![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Via ithiliana: an academic who runs a blog discussing ways to combat biased thinking argues that women don't seem to like this blog, clearly it must be because they're inherently wired not to understand/be interested in the topic, with the conversation quickly shifting to the way women are biologically predisposed to being less intelligent and scientifically rigorous. (Edited as per request, note that this still isn't an entirely accurate description of his argument)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ithiliana goes into the crazy bad wrongness of it quite well, as does mswyrr here (see the OP make an idiot of himself in the comments!) and has a really nice and interesting argument here, including some great quotes.
But it got me thinking about two insidious ideas I see a lot of places, which have a lot of appeal even for people who should know better (like this guy)
The first is that things like racism/sexism etc are just social justice issues, things you should care about because they're morally right, but that they have nothing to do with anything else. Yet to me, they're more like huge cognitive disfunctions, which distort and invalidate our perceptions and actions to a significant degree in all sorts of areas, and must be addressed for practical and not just moral reasons. How can we figure out the truth if we are unable to acknowledge any arguments which challenge our privilege? How can you write a good book if you are genuinely incapable of seeing women as people? How can you hire the best staff if you automatically dismiss anyone with an ethnic sounding name? How can you really understand history if you always take the side of people with a certain shade of skin or religion? This isn't just a matter of being nice to the disadvantaged, this is an issue of truth. And truth is something I'd like to think everyone wants to have as good a hold of as possible.
The second idea is that "there's no smoke without fire", that any prejudice, however horrible and blown out of proportion, must have some basis in fact. A common one (which is brought up here): so many societies have a strong tradition as viewing women as inferior to men. Thus, while it's not going to be universal or neccesarily that large, there must be some innate inferiority which started this tradition. (As this commenter points out, even if you stick with biological determinism, "men tend to be bastards" explains the data better than "women tend to be stupid")
In my opinion there's two issues here: the first is that even if the prejudice is borne out somewhat in practice (ie women perform worse in some standardised tests, certain ethnic groups have a higher arrest record) it's completely unfair to take it on face value without looking at the complex causes behind it (poorer education, institutionalised poverty etc). And in many cases the "objective" measure a group fails at has (possibly unconscious) bias against that group, ie police are racist and arrest that group more regardless of their behaviour.
But the second issue is that sometimes there's absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. A horrible example I came across of this a while ago (possibly misremembered) was of the way african women were portrayed as inherently seductive and sexual (and dangerous) in America and the west in general during slavery (and now). This was partly because they tended to wear less clothing than your typical victorian woman, but mainly because like any group with absolute power over another(*) the slave owners raped the women, and the only way to justify this was to think of them as evil seductresses. When you look at their history and culture, the africans were basically as prudish and monogamous as the europeans.
On the whole I think a lot of people like to think they're against racism and sexism etc, but deep down, when push comes to shove, would rather think sexist etc attitudes are true than acknowledge that a large part of the core beliefs of past and present societies are a horrible, unjustified, destructive lie.
EDIT: Since it turned out to be necesary, a bibliography of evidence for the existence of bias (found via google and the Blink website):
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2002-08203-006
http://www.osborne-conant.org/ladies.htm and http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5903.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/18conv.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2026
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
(*)I was going to say "group of men" here but then remembered the female guards at Abu Graib :/
ithiliana goes into the crazy bad wrongness of it quite well, as does mswyrr here (see the OP make an idiot of himself in the comments!) and has a really nice and interesting argument here, including some great quotes.But it got me thinking about two insidious ideas I see a lot of places, which have a lot of appeal even for people who should know better (like this guy)
The first is that things like racism/sexism etc are just social justice issues, things you should care about because they're morally right, but that they have nothing to do with anything else. Yet to me, they're more like huge cognitive disfunctions, which distort and invalidate our perceptions and actions to a significant degree in all sorts of areas, and must be addressed for practical and not just moral reasons. How can we figure out the truth if we are unable to acknowledge any arguments which challenge our privilege? How can you write a good book if you are genuinely incapable of seeing women as people? How can you hire the best staff if you automatically dismiss anyone with an ethnic sounding name? How can you really understand history if you always take the side of people with a certain shade of skin or religion? This isn't just a matter of being nice to the disadvantaged, this is an issue of truth. And truth is something I'd like to think everyone wants to have as good a hold of as possible.
The second idea is that "there's no smoke without fire", that any prejudice, however horrible and blown out of proportion, must have some basis in fact. A common one (which is brought up here): so many societies have a strong tradition as viewing women as inferior to men. Thus, while it's not going to be universal or neccesarily that large, there must be some innate inferiority which started this tradition. (As this commenter points out, even if you stick with biological determinism, "men tend to be bastards" explains the data better than "women tend to be stupid")
In my opinion there's two issues here: the first is that even if the prejudice is borne out somewhat in practice (ie women perform worse in some standardised tests, certain ethnic groups have a higher arrest record) it's completely unfair to take it on face value without looking at the complex causes behind it (poorer education, institutionalised poverty etc). And in many cases the "objective" measure a group fails at has (possibly unconscious) bias against that group, ie police are racist and arrest that group more regardless of their behaviour.
But the second issue is that sometimes there's absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever. A horrible example I came across of this a while ago (possibly misremembered) was of the way african women were portrayed as inherently seductive and sexual (and dangerous) in America and the west in general during slavery (and now). This was partly because they tended to wear less clothing than your typical victorian woman, but mainly because like any group with absolute power over another(*) the slave owners raped the women, and the only way to justify this was to think of them as evil seductresses. When you look at their history and culture, the africans were basically as prudish and monogamous as the europeans.
On the whole I think a lot of people like to think they're against racism and sexism etc, but deep down, when push comes to shove, would rather think sexist etc attitudes are true than acknowledge that a large part of the core beliefs of past and present societies are a horrible, unjustified, destructive lie.
EDIT: Since it turned out to be necesary, a bibliography of evidence for the existence of bias (found via google and the Blink website):
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=2002-08203-006
http://www.osborne-conant.org/ladies.htm and http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5903.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/science/18conv.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.2026
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
(*)I was going to say "group of men" here but then remembered the female guards at Abu Graib :/
no subject
(One of the commenters on the post who supported the feminist poster came over to my journal to talk about how "bias" in their world means something entirely different than in my world--but, still, what s/he said would, I think, fit into your first point--i.e. if I'm reading the comment corretly (and it's a quick read because I have to go to work), their search for "the truth" has nothing to do with these other issues which are so important to us. I think many of us are reacting the same way you are: how can they claim to be doing what they're doing and just dismiss the points you make above?
That's so.....irrational of them!
no subject
I was very tempted to ask if he'd read "Blink".