Isabel

101Joined Apr 2022

Comments
5

Maybe the norms-controlling/moderator team could take into account the millennia-old tradition of male power (as a demographic group) over everyone else (as a demographic group), making the  statement about there (not) being decent men meaningfully different from a statement about e.g. there (not) being decent women...

Molly, this is awesome! After (/possibly during)  scheduling, if everyone's on board, I'm looking forward to finalizing an updated syllabus with resources like these and popular input. I think firsthand accounts are going to be much more valuable than their poor representation on my original syllabus indicates. Thank you so much! :) 

Imo this post seemed pretty explicitly based on the prioritization of inclusivity towards women, nonbinary people, and people of the global majority and while I can see that you could conceivably frame this as a women's safety/workplace harassment thing, there's probably just as much to be said about e.g. monogamy being an antifeminist prison, so it seems strange to me that you'd want to bring this up here. 

The rhetoric around "senior men" and "the leaders wives" rings very handmaid's tale-y which is probably an exaggeration. Also not sure why the solution in the third paragraph isn't "don't hit on women who are your professional junior."

I can't shake the feeling this is a misidentification of the problem. I feel like people have been writing for years about how to make communities more diverse, inclusive, and safer for the people in them. The problem is not a lack of ideas that needs to be rectified by brainstorming - we have the information already. The problem seems to be that no one wants to act on this information. 

I don't know what kind of norm has yet to be stated that would convince people it's bad to have an expert panel that's just 5 white guys. I don't know what kind of "norm" I need to explicitly articulate to make it clear that it's not okay to come to a discussion of gender relations in EA and, as a man, open the discussion by asking how to hit on girls without it being creepy. 

I get the feeling everyone wants to pay lip service to these values without actually addressing the problem (thus the great karma on this post with no comments actually replying to the content of it [although I also agree, in line with Vaidehi and a great Cards Against Humanity card, that Hell will freeze over before we have a sane and respectful discussion of gender and race on the internet]). But the problem is behavior. The behavior simply needs to change. We are past brainstorming. Stop doing the things that make EA spaces hard to be in.