“I Don’t Want to Hire Women”: Conclusions I
“It is the salience of gender and gender-related norms, rather than gender per se, that lead to differences between women and men.” (Seger, C. R., Smith, E. R., & Mackie, D. M. (2009). Subtle activation of a social categorization triggers group-level emotions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(3), 460–467.)
My friend Entrepreneur and I have conducted a fascinating social experiment this week. In response to Entrepreneur’s provocative post, I received over 900 comments and emails. Out of these comments, I have had to ban over 300. But it is precisely out of those banned comments that I learned the most important lessons.
The 300+ comments that I deleted without reading them all started with the proclamation I warned people would get them banished: “men and women are different!” The most curious thing about these comments was how long they all were. Most were over ≈500 words. I copy-pasted the longest one into Word and discovered that it was over 3,500 words. It started with, “I know this will not get published, but still I need to say this. . .”
Just imagine this: people are sitting there, composing veritable essays THAT THEY KNOW NOBODY WILL EVER READ. They are speaking into a void, trying to fill it with words. They void, of course, is not located on this blog. It’s located inside them.
Sadly, many people are too stupid and lazy to work out their own individual identity, their own unique worldview. This would be a life-long project of self-improvement and learning, and many people choose not to think or make an effort. In the absence of an individual philosophy of life, they allow outside authorities to fill their inner void with content. The easiest way to organize your existence in the absence of a personality of your own is by adopting some collective identity. Gender roles work beautifully for this purpose because zero effort is required to practice them. Why figure out whether you like pink, blue or orange when you can always allow some manipulative salesperson make that decision for you and make you feel like you actually have a meaning as a result of adopting this “preference”?
As to Entrepreneur’s problem, here is what was causing it. She was so dedicated to offering her workers the maximal autonomy and freedom from hierarchy that she ended up confusing them. Entrepreneur was convinced that everybody wants a workplace where they can choose their own hours, working style, attire, way of handling responsibilities, goals, etc.
But that isn’t true. People do not want that in the least. Just like many do not want a world where they are free to emote, think, act and exist without the constraints of idiotic gender norms. In Russian, we call this, “Put back on my muzzle, because my face gets too cold without it.” Freedom is so terrifying that people feel the need to defend their captivity from anybody who encroaches upon it.
Entrepreneur’s employees were left by her without strictly defined roles. In the absence of punch cards, dress codes, pink slips, employee manuals and other attributes of a rigid hierarchical structure, they didn’t know who they were. So they grasped for a collective identity to inform their behavior, and the one that’s most easily accessible was gender.
Traditional patriarchal gender roles are designed in a way that makes men great workers and women horrible ones. Both men and women at Entrepreneur’s company were resorting to (non-innate, completely manufactured, not in the least hard-wired) gender roles to fill the vacuum she left with her easy-going managerial style. The results were different because these norms obligated men to work well and women to act like infantile princesses.
When I forbade the wordy affirmations of gender identities on my blog, I created the same void for the commenters that the one Entrepreneur created for her employees. Since collective identities are artificial constructs, they are in need of constant and very verbose reiterations. The empty shells of human beings who left these 300+ pathetic “men and women are different” comments perceived an existential threat in my assertion that what they see as personality is actually nothingness.
It would be great if you could publish those 300 posts for further study.
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These silly excretions are neither unique nor particularly curious. Tabloids and cheap talk shows are filled to the brim with them. There are also tons of bestsellers in the “Men are from Mars. . .” category. why add to the mountain of boring garbage?
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How do you know? I thought you said you didn’t read them.
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Nothing that starts with “men and women are different” can possibly be interesting. Only very stupid people are capable of saying such things.
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Thanks for the links in the previous thread to Cordelia Fine’s work and the other analyses of the neuroscientific studies. Part of my background is in neuroscience, so I’ve come across many poorly designed fMRI studies (not just on gender – on practically every area of life).
There’s also a hilarious PhD Comics bit on science journalism this whole issue reminded me of: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
I’m interested to see if making the work roles more defined will have a positive effect. My own preference is a more free, hierarchy-less workplace – but that’s not what could work for an organization as a whole. My understanding from how Entrepreneur described her workers, is that they do their work well, including the women who need more emotional management. In what ways might changing the style of the organization also change their performance (both the men’s and the women’s) on the work itself, and not on the feelings management issue?
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This kind of discussion is like a labyrinth: once you venture into it, you never find a way out.
And someone ends up crying crouched on the floor.
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My experience is the exact opposite. After this discussion, I feel like a bulb has been lit inside my head. I guess I needed hundreds of these empty shells of human beings to throw tantrums on the blog to understand something that’s been bothering me forever.
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That’s how the shamanic process works too. It’s different from logic, talking or reason. One has to see the way things really are with one’s own eyes after a lot of bombardment by confusing data.
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Wait, this is what my next post was going to be about! Don’t give it away! :-)
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I’ll be very interested to read it. In recent days I have been talking to a crazy guy, one that I had spoken to before, and it is very interesting how one learns about oneself in this way, in a manner not unlike free sparring. You do need to take care not to harm anybody and just learn and just play, although it eventually gets too much in some ways.
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Banned Again? :)
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“The empty shells of human beings who left these 300+ pathetic “men and women are different” comments perceived an existential threat in my assertion that what they see as personality is actually nothingness.”
Very interesting, because that must be the most terrifying interpretation of the word. “nothing”. IN my video, I suggest there are different interpretations, often depending on your prior level of consciousness
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Perfect Muster, Im glad you got inspired.
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Yes, you inspired me to speak about Bataille’s philosophical ideas and how people interpret things at the level at which they are capable. It was all you. You have contributed to things way beyond yourself now.
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I appreciate the shout out. My self esteem is so much better now.
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Well, isn’t that what you were saying? That you are responsible for something beyond yourself? That you have creativity and originality in you?
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On gender norms. I just recently came across Florence King’s “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady” (many years ago I all but memorized “Southern Ladies and Gentlemen”).
She spends a lot of time in the book (indirectly) on American gender socialization as she tries to come to grips with her own sex, sexual and intellectual drives and the wide gulf between her and most young women of her generation (and also offers a devastating portrait of the worst aspects of 50’s suffocating conformism and repression).
Her bookish English father suggests the Shakespearean term ‘malkin’ for the great bulk of conformist females whose behavior she could not understand (let alone emulate). Their defining feature was fear about the public status and perceptions of their femininity. (the male equivalent, especially in the south, of a man who makes thing of his mascuinity to the point where it becomes weird and uncomfortable is the good ole boy).
She also touches on the Henry Adams theory that American women, unlike Europeans, were deprived of goddesses and so had to create femininity from scratch.
She also echos your idea that ‘socialization’ is less important in forming identity and personality than observation. Her grandmother waged a tireless, lifelong campaign to turn her into a demure, charming, deferential southern lady and the place and time did everything it could to corral her into placid domesticity and maternity. But the female role models she had (including the Grandmother) were all forceful, imperious and cut a very wide swath through life. Guess which of the influences was stronger?
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Even “influences” is a very passive way to talk about the way we end up. People do make choices to fight for things, rather than succumb to influences! ::)
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I agree completely that it’s a choice. Or, rather, a series of small daily choices. Every day there is a fresh chance to dump this collective identity garbage and start developing as an individual.
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Yeah, I’ve never had the option of small daily choices, but rather big forks in the road.
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It’s not always a choice.If you don’t fit in, you are forced to fight. Conventional femininity = drag, to me. Yep, I can do it, but it is a performance, and as such prone to slip-ups, not 100% convincing.
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Same here–and I can’t even do it.
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The opinions you have banned seem to be arguable at the least, rather than to be summarily dismissed. To disallow them outright smacks of insecurity. Why not let the debate flourish? If you are so correct, won’t every wrong-headed commenter be easily smacked over the head with the words of truth?
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You are a very insecure person which is why you project this issue onto me. Have you tried consulting a psychologist? Your problem must be quite severe if you are injecting it so insistently into completely extraneous conversations.
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The phrase “tilting at windmills” comes first to mind after I read this post.
One of many definitions you can find online:
The phrase ’tilting at windmills’ comes from the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. It means fighting battles in life that can’t be won or attacking enemies where none exist.
While some would think “tilting at windmills” is a foolish pursuit, I happen to think it is a noble one.
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I’m a professor of Spanish literature. Please abstain from explaining Cervantes to me.
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What makes you think I was explaining Cervantes to you? For the record, I was doing my best to make my comment as clear as possible to future readers. It is a habit I get into when I am unsure of the background of the readers.
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No need to worry, most of my readers have PhDs.
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“As to Entrepreneur’s problem, here is what was causing it. She was so dedicated to offering her workers the maximal autonomy and freedom from hierarchy that she ended up confusing them. Entrepreneur was convinced that everybody wants a workplace where they can choose their own hours, working style, attire, way of handling responsibilities, goals, etc.”
I missed the part of the discussion where she said she had a flat hierarchy and a ROWE workplace. I would expect more flailing in more areas from all of her workers, not just the women.
I’m pretty sure I’m a collection of quirks and mannerisms wrapped around an omnivorous void but I’ve never been compelled to write inbox or giant message board essays. Odd.
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“I would expect more flailing in more areas from all of her workers, not just the women.”
– You are right, there was flailing on everybody’s part, irrespective of gender. But for men, adopting a traditional male gender role ended up being very conducive to good workplace behavior because a male identity is predicated, first and foremost, at being successful in the workplace.
“I’m pretty sure I’m a collection of quirks and mannerisms wrapped around an omnivorous void but I’ve never been compelled to write inbox or giant message board essays. Odd.”
– No, I’ve gotten to know you quite well from your comments on the blog. You have a complex and rich personality that offers no space for silly essays filled with banalities.
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Well, I didn’t see Entrepreneur mention the type of work for which she hired people. Different types of work have different cultures. The medical culture is different from the medical research culture is different from the nursing culture, and all of the above are different from the humanities faculty culture or the mechanical engineering culture. Some cultures train employees to be self-motivated, some cultures train employees to value hierarchy and predictability. Some cultures value formality, some don’t. I’d need to dress more formally if I were in private practice, though it is true enough that pathologists are stereotypically nerdy and rarely fashion plates.
I daresay that Entrepreneur might have had a bit more success with her desired management structure if she had offered some form of profit-sharing in the compensation package. Lower base pay and a chance at a big bonus attracts employees with different personalities than those attracted by a “standard” salary-plus-benefits compensation package.
Finally: men don’t gossip? G’wan! Clearly Entrepreneur has no experience with the academic workplace. Men don’t gossip in front of women, that tends to be true. Rest assured, male professors gossip. They call it “networking”.
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“Finally: men don’t gossip? G’wan! Clearly Entrepreneur has no experience with the academic workplace. Men don’t gossip in front of women, that tends to be true. Rest assured, male professors gossip. They call it “networking”.”
– Academia is a very different space because among academics traditional gender roles have long been abandoned and are not prestigious. I will never forget how a male colleague brilliantly taught me to gossip. :-)
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IME American men gossip incessantly, but mostly not with women (certainly not with supervisors and especially not a female supervisor) and it’s a little more… diffuse.
Rather than devoting a conversation to the the burning question “Are Suzy and Rob doing it?” it’s more like a few intermittent comments interspiced with others about some other topic and a lot of it is in the form of half statements and or hypothetical statements that seem to be about something else (for plausible deniability). But the upshot is clear: They’re totally doing it and it’s probably a bad idea cause Rob is kind of a low life (he hasn’t even broken up with Carla yet officially) and Suzy’s kind of an obsessive potential stalker chick but hey, it’s their funeral so who’s to judge?
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So, 300 people took the time to write long notes, and some of these missives were without doubt informative, and, at least in part, true. And you proudly deleted these notes without reading them, perhaps without skimming them, and then bragged about your behavior.
For what it’s worth, I’ll no longer subscribe to your blog. As your great-grandmother said about Stalin, “Na na na boo boo.”
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Wow, you can read a post and even retell it in your own words. What an achievement! I’m glad you found it important to share this huge milestone with us!
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Pride comes before a fall, Clarissa. That person will no longer be reading your blog. This is what will happen to everyone who doesn’t pay attention to what anonymous people want to say to them, because everybody is important. Even the greatest idiot has something to contribute. When will people realize it? Not until they are boycotted.
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“Pride comes before a fall, Clarissa. That person will no longer be reading your blog. This is what will happen to everyone who doesn’t pay attention to what anonymous people want to say to them, because everybody is important.”
– Oh, woe be unto me!!! I have lost this ultra-important person who never commented before and started his participation on this blog with a tantrum. Oh the pain, oh the horror!
“Even the greatest idiot has something to contribute. When will people realize it? Not until they are boycotted.”
– I would definitely promise to ponder once again whether all opinions are equally valid if I could have a written promise that the greatest idiots would keep away from me.
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Again, I think the Entrepreneur hired the wrong women.
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It sounds like dismiss most people who have different ideas from yours as “idiots” and you ban/censure them.
Even when they are trying to be constructive and have a healthy debate.
Couldn’t different ideas be mind-opening? Couldn’t they sometimes show you things from a different perspective that you hadn’t thought of before?
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In this thread, there wasn’t anybody with “ideas”. Just a bunch of very dense folks who embarrassed themselves by proffering stupidities.
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God help the poor souls who have to work under you, Clarissa.
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God help the poor losers who are so dumb that they can’t figure out what the words “guest post” mean.
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