“Let her speak please” | Hacker News Reader

“Let her speak please”

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995 pointsdevnonymous646 comments

Edit: I watched the video. The moderator goes on and on and the "let her speak please" sounds very polite.

This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men. It's one thing to have one panelist talk over another, but to have the moderator, who is explicitly in charge of facilitating a panel discussion, be the one to drown out a panelist is just unacceptable. Yes, "not all men" do this, but the fact that this continues to happen in such visible and public settings, where presumably people are on "their best behavior", would suggest that it happens even more in more private situations. Research has shown that groups where speaking is more distributed are more successful at solving problems, and explicitly teams with more women are more successful: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/the-sec...

I will take this story as another reminder to be aware of situations where I might be dominating a conversation, and I hope you will too.

People get talked over by people. I see this all the time and it's generally sexless. As a consultant I've helped at least 100 teams have crucial conversations across tens of businesses. I don't get the constant refrain that this is a male vs. female thing.

Your anecdote of your fuzzy memory is not research.

When measurements are taken, there is a clear pattern:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2017/01/03/gal-inte...

https://hbr.org/2017/04/female-supreme-court-justices-are-in...

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/03/19/google...

Your fuzzy memory is not research so I quote the three top scientific magazines: Forbes, HBR [1] & NYT.

(If you look in the articles, they quote studies with 20 participants. At university I would have been destroyed when making fundamental claims on a sample size of 20).

And yes my gut feeling tells me women get interrupted more often. And from this comment you may assume I'm guilty of this, though my bad social habits probably interrupt men as often.

[1] the magazine of business anecdotes.

Your links do not justify your confident tone. Two are about the 7 Supreme Court Justices and some Google guy. That's 8 people. The first is about a study involving 11 male-female interactions (19 now), and a study which noted that "...The men interrupted their female conversational partners 2.1 times during a three minute conversation. That number dropped to 1.8 when they spoke to other men." So men just interrupt more in general, not against women specifically, i.e. not sexist behaviour but a simple gender difference.

Ironically, the guy's "fuzzy memories" are more accurate than your "research-based" opinions.

Even if there is a "clear pattern", that doesn't mean every instance of a man talking over woman is sexism. Not even close.

So even if you can prove there is a pattern, it doesn't invalidate his statement that "it's generally sexless"

Thanks for bringing data.

From what I gather, it does get done to women more than to men. From my perspective, an even bigger problem is that women are more expected to just take it.

Having read the piece, it is by a woman who spoke up and said "Let her speak, please" and that's fine. But I have mixed feelings about the title of this piece and how it looks before you read it, because white knighting is a big problem for women. Men coming to the rescue of some damsel in distress and championing her often just deepens the problem. It often simply reinforces the idea that the only role women are allowed to play is that of victim and any justice that happens will be credited to some heroic guy. It often gets done in a way that in no way empowers her. It is frequently just some guy coming in, playing hero and getting pats on the back and when he goes off stage, her situation remains just as crappy and disempowered as before.

I am a woman and I personally don't have any problem with giving the guys push back and that gets me perceived as incredibly confrontational and fighty. At one time, my account on HN was rate limited. My feeling on that is that simply standing up for myself as a woman who often gets a lot of pushback merely for being a demographic outlier was being punished. That winds up a no win situation for women. If you don't stand up for yourself, you get walked on. If you do, you can be actively punished for it.

To be fair, the current mod team on HN has been great. I am sure they often find me cringe-worthy, but they have made me feel much more like I can report people who are really engaging in bad behavior towards me that is beyond the pale and much more like I can stand my ground without fear that doing so is highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it.

Hacker News has generally been great about putting up with my outrageous agenda* to open my mouth here and engage in conversation on equal footing with the guys. I am well aware that is a shocking expectation and is simply Not Done in so many spaces, both online and off. I want to thank everyone here for being so good about that.

* http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/11/my-agenda-fo...

> women are more expected to just take it.

Or women, in general, just don't want the bother.

> giving the guys push back

Excellent. Too many women don't, in my experience. In my personal experience, I find women not standing up for themselves in the situation at hand, and then complaining about it for ages after.

> highly likely to get me banned, no matter how reasonable I am about it.

That seems unlikely. If you are getting banned, maybe you're not being reasonable about it?

> If you do, you can be actively punished for it.

This is not a women-only issue. Men get "punished" just as much for unpopular opinions. Just like they get talked over if they let themselves be talked over. etc.

Totally, this is her political perception grid overlaying reality. If Jim Holt or whoever thought that her theories were contradictory, then likely he would've talked over whoever was sitting there, regardless of sex. It could have had as much to do with his condescension to what he perceived as an inferior theory as anything.

> theories were contradictory

That's actually a desirable quality. It means that you are not emotionally attached to your theories (you shouldn't be, it's science not religion) and are willing to contradict them. Still, most people would think that a bad thing.

Yes they do Ryan. And it's something we need to stop. In this particular case though the female expert was asked a question related to her own very specialised area of expertise by the male host, AND then the person asking the question (a) answered on her behalf, (b) then talked over her when she tried to answer, and (c) then made fun of her when her response was to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Truly appalling especially when for over an hour the other all male members of the panel had spoken at length without interruption.

what you describe matches my observations too: i see it happen in both directions, with the most pushy example being, in what i see, certain women talking over everyone regardless of gender. it's just a personality trait, perhaps?

My suspicion is that it is based largely upon context.

I would postulate that academia and journalism are still pretty sexist compared to the 'tens of businesses' you observed.

Potentially in support of your perspective: I see the overspeaking roles inverted in the context of reality TV shows, though that could potentially be seen as a counter-action to normal social roles which develops as structure of society is removed... which would imply the sexist paradigm is the prevalent one.

> I would postulate that academia and journalism are still pretty sexist

Two industries I have not had the pleasure of engaging with. My coaching experience has been around healthcare, insurance, banking, transportation, energy, construction, software, audit, and a few other random things.

Reading the comments here I am surprised at all the people who are claiming that people get talked over by other people all the time and it has nothing to do with sex.

I mean, yeah there's no denying that there exist pushy jerks who are jerks to everyone but guess what? those kinds are more likely to be even greater jerks with women. So either this guy was a regular jerk talking over her because she was a woman or being that special kind of jerk who normally talks over some men but talks over most women. Why is there an difference of opinion about this?

Does anyone really think there is a breed of jerks who talk over some/most men but will never do that/will do less of that to a woman?

That precludes the breed of jerks who will talk over anybody that will tolerate it.

What makes you think there aren't women who also like to claim the center of attention, regardless of other men OR women around them?

I don't understand this need to idolize one sex over the other, when the issue is that some people (like this moderator) are just more tone deaf or inconsiderate than others.

Equality between sexes implies treating everyone as a human rather than assuming that this moderator is a stand-in for men in general.

If it was a men complaining about the same situation women would be the first to tell him to man up and speak up.

I'm guessing you're male.

thank you for saying this, and be willing to be downvoted by the PC hivemind. I've personally long given up trying to share a non-PC-orthodox view here on this topic

Journalists definitely like to hear themselves talk, even when formulating questions while moderating a discussion. But if he, as a relative layperson in science, felt that comfortable interrupting Dr. Hubeny and riffing off of her area of expertise, imagine what he's like in a topic in which he doesn't think himself a relative amateur.

Today I met a journalist who gave up on his job because it was all about his interpretations of other people. He instead started projects to empower others to speak.

Please provide some links to these projects.

> Imagine what he's like in a topic in which he doesn't think himself a relative amateur.

He may not be aware that he is a relative amateur here.

> Journalists definitely like to hear themselves talk, even when formulating questions while moderating a discussion.

slightly off topic, but with the rise of ubiquitous audio/video and the interview/discussion/panel format, it is infuriating how many hosts just blatantly speak over their guests, over and over and over. it's one of the biggest tells between a professional interviewer and a rank amateur. i can barely make it through my weekly playlist without cringing at half the dialogue.

i completely stopped listening to charlie rose because of this. it's absolutely atrocious. it's not helpful, and makes me anxious when i'm trying to unwind. some guests simply continue speaking, and the entire discussion devolves into little more than a god damn shouting match.

sexism or not, i hope this public assassination at least makes one loudmouth blowhard reconsider his default modus operandi. just let your guests speak! for fuck's sake, it's not that hard.

I get talked over all the time. I usually chalk it up to being an American living in America, but with a more Scandinavian/Minnesotan conversational style.

That is, I will pause while speaking, spooling my next thought out to the phonological loop, to review and filter it, before streaming it out through the voice apparatus, but then some jackass will use that break to assume conversational priority when I haven't yielded it yet. So when I resume speaking, they are already talking.

It is practically impossible for me to engage in a conversation with such a person constantly ruining it for me, so I usually just keep my thoughts to myself and regret even showing up for the party.

Even my spouse does this in a 1-on-1 conversation. And then I am the one accused of interrupting, as though it is acceptable to jump in between two sentences of a paragraph. It's like I need that stupid conch shell from Lord of the Flies in order to say everything that I want to say. And I get so irritated when people spew out a stream of content-free babble, for the sole purpose of maintaining priority, to the point where I forget what I have been wanting to say for the last 5 minutes.

It might be a sexist thing, but I think it's more likely that the people with the least latency between brain and larynx--and therefore the fewest speech filters--are the ones that never learned that conversational priority isn't just about refraining from talking while sound is still coming out of someone else's mouth. And, of course, there are also the people who simply decide they are the most important person in a conversation and act like they're the lead actor giving a monologue, and everyone else is the chorus.

So please, have a care as to whether a silence in the conversation is a pause or a yield. You may be interrupting someone giving due consideration to what they will say next.

This is my experience as well. I am from Scandinavia and now living in Canada and I have only met a handful of individuals who do not interrupt others while speaking. Unlike you I tell them to shut up, which is the way it is where I come from but doesn't translate well.

Furthermore, I have never seen any american interviewer not interrupting their subjects.

This is my bias, so I never see sexism nor racism in this context. I only see idiots who think more of themselves than they should.

In this particular case and in regards to sexism, however, the voice that should be listened to most, in my opinion, is the voice of the subject. If we don't consider her voice the most important voice we put her in the subaltern and that is the worst position you can have. The subaltern being women in the context of patriarchal history.

The person who said 'Let her speak please.', should also be heard, regardless of her motives. The interviewers should shut up and let their subjects speak at all times, so we need more of this social courage.

This is just a cultural difference, and depends on what kind of family a person grew up in. It’s not intentional, and not a sign of disrespect or incompetence.

If you want to get the most out of those conversations, you need to meet the other person halfway: be more assertive about your time to speak, while also letting them know that they’re trampling you and need to back off a bit. If you don’t tell them they’ll just think you’re a shy person with nothing to say.

Other cultural differences cause similar problems. If someone I don’t know is mad at me and just silently stews with a vaguely grumpy neutral expression on their face, I’m not going to have any idea they’re mad, because in my culture we just come out and tell people what we’re thinking. By contrast I know people who are deeply humiliated by (what seems to me like) light criticism, because it is huge faux pas and therefore never happened in their culture. Similarly, I know people who simply don’t understand the concept of teasing, at all, and others who are almost cruelly biting in their teasing: when those two collide it’s not pretty.

Or if I’m listening while someone tells one thing to one person, and something contradictory to someone else, I will consider them to be dishonest/untrustworthy and start discounting everything they say. But in some cultures, it’s normal and expected to say what you think the listener wants to hear, and listeners just have to learn to read between the lines and interpret subtle distinctions in presentation style.

Etc.

I realize this sounds silly, but maybe having a conch, or similar talisman of "I'm not done yet, please listen" might be handy.

I find myself interrupting my children a lot more than I like (and while it often feels like it's because they're interrupting me as well, I'm certain that's usually not true). Having a stuffed animal or similar "conch" talisman might help us actually listen, because each of us could point out who has the conch.

I cannot agree more. Thread done. Thank you for expressing yourself with such great metaphor.

As a tiny, girly looking feminine man who crossdresses half the time, I have to say that everybody- male or female- is at risk for being "talked over" and not given a fair chance. That's just how the world works.

You can be upset about it and say that people were unfair, or you can make yourself a better person by learning from others mistakes.

The world would be a better place if people put less energy into being upset, and more energy into mutual empathy between sexes.

As a large, athletic, deeply voiced man I agree with your sentiment.

This is a real problem in the business and tech communities. I have seen few people "at the top" acknowledge it.

Leaders, make an effort to listen and clear the air for others to speak up. Don't beat them up if they don't articulate brilliantly right away -- it takes practice. You'll be surprised at the rate of improvement.

For individuals, I use this trick when people cut me off AND it's unjustified: saying "hang on, let me finish" and then driving my point aggressively. It has mostly worked though I am male.

If you watch the rest of the video you will find the moderator imposes himself and cuts off the panellists and talks over them multiple times, seemingly regardless of gender. This makes me strongly inclined to believe that this incident had nothing to do with sexism, but rather with the annoyingly dominant and imposing personality of the moderator.

Maybe you think otherwise. Why would you say this incident is a "painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men"? Surely you can't construe this incident to mean that when all panellists alike suffered the same treatment? What's your take?

> If you watch the rest of the video you will find the moderator imposes himself and cuts off the panellists and talks over them multiple times, seemingly regardless of gender.

Honest question: Did you watch the rest of the video?

I did and completely disagree with your assessment.

Note that behaviours which tend to have disproportionate impact on one gender over another are still sexist, and women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did.

Link to video?

EDIT: Found it at the bottom...

Watched the related part of the video. I don't know if it was because of sexism, but it was clearly rude and annoying. The excited native, faster and louder speaking moderator taking over a kind, non-native, slower and smaller speaker. Since as a non-native male, I have seen this kind of taking over whatever the gender is and this might happen to any person which has those characteristics.

> This is a painfully frustrating reminder that women get talked over by men

men get talked over as well

some people just talk over other people

nothing new

I can't find the study, but men interrupt women much more than they interrupt men. Also, women interrupt other women more than they interrupt men as well.

There were four men on the stage who weren't talked over.

Ugh, I watched the video, jesus the host might be the least self-aware person who's ever been asked to host anything. I was unreasonably annoyed listening to him.

Anyway I want to share something, made this throwaway account specifically for this. I'm the only female at my company, and a developer to boot. I'm assertive in general, I make sure I'm heard. In fact, I try to be hyper-aware of how much I'm talking in a meeting setting, just to be respectful of others. I also feel that I am virtually unaware of my gender at work. I've been lucky in that respect -- trust me, sexism in the world and sexism in STEM is real, and it's not always easy being a female -- but I'm in agreeance with the author that intent matters, and generally that assumed sexist intent can get a bit dramatic. Whether my personality affects my perception, I can't say.

I work with a lot of very introverted and quiet males -- and a small handful of overpowering, extraverted males. I've found myself doing this exact thing quite often. Weekly even. "Let's let him finish his point", "I'm interested in hearing more from {quiet_guy}", "{quiet_guy}, is {contribution_of_loud_guy} what you meant by that?", et cetera.

I would like to believe that if the panel person was a male, it would have elicited the same building irritation from the audience. Although, I'm less sure that someone would have spoken up. I think someone would have needed to feel personally antagonized in order to speak up, which is exactly what happened here.

Bit of a ramble, sorry. My bottom line is that we should all be looking out for those who speak up less, if we sense that those people are being out-talked. My feeling is that people in that category might be more female than not... but I'm also saying that it doesn't matter either way.

I think your point about there being people who are out-talked is spot on. It seems to me that both quieter women and quieter men both get talked over by domineering men or women, but that due to men generally being more likely to be domineering, the whole situation skews by gender. I think it's one of those situations that seems sexist on the surface, but when you look into it it's more of a social dynamic that correlates with gender.

Thank you. As the "loud guy" around the office I have to keep this habit in check myself. I'd hate to think that, if I was drowning out the women, that people thought it was because I was personally discounting them as women.

Obviously sexism of outcome can be just as important to combat as sexism of intent, so of course I have to break the habit talking over people with my loud and opinionated speech.

Thank you. People get distracted by the difference between "intentional discrimination" and "disparate impact".

You are showing good leadership to your mild-mannered coworkers and also the ones who are better ad speaking than listening, both the women and the men.

> I would like to believe that if the panel person was a male, it would have elicited the same building irritation from the audience. Although, I'm less sure that someone would have spoken up.

This makes me think of a complain I saw years ago from a woman about how she was treated on a mailing list. Apparently someone got aggressive with her and one of the things she complained about is that no one stepped in to defend her.

My response to that was along the lines of "they probably expected you to defend yourself".

Your comment reminded me of that, and even then I thought the same thing. Many women are used to getting defended, but men generally aren't and have learned to defend themselves.

So I think you're right that it would've been less likely for someone to defend the panelist if said panelist had been male and for much the same reason. You would expect the male to defend themselves.

I'm grateful for your perspective and your values.

> You may be amazed to hear it, but during this panel session I genuinely did not feel affronted or discriminated by the moderator’s behavior. It seemed more amusing to see him try posing a question in a way that at the same time tried answering it. It’s true that this made the question a bit of a moving target for me (and therefore harder to address coherently), but I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism. Maybe I’m too naive, but I simply gave him the benefit of doubt that he was so excited by the newly-learned idea of the duality that he couldn’t resist, and that the same might have occurred had the panelist been a male instead of me. So it didn’t bother me.

...

> Please understand that I’m not trying to say that sexism in science is a myth. It is real and we should all aspire to diminish it. But I am trying to say that it need not pose as much of an impediment as you might fear and that you might be in more control over its influence yourself than you might think. Just as you put up with long lines to see a great show, or with sore feet or mosquitos to have a great hike etc., the annoyance of otherwise abominable behavior diminishes in the larger perspective of doing something you really enjoy.

https://web.facebook.com/marilee.talkington/posts/1015505138...

Indeed, a level-headed comment is what is required in this situation. This is her livelihood, her career.. Pretty much everything for her.

If she was to attack her colleagues, it would spell certain doom for her career. Her opinions and proofs would be dismissed and denigrated. And the specter of "Will I be accused of sexism if I pan this paper?" will rear its ugly head anywhere she would turn.

Think of this as an analogy to badmouthing your previous employer in an interview. You just don't do it. Except, now exchange interview for world-wide public debate/discussion. Nobody in the world, in that field, would consider her.

Aren't you doing the same thing the moderator did?

You're dismissing her comments out-of-hand as not entirely honest and assuming you know her true feelings.

Maybe now that she's been given the opportunity to speak, we should listen to and consider her thoughts.

kefka's comment appears* to be carefully worded to comment only on the situation she finds herself in, and does not make any assertions about her state of mind.

*does HN indicate when a comment has been edited?

While I agree, it's also plausible that she's being sincere, and it's merely a consequence of being awesome that people treat you well.

> Except, now exchange interview for world-wide public debate/discussion.

There's an important difference caused by this: what you must avoid doing is badmouthing old employers to new employers. It's about what you, and you alone, say to the employer. The new employer isn't sitting around listening for what other people have to say; they're only interested in what you have to say. So your only options are "tell them yourself" or "don't tell them and they'll never know."

But in the public sphere, there's a third option: ask a well-respected-in-the-same-sphere friend or colleague to carry the torch for you, making a big deal of what happened to you while you yourself remain silent. Other people in the public sphere are "listening" to claims made by any-and-all prominent members of the sphere, and so will hear what some random member says on your behalf. Which makes that pretty much the best option 100% of the time; you get the gains from speaking up, with none of the risks.

As a side-note: consider the fact that you can pay people to speak up for you in this way. Consider the implication that "the protection of your social position through third-party calling-out" is a good that can be purchased by the wealthy, and which is less available to the poor. And consider what this implies, in an anthropic-argument sense, for those who rise to the top of social hierarchies.

I think it was really valuable to surface the feelings of the person who was the target of this discussion. It changes the perspective of the incident.

When you look at the full response though.. She is supportive of the woman in the audience who spoke up.

Veronika Hubeny: I applaud your heroism in standing up for what you believe in! I know well the shaky feeling and subsequent exhilarated and heartwarmed contentment in the knowledge of having done the right thing, and I think that doing so has become more crucial than ever. Your behavior was inspiring and I’m glad that many of those inspired shared their gratitude with you.

I guess that, being the subject of the incident, it might be worthwhile to offer my perspective, which to my surprise is rather more atypical than I had hitherto realized, but which I hope might perhaps provide some encouragement to all those who feel put off by the present situation — especially to those who feel drawn to science yet dissuaded from following their hearts’ calling. (For posterity I also feel compelled to correct a point about the physics — as a physicist I can’t help myself wink emoticon;-) — but since I realize that that was entirely beside the point of the post, I’ll only do so at the very end…)

You may be amazed to hear it, but during this panel session I genuinely did not feel affronted or discriminated by the moderator’s behavior. It seemed more amusing to see him try posing a question in a way that at the same time tried answering it. It’s true that this made the question a bit of a moving target for me (and therefore harder to address coherently), but I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism. Maybe I’m too naive, but I simply gave him the benefit of doubt that he was so excited by the newly-learned idea of the duality that he couldn’t resist, and that the same might have occurred had the panelist been a male instead of me. So it didn’t bother me.

In fact, even though in my entire academic career I was in an environment where women were in striking minority (and as a student often the only woman in the class), I never felt discriminated against or thwarted in my calling. The feeling was rather one of camaraderie: the challenges to unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, the thrill in understanding another tiny bit of this grand puzzle, and the sheer wonder at how beautifully the physics hangs together, put us all in the same boat, so to speak. In retrospect I think I was fortunate in being amongst like-minded physicists who were not only great but gracious and earnest in their love of science. But when I eventually did start coming across others who were not of the same caliber, they somehow seemed insignificant.

I had early on decided that I like physics so much that I’d be quite willing to give up quite a bit of other comforts for it, but perhaps having made that decision and bracing oneself, then made the actual “discomforts” not only more bearable, but genuinely less discomforting. I think the subjective severity of a lot of these issues can be greatly influenced by one’s mindset, one’s psychology. If you allow yourself to enjoy the beautiful things that really matter, if you don’t let social or peer pressure dissuade you from pursuing a field which appeals to you, then no pettiness or childishness or boorishness that you encounter can harm you so much.

Please understand that I’m not trying to say that sexism in science is a myth. It is real and we should all aspire to diminish it. But I am trying to say that it need not pose as much of an impediment as you might fear and that you might be in more control over its influence yourself than you might think. Just as you put up with long lines to see a great show, or with sore feet or mosquitos to have a great hike etc., the annoyance of otherwise abominable behavior diminishes in the larger perspective of doing something you really enjoy.

OK, so now to the physics (sorry): First, what you refer to as the “two theories of string theory that seem to contradict one another” are actually two ‘dual’ descriptions of the same physics, which while curiously different in rather amazing ways, are completely consistent with each other (one using the language of string theory, the other of a field theory). Second, I cannot take credit for inventing this holographic (so-called AdS/CFT) correspondence — I have worked on understanding how it works at a deeper level, but the AdS/CFT was originated by Juan Maldacena in 1997.

Once again, let me stress my appreciation, Marilee, of how you bravely stood up for your principles and values! Well done!

I think it's worth considering that we're seeing some survivorship bias here - it's possible that she's the only woman on the panel because she thinks this way. In other words, it's possible that other women who would have seen this event as being rooted in sexism may eventually be a part of so many similar events during their career that they effectively burn out and switch to more female friendly fields.

This has been my experience working alongside women in software engineering - the ones who pay attention to how they might be treated differently leave.

It's also one of the hardest things about being black in tech - you must ignore many possible slights and assume that nobody is purposefully racist. You must construct alternative narratives to explain things that you see day in and day out, otherwise it's easy to get swallowed by doubt and lose your ability to contribute effectively. I call it assuming positive intent. It's how you survive.

The feeling was rather one of camaraderie: the challenges to unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, the thrill in understanding another tiny bit of this grand puzzle, and the sheer wonder at how beautifully the physics hangs together, put us all in the same boat, so to speak.

This is what will end discrimination based on superficial differences: I think our mental reality is so much more interesting than our physical differences. Am I a man or a woman? Mostly I'm human. It may seem stupidly obvious to say that, but I feel it bears repeating.

> If you allow yourself to enjoy the beautiful things that really matter, if you don’t let social or peer pressure dissuade you from pursuing a field which appeals to you, then no pettiness or childishness or boorishness that you encounter can harm you so much.

I like this and also like how it's phrased.

Yes, sexism, racism and other forms of bigotry are real; the way they'll truly be beat is if more and more ostracized people think like this and push through the slights, ultimately normalizing their being among the people that, formerly, ostracized them.

Outrage on behalf of others will only take us so far, although the good intention is surely commendable.

In what way? Sure, it's an additional perspective, but it sounds like you're suggesting it should somehow alter the audience perspective.

She saw it as questioner trying to put on table his understanding of the theory so she can correct him in his understanding.

e.g. Mam, you tell me if I got this correctly. This is how I think it works...

I think it is actually a position of submission in a discussion, the person who is doing the talking is accepting the higher authority of person doing the listening to find errors in your understanding of the subject.

You explain to see if you got it correctly in front of a teacher.

The audiences would have been better served by hearing from the expert directly, so the moderator clearly failed at moderating. There is a chance that he may not have been sexist, but more student like and in the flow of events forgot the place, audience and his role in the conversation.

I didn't see the video so just exploring possibilities.

The audience may have come to thank the person who yelled "LET HER SPEAK PLEASE" for two reasons...

1. They thought moderator was sexist and one doing yelling was a liberator.

2. They wanted to hear the expert. Moderator was doing a poor job at moderating. This was not classroom. The people were there to hear the experts, they probably paid to attend the event. So, "HER" in this case is referencing the expert, not a woman. e.g. a version of "LET THE PROFESSOR SPEAK PLEASE".

I think she's taking a very charitable view of things. She was constantly interrupted by the moderator in a way that the male speakers weren't. There was differential treatment and it didn't sound to me like the moderator was so much more excited about her theories than those of the other speakers when he choose to interrupt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo#t=1h1m53s

Sexism is not misogyny. It is not about intent, and certainly not about hurt feelings. It is an objective quality of a reality where women are given less power. A sexist situation either is or isn't. And as power is a social construct -- e.g. people who are treated with respect by others with a high social status, have their own status elevated and vice-versa -- the reality of sexism is determined by the effect on the audience (i.e., by the perception of power).

Whether or not Prof. Hubeny was herself offended, is, of course, a very important interpersonal matter, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not the moderator's behavior was sexist. I certainly hope (and assume) that his behavior wasn't misogynistic, but most sexist behaviors aren't, and they have no ill intent behind them. In some ways, that is precisely what sexism is: social behaviors that are ingrained in us so much that we don't notice when do them, that help perpetuate an imbalance of power.

This. A million times.

I'm the father of two college-age daughters and seeing the world through their eyes is disturbing to me. I wish the world understood this better.

Honestly this is a horrible philosophy -- the notion that anything can be sexist if someone chooses to be offended. You talk about an imbalance of power, but isn't the ability to recontextualize any bad behavior as sexist just because of the participants involved a huge source of power in of itself?

> Honestly this is a horrible philosophy -- the notion that anything can be sexist if someone chooses to be offended.

But it's the exact opposite. Being offended has nothing to do with sexism. Sexism is an objective situation of an unequal distribution of power. Sexism would exist even if everyone in the world thought it was great, and no one was ever offended in the slightest.

> but isn't the ability to recontextualize any bad behavior as sexist just because of the participants involved a huge source of power in of itself?

I don't know what "bad" behavior is. I do know what sexist behavior is: behavior the creates or perpetuates an unequal distribution of power. There is no "recontextualization" involved; sexism would exist or not regardless of how it's contextualized; like gravity. The only ethical question is whether you believe that this imbalance of power needs to be rectified.

But do people who fight sexism have power? Sure, they have some, but clearly, the imbalance of power between men and women is so large, that there is still no question about which side has more power.

You'd have to agree though that it's a remarkable coincidence that this only happened to the only female scientist who was part of the panel.

You'd have to agree though that it's a remarkable coincidence that the moderator began to ramble when he started talking about a topic that he was particularly excited about and which he was not particularly knowledgeable about.

I don't expect he set out that day to make the scientist shut up because she was a woman. A lot of sexism is so deeply rooted that it's not even hostile by the men who engage in it, it's simply the acting of the cultural norms, for example, that men can talk over women.

I don't have a sexist bone in my body and I've caught myself doing this. The only way we improve as a society is to continuously monitor and correct each other because this stuff is laid so deep in our cultural consciousness that catching ourselves every time by ourselves is not reasonable to expect.

Why is it more important to you to prove it's "not sexism" than to be concerned that moderator did his job poorly regardless of the reason?

Maybe it happened to the least assertive person in the panel?

Yes, the moderator's behaviour would have been wrong against any person, no matter their gender. But it is especially inappropriate when done against those who have to endure this more than others throughout their life.

You don't need a sexist intent to behave sexist. Being ignorant to this issue doesn't make it much better. And calling the person from the audience "heckling" just because she made him aware of this issue is a very clear sign of ignorance.

At least he changed his behaviour nevertheless, although I'd attribute this more to the reaction of the rest of the audience.

Yeah, this gets into a problem where people use the word "sexism" in a couple different ways, that don't mean the same thing. Mostly conscious vs unconscious, I think? Almost no one goes home and writes, "Dear Diary, today I insulted some women, because I hate women. Let's keep doing that." So of course, if you accuse someone of being that kind of conscious sexist, it's a huge insult. You're calling them a sad hate monster person. When we do talk about other people's sexism, especially if those people don't have a lot of practice talking about unconscious bias, it might be a good idea to reassure them that we're not calling them a hate monster.

But that cuts both ways, and it's possible to be unfair in the other direction. If someone comes to me and says "I think what you did was sexist," it would be fair and polite of me to assume they meant "unconsciously sexist." If I want to ask for reassurance about that, sure that's fine, but not fair for me to put words in their mouth like "HOW DARE YOU CALL ME A CONSCIOUS SEXIST?!" when I know that both meanings exist.

So yeah, sorry for the long reply, but here's why your comment made me think of it: Saying "that wasn't sexist; so-and-so is actually less assertive" kind of assumes that we're talking about conscious sexism. If we're talking about unconscious sexism instead (the charitable assumption here), that difference-in-perceived-assertiveness might be precisely the problem that we're worried about. This is kind of a nitpicky distinction, except that accusing someone of accusing you of conscious sexism, can be kinda sorta flirting with bad faith?

This might be the thing that is most problematic about 'call out' culture. We assume that we know the intention of people's behavior (sexism) and how it is received (offense). In many cases there may be neither. But I'm just cynical enough to suspect that this many not matter to people who 'call out.' They feel that they are on a mission to make society better regardless of whether there are problems in any individual case.

I don't see any "'call out' culture" here. Note that the person in the audience did not say "you are sexist". The words were "Let her speak please". Specific, and to the point.

(EDIT: The article itself uses the word "sexist", so it might indeed have been a call-out. However, that doesn't affect my point that we should not tolerate shitty behaviour, no matter which label is attached to it.)

The moderator's behvaiour itself was inappropriate, no matter which gender the other person had, and no matter whether the other person is offended or cool with it.

Why? Because others might not be cool with that, and rightly so! If we publicly tolerate inappropriate behaviour, we are making it even harder for those who are not cool with it.

That's why we (the audience, the society) should not tolerate shitty behaviour, and speak out publicly against it. Not just to fix this individual case, where the affected person may or may not need our help, but to establish a culture where this shitty behaviour will occur less often in the first place.

>I don't see any "'call out' culture" here. Note that the person in the audience did not say "you are sexist". The words were "Let her speak please". Specific, and to the point.

The "call out" is the Facebook post and the subsequent social media firestorm that follows it.

Yeah, but the entire Facebook post was a tirade about sexism.

'Impact' is far more important than 'intent'. People do racist/sexist/less than ideal things all the time, without even meaning to, because many of those behaviors are ingrained/systemic. Not meaning to be sexist doesn't excuse sexism.

I agree that call out culture sometimes doesn't leave room for nuance and sometimes unnecessarily shoves people into defensive spaces - i.e. telling people they 'are sexist' vs telling them a behavior they are exhibiting is 'a little sexist'.

In this situation the impact wasn't "The speaker is being offended, I must speak up", the situation was "Im here to hear what the expert has to say on the subject that they are an expert in, and the moderator is doing all the talking" Which would be irritating regardless of the genders involved. But this behavior fit with a very common pattern of men speaking over/for women.

I'm not sure what you even mean by "impact" and "intent". If by impact you mean treating a man differently than a woman, you're neglecting the myriad of factors besides sex which could have resulted in the distinction in treatment. The canonical example being the wage gap, which is ultimately caused by individual choice and not discrimination. If people insist on defining sexism, etc based on the result and not on the cause, then these so-called prejudices aren't worth fighting (because a huge portion of what we're fighting isn't prejudice but individual freedom).

As for "intent", how can one be accidentally racist if racism is defined in useful terms? One can conceivably accidentally participate in a racial disparity, for example, by being an English-speaking business owner providing a useful service, I might only advertise my services in English such that mainly English speakers benefit. Because the racial distributions vary across these language groups, Asians and Hispanics would benefit less, and a race gap might widen. This obviously isn't racism in the original sender of the wires, but people tend to use it in this sense, often it seems to use this ambiguity to make harsh accusations about individual motives while affording the accuser the ability to say "No, I didn't mean it _that_ way! Why are X people so sensitive/guilty/etc?"

The other plausible explanation is that "intent" is meant to refer to a decision by the conscious brain, and prejudice is a deeply subconscious activity. This is generally what I subscribe to, but I could never imagine making wanton and very damaging accusations about the happenings and motives in others when they can't even reliably tap into them. Even when we have existence of a disparity, our society seems quick to attribute it to discrimination, but this is rarely the case to any significant degree (for example, all of the data on the wage gap suggests that discrimination is responsible for a small fraction of the gap at very most).

There can not be any sexism without the behavior being based on sex, and it in this case it isn't clear that it was. That's an assumption people are making.

And isn't that "collateral damage" well worth it?

I mean a moderator for a panel consisting of four men and one woman, in this day and age, shouldn't one of their mental bullet points going on stage be "make damn sure she gets about the same airtime as everyone else"?

In many cases I do feel sorry for the person who's 'called out', but in this case: he failed spectacularly at his task, and when you do you can't expect to fully control the narrative of why that happened...

> In many cases there may be neither.

The story tells how the audience applauded to the "let her speak" comment, and how afterwards a large number of people came to thank her for the comment. So in this case it was a large number of people who perceived there being sexism.

Which isn't evidence of much; millions of people assumed Darren Wilson was a racist murderer even after the facts were known. There's a very strong temptation for some people to perceive injustice everywhere.

No, it's not problematic at all. The behavior was unacceptable. The victim being so used to it that they don't notice the offense doesn't make it not an offense.

You can never hide behind "the victim said it was ok". You need to examine the behavior. Consider the environment in which it took place. Consider the statement the behavior makes to those observing it. Maybe even consider why the perpetrator was behaving that way, but don't give that too much weight.

The important part is that public behavior does not exist in isolation, by definition. Public behavior shapes the world in which it takes place, and the perception of it is shaped by the world in which it exists.

Let me jump to a hypothetical case, totally unrelated to what was presented here:

Let's imagine a couple who in private mutually enjoy the male partner dominating the female partner, including verbal and physical abuse. There is nothing wrong with this. "It's not a problem, she enjoys it" is a perfectly true statement.

Now move that couple's behavior into the public realm. "It's not a problem, she enjoys it" is no longer true. She can completely enjoy it, even feel empowered by it, and the situation still presents a problem. The abuse must now be considered in a wider context. If no one challenges it, it is tacitly accepted behavior. That acceptance influences other people - a man sees that there are no consequences for abusing women and thinks the behavior is a bit more acceptable; a woman sees the same and thinks her only option in that situation is to put up with it.

To move the subject back to the original post, then:

It really doesn't matter whether the victim believed she was being attacked. What matters are the conclusions observers would draw from the interaction. Up until the OP spoke out, an observer would see evidence that it's acceptable for a male speaker to talk over the female speaker he's supposedly asking a question of. The OP speaking out (and the room's reaction to it) provided a very strong contrary signal - it's not acceptable.

In context, does this one incident mean a whole lot either way? No. But our reactions to it do. If you read about this and say "hey, that was a good thing, I should do the same if I notice a situation like that" then you are helping to fight sexism in a real way. Every single time someone says "Let her speak, please" it is creating a tiny shift away from sexism. On the other hand, if your reaction was "this was a non-issue, just ask the woman on the panel", you're not doing a thing to help the culture shift away from sexism.

I'm in the former camp myself. I've been on a work call where a male participant jumped in and started talking over the top of a female participant. I'm ashamed it took me almost a whole minute to work up the nerve to tell him we should let her continue talking. Next time I'll be faster about it. And Marilee's story definitely makes me feel better about doing so in the future.

Don't call this "problematic". It's explicitly shifting cultural norms in the correct direction, a little bit at a time. Stand up for what's right and do the same next time you notice a public situation which would serve to normalize sexism. Trust me, I know how uncomfortable it is. But I also know it's worth it.

It's only a matter of time before more people realizing that making simplistic, gender-based judgments in the name of "combating sexism" is a really bad idea, and probably questionably motivated.

So the top comment here on HN is the one that minimizes the possibility of the incident being rooted in sexism. What a shock.

There's a strange mindset at work here. Everyone perfectly well knows sexism is a real thing that happens in billions of incidents all over the world every single day. Yet somehow the possibility that somewhere, sometime, an accusation of sexism might have been misjudged to some degree, gets some people revved up.

> I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism

So who is sexist in this scenario?

Turns out its the feminist in the audience assuming that a woman needs someone to cause a public disturbance because she could not help herself be heard.

Why is it every time some social justice event gains public attention, it turns out to not be sexism/racist/etc. at all.

To say "every time some social justice event gains public attention, it turns out to not be sexism/racist/etc. at all" seems like a wild overgeneralization. You would probably be more accurate in saying that while "sexism/racism/etc" are often over-attributed as a cause, they are in fact pervasive, but to varying degrees of influence. The first mistake is to assume there's a singular cause of any behavior.

He was plainly speaking figuratively...

So who is sexist in this scenario?

Maybe it's no one.

A simple test is to ask yourself if you believe it'd have been sexist for a man to have done the same thing. I think we'd all just assume it was someone interested in what the woman on the panel had to say. It's not automatically 'sexist', or even feminist, for a woman to speak up for another woman.

Because our society has advanced a lot in the last fifty years, but some people want to profit from the appearance of "fighting injustice" or perhaps they feel they need some sort of moral consolation?

I really want to understand the internal monologue of these people. There is some culmination of factors that must result in this need to fight injustice. It just feels like they have some chip on their shoulder from adolescents. Being bullied at school. Having gone through a bad breakup. Something like that.

That's exactly my interpretation of the situation. The moderator is exceedingly polite towards everyone; there's not a trace of sexism.

If you see this kind of behavior in the workplace, I highly recommend the technique of "echoing" as a means of overcoming it. In meetings I've seen it happen many times where an introvert makes a brilliant point, which gets completely lost when some manager who likes to hear themselves talk follows them. When this happens, I find it incredibly powerful to raise my hand and say, "I'd like to bring us back to [introvert's] point that..." The women in the Obama White House made this techique popular [1], and it's extremely effective in getting quieter more thoughtful ideas the attention they deserve.

As an introvert myself, I support a workplace that is encouraging and respectful of women because that is a workplace respectful of introverts as well.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/10/25/...

You need to keep in mind that the attribution of credit is important in echoing - simply bringing the subject back up will be seen as stealing the point.

"will be seen as stealing the point." - no, it is stealing the point.

Nice an actual constructive suggestion!

> a workplace that is encouraging and respectful of women [...] is a workplace respectful of introverts as well.

And this is a good point as well.

Thank you. Mild-mannereds unite!

The exaggeration of this post is infuriating. I saw the video, and while I do agree that Jim Holt was especially rude in asking questions and then start talking as soon as she started answering, that is all it is. Rudeness. Not sexism. He did it with the men too.

What exaggeration!

> "Oh my god. what you said was the most important thing that was said all day. Thank you. Thank you."

> most important thing that was said

> most important

You watch the video?

I didn't watch the full discussion but I think it's fair to say that "let her speak please" was not the most important thing said that day.

How big headed is this person that she thinks her input was more important than that of the person she's claiming to uplift.

CSB time: A while ago, I had lunch with a group of friends from university and a (male) professor we'd all had.

I thought it was pleasant, but soon after we were done with lunch, I got a text from a female friend of mine who was also there: "Prof. So-and-so is a sexist bastard, I am so mad."

I was taken aback, because I'd been sitting right next to both of them, and...what had happened that I'd noticed nothing?

Turns out the professor had ignored my friend the whole time, even though he'd spoken to everyone else there.

Does this make him sexist? He's very liberal, and I'm sure he'd take the side of the women in this thread. Maybe he just didn't remember my friend. There was another woman there he spoke to, at least some. There are a lot of "maybe"s.

But after talking to my friend, what she concluded is, she gets treated differently than the men around her all the time. Any one instance is usually something she can brush off as due to something other than sexism. But taken as a whole, the evidence of being her disproves the null hypothesis that the reason she's being treated differently isn't because of her gender.

And so I think that when you're responding to a particular instance, like this, or like my friend at lunch -- and particularly if you're a man responding to such an instance -- you should try to take a step back. It is perhaps plausible in a particular instance that what happened had nothing to do with anyone's gender. We can imagine all kinds of explanations. And it's likely that whatever happened was not the result of active malice and hatred of women or a particular woman. But that doesn't mean that sexism doesn't exist, or that this is not a datum pointing strongly in the direction of, women are treated differently than men.

So when TFA says, "the sexism is beyond blatant", understand that this is coming from her perspective, which is more valid than that of someone like me who doesn't experience discrimination on the basis of my gender (or anything else, for that matter) on a daily basis. And clearly many people in the audience shared her perspective.

If you don't share her perspective, that's OK. But I think you'd do the women in the world a big favor if you'd just...let it go. "I see it differently." OK. nbd. There's no need to be "infuriated". You will never know what it's like to be another person, so it's expected that you're going to see things differently. WAI, let's move on.

Or, if you don't want to move on, maybe spend some time considering what it might be like to be her.

It's possible that a person's perception of reality is warped by their own fears and biases. They may think X is happening to them more than to other people because they have Y distinguishing feature, but in reality, they just notice when X happens to them, because they're hyper conscious of it, or it's actually happening to them because they exhibit Z behavior.

I think I've probably done this myself many times, and I imagine others do it a lot too.

Agree.

Everyone reading this please, please, please watch the video.

It is ridiculously not what it seems. I read the comments here, and the FB post and after watching it in full context you get such a different perspective.

And it is just as the lady on the panelist has said in her comment.

The moderator is trying to simplify things for the audience.

After introducing her he tries to create an analogy as to how to think about it and says:

"I'm giving a very garbled caricature of it, you're the expect, why don't you tell us."

Why would he use self-deprecating language if he was being sexist? He is openly saying that she could explain it better.

He talks over her a few times, but he is in know way talking down to her, rather just trying to place everything in his overarching analogy which is the role of the moderator. To maintain a common thread running through the discussion.

Then he reframes it again, and concedes: "I'm putting this in a provacative way. Please explain it to us properly."

Again, he is even acknowledging when he feels he is being provocative.

After the interruption:

"That always happens to me...do I talk too much?"

Which seems like he knows that he gets overly excited sometimes and talks to much.

Seriously people!

WHERE IS THE VIDEO?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo#t=1h1m53s

Exactly. Seems nobody cares to take the time to watch it.

Besides, Jim Holt appeared to bring her into the conversation beforehand in other parts of the video. All other male scientist jump into the conversation on their own. Jim Holt brings her into conversation 2 times proactively.

What an age we are living in...

The Observer has an article about this: http://observer.com/2017/06/sexism-science-facebook-mansplai...

The video of the event is here: http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/big-universe-bi...

edit: Youtube version, at the 1:02 mark where people apparently were getting irritated: https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h1m55s

1:05:39

Nerds do this a lot. It's annoying AF. I've had conversations about topics like zopfli or 'HTTPS in the 90s' where I was sure I was right (and I was) but the other person was so confident and loud I genuinely wondered if I was missing something.

gaslighting in a nutshell

"Nerds do this a lot."

Agreed but we can be less specific here...human males do this a lot.

We can be even less specific: humans do this a lot.

And the "let her speak please" happens just after 1:05: https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=3928

A Youtube comment:

He spends 0:40 asking her the first question. He continues talking when she tries to speak once.

She talks for 0:30

He redirects her from her answer and tries to clarify what he wants to know for 0:55

She talks for 1:00 answering this question

He begins clarifying/providing an example of what she is saying for 0:20, continuing to talk when she tries to speak once. It is during this interruption that "let her speak please" is shouted (1:05:40).

It's clear that he was quite excited about the ideas and some of the ways he wanted to explain them and examples he wanted to give. It's not clear that there was no subconscious bias on his part in the way he went about it.

>He spends 0:40 asking her the first question. He continues talking when she tries to speak once.

>She talks for 0:30

>He redirects her from her answer and tries to clarify what he wants to know for 0:55

>She talks for 1:00 answering this question

> He begins clarifying/providing an example of what she is saying for 0:20, continuing to talk when she tries to speak once. It is during this interruption that "let her speak please" is shouted (1:05:40).

This makes it sound like he only interrupts her twice, while my count is up to eight at this point. He's already interrupted her mid-speach three times, and she's trying to get back air time five times after 1:03:25 when he's interrupted her.

And it's the same after 1:05:25 when he interrupts her yet again.

> It's clear that he was quite excited about the ideas and some of the ways he wanted to explain them and examples he wanted to give. It's not clear that there was no subconscious bias on his part in the way he went about it.

I honestly don't think it's nefarious, but what I do think is fairly blatant is that it's a case of speaking for the woman, which is text book sexism. If I can read more between the lines than perhaps is there, I think he believes he's doing her a favor. While clearly wrong, I think this is a/the main component of sexism. Which could also explain people (men) not seeing it as a problem because it's habitual and not stemming from ill-will.

Contrast this to Holt's behavior for the rest of the video when interacting with the men on the panel and it is quite clear that his bias was not subconscious, but rather that he is just an asshole.

Veronika Hubeny(the physicist who got interrupted) replied to the incident,

https://www.facebook.com/marilee.talkington/posts/1015505138...

Very humble woman.

Could you possibly copy the comment here? I tried to find it in Facebook's "awesome" comment paging system, but I don't know how far through the 9000 comments I have to scroll back. (I assume the URL you posted is supposed to jump me to it, but it doesn't work for non-facebook users like me.)

ETA: From the Observer article: http://observer.com/2017/06/sexism-science-facebook-mansplai...

“I applaud your heroism in standing up for what you believe in!” she wrote. “I know well the shaky feeling and subsequent exhilarated contentment in the knowledge of having done the right thing, and I think that doing so has become more crucial than ever. Your behavior was inspiring, and I’m glad that many of those inspired shared their gratitude with you.”

Hubeny also offered advice to help women deal with sexism at work, no matter their field.

“If you allow yourself to enjoy the beautiful things that really matter, if you don’t let social or peer pressure dissuade you from pursuing a field which appeals to you, then no pettiness or childishness or boorishness that you encounter can harm you so much,” she wrote.

The comment in full:

Once again, let me stress my appreciation, Marilee, of how you bravely stood up for your principles and values! Well done!

What an amazingly balanced and collected comment. Acknowledges and thanks the person for her intervention while exposing her view and her experience and how she did not feel threatened or a victim of sexism in this incident or in her life, all the same acknowledging it's a very much real problem that should be diminished.

She sounds like a very nice and humble lady in addition to an excellent physicist.

>I never felt discriminated against or thwarted in my calling

This just goes to prove my stance whenever the whole women in STEM fields debate is brought up. You have two kinds of women, those who are out there doing science, building things and being badasses (The likes of Veronika and Julia Evans, ones I consider as role-models) and then you have women that have questionable technical skills who keep whining about sexism and lack of women in tech. Veronica wasn't concerned with the perceived sexism and was interested in physics, Marilee, a specimen of the second category, gave herself a pat on the shoulder for standing up to Veronica.

>You may be amazed to hear it, but during this panel session I genuinely did not feel affronted or discriminated by the moderator’s behavior. It seemed more amusing to see him try posing a question in a way that at the same time tried answering it. It’s true that this made the question a bit of a moving target for me (and therefore harder to address coherently), but I don’t a-priori assume that the incident was rooted in sexism. Maybe I’m too naive, but I simply gave him the benefit of doubt that he was so excited by the newly-learned idea of the duality that he couldn’t resist, and that the same might have occurred had the panelist been a male instead of me. So it didn’t bother me.

...

I don't see anything. Can you paste it here?

I applaud your heroism in standing up for what you believe in! I know well the shaky feeling and subsequent exhilarated and heartwarmed contentment in the knowledge of having done the right thing, and I think that doing so has become more crucial than ever. Your behavior was inspiring and I’m glad that many of those inspired shared their gratitude with you.

I guess that, being the subject of the incident, it might be worthwhile to offer my perspective, which to my surprise is rather more atypical than I had hitherto realized, but which I hope might perhaps provide some encouragement to all those who feel put off by the present situation — especially to those who feel drawn to science yet dissuaded from following their hearts’ calling. (For posterity I also feel compelled to correct a point about the physics — as a physicist I can’t help myself ;-) — but since I realize that that was entirely beside the point of the post, I’ll only do so at the very end…)

Once again, let me stress my appreciation, Marilee, of how you bravely stood up for your principles and values! Well done!

>he continued to talk over her and dominate the space for several minutes

>I'm still upset by the incredible sexism that has been demonstrated this afternoon

Now I feel bad for missing out on labeling every instance of a man being rude to me as sexism! /s

My thoughts exactly. It is beyond all doubt that sexism exists in the world, there are countless examples of it, from Disney movies, toy advertisement, philharmonic orchestra, etc, etc.

I find it a bit strange to label the speaker as a sexist just because he didn't let someone speak. Maybe he is just a dick? Maybe she was rude to him back stage? Maybe he was having a bad day? Maybe the chemistry between them was off? You have no idea what is going on beyond him not letting someone speak.

I even find it offensive to label his behaviour as sexist. What, I now can't be rude to a woman without being called a sexist? People should stick to the facts, not fill in the underlying reasoning. Well... unless you want to spark heated debates of course, in which case it is a solid strategy.

You don't have to be a sexist, racist to say stupid things. Bill Maher just dropped the n-bomb.

It's not for me to determine what offends other people.

To have successful interactions, relationships, I try very hard to meet other people where they're at, listen more than talk, adapt.

Sometimes it doesn't work. Most of the time it does.

---

In this case, the moderator's job is to make the panel shine, just like Johnny Carson. But he didn't. And if our collective guess why is wrong, he could still up his game.

> the moderator's job is to make the panel shine

To be honest, it wasn't any different from any panel I've witnessed, there's always people speaking over each other, let alone in vague subjects such as cosmology and string theory.

Just a classic case of confirmation bias if you ask me; "Scientists are sexist" "Oh he interrupted her!" "Yup sexism is confirmed"

People talking over other people is a problem of sexism because the people doing the talking are mostly men, and the people being talked over are mostly (but not always) women; but also because the consequences for challenging this behaviour are different for men and women.

If a man asserts himself he's seen as confident and assertive, and other positive labels

If a woman asserts herself she's seen as aggressive, shrill,

> What, I now can't be rude to a woman without being called a sexist?

If your rudeness is more likely to happen to women then maybe it's a result of sexism.

> ...because the people doing the talking are mostly men, and the people being talked over are mostly (but not always) women;

I find _this_ sexist. I know cases where the opposite is true as well as where the interruptor does not care about the gender of the other person.

> If your rudeness is more likely to happen to women then maybe it's a result of sexism.

If A=A then A=A, therefore we can conclude that A=A. How wise.

I am not saying sexism doesn't exist, I am just saying that the author of this article is very liberal with her accusations based on a single observation of the moderator. Moreover, ironically, it is very sexist of her and I find this unfair to the moderator and men in general.

Bollocks. I have two ex-collegues who were exactly like this, no matter who they interacted with. I make a point of avoiding them now.

I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men. That is a stereotype, but sometimes there's truth in stereotypes. I mean I recall studies that women are less likely to ask for raises or are worse at haggling.

So if a person is speaking over you and rambling on, perhaps a man is more likely to speak up or butt in at the first opportunity. The quote in the top comment sort of hints at this. That she didn't feel as annoyed by his talking and so didn't speak up. I haven't watched the whole thing, but other comments mention he does this over male panelists as well.

> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men.

If this has been your experience, I'd encourage you to consider why that might be the case.

Here's one possibility: Perhaps in our culture, assertive women are treated worse than assertive men.

Or that non-assertive women are treated well and non-assertive men are treated poorly. Men have to learn to be assertive to be treated as well as women.

You can see this dynamic in the dating world where non-assertive men are the losers of the game.

yeah or they don't have testosterone or any form of latent aggression built in, which is required for assertiveness

That's one possibility, yeah

Yes, women are in average higher in trait agreeableness[1][2]. This is well studied cross-culturally. There's still a huge overlap between men and women in most traits so it's not useful as a rule of thumb of how people as individuals.

It can explain average population outcomes like men on average haggling for better wages as you said.

It can also explain outlier outcome, for example the most disagreeable people are mostly men. This makes men more likely to end up in prison. Which doesn't mean that the average men is much more likely to end up in prison than the average woman. But the type of person who is more likely to end up in prison happen to be mostly men.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreeableness [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

> I have a theory that women are less likely to be, I guess the word would be "assertive", than men.

That's a descriptive, not necessarily a normative, statement. What's more interesting to me is why women and men act differently. Do you believe the differences could be the result of child rearing, social climate and norms etc?

At what point do we chalk up behaviors to sexism vs biological tendencies?

IF being more assertive is proven to be a naturally masculine trait, then shouldn't discriminating against men for a natural behavior be seen as sexism as well?

Anti-sexism might still be sexism, but with a non-negative connotation.

The question is ill-defined, those terms, sexism and natural ..., don't have to be mutually exclusive. Thew comparison doesn't even make much sense, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Your implication is paradox, because it paints with a pretty broad brush and out of line. You suggest that discriminating against naturally gender specific behavior is sexism. I don't think that's the case, although it's a loosely defined, broad term. At least sexism is a stereotype, too, yes.

Paradoxically, women who are discriminating against men would be assertive. Therefore you would be in turn discriminating against this presumably unnatural tendency (unless women aren't vocal about this). That's ironic because as far as I know sexism fundamentally is against ascribing any character attributes based on gender, analog to racism. (I might be confused here, because it's not usually my debate. Popular sexism is rather against discrimination in face of obvious gender based properties, like pregnancy.)

On the other hand, casual sexism is just the exercise of sexism, whether it be natural or not, in settings where it doesn't belong. In general, professionalism requires an extend of discretion and privacy and is certainly not black and white at that, but rather subjective. And that's what emancipation is about, incidentally, to be treated as a subject, individually, and not objective as a stereotype.

> I recall studies that women are less likely to ask for raises or are worse at haggling.

The issue I see is that a lot of these issues are just about being in "a minority group". But a lot of complaints are levelled against the "male gender". This is sexist. Everything else is not.

Sexism has to be when people are treated differently solely because of their sex. In the tech world and corporate world, there is often a large imbalance between male and female, so that the treatment of a minority group appears sexist, because females are usually the minority.

The best test is to reverse the groupings and apply the same test.

When you think about it like this, it becomes less about "men" being somehow inherently bad which is a gross generalisation, and more about "humans are terrible people sometimes". But the issue with the latter statement is its not easy where to throw the blame.

I read a study that comes to mind, that said, basically, women tend not to ask for raises as often as their male counterparts in the office. And when they do ask for raises, they tend to ask for raises to the level they are currently at, as opposed to where they think they will grow to, while its the opposite for men.

Its just one data point, but it correlates

he doesn't interrupt just her. His role is host, his role is to move the conversation about and yes he does fuck up by saying some stuff he should leave to her. However to me the evocative language used in the Facebook post suggests there is an aspect of deliberately seeking out "injustice" and being overly sensitive to it and seeing the world as a gender battle. If you're looking at the world through such a frame you're gonna get false positives. Maybe this isn't one but I feel a detailed and objective analysis might make it more close than the OP _feels_ it is through their frame that they view the world.

Did the host just fuck up or was it sexism? Maybe the host really loves her work and is read-up on it and got carried away? There are lots of possibilities. I'm not disagreeing with OP, I like that they chipped in. Everyone has the right to push around on their local environment to change it. I'm just wary of people viewing the world as a gender battle because it might turn it into more of a gender battle than it actually was.

I tend to be sympathetic to the original poster of the story, it sounds like the woman was treated differently, and an expert being talked over like that by a host is ridiculous. It does indeed sound like an example of sexism.

This probably marks me as an ignorant oppressor, but I do find this style of telling a story to be a bit confusing and off-putting though. Why all the references to "with my hands shaking" and "I'm feeling light headed" and so on?

I guess it's a personal story that she can tell however she likes, but this idea of having a violent physical reaction to a relatively straightforward conversational faux-pas seems to be the hallmark of a certain genre of story.

Speaking up in public or confronting people has this effect on many, many people.

It is an indication of something that you think explaining a woman's own theories to her in public a "relatively straightforward conversational faux-pas". You should ponder that.

She's just reporting her experience. If she hadn't felt so intense, she probably wouldn't have spoken up. The intensity was an important part of the story.

> Why all the references to "with my hands shaking" and "I'm feeling light headed" and so on?

A weighty argument these days is one with an emotional punch. When was the last time that a presidential debate was about well reasoned points? Are the reposted John Oliver clips the ones that cite the best evidence?

People instinctively share their feelings about an issue because that's how they get to be heard and listened to.

The risk is that the case being made ends up being very convincing to the people who empathise and off-putting to people who don't. I think this thread demonstrates that.

You know, I think you might be on to something.

https://youtu.be/Ro1ROeKbZhM

My opinion, probably worth less than the time it takes to type it, is that the moderator was clearly being very clueless. Therefore I definitely would have wanted to holler "Let her speak please." I'd have been annoyed, and perhaps a little angry.

But sexism in this case is really a stretch. He didn't seem condescending, just excited, and clueless, with just a touch of jackass. As a man who gets talked over by everybody, all the time, I know that you have to be very assertive to get a word in when talking to these donkeys. I think it's much more likely that the woman simply didn't reach that assertiveness threshold.

Notice that "Let her speak please!" works perfectly well, without the leap to the conclusion of sexism that followed here.

I sympathise with that position but the issue here is that the woman was 1. If there were two women and the same happened with both we could be much confident with our assertions as we'd effectively have a "control" woman but with just one its hard to make social assertions as to whether it was sexist or there were other factors that led to the outcome.

It's very likely both, and out of all the panelists she did seemingly have fewer chances to speak. So in this isolated case, a surface evaluation of some gender bias being involved isn't completely outrageous. It doesn't by any means indicate that he's a bad person.

its certainly not outrageous but its also hard to make the claim with any strong probably as there could be many factors that led to the outcome.

If someone "fucks up" with women but not men, even if not intentional, is that not sexism?

it is if its the only thing you're looking for it but if you're not then there are countless possibilities. One of which being that he'd read up on her work, was excited about it and blurted it out accidentally instead of letting her talk about it.

If there was a second woman on the panel then we'd have greater clarity about making the assertion if he behaved the same way. Sadly there wasn't which means that we should be cautious about labelling it as out and out sexism.

That's spot on. Unfortunately the swarm of social media opinion in support of the more scornful verdict, is what the news outlets pick up and run with regardless of truth.

That said, he was insensitive at the point in question where he should have let her speak. You could sort of tell he was trying to organise and grasp the ideas in his own mind, probably in an effort to stay on top of things. A clumsy moderator moment more than ingrained sexism.

Let's not forget, she had the right to speak up and say "can I answer the question"... We all have the responsibility and option to guide things back on track if something isn't running smoothly. Don't just sit there waiting for balance to restore, or for the audience to come to rescue, do something about it.

> Let's not forget, she had the right to speak up and say "can I answer the question"... We all have the responsibility and option to guide things back on track if something isn't running smoothly. Don't just sit there waiting for balance to restore, or for the audience to come to rescue, do something about it.

Women who do this are very often shamed and called "pushy" or "aggressive" for doing so, even though a man doing it would garner no such complaint. The cultural position of "take charge and get what you want" being appropriate doesn't apply for women. The advice you're giving, frankly, is part of the problem.

The only thing as annoying as a moderator who speaks over guests is a guest who speaks over the moderator. Moderators are there for a reason. If they aren't doing their job, the whole thing descends into an anarchy of people talking past each other while the least bold panelists sit there quietly bemused.

> We all have the responsibility and option to guide things back on track

So the woman panelist failed in her responsibilities?

Nice try.

I'm not sure that this has to do with her being a woman, everyone else on the panel have wikipedia pages while she doesn't. In such a scenario there will obviously be a power differential irrespective of the genders involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Albert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._R._Ellis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Guth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Linde

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Loewer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Veronika...

I think there is some differential. Judging by number of citations, looked by google scholar:

George F R Ellis: 30744

Andrei Linde: 56716

Veronika Hubeny: 4874

Barry Loewer: 3431

Alan Guth: >17,317(summed 2 pages in scholar, as he doesn't have a profile there)

David Albert: >5062(summed 3 pages in scholar, counting only papers related to quantum mechanics)

So there are 3 researchers there whose voice can potentially trump others by a margin, if citations are a good measure.

I watched the video the other day and I did notice the Hubeny was not called a lot - part of the reason was that she was more introverted and soft-spoken then the other panelists and part of the reason was that the moderator monopolized the conversation - which is typical of the WCF where the moderator will try to contextualize and steer the discussion in a way that makes it broadly accessible (even to kids, who are the target audience as well).

I've seen panels moderated by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss and those guys are terrible because they really love to hear themselves speak and will monopolize the discussion.

From http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/jim-holt-why-does-...

> Q: Bone to pick: your list excludes women.

> Jim Holt: It wasn’t meant to be that way! I was going to include a Harvard physicist who’s not only a woman but she’s extremely attractive.

WTF?

Social awareness and "intelligence" often seem to have an inverse correlation in my experience.

Maybe he thinks the general public believes that the scientific community tends to discriminate against _attractive_ women the most, and he's trying to address that?

I don't know, but it seems like there may be a bit of a disconnect between him and the rest of society.

What's really interesting is that the author only became 'boiling' with rage when this socially-unaware moderator talked over the woman on the panel, not when he talked over the other men.

This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant. Problem? Yes. Sexism? No.

What's really interesting is that you felt the need to insist that there must be no sexism here because it happens to everyone, and that the person in the audience who described her and the audiences reaction is simply imagining the asymmetry.

Fallacy of symmetry.

Show me a sequence like what happens from 1:03 to 1:06 (the shout out) to her for the men in attendance. This is also not a case of women not speaking up. She repeatedly tries to answer, tries to interject and get a word in. I didn't watch the entire video, but I failed to see any comparable sequences.

I think in general you're not wrong that there is more generally shitty behaviour than explicitly discriminating behaviour. The right way to go about this is to make a better atmosphere for everyone. We all benefit if the quiet person in the room gets heard, too, and if ideas are properly attributed. This is anyway something we should strive for, and it's great that it also improves the experience of people who were not socialized to inject themselves forcefully, or even socialized to not inject themselves forcefully. Because sexist ideas and behaviours persist in our society these people tend to be women more often, thus the shitty behaviour of alpha nerds hurts women more than men (even if they do them to everyone). That's also why I'm not a big fan of calling people out as sexist.

This moderator was particularly egregious though.

Two things can be true:

1: Alpha nerds are jerks to everyone. (true)

2: A specific instance of an alpha nerd being a jerk to someone can be because they're being sexist. (likely, based on the account I read)

What's really interesting is that every time sexism comes up there are volunteers eager to show it isn't sexism.

Maybe you would like to address the substance of the comment, otherwise your only argument is "you are arguing and you shouldn't".

Sure it's interesting in a certain sense, but is it problematic? The whole point of these sorts of incidents being publicised is to make an argument that men in STEM as a group treat women in STEM as a group unfairly and therefore intervention to improve the lot of the latter at the expense of the former is an ethical necessity. To insinuate, as you seem to be doing, that members of the former group stepping up to contest the case against them is further evidence of its validity is downright kafkaesque.

Alternatively, every time a a man is rude to a woman, there are volunteers eager to show it's sexism.

You've been able to watch enough of the video to discern that the moderator was an equal-opportunity-interruptor? Honest question, I just skimmed the video, and given that there were 5 men of similar age/race, I don't think even if I were in the audience I'd have a clear tally on how much each man got to speak, versus how easy it is to track how much/little opportunity the woman had. But the OP does assert that the moderator even acknowledged to Dr. Hubeny that she hadn't had much time,. Looking at the time period around 1 hour in, it does seem that he talks excessively while questioning Hubeny. But I didn't sit and watch all of the other interactions he had with the men.

Just because the moderator had interrupted some of the other speakers does not mean the OP is wrong in her assessment that Hubeny was egregiously talked-over. I guess if you think the sexism claim is unwarranted, you could help skeptics by linking to timestamps where Holt gives other panelists the same intensity of talk-over he allegedly gave Hubeny.

Edit: I'll play a little Devil's advocate to help the discussion.

At 39:25, the moderator is going on length about...something. His cadence wavers as if inviting anyone to jump in, but he keeps on going: https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=39m26s

30 seconds later, he finally asks why inflation has such skepticism and points to a panelist. The panelist tells a kind of rambling joke and as he rambles through the punchline, the moderator steps in and moves on to the next question:

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=39m50s

Arguably, though, you could say the moderator did the right thing because the panelist made a kind of weak joke, and the moderator had to interject to go onto the next topic. He ends up explaining, in a way that I imagine is more accessible to the audience, the 2 fields of thought, before pointing to another panelist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

This panelist is given a decent chunk of time to talk, almost 2 minutes, to go over string theory, etc.

At 1:02:00, he pitches to Dr. Hubeny, and he gives her the same treatment in which he takes a good long time to set up the question and the scope that's understandable to the audience, while being a useful topic for her:

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h1m55s

At about 30 seconds in, as he's describing her position (presumably to the audience), she tries to clarify something , but he keeps talking. However, i think this is case of her misreading the moderator's pause as a cue. About 10 seconds later he finishes his train of thought and cedes the floor to her at around 1:03:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

But about 20 seconds later, as she's trying to assert how both theories are correct, the moderator jumps in say "So tell us about those 2 theories".

https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h3m21s

...which is fine, because maybe he sensed the speaker was going to go too deep into details about the equivalence of the 2 models, when the audience would benefit from her describing the models.

...However, this interruption goes on for almost a minute, as he apparently decides to do the work of describing the theories. He eventually stops talking and reverts back to his prior prompt of "tell us a little bit about the 2 theories"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er7qPv8jsZo&feature=youtu.be...

Hubeny appears ready to speak, but the moderator then goes on for 10 more seconds in which he tries to explain to her what he wants her to explain...and this is where Hubeny "giggles". But she's given about a full minute to talk, which seems reasonable.

----

I don't present the above points as complete evidence, it's what I landed on after randomly scrubbing in the period before the 60 minute mark. I think it's not out-of-line to say that the moderator is aggressive/over-eager in talking too much, and it may not just be sexism. But when you have a panel of 5 men and 1 woman and the woman has had little to speak for 60 minutes in, that's a bad time to go on an extended interruption as he did, as it becomes very noticable.

That said, I don't want to say that the moderator is a total ass. He has 6 highly intelligent and possibly highly specialized people who don't have a unifying topic of debate, so it's incumbent upon him to not only define a scope that the audience can relate to, but aggressively move the discussion forward so that no one rambles too far into their rabbit hole.

I didn't take notes and don't have a ton of time, but here are some examples:

14:30 - moderator assumes another panelist's position 'surely you're going to take issue...'

22:30 - moderator explains another panelist's research for him, for nearly 2 full minutes. Attempts to talk over panelist when panelist starts to speak, but notably the panelist consciously speaks louder and repetitively to cut off the moderator.

26:20 - moderator rambles while ignoring a panelist who raises hand wanting to speak (and then hands the conversation to the female panelist)

31:00 - moderator spends a full minute 'explaining' a panelist's philosophy completely incorrectly, before panelist says the summary is incorrect and corrects.

38:00 - moderator rambles about definitions of inflation, asks a cosmologist to explain, cosmologist explains, moderator isn't satisfied and explains more about different definitions of inflation, asks cosmologist to explain better than he did before.

The moderator is simply a dominant personality who wants to play a central role in the conversation rather than moderate it.

> This kind of behavior is extremely common in STEM, and happens to everyone. If you don't talk with confidence, purpose, and animation, you're going to get talked over by the alpha nerd of the group. Man, woman, or purple elephant. Problem? Yes. Sexism? No.

I thought about this argument a bit and I disagree on multiple grounds.

1.) These fields used to be refuge for actual nerds - shy introverted awkward people who could not really cut it elsewhere. What changed and why do we think it is ok that it changed?

2.) How come that loudmouth with half baked ideas who don't really know what he is talking is somehow nerd? Nerd used to be people who knew their shit. Alpha nerd is literally a dude who is pretender - fake who wants to be seen as nerd for social status points.

3.) If this is true, then these fields can not be possible meritocracies. Good ideas from shy and introverted people will be ignored and loudmouths with bad ideas are rewarded.

4.) The moderator quality should be judged on moderation quality. If the audience is so annoyed that they clap over the interruption, then the moderator failed miserably. Such moderators should either learn or be replaced by people who can do it better.

Panel members should not have to do anything special to not be talked over by moderator - it is literally his job to facilitate them talking.

What changed: status and money. It will pass.

Have you actually seen the video?

Yes, that is how I know that the moderator talks over each panelist in turn throughout the 'conversation'.

Do you have something to add to the discussion, or a question you wanted to ask of me that has some value? I'm not sure what you think your comment accomplishes here.

This is an excellent point.

This kind of argument is very akin to saying that we need a White History Month, and that #whitelivesmatter.

STEM, as an institution, has historically not provided a level playing field for everyone. So when stuff like this happens, it stops being an alpha nerd issue, and starts becoming a social issue.

Aren't nerds supposed to be awkward and shy? Alpha nerd sounds like an oxymoron to me.

In tech:

I don't like it + assertive = macho, bro, jock, alpha, etc

I don't like it + meek = neckbeard, autistic, etc

Facebook posts are more or less unreadable to me without a Facebook login. This is what it looks like to me: https://i.imgur.com/ZQNexgi.png

Does anybody else outside Facebook space find it annoying?

Yup, and not because I don't have a Facebook, only because I'm not logged in on my work machine.

I dipped in an out of the video hunting for this "event" a bit harder to find than I expected. Initially I didn't realise who the moderator was, and eventually I realised this guy kept adding dumbed down clarifications to everything, unnecessarily annotating things, almost every time talking over someone who was in the middle of trying to make a point or explain something... Maybe deep inside he did have a sexist attitude, but when I found "the event" what I saw was just a worse versions of the same explanation hijacker in previous parts of the video, It was nowhere near as well defined exclusion as the post made out... It was fucking frustrating sure but memory is coloured with your feelings, and this video shows it.

1:07:41 is the "end" of the event. Starting around the 1 hr mark is probably good if you've got 8 minutes to see the lead-up.

(This is for others "hunting" like you and I did.)

It is hard and subjective to assess if the moderator behavior was just indiscriminately rude or sexism by mansplaining. That's why I don't expect the comments here to be as interesting and enlightening as for other common topics at HN.

But I would like to just point out what, I believe, it's a strong signaling that it was sexism: the whole audience reaction to when the woman shouted: "Let her speak please". There is a genuine, spontaneous and loud ovation. Contrast that with the fact that through the rest of the video, the moderator doesn't act the same way to other panelists; and it makes clear to me that the whole audience was considering the moderator's behavior inappropriate and motivated by her being a woman. So, for subjective assessments, there is some wisdom of the crowd worth considering (especially as this was not a 'feminist' crowd or even a female-biased crowd, on the contrary, I believe).

Now, to give the moderator some credit, after some awkward moment where he does not know how to keep it cool, he does take the hint and shut up.

EDIT: I would like to give some more credit to the moderator. At the video moment that lorenzhs pointed out below (https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=1h1m55s), the moderator explicitly state that Veronika Hubeny was not given a chance to speak about her knowledge. This, I believe, is an indicator that the moderator is not a bad person and his sexism is not conscious or originated by strong believe that women are not as capable in the field as men. I still believe he is patronizing and is being sexist, but in a way that he can get the feedback and change his behavior, as he is not a sexist. He was being sexist, he is not one. My point is: he seems to be a nice person, not a villain, that is influenced by a sexist environment. And changing that environment should be our goal, not pointing fingers. As Marilee Talkington did, politely and publicly.

EDIT 2: After reading Hubeny's comment I'm more in doubt if it was sexism. Actually, I'm more inclined to believe it was not sexism. As I said, it is a subjective call, and her opinion matters most than others as she is the subject and used to being surrounded by men in her profession. Her comment is very kind and smart also in itself, worth reading.

> I believe, it's a strong signaling that it was sexism

No idea where you get that from, if not the wave of social media outrage. There's no evidence of sexism here at all.

The audience applauded because of the injustice taking place at that moment which the moderator was unaware of. He was being rude by not letting her speak at that point. Everyone saw and applauded when balance was restored.

Nothing to do with sexism, it was just a clumsy moderator moment that could have happened to anyone.

He could have handled it better by saying "let me talk for a moment about your theories, if I may, and then I'll hand over to you". That would have been acceptable, but he didn't do that, and she felt unable to speak. Audience was with her, and applauded.

At 27:05 he asks her a question and does not interrupt, so it's not like there are no examples of him being polite and treating her with the same respect as other members.

Since for some reason (flagging) this has fallen of the first page, I posted the Observer article also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505232

This only seems sexist if you think that people only speak when allowed to speak. People speak when they speak, the rules of politeness are universal, and she had every right to speak up, and every right to pipe down. She could have just as easily been a bit uncomfortable, or just more interested in listening. The host was overbearing on the whole conversation from what I see. There could be any number of reasons why the host might interrupt the string theorist; and the argument that it must be sexism is just so just-so.

I don't see why people should be expected to all be equally sonorous, when clearly people are not equally interested in it.

Why do activists like these always have to write that they "shake"? I usually stop reading and taking them seriously.

because normal human beings have a stress response that includes adrenaline being released.

they are literally shaking, and they are accurately describing their stress response.

Yes, but it makes it sound ridiculous. If I am going to include all my emotional responses to an event every time I write about something it will become ridiculous and annoying at one point.

Can you not be annoyed by something without starting to shake every time? Especially if you try to interpret rudeness as sexism...

If you want to know what happened by watching the video yourself, here it is: https://youtu.be/Er7qPv8jsZo?t=3920

I remember a sociologist once remarking that prejudice (racism in the case we were discussing) exists quite apart from an individual's intentions.

Most of the comments here appear to assume that prejudice is determined solely (or mainly) by the moderator's intentions-- hence the endless quests to somehow prove what is or isn't lurking in the moderator's soul.

That seems irrelevant in this case, but I haven't read the relevant sociological literature so that's all I can say.

Are there any sociologists here that can flesh this out (with citations)?

Edit: clarification

I''m not a sociologist. My phd minor was Anthro and I don't have any citations handy.

But basically you can never know someone's intention with 100% certainty. There is always the possibility that someone has different intentions than you think they are or that they say they have. Even if it is someone you know very well and trust there is the possibility that you are in some sort of Truman Show where everyone you know has been lying to you your whole life. Or, if we want to get into psychology, there is the possibility that a person could think their intentions are really one thing but subconsciously they might be something else.

So if we can't depend on knowing someone's intentions then we only have the act itself and its impact.

Of course, this opens up a deep rabbit hole in that we can't trust anyone's intentions, including the person that wrote this facebook post. Or mine for leaving this comment...

I shouldn't have put "citations" in parentheses. That's what I'm most interested in-- recommended readings from people who study this stuff for a living.

>sociologist

You mean those who have redefined words to push certain agendas that have cost their entire field a great deal of credibility in the minds of many?

Is there anything that gives this socialogist any more credibility than me if I claimed the opposite?

How is this sexism? As a quiet man that happens to me a lot too and I hate these kind of people.

Yes, it does also affect men and it always sucks when it happens and it's not acceptable behaviour.

But it happens more often to women. Also, if the person being interrupted asserts themselves they're seen in a positive light if they're male but a negative light if they're female.

And in this case there's a video, and he interrupts her far more often than he interrupts the other male guests.

I don't know if Holt behaved the way he did out of sexism, enthusiasm for the subject, generally liking the sound of his voice or what. Regardless, I think the narrative of this exchange between him, Hubeny, and Talkington can function as a nice morality play that most of us can learn from.

But I think it only works if we don't jump demonize or defend Holt and try to simply use him to score points for our side. Instead, if I empathize for all of the characters, there's something to be gained from each.

When I imagine myself in Holt's shoes (which, to be honest, is unfortunately a little too easy for me to do), it's a reminder to be more of a listener and less focused on filling silence or letting my own inner monologue take over. I'm overly sensitive to pauses in conversation and tend to rush to fill them. But some people are naturally quieter, more pensive, or have a different preferred cadence. It's important to cater to them. This is true regardless of their gender, but is particularly true for women where society has trained them to be the conceding person when two people — deliberately or accidentally — start talking at the same time.

Hubeny handled the whole thing with remarkable grace, both during and after. She didn't get irate on stage and tried to respond to Holt and go with the flow to keep things moving, even when she had every right to be frustrated. She certainly would have been justified in pushing back on him, but she demonstrated another important social skill, which is giving people some benefit of the doubt. Good engineers never forget about tolerances and safety factors and our social interactions need those too. We're humans. We make mistakes. When others around us handle those tactfully, it helps the whole machine run smoother.

It is, of course, totally unfair when women find themselves having to do a disproportionate amount of this social lubrication. But that's why it's useful for me (a man) to empathize with her in this interaction. It helps remind me to pick up that role more than I probably do now.

And, then, of course, Talkington's description is a perfect encapsulation of how frightening, but also important and rewarding it is to stand up for what you believe in. The applause she received afterwards shows that while most in the audience didn't have the courage she had, at least most of them did have their hearts in the right place. That's a sign of progress to me.

This reminds me an awful lot of Zimbardo's talk on how we should encourage children to learn to speak/act when the crowd does not.

https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_...

It seems like the other perspective has been lost here. The host has now been publicly branded as a sexist on "evidence" that at best is ambiguous. To the people upvoting this: Shouldn't claims like this that are extremely damaging to a persons reputation require more evidence?

Like half of this was talking about how the male was not letting the female asking the question (the male sounds like a bad interviewer for sure), and the other half was about how everyone 'literally applauded' what the author did. Sadly none of it was about the woman who was not allowed to speak or what she said... I get the point, the rest of the audience didn't say anything, but on the other hand 'literally shaking' is maybe not a reasonable response to someone being (probably inadvertently) rude, really no matter why the person is being rude.

I don't know how to write this without sounding like I in any way would defend sexism in any form, I mean maybe I should show I'm not sexist by piling on the male on stage and breaking out the pitch-fork or something.

This is written straight out of Buzzfeed, why did it not stay flagged?

I wish people could stop supporting these articles about serious issues that are so emotive build purely to play on/abuse human emotions? It just hurts every cause.

Veronika Hubeny on the other hand wrote a response very worthy of HN.

Good on her for speaking up but I would postulate that minority groups gets talked over by the majority group and that this is not sexism. Should people try to be more mindful of the people around them? Absolutely, but jumping to the conclusion that it is sexism is just counter productive.

Anecdotally as a man any time I am in a group that has a majority of woman the men get talked over by the woman all the time. I grew up in a family that was a majority woman and the same thing happened all the time, I would say generally in social settings where one sex has the majority they tend to talk over the opposite sex and control the conversation. It is human nature. However we can and should be better then that but it is hard.

This video is great. I'm glad I watched it and as soon as I finish writing this I'll be looking for more like it.

"Let her speak please", there are some many things wrong with this, starting with live tweeting this panel's discussion.

Just watch the video! There are so many more interesting and inspiring things to discuss. Listen to what they are saying. They are talking about the nature of reality and if it's possible for us to understand it.

Edit: I just got to the point where the audience member yelled out. What a disgusting display, who do they think they are, they should "check their privilege". This type of forum is not the place for aggressive behaviour like that. It's not good enough.

Having watched other parts of the video, I would say this was sexism.

While the moderator had a bad habit of talking too much and answering his own questions to all panelists, he didn't talk over the other (male) panelists, he only seemed to do that to Veronika Hubeny.

I was at this event. Marilee was seated directly in front of my girlfriend and I (the stage / panel and the back of Marilee's head pictured: https://imgur.com/a/GEapw). The interruptions were real. I was one of the men in Marilee's facebook post making comments about the sexism. Immediately following Marilee's comment, the entire place erupted with applause. On the way out, several people asked my GF if she was the one who made the comment, with one person saying "That was the most important thing to happen here today".

This guy seems like quite the blowhard. I do, however, need to know if he also does this to men. I've had a few co-workers that just talk on and on without letting other people get a word in. They do this to everyone.

Throwing in my two cents: a) the intent of the moderator is less important, in this specific instance, than the systematic and structural sexism which we know to be present. Who knows, perhaps the moderator was secretly grateful because they were unconscious of the impact of their behavior? Perhaps not. Outcome is a more useful measure than intent here.

b) In a perfect world, if the same thing was happening to a man, I would hope someone would speak up for him as well. Not only was the authors behavior an example of feminism in action, we could also say it was an act of human decency.

Knowledge of this social construct (that women are socially expected to be "seen and not heard") is one of the simplest life-hacks for small-group interactions, because once you're mindful of the dynamic it's fairly obvious when someone is getting talked over.

It also applies equally well to other introverts, it's just a good social rule in general. Let people finish their thoughts.

Most times people aren't doing it to be an asshole, they just are focused on a point or are extroverted and are unintentionally dominating the conversation.

I was at the world science festival though not at this talk. If it's like the others it's a panel discussion but a lot pre planned. For the Brian Greene quantum physics panel discussion he went from person to person to discuss the double slit experiment. The fact that videos were involved indicated that it wasn't just a random discussion.

There was the Alan Alda / Tina Feye talk about communicating that was quite good. If your waiting to say your thing instead of listening..

This facebook post sounds like a murder.

I do understand that it isn't nice or anything but that post blows it up to much which leads to disliking it.

I'm suprised no one has brought up that men talking over women is a well-studied phenomenon in childhood and adolescence. Girls tend to contribute less to discussions or conversations in mixed gender settings than they do in single-gender settings. My parents even noticed it when my brother and I moved out of the house, and suddenly my little sister was a lot more talkative at the dinner table. The exact mechanism or reason for this is not well understood.

I'm not sure if this phenomenon has been studied in adulthood, but I wouldn't be surprised if some remnant of it remains. Could this simply be an example of that phenomenon in action? Which isn't to say this isn't sexism, I wouldn't consider those two things mutually exclusive.

EDIT: to be clear, I'm not absolving the moderator of blame, or placing any fault on the woman. I'm simply linking this behavior to a broader social phenomenon that is fairly well studied. I personally think what he did was sexist, whether or not that was his intent.

> The exact mechanism or reason for this is not well understood.

I have nothing to back this up, but my personal opinion is that the reason is our patriarchal society.

It permeates our shared culture to such an extent, that most people don't see it. Women and girls even participate in it, and use it to perpetuate it. It is everywhere. Literally everywhere. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, you are immersed in it. It's not really a wonder that children would pick it up quickly and act accordingly.

If you ever are able to glimpse it - you likely won't be able to unsee it. It becomes blindingly obvious.

You and others may or may not agree with me, so I'll just leave this here:

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*yiv4glZWr2rzS2BMOo...

I completely agree, this is a consequence of the patriarchy pretty much by definition. The smoking gun is that girls become more talkative specifically when men are absent, so girls aren't just less talkative in general, it's specifically a reaction to the presence of boys. By "exact mechanism" I meant more specifically why the phenomenon happens. Are women encouraged to be quiet when men are talking, or are men encouraged to interrupt women, or both? In a truly egalitarian society, would men interrupt less or would women interrupt more?

It's biology.

Women are less aggressive and assertive by nature.

Testosterone and stupidity (much more prevalent in male population) does wonders when it comes to being aggressive, assertive and risk seeking.

No, this behavior is likely not biological. It's not a universal behavior, there are cultures where this phenomenon is reduced or completely lacking. That means it is likely a social construct, not biological.

Started reading her post, got to "The panel was made up of 5 men and 1 woman." and the agenda instantly became clear. Finished reading, in a masochistic attempt to confirm my suspicion and indeed, I was right. Give. Me. A. Break.

Has Jim Holt or World Science Festival commented officially after the fact? I would have thought this would be a priority by both parties. I don't see anything, but perhaps i'm just missing it.

I'm sure the moderator wasn't even remotely conscious of what he was doing because this is so endemic in our society. The only way this will change is for more people to speak up like this.

I am a male and when I am talked over I have to say something like "hold on let me finish" and that fixes it :D It's not a male vs female thing, it's just that everyone gets too excited, it happens to me too sometimes :D

The moderator talks too much along the whole video. Not a sexist thing though.

A link on how to handle interrupts: http://www.marionspeaks.com/_blog/Marions_Communication_Tips...

Noticed that too, also on other WSF videos. These is pretty common in the academics world as a rule, even between males (visible on this video)

ITT: Sexism _must_ be intentional to be true!

If someone's implicit biases (or given the circumstances, like having ten or hundred men in the room versus one woman) cause them to act differently toward women than men, it's still sexism - intentional or not. I'd encourage the men in this thread to exercise a bit of empathy and imagine what it'd be like to be the only man in a room full of 100 women (eg. Miley Cyrus concert) - not particularly comfortable!

There's a further characteristic to consider when thinking about intent.

I'm often the only man in a room of 10-40 women, eg "Mums & Toddlers" groups and at work. There's usually a degree of overt sexism and exclusion; however acting differently toward me is human nature, we have two different sexes.

Sexism that's not negative discrimination seems like something we should just live with. Some intentional (or at least easily avoided) sexism falls in that class IMO.

Thanks! - to the vast number of commentators who have taken the time to explain to me what Jim Holt was probably thinking.

By making everything so dramatic you will end up scaring all women away from science.

I feel like the details in the post make it fodder for alt right cannons. "I was literally shaking" and "everyone went silent and then burst into applause" are dirt-common memes on alt-right discussion boards. Until I saw the video I thought this was an elaborate alt-right prank.

Looks like she missed John Gruber's post on Facebook last week. :(

Talkington, quite the aptonym for this article.

link?

It baffles me that moderators keep blocking the community and remove flags form these kind of totally non factual and opinionated posts, and then go and themselves flag highly voted fact based posts that make it to the first page of HN - like they did some weeks ago about the code capabilities of IT grads in India.

It is almost like the moderators in HN have a clearly defined and very limited political range of ideological opinions they believe in and that they only allow anyone else to express - or even discuss about - their personal opinions if they mirror those of the moderators.

I would like to echo this a million times over. Flags are the community's way of saying that things aren't appropriate for HN, and the moderators removing flags to editorialize the front page, then in other threads throwing up their proverbial hands and going "well, the community voted for it" when someone comments about why something made the front page, as if there is nothing that can be done, is intellectually dishonest.

Either the community has control, or the moderators do and we should just remove voting altogether.

Can someone paste the contents here?

Marilee Talkington

4 June at 17:40 ·

So, after thinking about this over night, I've decided to share something that happened at the WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL yesterday afternoon in NYC that changed me. Or rather made me step into who I am in a larger way.

As some on my feed have seen, I was live-feeding the beginning of the panel discussion on FB. That panel was made up of some of the greatest and most famous minds in the world in Inflationary Cosmology, String Theory, Cosmology and Physics based Philosophy. The panel was made up of 5 men and 1 woman. And the moderator was a science writer and journalist for The New Yorker.

In the first hour of the panel discussion you can see clearly, if watching the video, that Veronika Hubeny, the only woman on the panel is barely given any opportunity to speak. And the Moderator, Jim Holt even acknowledges this.

In the last 20-30 minutes of the 90 minute discussion Jim Holt finally pushes the conversation to Hubeny's field of expertise, string theory, and this is what ensued:

He asked her to describe her two theories of string theory that seem to contradict one another.

And THEN, without letting her answer, proceeded to answer for her and describe HER theories in detail without letting her speak for herself.

We could clearly see that she was trying to speak up. But he continued to talk over her and dominate the space for several minutes.

I should say that this panel was taking place in a large auditorium as it is an extremely high-profile and always sold-out event. And the panel discussion was being live-streamed across the world and they say that millions of people watch these videos after they are made public. (Which they already are).

So at this point, after seeing very clearly that she was not going to be given space to speak and in fact having her own theories described to the audience by the moderator, I am in full outrage. My body is actually beginning to shake. The sexism is beyond blatant. It is happening on stage and NO ONE, not a single other physicist or panelist is stepping in to say anything about it. And I can hear other audience members around me, both men and women becoming more and more agitated with what is happening. Jim Holt, even at one point, asks Veronica a question and she laughs because he has been answering his own questions about her work...and he makes fun of her for 'giggling'.

So at some point while he is Still talking about Her theories, I just can't handle it any longer.

With my hands shaking,

I finally say from my seat in the 2nd row of the audience, as clearly, directly and loudly as possible;

"Let. Her. Speak. Please!"

The moderator stops.

They all stop.

The auditorium drops into silence.

You could hear a pin drop.

And then the audience explodes with applause and screams.

Jim Holt eventually sat back, only after saying I was heckling him

And he let her speak.

And of course, she was brilliant.

-----------------------

So, the panel discussion ends.

My hands are still shaking. I'm still upset by the incredible sexism that has been demonstrated this afternoon. But I also realize that I just spoke up in an auditorium full of people that are listening to people that are considered gods in the international science world. I was just overwhelmed by it all

We get up to leave.

And then it happens.

Person after person come up to me. Both men and women.

The first woman, right behind me, reaches over and embraces me and says, "Oh my god. what you said was the most important thing that was said all day. Thank you. Thank you."

And then people start filing out of their aisles and wind their way over to me:

"Was that you? Thank you so much for speaking up. Thank you."

"Was that you? Oh god, what he was doing was horrific. Thank you. I wanted to do something but didn't know how"

"Was that you? I wish I had the courage to say something, thank you! Thank you so much"

"Was that you? You said what everyone here was thinking. Look I had even been writing in my notebook what you eventually said (shows me his notebook with 'let her speak' written over and over.) But you said it. You said it. Thank you."

"Was that you? Thank you! I felt so powerless to do anything."

And on.

So we were all thinking this.

----

So I walked out. And my friend who was sitting about 8 rows behind me, came up to me with a huge grin and said

"That was you, wasn't it? Of course it was. YES!!!!! I will be telling this story for years."

And the whole time, my hands are still shaking. And I'm felling light-headed. And I just want to scream out into the lobby "WHY IS THIS SEXISM STILL HAPPENING? WHY, does someone like me, with No status in that room, have to be so extraordinarily bold and speak up? And why was it so frightening to do so?"

And I'm thinking. "God, please god let this be an opening for those that were here today and the tens of thousands that watched the live-streaming of the panel yesterday and the hundreds of thousands that will watch the video this year- to speak up when we see this happening. And please let me not be afraid to do this again

...and again

...and again"

Because it was scary.

Please keep giving me courage.

Thanks for the FBpaste.

> WHY, does someone like me, with No status in that room, have to be so extraordinarily bold and speak up? And why was it so frightening to do so?

Audience members do have some status, she actually exercised the precise limit of that status. Audience members aren't meant to have equal status, because that's just called a bunch of people in a studio / anarchy.

Screenshots here: https://twitter.com/SarahLerner/status/871754739817512963

Aaaaaand it's flagged. No surprises there. I was refreshing every five minutes to see how long it would take.

[Edit: Thanks to the mods for taking responsibility for allowing this discussion].

I'm literally in tears and shaking with anger.

How could he?!

We've banned this account for trolling.

Not contributing, am I? But that kind of voting is contributing, so much so that you have to get a bunch of karma to be allowed the privilege, right? Dear god. Yeah, I'm not allowed to talk about votes, but if you're going to give random people the ability to grey out comments of others anonymously, that's just tough luck. I don't care about the POINTS, I care what they're trying to say, and to that I will respond without fail.

In case of someone getting confused by my handle, I was going to reply "Not on the first date though" in response to the sentence "Most people would prefer to hear something along the lines of 'I love you and want to marry you.'" in this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14499533 earlier today, but then thought better after I had already made the account, but didn't bother to log out either. If you don't understand something, assume there's a super cool reason that's not for you to know.

This comment breaks the HN guidelines by going on about downvotes. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) and follow them when commenting here.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14507266 and marked it off-topic.

Outrage culture front and center. Time to pull out our morality antennas and virtue signal how pious we are in support.

Please don't post ideological boilerplate here. It's hard enough to have a substantive discussion without people falling into denunciatory generics.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14506656 and marked it off-topic.

I'm willing to accept the duality of this situation and that issues in life are full of nuances that are not so easily dismissed as entirely one thing or another.

I'm curious, for those that seem so absolutely certain that things are only exactly one thing, where does this confidence come from? I have yet to see any evidence that life is that simple.

> virtue signal

Your use of this vapid phrase is itself a form of virtue signalling.

Someone who unironically uses "virtue signalling" very conveniently signals that they're not worth listening to. It's kinda nice, actually.

I thought it means "dogwhistling", except for the political left instead of the right?

Can someone please pass that note to Joe Scarborough also? He was interviewed by Colbert, and not once was this raised. Seriously, watch Morning Joe and he just will not let Mika Brzezinski speak, and you can see her suppressing her frustration.

Scarborough doesn't even appear to know he's doing it, and Brzezinski seems to be powerless to stop him.

It can't bother her too much. They just announced their engagement.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/04/business/media/morning...

That doesn't mean it doesn't bother her!

You do realize that show is scripted, yes? This is all a play, they're playing off each other and pretending like there's debate and he's being patronizing, when they're actually two faces of the same coin and engaged IRL.

I don't think that's correct, except the being engaged bit.

This thread is basically people stumbling over themselves trying to defend how this is NOT sexist or justify the varying degrees of sexism.

Some of the fun examples: - men get talked over too! (doesn't mean this isn't sexist) - he's just an asshole (doesn't mean he's not a sexist asshole) - that woman is just looking for a social justice moment (how about the rest of the audience?)

No this thread is a response to obvious and blatant grievance mongering about one anecdote.

If you don't want to be interrupted, keep talking. If the moderator is an ass, he's an ass.

If you expect to always be treated with respect by default, a) you're privileged and b) you're deluded. Those men probably learnt to assert themselves because if they didn't, they'd be invisible. The woman on the other hand learned that if she waits long enough, someone will stand up for her and everyone will applaud.

So the cycle continues, that those whose problems are automatically taken seriously by most are those who are the least self sufficient and the most coddled. Hacker culture and the internet doesn't apply this rule so much, most of all because physical attractiveness and charisma is usually out of the picture.

What's that line again, about how when you're used to privilege, equal treatment feels like oppression? Strange how nobody examines it in both directions.

I've seen a lot of people denying the moderator is exist. I don't care one way or another.

The real question is was this behavior sexist in this context?

That's much easier to answer: yes. How we know:

A woman said she was seeing a discrimination pattern.

But what if she's wrong?

Then we'll overcorrect for sexism, realize it, and ideally find a point of moderation. Guess what...we're probably going to do that anyway because no system is perfect so the likelihood of moderately correcting sexism without over-/under-correcting is low.

All we need to do is let the women speak and give their perspective equal footing.

This can more easily be resolved without attempting to force objective judgments. I know that can be a hard idea for science-minded people to swallow. Unfortunately, science has become too objective and still lacks solid frameworks for dealing with the subjective experience, which sexism is so clearly intertwined with.

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