Now I don’t know what to do about this problem. (The essence of a rant, in fact, is that the ranter has no idea how to fix the thing being ranted about.) What I do know is this: it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.In the rarified air of tech punditry people seem to be able to get away with saying hotheaded things that they have no idea how to seriously address and act like it's a thought experiment and not a deeply entrenched social problem that people have been working on for millennia. Arrogance works out okay for individuals, some individuals. There is also value to being non-arrogant and working for your community as a whole. Both genders do both of these things, by the way.
A great Rant About Women by Clay Shirky: (Women) "are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so."Right, because women aren't human. Apparently. Sheesh.
So I get email from a good former student, applying for a job and asking for a recommendation. “Sure”, I say, “Tell me what you think I should say.” I then get a draft letter back in which the student has described their work and fitness for the job in terms so superlative it would make an Assistant Brand Manager blush.Whenever I write recommendation letters, I make 'em way over the top positive. The whole subtext is that if I really liked the person, I would want the best for them, and of course that would mean portraying them in the best possible light. If I got a recommendation letter from someone and it said the person was "OK" "reasonably competent" and "works slightly harder then the median employee" it would not instill a lot of confidence even if I only needed an OK employee for a job.
I agree, Countess Elena, but can we please banish the word "mansplaining" from our kingdom? I'd never heard it before, and it made me a bit nauseous.I think it's hilarious. Someone used it upthread and I knew exactly what they meant.
131posted by koeselitz at 12:21 AM on January 17, 2010
The sexes deceive themselves about each other—because at bottom they honor and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to put it more pleasantly). Thus man likes woman peaceful—but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.
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When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexually. Sterility itself disposes one toward a certain masculinity of taste; for man is, if I may say so, “the sterile animal.”
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... To be sure, there are enough imbecilic friends and corrupters of women among the scholarly asses of the male sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this way and to imitate all the stupidities with which “man” in Europe, European “manliness,” is sick; they would like to reduce woman to the level of “general education,” probably even of reading the newspapers and talking about politics. Here and there they even want to turn women into freethinkers and scribblers—as if a woman without piety would not seem utterly obnoxious and ridiculous to a profound and godless man...
Altogether one wants to make her more “cultivated” and, as is said, make the weaker sex strong through culture—as if history did not teach us as impressively as possible that making men “cultivated” and making them weak—weakening, splintering, and sicklying over the force of the will—have always kept pace, and that the most powerful and influential women of the world (most recently Napoleon's mother) owed their power and ascendancy over men to the force of will—and not to schoolmasters!
What inspires respect for woman, and often enough even fear, is her nature, which is more “natural” than man's, the genuine, cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger's claw under the glove, the naivete of her egoism, her uneducability and inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, scope, and movement of her desires and virtues—
– F Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
That’s the kind of behavior I mean. I sat in the office of someone I admired and feared, someone who was the gatekeeper for something I wanted, and I lied to his face. We talked some more and then he said “Ok, you can take my class.” And I ran to the local art supply place and bought a drafting board, since I had to start practicing.I do this shit constantly. This is essentially how I make my entire damn living. I walk in the door, and they say, "How's your Objective-C?" and I say, "Oh, it's passable." And then I run home and buy an O'Reilly book and learn the language over the weekend before the second interview.
"...we need men (and anyone with privilege) to consciously and conscientiously account for their own privilege and biases and to actively work to highlight and embrace diverse voices of all kinds.posted by bru at 10:01 AM on January 24, 2010 [1 favorite]
Your interpretation of others is just as (if not more) important in creating change as their efforts to impress you."
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okay okay I'll go read it....
posted by jessamyn at 9:08 AM on January 16, 2010 [35 favorites]