Your company’s Slack is probably sexist

Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by n42 on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @02:26PM (#15800529)

The article makes an observation that online communication favors a typically male communication style. That does not make you, your coworkers, or your company bad or inconsiderate people. There is no reason to respond defensively to an article like this, because it is not an attack. It is an observation on how modern work environments may favor one style of communication over another, and what role that gender socialization has in all of this.

What's important to gather from reading an article like this is that people are different. They communicate differently. Keep that in mind when you are communicating with them, because you may unintentionally be limiting their potential to contribute.

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Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by mundo on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @02:36PM (#15800629)

I think this (the defensiveness elicited by "here's why you're sexist" articles) is an unfortunate side-effect of overloading the term sexist to mean two nearly-opposite things ("subtle background prejudices that affect everyone and everything" and "overt toxic beliefs that you should be fired and shunned for having").

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Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by cuckcuckspruce on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @02:44PM (#15800710)

Further, the conflation between the two is intentional by some as a power grab.

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Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by romanovcode on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @02:39PM (#15800657)

> male communication style.

I'm sorry but WTF does this even mean? Every individual person has it's own communication style AFAIK.

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Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by n42 on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @02:46PM (#15800724)

The keyword that you seem to strategically be removing is "typically". Yes, everyone has their own style of communication. From the article:

> Gender socialization helps explain these findings. “From age two or three, kids show patterns where little boys are more assertive and girls more indirect,” says Herring.

If we are going to discuss an article based on studies supporting the idea that men and women are raised to communicate differently, we have to accept that there is room for some generalizations with how people communicate.

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Re:Your company’s Slack is probably sexist by jboles on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @04:06PM (#15801639)

Exactly, it is already sexist for the author to make such a generalisation.

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