November linkspam: "Political correctness" and the panic over campus speech

From May: "The Conservative Force Behind Speeches Roiling College Campuses", Stephanie Saul for the New York Times. On manufactured controversy over Nazis speaking on campuses:

'"It’s part of a larger systematic and extremely well-funded effort to disrupt public universities and create tension among student groups on campus,” said Alexandra Prince, a doctoral student at Buffalo...'

"Whose Free Speech? Black Lives Matter, the ACLU and Respectability Politics", Ben Passmore for The Nib (2017-10-30) -- a comic about what free speech means.

"There Is No Leftist Attack On Free Speech", Dan Arel (2017-11-03):

• "The speakers under attack haven’t lost their right to speak; they’ve sometimes lost a platform; and the government isn’t involved in suppressing their speech. Everyone is entitled to their speech, no one is entitled to a platform in which to give it.”
  
• 'So, when talking about the “place of the individual,” don’t we owe this student the right to attend college without fear of being attacked as a sexual predator and having her own existence being questioned? Don’t we owe her a safe place to be educated?'
  

"Political correctness isn’t the problem", Sean McElwee for The Outline (2017-11-20):

• “Despite the widespread panic that their speech will be suppressed, white supremacists, authoritarians, and war criminals continue to have very little trouble finding a platform for their views, especially on college campuses. In fact, the true threats to speech on campus are not idealistic students but the rich, old, and typically white male gatekeepers — the administrators, trustees, and donors.”
  
• “Few pundits have criticized these arrangements, revealing their implicit belief that the proper way to influence the national discourse is through the exercise of wealth, rather than protest.”
  
• 'What is commonly referred to “political correctness” is in fact an attitude of cultural inclusion that broadens the intellectual experience. And those who dislike political correctness often disguise the extent to which their attitudes are tied to racial animus.’
  
• "Opposition to political correctness is rarely rooted in deeply held liberal notions of tolerance and equality, but rather an impulsive reaction to the demands of groups: women, people of color, LGBTQ people and others who have been silenced for decades demanding representation."
  

November linkspam: Tech culture

"How to be an ally to women in tech", Sarah Adams (2017-06-24)

"You now understand that this is true of every woman you work with. Every woman you work with is there, at the table, despite being told hundreds of times:

• you are no good
  
• you do not belong
  
• get out.
  

Another thing you need to understand before I tell this story:
After being beaten down so many hundreds of times, I cannot tell the difference between a sexist comment made:

• with mal intent
  
• due to subconscious bias
  
• or because the person just misspoke
  

There is no difference in how it affects me. At this point, it is just one long drone of you are no good.

(Every bit of this is true for me as a trans man, too, and there's not really any place for me to go to talk about it -- but, that will have to be another blog post.)


"The Myth of Psychological Safety", Liz Fong-Jones (2017-11-01). On "If you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression" and privileged people's self-reporting about psychological safety.

"A Clash of Cultures, by bunnie (2017-11-08):

• "Any engineer who observes a bias in a system and chooses not to pro-actively correct for it is either a bad engineer or they stand to benefit from the bias.”
  
• "When a man harnesses the efforts of a team, they call him a CEO and give him a bonus. But when a woman harnesses the efforts of a team, she gets accused of being a persona and a front.
  

Twitter thread from jaythenerdkid (2017-11-13)

“the world is full of stem grads who have no idea how to think critically about the world in which they live or the media to which they're exposed, but who somehow consider themselves analytical thinkers because they know how to do calculus”

"Your company's Slack is probably sexist", by Leah Fessler for Quartz (2017-11-14) - there's some eyebrow-raisey casual cissexism (the stuff about "female socialization" and "male socialization") and the conclusions are kind of underwhelming, but there's lots of great content in this article about gendered conversation dynamics and how men use them to hamper women's economic success, not just specific to Slack:

“Does gender influence our office’s electronic communications? When I began asking my colleagues, nearly every woman said yes. Overwhelmingly, men said no."

'‘Both the men and women she surveyed agreed that the debate was contentious, but they reacted to that contentiousness differently. Men would say things like, “Well, it was kind of aggressive, but as long as the slings and arrows weren’t aimed at me, it was fine,” or “This is just the way online conversation goes.” Some men said it was “kind of fun to go at each other’s throats,” or they brushed it off: “This is nothing; you should see the philosophy list.”

Nearly all the women, however, showed an aversion to the tenor of the debate. Common responses included things like: “The contentiousness made me not want to participate in discussion,” or “It made me want to drop off list all together.” Some went so far as, “People who speak like this are not good people,” and “This debate made me want to not be linguist.”'

“Already as toddlers, the idea that girls should take others’ feelings and desires into consideration before speaking or acting has formed,” says Herring. “And for boys, conflict isn’t just okay, it’s encouraged.” 

‘What’s more, Herring found, men posted messages that were sometimes 20 screens long, never apologizing for consuming others’ time—while women always apologized for long messages.’

‘…language and discourse conventions are created and enforced by men, for men’s advantage; so when women participate in public discourse, it’s almost as if they’re learning or adapting to a foreign language.’

‘Men also tend to dominate public channels, she says, often responding to others’ posts with declarative statements and dropping in links with no context.’

‘With microaggressions, there rarely is a smoking gun. But over time, these aggregate power displays can wear down women and minorities, leading us to question whether it’s worth sharing our thoughts at all.’

"The Tech Industry's Gender Discrimination Problem", by Sheelah Kolhatkar for the New Yorker (2017-11-20):

“It’s the imbalance of pay and power that puts men in a position to harass, that gives them unchecked control over the economic lives of women and, as a result, influence over their physical lives. These subtler forms of discrimination, familiar to almost any woman who has held a job, can in fact be especially insidious, since they are easier for companies, and even victims, to dismiss.”

November linkspam: QTT (queer, trans, trauma)

"The Ridiculous Straight Panic Over Dating a Transgender Person", Samantha Allen for The Daily Beast (2017-11-04). What it says on the tin.

"How to Change Your Life in One Second Flat", Katherine Schafler for Thrive Global (2017-11-07). Some judgy "be in the present moment"-ism here, but I still like the formulation (from Maya Angelou) of the four questions we're all asking each other all the time.

"The Psychological Link Between Trauma And Work Addiction", Drake Baer for Thrive Global (2017-11-09). I don't see how "work addiction" can be anything but metaphorical, but it's a good article nonetheless:

Like any problematic repetitive behavior, being addicted to work, validation, or success is an issue with lots of factors and possible treatments. In Hungry Ghosts, Maté distinguishes between contingent and genuine self esteem. The bigger the void that people feel, the greater the urge to get themselves noticed, and the greater the compulsion to acquire status. Genuine self-esteem, on the other hand, “needs nothing from the outside”—it’s a sense of feeling worthwhile, regardless of your accomplishments.

A thread on the second adolescence of queer adulthood from IamGMJohnson (2017-11-10):

Many of us who are LGBTQ go through a second adolescence because our first (5-18 yo) is about suppressing identity.

So when we do get into our 20's we make A LOT of mistakes that most attribute to younger people because we never got to be younger people in our true identity.

Suffice to say, If you are LGBTQ don't be so hard on yourself if your life doesn't mirror the heterosexual timeline of love, marriage, career, and kids because many of your years were stolen from you. So take time to live them.

"When Your Childhood Gender Transition Is in Google Searches Forever", Katelyn Burns for Splinter (2017-11-15). Also what it says on the tin.

"Hit by 'Trans-Friendly' Fire", gendermom (2017-11-21). Two journalists interviewed a mom of a trans kid, and you won't believe what happened next.