2012-08-16 10:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineA friend was discussing the recent prying open of a can of worms that is sexism at Defcon, and possibly-interesting things fell out of my head in the comments, so I'm reposting them here.
Another commenter remarked: "The last bit was the bit about how speaking up against sexism diminishes ones social cred."
This is, itself, a byproduct of sexism, and, in my (admittedly straight white male) experience, almost exclusively[1] an erosion of social standing in the eyes of straight males... and often a huge leap upward in the opinion of less-privileged groups of people. Speaking against privilege, which is what calling out sexists and sexism does, makes one a target for privilege to rail against at the same time it makes you an ally to or champion of the less-privileged. (It's possible that this is, itself, a product of my working from a privileged position; I can afford to backhand members of the privileged group from within with greater impunity than those from the outside are able, or, possibly, be listened to due to the _____-ist environment we're currently operating within that treats my current position as privileged.)
Is this a zero-sum equation? Is it net-positive? Is it net-negative?
I don't know. It probably differs by individual and group. I'd like to think that it's a net-positive, writ large (there being fewer straight dudes than all other groups combined, though it's entirely possible that some members of those groups favor the status quo for reasons I find it challenging to imagine), though when one drills down into a particular group - hackers, hacker convention attendees, sci-fi fans & con attendees (see: recent readercon situation), or what have you, and, as a consequence, the more overwhelmingly straight-male-dudebro-neckbeardy[2] a subgroup is, the longer and more tedious this process is going to be, and the more resistant to change, barring a clever (successful) social hack of some sort, rather than the brute-force approach of gradual cultural shift.
In the short term, this is prone to be acutely uncomfortable for the practitioner, because the current power disparity puts a lot of pressure on anyone who bridges the gap; in much the same way that a spark jumping a longer distance has to be a lot more powerful, until that gap can be narrowed by lots of people taking action, so that each successive one is less striking. That gap may never close entirely, but if it can go from being a dramatic and hostile Tesla coil KAPOW to the trifling zap of a fingertip on a doorknob in the near-ish term, we can work to try and buff the last of the stupidity out of the system in larger numbers - not everyone has the grounded chain-mail suit today's environment calls for, but most folks can handle a small, occasional zap.
Ideally, there will come a time when there is no discomfiting zap at all, and the current flows smoothly throughout the entire populace, but even on my most optimistic days, I'm not sure I'll live to see that happen.
[1] I would be unsurprised but disappointed to be wrong about this, though.
[2] In short, Reddit.
Another commenter remarked: "The last bit was the bit about how speaking up against sexism diminishes ones social cred."
This is, itself, a byproduct of sexism, and, in my (admittedly straight white male) experience, almost exclusively[1] an erosion of social standing in the eyes of straight males... and often a huge leap upward in the opinion of less-privileged groups of people. Speaking against privilege, which is what calling out sexists and sexism does, makes one a target for privilege to rail against at the same time it makes you an ally to or champion of the less-privileged. (It's possible that this is, itself, a product of my working from a privileged position; I can afford to backhand members of the privileged group from within with greater impunity than those from the outside are able, or, possibly, be listened to due to the _____-ist environment we're currently operating within that treats my current position as privileged.)
Is this a zero-sum equation? Is it net-positive? Is it net-negative?
I don't know. It probably differs by individual and group. I'd like to think that it's a net-positive, writ large (there being fewer straight dudes than all other groups combined, though it's entirely possible that some members of those groups favor the status quo for reasons I find it challenging to imagine), though when one drills down into a particular group - hackers, hacker convention attendees, sci-fi fans & con attendees (see: recent readercon situation), or what have you, and, as a consequence, the more overwhelmingly straight-male-dudebro-neckbeardy[2] a subgroup is, the longer and more tedious this process is going to be, and the more resistant to change, barring a clever (successful) social hack of some sort, rather than the brute-force approach of gradual cultural shift.
In the short term, this is prone to be acutely uncomfortable for the practitioner, because the current power disparity puts a lot of pressure on anyone who bridges the gap; in much the same way that a spark jumping a longer distance has to be a lot more powerful, until that gap can be narrowed by lots of people taking action, so that each successive one is less striking. That gap may never close entirely, but if it can go from being a dramatic and hostile Tesla coil KAPOW to the trifling zap of a fingertip on a doorknob in the near-ish term, we can work to try and buff the last of the stupidity out of the system in larger numbers - not everyone has the grounded chain-mail suit today's environment calls for, but most folks can handle a small, occasional zap.
Ideally, there will come a time when there is no discomfiting zap at all, and the current flows smoothly throughout the entire populace, but even on my most optimistic days, I'm not sure I'll live to see that happen.
[1] I would be unsurprised but disappointed to be wrong about this, though.
[2] In short, Reddit.
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To your note [1], there is definitely sexism within the gay community as well. Granted, it has been 15 years since I've been actively involved in said community, so I will allow that it may have changed more rapidly than culture at large, but in my experience as a bisexual woman in non-heterosexual social spheres, there were subsets of the community in which there was definitely an erosion of standing to fight sexism, often in part because the community was seen as "above" that sort of thing in the first place, so there was a huge risk to anyone who brought up the idea that perhaps we weren't above sexism and misogny after all.
In terms of the benefit of privileged groups speaking up, I think it absolutely has benefit, so long as the privileged person is willing to cede the floor to the non-privileged group being discussed. To some extent it does risk perpetuating the cycle of privileging already privileged voices, but when done thoughtfully, it is also helpful for the in-group to self educate and take some of the burden of teaching 101 level crap off of the people who experience the most oppression.
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CRUCIAL.
Way too often, the opposite happens, and the privileged person winds up retaining power in the situation. Because that's what s/he's used to.
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That just blew my mind a little...
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... and serious fucking woe unto those who fuck with the people I like.
My gamer .sig for a long time was, "Don't think of it as losing; think of it as getting beat by a guy in a skirt." I will, skillfully and with great vigor, school these dudes at their own game if I have to.
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