I’m a dude, but this one pisses me off more than anything. I work across several technical and scientific fields and the thing that pisses me off more than anything is how women aren’t given the space and opportunity to take big risks and fail. Men can basically spin a bunch of bullshit about what they can do or what they think is possible, and some one will gamble on them if they are convincing enough, even if they don’t have the track record. Women seem to have to hit such a higher bar in terms of getting their projects/ ideas funded/ supported, and seem to be much more conservative in terms of stepping out on limbs. There also seems to be an institutional tendency to give them the ‘clean up’ or maintenance projects, rather than the headline grabbing glory work. It pisses me off because I’ve had the opportunity to mentor several women in my areas of expertise at this point, and they are highly capable and competent, and tend to be much harder working. But they still get passed up for less competent, more braggadocios, less productive male counter parts. At the same time I want to urge them to take big risks, I get that from their lived experience, the costs of failure are much higher. So I get it, but it still pisses me off.
Yeah, that’s something I’ve never been able to understand, even in principle. Misogyny, by definition, necessitates the willingness to sacrifice maximally ruthless efficiency under completely ideal circumstances and for objectively no reason. So does overy other description of prejudice, while we’re at it.
Edit:
Okay.
I realize this may have come off somewhat ostentatious, or at the very least, hilariously overly worded. I should explain that coherently, or something approaching that, I guess.
To put it plainly, and to keep using misogyny as an example: if the most efficient person for the job is a woman, the job should be given to her, and that’s it. Not that I wish to imply my brain’s normally wired, obviously, but that’s honestly something I don’t “get” about the entire concept of misogyny, or, like I said, about any kind of prejudice named individually. I, personally, care about the objective outcome and nothing else, at least within reason. If the goal is realistically attainable without anyone’s feelings getting hurt, then under any normal circumstances, that is exactly what should happen. If the goal is unattainable barring the direct violation of basic human decency and/or the law, then that’s what we’re not gonna do because clearly some bigger issue exists, and clearly whatever that is needs to get dealt with immediately. That’s about the extent of it, though, frankly. As far as I’m concerned, whoever has the best idea should say whatever that is out loud, and then whoever is the most highly capable of implementing said idea properly should do so; as long those things happen in that order, as long as no one wastes anyone’s time, and as long as nothing else that doesn’t need to happen does, it really doesn’t affect me personally one way or another, and who gets credit for what is precisely none of my business nor should it be.
It’s simply a technical matter that no one properly interacts, conducive towards getting from point A to point B in a straight line as fast as is humanly possible while doing so correctly, as a misogynist, or as a racist, or what have you, if only because that’s not logically possible. To maintain one’s own prejudice is to know, to understand, and to acknowledge the mindset that makes people objectively good at getting things done, and to deliberately act contrary to that mindset by demonstration. If I were prejudice against women, I would functionally sabotage any and all women I may work with, either consciously or subconsciously, or both, and to some extent that actually would matter at the end of the day, I would make any and all women I may work with less effective at their jobs in so doing. Same thing if I happened to be prejudice against anyone whose skin doesn’t look like mine, and I happened to work with someone whose skin doesn’t. Et cetera.
I feel like I just wrote an entire essay about effectively nothing; sorry. This is just something that’s always driven me up the wall, in case somehow that’s not obvious. I just don’t understand—again, within reason, of course—why anyone in their official capacity would ever care about anything other than the job, or why almost everyone I’ve ever worked with has made the whole thing totally personal or tried to.
I’m a dude, but this one pisses me off more than anything. I work across several technical and scientific fields and the thing that pisses me off more than anything is how women aren’t given the space and opportunity to take big risks and fail. Men can basically spin a bunch of bullshit about what they can do or what they think is possible, and some one will gamble on them if they are convincing enough, even if they don’t have the track record. Women seem to have to hit such a higher bar in terms of getting their projects/ ideas funded/ supported, and seem to be much more conservative in terms of stepping out on limbs. There also seems to be an institutional tendency to give them the ‘clean up’ or maintenance projects, rather than the headline grabbing glory work. It pisses me off because I’ve had the opportunity to mentor several women in my areas of expertise at this point, and they are highly capable and competent, and tend to be much harder working. But they still get passed up for less competent, more braggadocios, less productive male counter parts. At the same time I want to urge them to take big risks, I get that from their lived experience, the costs of failure are much higher. So I get it, but it still pisses me off.
Yeah, that’s something I’ve never been able to understand, even in principle. Misogyny, by definition, necessitates the willingness to sacrifice maximally ruthless efficiency under completely ideal circumstances and for objectively no reason. So does overy other description of prejudice, while we’re at it.
Edit:
Okay.
I realize this may have come off somewhat ostentatious, or at the very least, hilariously overly worded. I should explain that coherently, or something approaching that, I guess.
To put it plainly, and to keep using misogyny as an example: if the most efficient person for the job is a woman, the job should be given to her, and that’s it. Not that I wish to imply my brain’s normally wired, obviously, but that’s honestly something I don’t “get” about the entire concept of misogyny, or, like I said, about any kind of prejudice named individually. I, personally, care about the objective outcome and nothing else, at least within reason. If the goal is realistically attainable without anyone’s feelings getting hurt, then under any normal circumstances, that is exactly what should happen. If the goal is unattainable barring the direct violation of basic human decency and/or the law, then that’s what we’re not gonna do because clearly some bigger issue exists, and clearly whatever that is needs to get dealt with immediately. That’s about the extent of it, though, frankly. As far as I’m concerned, whoever has the best idea should say whatever that is out loud, and then whoever is the most highly capable of implementing said idea properly should do so; as long those things happen in that order, as long as no one wastes anyone’s time, and as long as nothing else that doesn’t need to happen does, it really doesn’t affect me personally one way or another, and who gets credit for what is precisely none of my business nor should it be.
It’s simply a technical matter that no one properly interacts, conducive towards getting from point A to point B in a straight line as fast as is humanly possible while doing so correctly, as a misogynist, or as a racist, or what have you, if only because that’s not logically possible. To maintain one’s own prejudice is to know, to understand, and to acknowledge the mindset that makes people objectively good at getting things done, and to deliberately act contrary to that mindset by demonstration. If I were prejudice against women, I would functionally sabotage any and all women I may work with, either consciously or subconsciously, or both, and to some extent that actually would matter at the end of the day, I would make any and all women I may work with less effective at their jobs in so doing. Same thing if I happened to be prejudice against anyone whose skin doesn’t look like mine, and I happened to work with someone whose skin doesn’t. Et cetera.
I feel like I just wrote an entire essay about effectively nothing; sorry. This is just something that’s always driven me up the wall, in case somehow that’s not obvious. I just don’t understand—again, within reason, of course—why anyone in their official capacity would ever care about anything other than the job, or why almost everyone I’ve ever worked with has made the whole thing totally personal or tried to.