LESSWRONG

LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance

58 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
daenerys
Nov 25, 2012
1259 comments

Standard Intro

The following section will be at the top of all posts in the LW Women series.

About two months ago, I put out a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW, with the idea that I would compile them into some kind of post.  There is a LOT of material, so I am breaking them down into more manageable-sized themed posts. 

Seven women submitted, totaling about 18 pages. 

Crocker's Warning- Submitters were told to not hold back for politeness. You are allowed to disagree, but these are candid comments; if you consider candidness impolite, I suggest you not read this post

To the submittrs- If you would like to respond anonymously to a comment (for example if there is a comment questioning something in your post, and you want to clarify), you can PM your message and I will post it for you. If this happens a lot, I might create a LW_Women sockpuppet account for the submitters to share.

Standard Disclaimer- Women have many different viewpoints, and just because I am acting as an intermediary to allow for anonymous communication does NOT mean that I agree with everything that will be posted in this series. (It would be rather impossible to, since there are some posts arguing opposite sides!)

Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.

Minimizing the Inferential Distance

One problem that I think exists in discussions about gender issues between men and women, is that the inferential distance is much greater than either group realizes. Women might assume that men know what experiences women might face, and so not explicitly mention specific examples. Men might assume they know what the women are talking about, but have never really heard specific examples. Or they might assume that these types of things only happened in the past, or not to the types of females in their in-group

So for the first post in this series, I thought it would be worthwhile to try to lower this inferential distance, by sharing specific examples of what it's like as a smart/geeky female. When submitters didn't know what to write, I directed them to this article, by Julia Wise (copied below), and told them to write their own stories. These are not related to LW culture specifically, but rather meant to explain where the women here are coming from. Warning: This article is a collection of anecdotes, NOT a logical argument. If you are not interested in anecdotes, don't read it.

 

Copied from the original article (by a woman on LW) on Radiant Things:

It's lunchtime in fourth grade. I am explaining to Leslie, who has no friends but me, why we should stick together. “We're both rejects,” I tell her. She draws back, affronted. “We're not rejects!” she says. I'm puzzled. It hadn't occurred to me that she wanted to be normal.

…................

It's the first week of eighth grade. In a lesson on prehistory, the teacher is trying and failing to pronounce “Australopithecus.” I blurt out the correct pronunciation (which my father taught me in early childhood because he thought it was fun to say). The boy next to me gives me a glare and begins looking for alliterative insults. “Fruity female” is the best he can manage. “Geek girl” seems more apt, but I don't suggest it.

…..................

It's lunchtime in seventh grade. I'm sitting next to my two best friends, Bridget and Christine, on one side of a cafeteria table. We have been obsessed with Star Wars for a year now, and the school's two male Star Wars fans are seated opposite us. Under Greyson's leadership, we are making up roleplaying characters. I begin describing my character, a space-traveling musician named Anya. “Why are your characters always girls?” Grayson complains. “Just because you're girls doesn't mean your characters have to be.”

“Your characters are always boys,” we retort. He's right, though – female characters are an anomaly in the Star Wars universe. George Lucas (a boy) populated his trilogy with 97% male characters.

…................

It's Bridget's thirteenth birthday, and four of us are spending the night at her house. While her parents sleep, we are roleplaying that we have been captured by Imperials and are escaping a detention cell. This is not papers-and-dice roleplaying, but advanced make-believe with lots of pretend blaster battles and dodging behind furniture. 

Christine and Cass, aspiring writers, use roleplaying as a way to test out plots in which they make daring raids and die nobly. Bridget, a future lawyer, and I, a future social worker, use it as a way to test out moral principles. Bridget has been trying to persuade us that the Empire is a legitimate government and we shouldn't be trying to overthrow it at all. I've been trying to persuade Amy that shooting stormtroopers is wrong. They are having none of it. 

We all like daring escapes, though, so we do plenty of that.

…...............

It's two weeks after the Columbine shootings, and the local paper has run an editorial denouncing parents who raise "geeks and goths." I write my first-ever letter to the editor, defending geeks as kids parents should be proud of. A girl sidles up to me at the lunch table. "I really liked your letter in the paper," she mutters, and skitters away.

................

It's tenth grade, and I can't bring myself to tell the president of the chess club how desperately I love him. One day I go to chess club just to be near him. There is only one other girl there, and she's really good at chess. I'm not, and I spend the meeting leaning silently on a wall because I can't stand to lose to a boy. Anyway, I despise the girls who join robotics club to be near boys they like, and I don't want to be one of them.

................

It's eleventh grade, and we are gathered after school to play Dungeons and Dragons. (My father, who originally forbid me to play D&D because he had heard it would lead us to hack each other to pieces with axes, has relented.) Christine is Dungeonmaster, and she has recruited two feckless boys to play with us. One of them is in love with her.

(Nugent points out that D&D is essentially combat reworked for physically awkward people, a way of reducing battle to dice rolls and calculations. Christine has been trained by her uncle in the typical swords-and-sorcery style of play, but when she and I play the culture is different. All our adventures feature pauses for our characters to make tea and omelets.)

On this afternoon, our characters are venturing into the countryside and come across two emaciated farmers who tell us their fields are unplowed because dark elves from the forest keep attacking them. “They're going to starve if they don't get a crop in the ground,” I declare. “We've got to plow at least one field.” The boys go along with this plan.

“The farmers tell you their plow has rusted and doesn't work,” the Dungeonmaster informs us from behind her screen. 

I persist. “There's got to be something we can use. I look around to see if there's anything else pointy I can use as a plow.” 

The Dungeonmaster considers. “There's a metal gate,” she decides.

“Okay, I rig up some kind of harness and hitch it to the pony.”

“It's rusty too,” intones the Dungeonmaster, “and pieces of it keep breaking off. Look, you're not supposed to be farming. You're supposed to go into the forest and find the dark elves. I don't have anything else about the farmers. The elves are the adventure.” Reluctantly, I give up my agricultural rescue plan and we go into the forest to hack at elves.

…............................

I'm 25 and Jeff's sister's boyfriend is complaining that he never gets to play Magic: the Gathering because he doesn't know anyone who plays. “You could play with Julia,” Jeff suggests. 

“Very funny,” says Danner, rolling his eyes.

Jeff and I look at each other. I realize geeks no longer read me as a geek. I still love ideas, love alternate imaginings of how life could be, love being right, but now I care about seeming normal.

“...I wasn't joking,” Jeff says. 

“It's okay,” I reassure Danner. “I used to play every day, but I've pretty much forgotten how.”

 

…............................

 

A's Submission

 

My creepy/danger alert was much higher at a meeting with a high-status (read: supposedly utility-generating, which includes attractive in the sense of pleasing or exciting to look at, but mostly the utility is supposed to be from actions, like work or play) man who was supposed to be my boss for an internship.

The way he talked about the previous intern, a female, the sleazy way he looked while reminiscing and then had to smoke a cigarette, while in a meeting with me, my father (an employer who was abusive), and the internship program director, plus the fact that when I was walking towards the meeting room, the employees of the company, all men, stared at me and remarked, “It’s a girl,” well, I became so creeped out that I didn’t want to go back. It was hard, as a less articulate 16 year-old, to explain to the internship director all that stuff without sounding irrational. But not being able to explain my brain’s priors (incl. abuses that it had previously been too naïve/ignorant to warn against and prevent) wasn’t going to change them or decrease the avoidance-inducing fear and anxiety.

So after some awkward attempts to answer the internship director’s question of why I didn’t want to work there, I asked for a placement with a different company, which she couldn’t do, unfortunately.

 

B's Submission

 

Words from my father’s mouth, growing up: “You *need* to be able to cook and keep a clean house, or what man would want to marry you?”

…................

Sixth grade year, I had absolutely no friends whatsoever. A boy I had a bit of a crush on asked me out on a dare. I told him “no,” and he walked back to his laughing friends.

…................

In college I joined the local SCA (medieval) group, and took up heavy weapons combat. The local (almost all-male) “stick jocks” were very supportive and happy to help. Many had even read “The Armored Rose” and so knew about female-specific issues and how to adapt what they were teaching to deal with things like a lower center of gravity, less muscle mass, a different grip, and ingrained cultural hang-ups. The guys were great. But there was one problem: There was no female-sized loaner armor.

See, armor is an expensive investment for a new hobby, and so local groups provide loaner armor for newbies, which generally consist of hand-me-downs from the more experienced fighters. We had a decent amount of new female fighters in our college groups, but without a pre-existing generation of female fighters (women hadn’t even been allowed to fight until the 80s) there wasn’t anything to hand down. 

The only scar I ever got from heavy combat was armor bite from wearing much-too-large loaner armor. I eventually got my own kit, and (Happy Ending) the upcoming generation of our group always made sure to acquire loaner armor for BOTH genders.

…................

Because of a lack of options, and not really having anywhere else to go, I moved in with my boyfriend and got married at a rather young age (20 and 22, respectively). I had no clue how to be independent. One of the most empowering things I ever did was starting work as an exotic dancer. After years of thinking that I couldn't support myself, it gave me the confidence that I could leave an unhappy marriage without ending up on the street (or more likely, mooching off friends and relatives). Another Happy Ending- Now I'm completely independent.

…................

Walking into the library. A man holds open the door for me. I smile and thank him as I walk through. He makes a sexual comment. I do the Look-Straight-Ahead-and-Walk-Quickly thing. 

“Bitch,” he spits out.

It’s not the first of this kind of interaction in my life, and it most certainly won’t be the last (almost any time you are in an urban environment, without a male). But it hit harder than most because I had been expecting a polite interaction.

Relevant link: http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/why-men-catcall/

…................

 

 

 

The next post will be on Group Attribution Error, and will come out when I get around to it. :P

58 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
daenerys

Comments

sorted by
magical algorithm
Highlighting new comments since Today at 3:58 PM
Select new highlight date
All comments loaded
cata
36 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Being male, I never had any visibility into experiences like these until I first began reading anecdotes like this online, and then started talking with women I knew about how things were for them. So thanks for taking the effort to put this together.

36 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Konkvistador
35 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

I'm not going to spend much effort in the comment section here because my activity will only empower the ideological dynamic at work. I refuse to engage in a losing strategy. Read Mencius Moldbug on why Conservatism always fails (this isn't a good place to start reading him, seek other recommendations then return to the linked piece) to see which losing strategy I mean. While I hold some right wing positions I'm not talking about mainstream Conservatism here but conservatism towards the LessWrong culture and ethos as I knew them. Even this comment is likely a mistake but I just can't keep quiet on this because of internal anguish.

It is not the opening material that bother me so bitterly, since I found that it had interesting examples of experience to share. Gathering and posting it also seemed a good idea to me in my optimism some weeks ago. The comment section however... I disagreed about it being too nitpicky, but now I wonder if I was wrong. I think some are plain avoiding attacking the fundamental assumptions, in a way similar to how I'm about to briefly do, in order to avoid the gender drama LW is infamous for. If so the game is already over.

The personal experiences shared basically give examples of "privilege" and "microaggressions". That is, relatively small but pervasive uncomfortable or inconvenient defaults and related status moves which one notices from time to time. People with low social awareness don't see when they occur to them, so hearing them described explicitly they go "wow this is horrible, how X group suffers". The voting shows systematic appreciation for a male posture of "protecting women". This posture does little good for women, much like like signalling how much you hate child molesters does the opposite of helping child abuse victims.*

For nearly anyone not living hermit's life experiences like these are common, but we are incredibly selective about which ones get our public attention. I say how much attention they get is based not on actual subjective suffering, but on the most viable political coalitions. And I find it obvious that nearly any kind of social standard will produce nearly exactly the same dynamics, just for people with different sets of traits, since these are features -- not bugs -- of how social apes work. Ah, but this kind of observation violates sacred norms that prevail in our society. Indeed, my entire post is probably already practically glowing red in the minds of some people reading it, causing a deep emotional disturbance.

35 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
NancyLebovitz
16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

I agree that what gets foregrounded matters, and that people can learn to foreground different things. Furthermore, I know by experience that the current feminist and anti-racist material I've read has cranked up my sensitivity, and not always in ways that I like.

One thing that concerns me about anti-racism/feminism is that people who support them don't seem to have a vision of what success would be like. (I've asked groups a couple of times, and no one did. One person even apologized for my getting the impression that she might have such a vision.)

However, it's not obvious to me that it's impossible to raise the level of comfort that people have with each other. The same dynamics isn't identical to the same total ill effect.

I'm hoping that the current high-friction approach will lead to the invention of better methods. I'm pretty sure that a major contributor to the current difficulties is that there is no reliable method of enabling people to become less prejudiced. I've wondered whether reshaping implicit association tests into video games would help.

I'm very grateful to LW for being a place where it seems safe to me to raise these concerns.

16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Daniel_Burfoot
27 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Words from my father’s mouth, growing up: “You need to be able to cook and keep a clean house, or what man would want to marry you?”

I assume most people find this statement offensive and objectionable. If you are such a person, can you provide a rational justification for your response? It seems to me that the father is simply making a set of empirical claims about reality, and so at worst the statement is just inaccurate.

Also, imagine a father telling his son "You need to get a good job and learn how to dress well, or else no woman will want to marry you." Is this statement similarly objectionable? If so, why?

27 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Alicorn
34 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

There's a few parts. Let's charitably assume that the father is just making an empirical statement, to shorten the list.

  1. He assumes that his daughter needs to achieve the prerequisites of marriage - that she needs to get married. (And that it's his job to prepare her for this, even if only informationally.)

  2. He assumes she's going to marry a man.

  3. He describes her future marriage in terms of the wants of her hypothetical husband, as opposed to hers (compare something like, "You need to be able to dump guys over long-term dealbreakers without dating them for years, or how will you find a man you want to marry?")

  4. He is wrong as a statement of fact, because there exist men who would marry a woman who doesn't clean and cook - and this isn't just a harmless falsehood (compare the implausible "you need to wear cunning knitted hats and eat parsley, or what man would want to marry you?"), but one that draws attention to evaluating his daughter's value in terms of her domestic skills - a pattern that is reinforced elsewhere, while cunning knitted hats and parsley are not.

34 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Emile
16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Some of those objections disappear if you treat the father's advice as a heuristic and not an absolute rule - something like "being able to cook and keep a house clean increases your chances of finding a desirable long-term partner"; especially objection 2 (I would expect a woman would also prefer a partner who can cook and keep a house clean, all else being equal) and 4 (even if some men are perfectly okay with a wife that can't cook, I would expect that all else being equal being able to cook still makes one a more desirable partner).

"There are exceptions to that rule" is close to a fully general counterargument, because there are exception to pretty much any rule (outside the hard sciences), and I'm a bit annoyed when such an exceptions is used to triumphantly "refute" an argument (for example "once there was this guy who would have died if he had been wearing a seat belt!").

I do agree that the statement is sneaking in some iffy connotations like "your value as a woman is who you marry" and "you don't pick a husband, you get picked", and even if knowing how to cook does make increase the chances one ends up in a happy long-term relationship, other traits probably have more bang for the buck.

16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
JoachimSchipper
17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

If you interpret the father's statement as "all else being equal, being a better cook is good" and you completely divorce it from a historical and cultural context, it is indeed not really problematic. But given that we are, in fact, talking culture here, I do not think that this is the interpretation most likely to increase your insight.

17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
juliawise
25 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Both messages are only about the past/current state of things and leave no room for "The old model stinks, and I hope your generation will continue changing it."

I prepared for adulthood/marriage on the old model, and it did not serve me well. It was like getting a job only to find that my typewriter skills weren't needed. Early on we had a series of dinnertime arguments that boiled down to: "Have some more food." "No, thanks, I'm done." "I cooked you this Good Food because I am a Good Wife! Why can't you appreciate the work I put into being good at this? Eat the damn food!"

25 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Konkvistador
17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

"You need to get a good job and learn how to dress well, or else no woman will want to marry you."

I would endorse giving this advice if I thought marriage was a good deal for men. Currently I plan to strongly advise my future sons against marriage. I'm unsure whether to advise my daugthers to marry or not, since it will give them greater power over their partners which may destablize such relationships.

I think its pretty crappy that cohabitation laws are now basically converging with marriage laws. I wish there was a "state please get your grubby hands out of my romantic relationships" wavier I could sign.

17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
army1987
16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Words from my father’s mouth, growing up: “You need to be able to cook and keep a clean house, or what man would want to marry you?”

I assume most people find this statement offensive and objectionable. If you are such a person, can you provide a rational justification for your response?

I think the sexism isn't telling that to your daughter -- it's not also telling that to your son.

ISTM that, until a few generations ago, people traditionally lived with their parents until they got married (in their early twenties, sometimes even in their late teens), and lived with their spouses thereafter. The husband traditionally had a full-time job, and the wife stayed home and was in charge of the housework (incl. cooking). Therefore, a man never actually needed to know how to do housework, because he would always live with a woman (his mother until he married, then his wife) who would do that for him. (Conversely, a woman never actually needed to work, because she would always live with a man (her father until she married, then her husband) who would bring home the bacon for her.) So, within the traditional gender roles, a male would never need to be told those words Julia Wise heard from her father.

Nowadays, instead, people (of either gender) who complete high school typically rent an apartment with roommates (often all of the same gender) in order to attend university, may (or may not) get married in their late twenties (sometimes even in their early thirties or later), and when they do, often both spouses have a job, so neither has the time/stamina/willingness to do all of the housework and they share it. So people of either gender will have to know how to do housework starting from college age. There is still a cliché that men can't cook, but it's mostly repeated tongue-in-cheek and hardly anybody seems to actually really believe it. (I'm talking about Italy -- YMMV.)

Also, imagine a father telling his son "You need to get a good job and learn how to dress well, or else no woman will want to marry you." Is this statement similarly objectionable? If so, why?

When my dad told me “I've heard that $bank is hiring -- why don't you apply there?”, I said “I'm not interested -- I'm going to start a PhD next year; if my ambition had been to work in a bank I wouldn't be studying physics” and he said “but it would be one of the best [i.e., highest-paying] jobs one could get!”, I kind-of freaked out -- and he hadn't even mentioned marriage!

(OTOH, when my mother told me the one about keeping a clean house (with “what woman” instead of “what man”), I just thought ‘Well, I hope not all women are as obsessed with cleanliness as you’ and IIRC said nothing in particular and smiled (i.e., pretended to think she was joking). So, in my case, it's the one about jobs that felt more objectionable. YMMV.)

16 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
moridinamael
26 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

I'm a male LWer with an infant daughter. I'd like to request some specific advice on avoiding the common failure modes.

26 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
David_Gerard
35 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Look for female role models and characters, wherever you can. My daughter is dinosaur-mad. The Usborne Big Book of Big Dinosaurs includes little cartoon palaeontologists - and she was delighted some were women. "I like the girl dinosaur scientist!" And then she came out with "When I was a three I wanted to be a princess, but now I am a five I want to be a dinosaur scientist." I CLAIM VICTORY. (so far.)

I suspect the problem there is that children are natural Platonic essentialists and categorise everything they can. (That big list of cognitive biases? Little kids show all of them, all of the time.) Particularly by gender. "Is that a boy toy or a girl toy?" It really helps that I have her mother (a monster truck pagan who knows everything and can do everything) to point at: "What would mummy think?" So having female examples on hand seems to have helped here. So I have this little girl who likes princesses and trains and My Little Pony and dinosaurs and Hello Kitty and space and is mad for anything pink and plays swordfighting with toy LARP swords. And her very favourite day out is the Natural History Museum.

(yeah, bragging about my kid again. You'll cope.)

35 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
thomblake
24 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

For me, this post is not doing any favors for the "women's experiences are fundamentally different" camp. Most of these sound like stories from my own life. Of course, "Why are your characters always girls?" is probably a harder question for a boy than a girl.

I'd guess these mostly work as stories of "growing up geeky".

The only ones that didn't resonate were the last one about not playing M:tG anymore (probably since I've never stopped appearing like a geek) and the "Star wars characters are mostly male", which does seem worth mentioning.

MLP:FiM is probably a good available example of the reverse phenomenon. The positions of power are occupied by females. There are very few male characters (though a significantly more even ratio than Star Wars), and they seem to be shoehorned in as male stereotypes. I suggest male readers ruminate on this aspect of the show until it seems a bit disturbing. And then notice that females can experience this when watching most things.

24 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
steven0461
24 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

this is your warning that Crocker's Rules apply to the following content

That's not how Crocker's Rules work; they're supposed to be declared by the listener, who thereby takes responsibility for any hurt feelings caused by the content. You can't declare Crocker's rules on behalf of others.

24 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
daenerys
20 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

That's why I called it Crocker's Warning and not Crocker's Rules. I am implying that by reading the content you are agreeing to Crocker's Rules. It's just a way of saying that the submitters were told not to hold back, and if you want it sugar-coated, you shouldn't read it.

20 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
shokwave
20 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

This feels like Main material, both in the "well written and based on collected data" sense and the "something the whole community benefits from reading" sense.

20 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
lukeprog
19 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.

Recommend putting this sentence in bold.

19 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
MugaSofer
18 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

I have to say, I found most of these to be either standard geek fare (I play D&D and the DM railroads me towards combat) or pretty obvious sexism-is-bad (Dad says I need to cook or I wont get a man.) Is is possible that you're overestimating the inferential distance here?

18 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Konkvistador
18 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

“It's rusty too,” intones the Dungeonmaster, “and pieces of it keep breaking off. Look, you're not supposed to be farming. You're supposed to go into the forest and find the dark elves. I don't have anything else about the farmers. The elves are the adventure.” Reluctantly, I give up my agricultural rescue plan and we go into the forest to hack at elves.

I got a very similar response when my Lawful Neutral Cleric wanted to set up a formal inquisition to root out the evil cultists in the city rather than go to the big bad's cave and whack them on the head. Also a barbarian of mine wanted to run a brothel after the party defeated the gang that controlled it before. It mysteriously burned down the following night.

In general some DMs have a hard time dealing with characters that want to weave baskets instead of going hack and slash.

18 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
Larks
17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

My lawful neutral character attacked the rest of the party when they assaulted a group of innocent (until proven guilty) goblins in the first encounter.

17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
asparisi
17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote
5 years ago

I had an interesting experience with this, and I am wondering if others on the male side had the same.

I tried to imagine myself in these situations. When a situation did not seem to have any personal impact from the first person or at best a very mild discomfort, I tried to rearrange the scenario with social penalties that I would find distressing. (Social penalties do differ based on gender roles)

I found this provoked a fear response. If I give it voice, it sounds like "This isn't relevant/I won't be in this scenario/You would just.../Why are you doing this?" Which is interesting: my brain doesn't want to process these stories as first-person accounts. Some sort of analysis would be easier and more comfortable, but I am pretty sure would miss the damn point.

I don't have any further thoughts, other than this was useful in understanding things that may inhibit me from understanding. (and trying to get past them)

17 points
expand_less
Upvote
expand_more
Downvote