women, men and being a con artist

[rm]

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/



I'm pretty good at the sort of stuff Shirky is talking about. Maybe that's because my dad was in advertising, but it's probably not. Maybe it's because I've never been or felt consistently female and therefore am not the sort of person (woman) Shirky is ranting about it, but that's sort of besides the point, as we'll get to below.

The fact is it's probably because my perception of my childhood was that it was frightening and unpredictable and I always had to be ready with a response that would keep me safe or loved. I wasn't hit. I wasn't abused. I wasn't not loved. But my father's temper was unpredictable and spooked me nearly all the time, and the things I could be guilted for by family, teachers and/or peers (getting a cold, not smelling right, playing the wrong type of pretend, not being "cool") had a lot of impact on me.

I'm an only child, so I can't really tell you what of that was a truly difficult environment and what of that is the fact that I've always been pretty sensitive (some of this, I now know, is probably celiac-related) to loud noises, to teasing, to social cues, etc., and like most kids, my main goal was to not cry. As I became a tween (a word we didn't even have then) that goal became, more accurately, to hate myself enough that I could force myself into the forms that would prevent other people from hating me even more.

And that's had a huge impact on me. It's made me ambitious, competitive and deeply insecure. It's made me a catastrophist and a self-aggrandizer.

And while people who tell stories well at parties, who are self-confident, who are even smug (and I am all those things), are sexy... this isn't sexy. It's unpleasant for you and for me. And it's stressful.

Now, is this because I'm female-socialized and do care (as opposed to men, according to what Shirky posits) about the consequences when I get caught? Or is it because I'm not as good at it as I think (again because I'm female-socialized)? Or is it because Skirky isn't acknowledging consciously in his piece how much all of us, regardless of gender, spend so much of our lives feeling like frauds (did this happen before mass media, I wonder -- before mass media the pool with which anyone competed with was smaller and so, arguably, were the stakes) and so live in fear, not just of failure, but of success? There's always a higher mountain to fall from.

I loathe how often I feel this way -- like I'm telling a story to make people like me when I should just shut up, or just that I'm some sort of fraud in general. I loathe many of the reasons I am successful. I loathe the impact what it takes to be even as slightly successful as I am has on others. I loathe the idea of any one else having to feel this way.

And I hear everything Shirky says, much of it while nodding my head (ETA: which doesn't mean I think it's good or that he gets the impact of what he's saying (some of which is victim blaming BS, you bet) but I think a lot of the observations are spot on, even if the conclusions are wonky).

But wow, as a veteran of friendships and relationships with alcoholics, and as a person whose life as been defined by the borders between truth and fiction (my father's career and several of my own have centered on this), it's hard for me to get on board with the idea that more lies are the answer.

That said, I've no idea what the answer is -- for women or anyone else -- and whether the path to it is up. Or down.

Comments

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link, and your response.

The thing that I have trouble with is reconciling the idea that women need to be more performatively self-aggrandizing (as men are, at least theoretically), with the fact that women who are more self-aggrandizing are not, necessarily, perceived as generously as men who are, are. In other words: the all too common situation where a man who speaks well of himself is (seen as) confident, but a woman who does exactly the same is (seen as) a bitch.

I guess part of me is tired of the blame-the-victim rhetoric of telling women to just speak up more. For one thing, it's not necessarily accurate: women who speak up will not necessarily get the same benefit that men who speak up will. For another thing, it assumes that shaking off deeply ingrained cultural training is just something you can decide to do—with the implication that, if you don't, it's kinda your own fault that you don't get as far in life as the men.

I don't know. It's complicated and difficult, and I just don't know. I wish I did.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

You distilled exactly what bothered me about that piece far more cogently than I could have.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

the all too common situation where a man who speaks well of himself is (seen as) confident, but a woman who does exactly the same is (seen as) a bitch.

Yes, this.

I have also gained the impression that it's harder for women to get away with the kind of self-aggrandizing lies, at least in fields where women are underrepresented. It's not only the ability to lie, but the ability to have the lie believed, and if you lack some cultural knowledge of the situation you place your lie in, you'll be less convincing.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Additionally, there's the cultural baggage of women _as_ liars. Women are assumed to be deceitful more often than men about pretty much any topic. See: Eden.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is what's resonating most with me. I feel like I have to go through life being extremely baldly-honest (often to the point of crossing lines of propriety) just because I was raised with the idea that women are deceitful and manipulative and passive-aggressive and just in general get through life by tricking men with their poisonous wiles.

As a result, I'm not sure that women lying more will get them the same respect that (according to Shirky) it gets men.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

It's not only the ability to lie, but the ability to have the lie believed

Yes, absolutely. "I am the best programmer in the history of ever" is only going to be accepted as a plausible lie if you are the type of person who the hearer believes can be the best programmer etc. If you're a woman and the person has a belief—conscious or subconscious—that men are better programmers than women, they might reject it out of hand.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

Yes, that probably explain the difference in "fields" better than my idea about it.

[phaetonschariot.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. There are huge double standards and damned-if-you-do situations in women's behaviour in relation to society. You either do too much or too little, and in theory there's a line in there that's right between them, but it's like trying to balance a pencil on its sharpened tip. Society, as a whole, does not give women the same rewards as men, no matter what their behaviour, and while this has been changing over the last few decades, the change is slow. Self-promotion for men is the norm, but self-promotion for women is still pushing boundaries - and while you need to push boundaries to make progress, the people doing the pushing will often suffer greatly for the effort.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

a man who speaks well of himself is (seen as) confident, but a woman who does exactly the same is (seen as) a bitch.

Because I don't do that (I am cismale, ICYWW), I don't expect other people to do that, so I'm still surprised when that happens.

However I know that there is an expectation for women to be self effacing than men, so when a woman behaves confidently I respect them more than I would the average man.

Instead of being more self aggrandizing or less self aggrandizing the third way, and what I would do, is to make decisions based on evidence (and also to encourage people to supply that evidence). You say you're excellent at drafting? Right there's some paper. There's a pencil. Show me some fucking magic or someone else gets the job. I've got 10 web designers who all know CSS, FLash, Actionscipt, PHP, XML and Visual basic, sop tell me one way to improve my website taht only YOU would think of. Don't sit there and tell me you're the best, get off your arse and SHOW me.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

There's something to that, but only if you get to the point where you can prove your skills with pencil and paper. If the prejudice—privileging men, or self-aggrandizing people, or self-aggrandizing men, or whatever—filters you out before you get to the interview where you can show that you know how to draft, or demonstrate your CSS, PHP, XML, etc., skills, well, then it doesn't matter if you're capable of 'getting off your ass and showing' someone.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's unfortunately not enough to rely on the ability to prove one's skill, if there's a reasonable chance that one will be minimized out of the picture prior to the 'proving' point.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Again, if I was a boss, the first question I would ask of my recruitment process is 'How can I remove all biases from this selection?'. So I would have someone else photocopy the CVs and the redact their names. And possibly also redact all the adjectives before giving them to me.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

And of course, whatever else I could cook up that would help me make my decision making process more objective.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

Because I don't do that (I am cismale, ICYWW), I don't expect other people to do that

Chances are that you do do it and just don't realize. That's how these deep cultural assumptions work (and they affect women as well as men, so I'm not saying that just because you're a man).

I try to keep in mind the time when I was drawing up a syllabus, and I though "hmm, there are a lot of women writers here, I wonder if it's too many?" So I went back and counted, and the reading list was two-thirds men and one-third women. That was what I--a feminist and a person who was raised female--instinctively identified as "a lot of women, possibly a disproportionately large number." And if I hadn't gone back and counted, I would never have realized how strongly I was affected by biases I knew existed and consciously rejected.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Thank you; this is part of what I wanted to say and couldn't find the words for.

I think of a study (that I can no longer find, alas) where female students in junior high were chastised for speaking too loudly and too often when they were, by both decibel level and by frequency of comment, speaking both more quietly and less frequently than their male counterparts. The cultural assumptions were such that girl speaking, say, one-third as often as her boy counterpart was perceived as speaking far more than he was.

And, yeah, that's why individual effort isn't enough to 'solve' the problem.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Man. That's intense. I can totally see it happening, but that's still a hell of an anecdote as far as impact goes.

Do you mind if I repeat this, and if you're okay with it, would you like me to link back to you if it's online?

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I repeat this

No, not at all. It's publicly posted, so all linkage is fair game.

would you like me to link back to you if it's online

Do you mean would I like a link to your post when you make it? Yes, I would, thanks. You can drop me a comment here or send me a PM.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

1. You've never met me
2. You don't know anything about me.
3. I wouldn't have made the comment above unless I had thought it through and checked it against my own experiences.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

You seem to have missed the fact that what I said was not any kind of personal accusation against you. It was a comment on the ubiquity of bias and the ways it affects our judgments without us realizing it.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Chances are that you do do it and just don't realize. emphasis mine

As well as flatly contradicting something I said about myself, you did address that directly at me. I appreciate your point, but there was probably a way of making it less personally.