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The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and now we have a discussion about the place of women in the industry, designated days, and a camp

The investor added an unnecessary qualification to her title, and now we have a discussion about the place of women in the industry, designated days, and a campaign about changing job titles. If you do not find that charged, then we have to make do with the significant degree to which our definitions of that word differ.

JshWright 10y ago
"Charged" to me implies that there was some disproportionate response. What do you think the response would have been if he had directed a question to "the black CTO"?
- projektir 10y ago
  I've definitely seen people use terms like "the man!" and "this gentleman here", so "lady" doesn't seem all that special to me. Isn't the reason "the black CTO" sounds so bad is because the situation is even more charged? Charged to me means that people are on edge, potentially feeling unsafe, and are ready to make various assumptions in reaction to something that would normally be considered fairly benign. Such reactions may very well be justified, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is somehow normal. Black, lady, German, etc., are all just factual descriptors. It is the additional meaning that we assign to them that may make these descriptors sound bad. I do not believe that asking people to walk on eggshells around terms like "woman" and "lady" is a move in the right direction. That may even generate extra resentment. I'd rather change how people think and act. I don't think it's a great thing that people are afraid to say "the black CTO". A better world is not one where nobody acknowledges things like gender or race, but a world where those things are not grounds for diminishing a person.
  - dgacmu 10y ago
    The core question is whether these are applied uniformly. In the specific case at hand, only the woman's gender was emphasized. We're the questioner to have identified everyone prefixed by their gender, it would have seemed weird, but not biased per se. There's also a question of whether it's contextually relevant. In this case, the question had everything to do with her CFO-ness and nothing to do with her gender. In a different context, it might have made sense to direct a question to someone on the board specifically because of their gender or race. But this wasn't such a context.
    - projektir 10y ago
      Well, if someone says "the CFO", many people will automatically assume the CFO in question is male. The gender may be emphasized to avoid that assumption. The article, as it is written, doesn't do a very good job of presenting the context. Without additional context, I very much doubt the investor was trying to be sexist or offensive with their statement, and I don't think they deserve such a backlash. It's picking at straws. The investor is human, too. There are better targets.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    Why apply the qualifier at all if not to emphasize the point? As there is only one CFO, there was no need to disambiguate.

JshWright 10y ago

"Charged" to me implies that there was some disproportionate response. What do you think the response would have been if he had directed a question to "the black CTO"?

projektir 10y ago
I've definitely seen people use terms like "the man!" and "this gentleman here", so "lady" doesn't seem all that special to me. Isn't the reason "the black CTO" sounds so bad is because the situation is even more charged? Charged to me means that people are on edge, potentially feeling unsafe, and are ready to make various assumptions in reaction to something that would normally be considered fairly benign. Such reactions may very well be justified, but that doesn't mean the overall situation is somehow normal. Black, lady, German, etc., are all just factual descriptors. It is the additional meaning that we assign to them that may make these descriptors sound bad. I do not believe that asking people to walk on eggshells around terms like "woman" and "lady" is a move in the right direction. That may even generate extra resentment. I'd rather change how people think and act. I don't think it's a great thing that people are afraid to say "the black CTO". A better world is not one where nobody acknowledges things like gender or race, but a world where those things are not grounds for diminishing a person.
- dgacmu 10y ago
  The core question is whether these are applied uniformly. In the specific case at hand, only the woman's gender was emphasized. We're the questioner to have identified everyone prefixed by their gender, it would have seemed weird, but not biased per se. There's also a question of whether it's contextually relevant. In this case, the question had everything to do with her CFO-ness and nothing to do with her gender. In a different context, it might have made sense to direct a question to someone on the board specifically because of their gender or race. But this wasn't such a context.
  - projektir 10y ago
    Well, if someone says "the CFO", many people will automatically assume the CFO in question is male. The gender may be emphasized to avoid that assumption. The article, as it is written, doesn't do a very good job of presenting the context. Without additional context, I very much doubt the investor was trying to be sexist or offensive with their statement, and I don't think they deserve such a backlash. It's picking at straws. The investor is human, too. There are better targets.
- JshWright 10y ago
  Why apply the qualifier at all if not to emphasize the point? As there is only one CFO, there was no need to disambiguate.