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It is not men who sabotage women and stump their career growth – it is women themselves! I wonder if she is (subconsciously?) part of the problem. Now, I'm not
by michaelochurch 12y ago
It is not men who sabotage women and stump their career growth – it is women themselves!
I wonder if she is (subconsciously?) part of the problem. Now, I'm not saying that she overtly engages in that sort of passive-aggressive, competitive behavior (stereotypically female, but characteristic of the sexes about equally, if not more often by men, in the office context) against them... but it could be that she carries a subconscious bias that leads her to hire a different and possibly lower quality of women than the men she brings on.
If it seems far-fetched, consider the casual misogyny of a high school or college campus, and the vicious cycle it creates for young men. We're not talking about a raving woman-hater. We're talking about the average-case college male who thinks women are irrational, flighty, and manipulative. He's actually right-- about most of the women he pays attention to. That's the misogyny loop: guys who think ill of "women" tend to hang around low-quality women (high-quality women just avoid them) and end up confirming their own biases ("misogyny loop"). If he stopped focusing on the bubbly/popular girls with broken personalities (who get away with it, because everyone wants them) and took a representative sample, he'd realize that women aren't any worse or better than men. Of course, such guys are usually blind to their own broken personalities.
See, I've never seen these patterns she's described. I've worked with a lot of horrible people and only one of my top 10 is female... and, to her credit, she was pretty "active-aggressive" in her toxicity.
I know that these behaviors exist in workplaces, but I don't think they're especially gendered. Passive-aggressive, gossiping men are out there as well.
- Dewie 12y ago> If it seems far-fetched, consider the casual misogyny of a high school or college campus, and the vicious cycle it creates for young men. We're not talking about a raving woman-hater. We're talking about the average-case college male who thinks women are irrational, flighty, and manipulative. What makes this an objective observation about men in college, as opposed to the selection bias that you think that these men (however many of them) have and the author of this article?
- stcredzero 12y agoWhat makes this an objective observation about men in college, as opposed to the selection bias... Are you assuming that he is making this observation in comparison to college women? I think the observation has to do with who holds the preponderance of power. In the artificial age-segregated school environments we've created, young, inexperienced people dealing with the full flush of their hormones and newly matured bodies create their own "Lord of the Flies" society, largely free of the influence of older, wiser people. Natural human instincts create concentrations of power in a minority of popular individuals, and this power corrupts. This is quite unfortunate, as young people in school are still forming their models of the world.
- Dewie 12y ago> Are you assuming that he is making this observation in comparison to college women? I don't really care. Whether he thinks that college women are misogynist, or misandrist, or whatever is supposed to be the comparison; 'most college men are misogynistic' is a pretty stones-in-glasshouses thing to utter after having complained about other peoples broad generalizations being a result of selection bias. It's fine if it is backed up, but without substantiating it, why would I readily assume that this kind of judgement comes from kind of reasoned perspective, instead of just hanging out with the "wrong" people (which was what Michael originally claimed the author was doing)? > I think the observation has to do with who holds the preponderance of power. In the artificial age-segregated school environments we've created, young, inexperienced people dealing with the full flush of their hormones and newly matured bodies create their own "Lord of the Flies" society, largely free of the influence of older, wiser people. Natural human instincts create concentrations of power in a minority of popular individuals, and this power corrupts. > This is quite unfortunate, as young people in school are still forming their models of the world. I was talking about men in college. People in university (Masters or lower) are in the age range 19-26, at least in my experience. Even if they are immature, which I won't comment on, there really isn't much of a breeding ground for this kind of environment where I go to school; everyone is responsible for handing in some compulsory assignments and showing up for the exams. How they go about doing this, is up to them. Unlike in high school, people aren't confined to hanging out at the same place from 8000-1500 (again; just my experience), and if some person is disagreeing to you, it is relatively simple to avoid them. Michael seemed to talk about how these men view women is due to who they hang out with. And certainly, at a decent sized university, you're not strictly confined to whoever happens to take the same classes that you do. EDIT: I see that the two O'Church fans have been able to get their jollies by now.