice people and don't realise they are being assholes and pushing people down.

On the other hand it's completely fair that people feel pushed down by them.

HOWEVER - this entire social justice movement is being used to outsource getting into conflict, and standing up for yourself. My guess is 80-90% of the time if you told someone who made a sexist joke that you are hurt by it, they would apologise (sincerely), and probably not do it again. But for that people actually need to get into a conflict situation, which is hard.

But it would make life a lot easier if we just sorted out these issues at the source, with two people, explaining what hurts and why to someone.

This modern solution of going to HR or to Twitter is not constructive to society, it creates massive divides, it also creates cowardly behaviour rather than encouraging actual people to talk to each other.

[pessimizer]

But this becomes a full-time job for minorities to explain what is bigoted to people they don't even want to be talking to, which

1) gets you attacked for seeing everything as bigoted - especially when you make mistakes because you can't know why everyone is doing everything, just see statistically stuff is happening to you and people who look like you more than everyone else, and

2) alienates you from your co-workers, who would prefer that you act according to the stereotypes they have of people like you and laugh at the jokes they're making about you (and your parents, and your parents parents, who were indisputably shat on.) They don't want to hang out with you because they can't relax around you. You're not going to get promoted unless the word comes from so far up you're going to get resented for it, and

0) it's just another burden to constantly be explaining how and why you're miserable to people, even (especially) the ones who consider it self-improvement to listen to you.

The temptation is just to coon for people, say what they want you to say and do what they want you to do, and just silently hate them and hate yourself.

> But it would make life a lot easier if we just sorted out these issues at the source, with two people, explaining what hurts and why to someone.

This is problematic thinking. For example, black people are 15% of the US population. It isn't one-on-one, it's one-on-five-and-a-half at best. And really, if you're a middle class professional (let's say programmer) where there's a lower proportion of black people that would be indicated by relative populations, it's one-on-a-small-army-20%-of-them-heavily-redpilled-and-angry.

I prefer to leave it to the twitter mob, although some of their positions are crazy, and it being twitter the people who are going to be the most vocal are going to have severe personality disorders (usually borderline.) It's still nice sometimes to have them deflect the belligerent white dude from you.

[wpietri]

Exactly. Very well put.

I once had a Black intern come back to his desk and I could see he was unhappy, which was far from his norm. I asked him what was up and there was this long moment of consideration, clearly deciding whether it was worth even explaining it to a white guy.

It turned out he'd left his badge at his desk and got trapped in the elevator lobby, something many people did going to and from the bathroom. When asking to be let in, a white guy gave him the third degree about who he was and whether he really belonged there. Nothing like that ever happened to me, even though my intern was a sharp dresser and I looked one notch up from a hobo.

After talking with my boss, I wrote this up for HR. At the intern's request, we never even named the interrogator. I explained that it was surely an unconscious bias incident and that I thought they'd want to keep track of things like that. In short order I get an email back from an HR lawyer denying, deflecting, defending. They did jack shit. So I also wrote the Black ERG heads. They jumped on it and raised it up to the level of the CEO, which I was very grateful for. It ended up being a reasonably positive experience for the intern on net; he felt heard and respected.

But it has always stuck with me how instantly this was dismissed by the normal power structure. They did not want to hear it, and no amount of me explaining "what hurts and why" would have made a lick of difference. And that was to a (white) manager with the backing of his (white) manager. I totally get why people targeted with this stuff just keep their heads down most of the time.

[monoideism]

> But it has always stuck with me how instantly this was dismissed by the normal power structure.

Your misunderstanding was believing HR is there to solve human interaction problems in the company. HR is there first and foremost to protect the company. In the case of legal, that’s even more the case.

But good on your for speaking up and trying to make the situation better. But I also believe your intern was smart to ask not to name the interlocutor. That would have only made enemies, and probably made things harder on him.

[wpietri]

Thanks, but avoiding future lawsuits for racial bias is part of protecting the company. As is making it safe for all sorts of people to work there, as that aids recruitment, retention, and results. So this wasn't about protecting the company.

My take is that HR's first goal is to protect HR, and their second to protect the powerful people in the company. Protecting the actual company is low down on the list.

[earleybird]

The phrase "outsource getting into conflict" caught my eye. To me, that is an interesting take/observation. I've been trying to sort out when a disagreement or argument becomes harassment and the closest I can come to is when there is a power imbalance between the parties. I'm inclined to agree that taking your grievance to the mob doesn't solve the real issue.

[wpietri]

I think it depends on what you mean a lot by "think". Did they wake up thinking, "Hey, let's go for some misogyny today"? Probably not. But on the other hand, it's not like their behavior is random, patternless. People often do things without really understanding what it means. Indeed, given how hard actually understanding a global society and its history is, I'd say we almost never totally understand anything we do. It's a big world, and people are universes unto themselves.

One book you might read here is, Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men". It's written by a therapist who mainly dealt with men in court-mandated therapy programs related to domestic abuse. Few of the men ever saw themselves as bad actors. There was always a reason they were justified in their abuse. He goes into great detail examining how abuse worked well for them.

I also think you misunderstand the systemic nature of things like misogyny and racism. You are effectively saying it's the job of women to fix sexists. Putting the burden there acts to support sexism. That's true anywhere, but it's especially true when we're talking about academia. Look at that UMich CS professor: he had many opportunities to understand his behavior was wrong. He surely heard it from women. He certainly heard it in trainings; "don't grope the students" is something every professor knows by now. Ignorance is not the problem, and suggesting that women with little power should educate men who can ruin their careers only helps abusive men.

Ignorance can be the problem in specific cases, of course. But even there, individuals are responsible for their own behavior. If men would like to not be sexist, they should study the topic. For the HN crowd, I might suggest Manne's "Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny" and the follow-on book "Entitled". Both are sharp, readable, and very analytical looks at the topic.

[throwaway894345]

I agree that jokes can be subversive; I don’t agree (perhaps you don’t either) that subversive speech (jokes or otherwise) merit termination, which is to say I’m not an authoritarian. With respect to racism, I don’t doubt that there are too many racist jokes, but the Twitter sphere tends to miss those in favor of jokes which are decidedly “antiracist” i.e., jokes which make fun of racism (whether left-wing racism or right-wing racism).

[loup-vaillant]

Taking the Wikipedia article at face value, and taking for granted the exact word it cites, I fail to see anything sexist in what Tim Hunt said in that conference. If anything, he was joking about sexism itself. The people who say are offended by his words either read a quote out of context, or did the cherry picking themselves.

Assuming you followed the same Wikipedia link I did, it would seam you are guilty of cherry picking. Let's explore this mistake together:

> Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?

So at a first glance, it seems to be as you say. That would indeed be disgusting. Wait a minute though. In your haste, it seems you failed to read the words that preceded:

> It's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists.

…as well as the words that followed:

> Now, seriously, I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without a doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.

So first, he tells his audience to take the words that will follow with a grain of salt: "Hey, I'm a monster, don't be surprised if I say monstrous things!". Then he says the thing (with less than ideal words, he could have said "me" instead of using the generic "you"). And finally he explicitly signals that the joke is over ("seriously"), and go on encouraging women to do science, and fight the very misogyny he just incarnated in his joke.

Did he actually used rank sexist stereotypes to suggest that women should be pushed out of men's labs? Of course not, and you know this.

---

Now let's stop the cherry picking, and acknowledge that we have both false positives (people getting fired over misplaced outrage), and false negatives (people not getting prosecuted for serious offences). While I understand the need for getting fewer false negatives (rape prosecution rates for instance are appallingly low), the solution is not to move the cursor all the way to hair trigger sensitivity: you'd just end up with far too many false positives, and not enough attention left to solve the real issues.

[wpietri]

He did literally both use rank sexist stereotypes and suggest women should be pushed out of men's labs. There's just no denying that. He did that as part of what he may have intended to be a joke. But when your audience doesn't laugh, it's a bad joke. If one is going to joke about a fraught topic, there's a strong obligation to succeed.

Even taking it as entirely sincere and well meant, something I don't think women in science are obliged to do, his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

I therefore think your theory this is a false positive is incorrect. I think the most that you can claim is that the level of outrage is disproportionate to the particular offense. But that analysis ignores the extent to which sexism is utterly commonplace in a society that has oppressed women for centuries and is still working its way out of it. So you can argue that this wasn't perfectly fair to this one guy, but it's not disproportionate to the problem this guy was part of. And a) that rings of himpathy to me, b) that ignores the much, much greater degree of unfairness caused by sexism, and c) that focus itself helps protect sexism. If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

[loup-vaillant]

> his "solution" is apparently for women to just ignore the sexism, something that places the burden for men's sexism on women. That is also sexist. So again, this looks like a failure to me.

That I can concede.

> If fairness is really what's motivating you, your time is better spent on the many early-career women continually being harmed and pushed out of the sciences, not one old white guy who is already back doing what he wants to.

Agreed. This cuts both ways, though. Attention directed at slandering the guy on Twitter is attention not devoted to actually help discriminated women.

[wpietri]

If slander were the point, sure. But for a lot of the people calling out sexism, etc, the point is not really the one offending guy. It's the caste of guys who have been supporting and benefiting from the problem that the current focus is symptomatic of. It's the system itself. But humans mostly don't think in systemic terms act to solve systemic issues. They work in terms of narrative, of example.

[loup-vaillant]

If the point is not the one offending guy, how do we justify his sacking? We could say we needed to make an example of someone, and that ended up being him, but I bet my hat it wasn't a conscious choice.

My problem with this whole thing is that our attention is focused on the visible things, instead of the real things. Harassment to name one tends to happen quietly, subtly, often away from witnesses. There's also a good chance that sexist jokes in public speeches are a consequence of a sexist atmosphere more than they are a cause. While they should indeed be addressed, we should be wary of fixing the symptom (looking good on the internet or in front of journalists), without addressing the actual cause (toxic work environment).

[wpietri]

He was hired for leadership/advocacy positions and compromised his value as a leader/advocate, so I can see why he resigned.

I agree that his behavior was driven by the cultural artifacts of patriarchy, but the very best way to continue that culture is to have leaders who are comfortable with the those artifacts or are clueless about eliminating them.

I'm all for anything that fixes toxic work environments, of course. And there are many subtler approaches. But as the UMich situation shows, those approaches often fail. Existing systems are good at sweeping incidents under the rug. So I am also all for giant public reactions to failures that are so painful for the organizations involved that change actually happens.

As an example, consider Brock Turner's judge Aaron Persky. His prominent himpathy for a rapist made him an internationally known figure and cost him his judicial seat, the first CA judge to be recalled in 80 years. Was this fair? In one sense no, in that other judges were surely equally bad in going easy on rapists that they identified with. But on the other hand, he was part of an institution that had 170 years to get its act together on rape. So although I would have preferred that the CA legislative branch had fixed this problem at any time in the past, they hadn't. And you can bet that a lot of male judges who would have scoffed at, say, mandatory training have taken careful note of what happened to Persky.

If you think you can swing the creation of effective training programs or other more real interventions, definitely go for it. But if not, then I think you'll have to get comfortable with the big-failure-and-strong-reaction model. Because as a general rule, the people who have the power to drive systemic change are not doing much about America's endemic sexism and racism. Until that gets better, activists are going to keep using the powers they have, a big one of which is making big examples of visible problems.

[meowkit]

> for social control

I think you’re reading way too deeply into this. You’re referring to the Tim Hunt quote linked?

Everything is about control or manipulation - its implicit to the human condition.

[wpietri]

I am not particularly referring to Hunt's "joke" there. There's a whole genre of "jokes" used to denigrate women.

I disagree that everything is "about" control or manipulation, but as status-oriented primates, humans certainly do inject it into everything. However, that's all the more reason we have to examine little things like "jokes" and be conscious of the effects we're having.