> 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.

I watched much of the video and he does interrupt other panelists frequently. He also gives a less obtuse lead-in and allows her to speak uninterrupted at around 27 minutes. Following that, other panelists acknowledge the importance of her statements.

Also, the panelist herself wrote that she thought it funny that the guy was asking and answering a question at the same time; she didn't feel she was targeted or silenced during the event.

This guy just likes to dominate conversations and lacks self/social awareness. I bet he's like that all the time. Does he do it more to the woman in the video? Yeah, you might have a good argument that he does. But I've met plenty of these people in management-level meetings and they do it to everybody; it's soooo annoying. Very hard to assert yourself without making things awkward. Impossible to assert yourself when it's a woman who's overriding everyone else.

The solution is usually to appoint a meeting moderator that everyone knows to be fair beforehand (obviously, this isn't always viable), but we found it shortened up our medical practice meetings quite a bit. The guy who likes to hear himself talk still goes overboard from time to time, but we have a third-party moderator who can cut him off without worrying about upsetting a supervisor.

If you both watched it, we could simply count the number of interruptions and see if she was interrupted statistically significantly more.

There's an objective answer and opinions don't really count here.

To be completely fair, it's not so simple. Opinions may differ in what constitutes an interruption, what's the threshold for considering someone tried to speak up and was cut off, about whether the attitude towards women was more forceful than towards men, etc. It's difficult to quantify these things.

"Statistically significantly" is not a magic word. It has no application when you sample the entire population (in this case, the entire video).

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.

Nonsense. By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.

In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men. Perhaps you might merely argue that he should not behave that way to anyone simply because of the disproportionate impact. But even if that's the case, you are still saying that women are incapable of speaking up for themselves the way the men did to gain their voice back from the moderator. How is either of those scenarios not sexist on your part?

> By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.

No, the effects of deliberate, targeted differences in socialization by gender aren't the fault of the people experiencing adverse impacts because of the intersection of those with social structures that respond better to people socialized in the manner which is targeted at the other gender.

> In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men.

It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism.

>No, the effects of deliberate, targeted differences in socialization by gender aren't the fault of the people experiencing adverse impacts because of the intersection of those with social structures that respond better to people socialized in the manner which is targeted at the other gender.

I've heard this argument before - that women are deliberately socialized to be subordinate.

Personally, I believe in the strength & agency of women.

>It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism.

I don't understand how using a persons gender for gauging ability to cope with forceful men isn't sexist.

> I've heard this argument before - that women are deliberately socialized to be subordinate.

That's because it's a fairly well established fact.

> Personally, I believe in the strength & agency of women.

Yeah, so do I. That doesn't negate the effects of differential socialization; objective external circumstances have real impacts.

It is possible for both things to be true at once:

* For women to have strength & agency

* For external circumstances & socialization to have impacts on individuals

But what I don't understand is how you can maintain simultaneously that women are strong & have agency, but must receive corrective action sensitive to gender-differentiated effects.

Are the strong women you're thinking of incapable of overcoming societal pressures without gender sensitive treatment?

When I was little and my brother was hitting me, I was always capable of moving away from him so he couldn't hit me. The right thing, though, was for him to stop hitting me.

Sorry that happened to you. What you've said is true - your brother should not have hit you in the first place.

Apples and oranges, though.

Physical violence, threats, and calls to action must not be equated to expression. The urgency & rigor needed to address violence would be inappropriate applied to expression.

As an aside: it's not always possible to take action to defend yourself, but this does not necessarily mean that passive or defensive actions are all that you have.

Thank you. It wasn't severe abuse, it was just annoying sibling bullying. My point, made obliquely, is that the one's agency is independent of how others should behave.

> Are the strong women you're thinking of incapable of overcoming societal pressures without gender sensitive treatment?

Strength and agency are relative, and different in principle and in fact. All women (and men) are theoretically capable of asserting themselves even against an expressive bully (which is what I think you mean when you say " I believe in the strength & agency of women"; in practice many are not for a variety of circumstantial reasons--bad day, bad upbringing, cultural background, misinformation, fear, insecurity.

Whether men (especially conference organizers and panel moderators) should do something differently in light of received knowledge about sexist patterns of socialization, there's no contradiction with believing in the agency of women. Affirmative action might be problematic at the legislative level, but strongly indicated at the social level.

In other words, Jim Holt could be conscious of the fact that sexism against women in science is a real and ongoing problem, and make a point of being deferential to female speakers; at the very least, he could avoid actively preventing them from speaking more than he was preventing the men. The first would be a positive good; the latter a basic expectation. Neither is an infringement on Holt's expression, nor is a social backlash against Holt for failing to meet even the basic expectation of civility.

From a societal perspective, it would be honorable to right a wrong on behalf of the victim. Sure they may lift themselves up out of their own predicament, but it may not be necessary.

So long as our society rights wrongs reactively I see no problem with this.

A society righting wrongs proactively will never run out of wrongs to right.

"I don't understand how using a persons gender for gauging ability to cope with forceful men isn't sexist. "

Yes! That's the entire point I am trying to make. You just said it in far less words.

It may not be the fault of the people experiencing "adverse impacts", but they still make a choice on how to respond to them. The commenter claimed that women find it more difficult to respond in the same way as men. To me, that's sexist because they are saying women are essentially less capable of standing up for themselves. I don't understand how anyone doesn't see it that way.

"It's not sexist to recognize that the consequences of past sexism may require corrective action that is sensitive to the gender-differentiated effects of that past sexism."

True, but if the corrective action is treating women differently, then yeah, that's sexist. You can't say this guy is being sexist because he acted differently toward her and then say that we need to treat women differently than men to correct past sexism, but that different treatment is somehow not sexist.

Nice victim-blaming, bro. Just because some people push back against misbehavior doesn't mean the misbehavior is right to continue wherever it's not checked.

In precisely what way is any of what I wrote not real?

> In fact what YOU wrote is actually sexist, since it suggests that the corrective action would be to act differently toward her, but not the men.

No - the "correct" response is to avoid talking over everyone. Helps everyone, overall helps women (as a group) a little bit more.

> But even if that's the case, you are still saying that women are incapable of speaking up for themselves the way the men did to gain their voice back from the moderator.

Nope, I'm saying that there's a sort of cultural training against interrupting people, and women are more severely affected by that cultural training since it ties in with a lot of "be nice/the good girl" pressure that women get while men are pressured to be more competitive. What I'm specifically not saying is that this is something inherent in being female - it's a cultural issue, not a female one.

Or, in other words - it's easier for men to interrupt people because it's the norm for men to interrupt people and so they have practice at it. It's harder for women to interrupt people because it's not the norm for women to interrupt people and so they have less practice at it. Doing something you don't normally do is hard, even if you have the knowledge on how to, and it's especially hard when you know you're going against the norm to do it.

I'm sure most people go against the norm sometimes - but we should really be creating social environments in which people don't have to go against the norm to get the same result as their peers.

> By your statement, the reason it disproportionately impacts women is not because of some rudimentary, fundamental reason but rather because they fail to react the same way the men did and speak up. That lies 100% on the women.

Saying "women should just act like men" is actually pretty sexist.

Protip: It's not.

Pulled a quick definition of sexism from the web (they all seems more or less the same - "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex."

And the commenter said - "women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did"

At minimum, that fits at least the stereotyping requirement of the definition.

"pulled a quick definition from the web" is virtually never a useful way to engage something like this. It's like quoting a statute from the law books and ignoring a long history of case law that defines how that law actually works in practice.

That's a fair enough point.

I'll strengthen my position this way instead. Let's assume the definition is garbage and ignore it. Are stereotyping examples things that fall into the category of sexism? I think they absolutely are. And I think most people would agree.

"Women aren't as good as men at [whatever]" - sexist? Yep "Women often have difficulty interrupting in the way that the men here did" - sexist? Sure sounds like it to me.

You're doubling down on your quick definition by pushing a simpler, even broader definition that's more trivially satisfied. This isn't an issue of categories and word use, it's an issue of history and culture and every incident is tied up in a large amount of context. This is exactly why simplifying terms and definitions fail here. It's not the land of referential transparency.

I can't say whether either of your statements are substantially sexist because they only have real meaning once you get at what underlies each one. "Women aren't as good at men at critical thinking because they're genetically programmed for motherhood while men are programmed for leadership" seems very sexist because it's talking about essential traits of men and women. "Women aren't as good at interrupting as men are because they're socialized to be deferential while men are socialized to dominate" seems not sexist because it's describing an accident of history that could as easily be the other way.

"Men aren't as good as women at multitasking" - sexist?

Seems you've equated failing to successfully interrupt with "failing to react the same way". I think GP was pointing to the reception, not reaction.

This seems to boil down to the same old question of whether we're really asking for equality or equity. Attempting to guarantee equal outcomes is a dangerous path to head down.

Link to video?

EDIT: Found it at the bottom...

Where?

TFA

I read the facebook post and did not see a video link anywhere. I came to the comments to find the video. You could have actually been helpful and linked to the video.

For anyone interested, the link is here.

http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/big-universe-bi...

edit: The moment happens at roughly 1 hour 7 minutes in.

It's at 1:07:41 in the video linked in the parent[1], but start at 1:03:50 to get the full context (short of watching the whole video).

Also, in case someone does a Ctrl+F for "timestamp", there you go.

[1] http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/big-universe-bi...