Diversifying TypeDrawers

Mark Simonson

As human beings, we are prone to cognitive biases and blind spots, and they can be quite difficult to see in ourselves.

A husband and wife have a disagreement. The wife says the husband never puts the toilet seat down. The husband says he never forgets. What's going on? Well, the husband doesn't remember when he forgets, so his statement is true based on his own memory. The wife only notices when he forgets, so her statement is also true based on her memory. The fact of the matter is, he forgets sometimes, and he can't count on introspection by itself to know that. He needs to listen to his wife to know what's really going on.

Chris Lewis

I don't often post in comment threads, because 1. I really hate arguing, and 2. Other people usually make my points better than I can. This is equally true of this thread, but I think the issue is important enough, and I have come so far in my own understanding of it in the last few years, that maybe I can say something of value. 

My favorite description of privilege is John Scalzi's article describing being a straight white male as playing a video game on easy mode:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

The answer to Chris Lozos's question (what can a horrid white man do?) is, first, to stop taking it personally. When someone says your race/class/sex benefits from certain factors of society, they are not saying you are a bad human being or that you've automatically had a perfect life. But it's a pretty safe bet that if you were black or gay or female, it would have been harder. (I can't argue with you about the draft sucking for men! But I'd take it over childbirth and the treatment of mothers in America any day. Different discussion!)

At the end of the day, "privilege" is statistics, and human beings suck at statistics. We have to turn everything into a personal anecdote in order to process things. This is why the responding to "white men generally have it easier" with "but I had it hard" doesn't help. 

So what we white men can do is:

• listen to the people who are affected by the problem
  
• resist the natural urge to be defensive
• figure out how to explain the issues to your fellow white dudes, because a side effect of all this is that they will probably hear the message louder and clearer from you than someone more "other"

I'm still figuring all this out myself. In fact, thinking back on just this thread, I can see my own biases at work. The posts that really stand out in my memory are the ones from Tom and Ray (ha! Car Talk!) rather than, say, Nina and Elizabeth who have explained things equally well. Feels weird saying that out loud, but there it is. 

Atilla Korap

Michael, I apologize, if it looked like that, but I don't believe that you personally are against gender equality. Still, even if you were the greatest feminist on the planet, that doesn't change the underlying meaning that was in your post.

I don't believe that Satya Nedalla is necessarily against gender equality. But what he said, with the same sort of good will, is another example. 

Göran Söderström

Oh, you want me to name names, J_Montalbano?

This man is the very reason I left Type Drawers a couple of years ago since I felt this forum would never work as a professional forum any more with comments from that man. What happened when I said this? The other James banned me. Adults acting as they were in kindergarten.

kupfers

This just in from our industry members 

http://twitter.com/frankjonen/status/633809496972861440

kupfers

Michael Clark, why did you flag my comments as “Abuse”? Disagreeing on them is fine, I disagree with your points too, but I don’t think I abused anyone, or don’t understand the meaning of the word. Are we still playing the flag-game that J_Montalbano started?

Ray Larabie

@IndraKupferschmid Yeah, we're certainly not as isolated from this type of thing as some people might think. I'm pretty sure that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Max Phillips

Late to the party, but I want to say that I'm thrilled at the recent influx of women, and think it's already improving and enriching discussions here. The lack of gender and other kinds of diversity in this industry are stubborn problems, and sexism is obviously a stubborn problem everywhere.  It's nice to see a little bit of movement.

But I have to object strongly to this:

I think, if you're tempted to respond to someone's offense, check your sex and skin colour. If the answer is white and male, you should refrain from chiming in on what you think shouldn't be offensive.

Respect and openness means being respectful and open to everyone, even if they happen to belong to one or more privileged groups.  Telling certain classes of people they need to shut up about certain subjects is bad for discussion.  Some of us white males are vividly aware of our privilege.  When we say something clueless, call us on it.  But let's not assume in advance we've got nothing to contribute.  To make this better we'll all need to work together, and listening is part of that.

Victoria Rushton

But let's not assume in advance we've got nothing to contribute.

Max, Ray specifically said that more privileged people should not share their opinions on what shouldn't be considered offensive. Not that you should shut up entirely, just that it's not the privileged's place to make a call on what is oppressive. 

If you're white and a person of color says something's racist, you should listen instead of sharing how you think it's not. If you're cisgender and a trans person says something's transphobic, you should listen instead of sharing how you think it's not. If you're a man and a woman says something's sexist, you should listen instead of sharing how you think it's not. 

From the rest of your comment I think we're on the same page about this issue, but I wanted to clarify this point. 

jfporchez

Thanks to Stephen for the launch of the twitter account. It pushed me to read part of this thread (I'm to rarely on such place).

Glad to see this discussion happening. Diversity is always welcome, including on a type related forum, or because of excellent articles by Dyana Weissman on Typographica.org. Not sure we can resolve all issues, but the simple fact to be able to read diverse opinions is a good thing. Merci.

Nick Shinn

I like Elizabeth’s take on quotas, as outlined in her linked post.

Forget the past and individual morality. There’s not much merit in arguing over who should be called out over what.

If there is agreement that the percentages of participant categories should change, then a practical, systemic solution is required—affirmative action.
One method to change the proportions is to provide disincentives to the tranches we have agreed are over-represented, and incentives to those under-represented.
Money is a powerful agent.

Therefore, because conference organizers have some discretion as to remunerating speakers (speaker fee, expenses for accommodation, and for travel), simply offer female speakers a better deal.

I've spoken at ATypI, TypeCon and TYPO conferences, and have encountered different remuneration, ranging from none at all, through waiving the conference registration fee, to paying a speaking fee and covering attendance, hotel and air fare. So there is clearly no set standard.

When I was soliciting speakers for TypeCon (2002), I found it was easier to persuade men to speak than women. One theory: women earn less than men, and so are less able to afford to speak. (Other reasons mentioned by Dyana, above).

At the moment, it doesn’t look like women require any incentive to participate in Typedrawers. As for disincentives, the danger is that would send the site into torpor. But would a posts-per-month limit for men be effective?

Max Phillips

Max, Ray specifically said that more privileged people should not share their opinions on what shouldn't be considered offensive. Not that you should shut up entirely, just that it's not the privileged's place to make a call on what is oppressive.

I understood Ray's point, Victoria. It goes without saying that when somebody from an oppressed group talks about what they find offensive, I should listen carefully, bearing in mind that this person's going to be able to speak from experiences I'll never have. But that doesn't mean that, having listened carefully in this way, I need to agree that what offends them is generally offensive and should be barred.  In fact, not every member of an oppressed group will agree with ever other member on this stuff.  If, for instance, a code of conduct is being drawn up covering what is and isn't acceptable on matters of race or gender in a given situation, I don't believe it should be drawn up solely by women and people of color while the white males sit silently in a corner, heads bowed.  Obviously you need to begin with the POV of the women in a group when you're talking about what's sexist, and listen hard to whatever the particular women in the discussion are saying.  But that doesn't mean members of other groups can't, after listening and thinking carefully, sometimes push back when they think a point of view is unreasonable.  Please don't tell me it's not my 'place' to do so.

Chris Lozos

I think there is a difference between a privilege and a right.  It looks to me that those who have suffered have had their rights trampled on instead of not being awarded a privilege. Saying Women have the "right" to walk freely about unaccosted by lucivious men is different than saying men have the privilege to walk about unaccosted by lucivious men [or women].  These are legal rights.  In my youth, I was accosted by street gangs just for walking in their neighborhood.  I did not see it as the gang members having the privilege to attack me.
All that I ask is that we replace the term "men" with "some men" in these matters.

Once again I say," what can I actually do now" as an individual to stop the rights of women from being trampled today?  If I admit to being privileged, it won't do a thing to stop the male perpetrators from trampling on another women's rights. Think of it this way, if I were to say "women are prostitutes" instead of "some women are prostitutes" would you take it personally? I have never seen any of my male friends act badly towards women.  I don't want anything to do with the men that do. We have to prosecute the men that show this behavior and put them in jail where they belong.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

Once again I say," what can I actually do now" as an individual to stop the rights of women from being trampled today? 

Spend more time listening, supporting, and trying to understand.

Dai Foldes

Tons of people can formally debate this better than I can, Chris, but here's my personal take. No matter how much I learn about feminism and privilege, the discussion of "Men"—as opposed to "Some Men"—still rankles, unbidden, on a personal level. But come on. We should be taking it up with the dicks ruining it for everyone else instead of the women harmed by them. Insisting on "Some Men" reads as almost cartoonishly pompous, self-important, and just whiny. If you've ever seen those "Male Tears" mugs? It took me a while to get the joke because I'm dumb.

In my experience, the best way to mitigate your own frustration with generalizations about "Men" is to join the right team, be a vocal ally/supporter, and maybe enjoy some laughs at the expense of "Men". It goes a long way towards removing doubts about your capacity for empathy.

John Hudson

Chris, privilege can be understood, perhaps helpfully, as a systemic confusion around rights. In privilege, some people assume as rights things that are not rights — e.g. more and better better opportunities for themselves or their families — while limiting or riding roughshod over the actual rights of other people. I'd say that it is the systemic nature of the confusion that constitutes privilege, and hence what makes it a social phenomenon rather than an individual one: if an individual behaves in an appalling way as if it is his right, we don't say he is privileged, we say he is a sociopath. It is the systemic nature of privilege that makes it subtle and insidious, unlike the actions of the sociopath, because it presents itself as normality, as 'just the way things are'. Of course there are very large numbers of white males who are unprivileged in any meaningful way that provides them advantage, and of course there are very large numbers of white males who have never individually treated a woman badly, and of course there are very large numbers of white males who are not racist, and of course there are very large numbers of white males who do an exemplary job of standing up against sexism and racism. The privilege is not in the behaviour of the individual, but in the systemic biases of social arrangements that give opportunities to some people and not to others, that give greater reward to some people than to others. As I wrote above, I think class privilege is by far the worst kind, causing the most misery worldwide, but once we have a notion of privilege as a systemic phenomenon, we're obliged to look for it wherever it may lurk, because it represents a profound inequality that affects the quality of peoples' lives. And because it is a systemic phenomenon, rather than an individual one, this suggests that solutions might also need to be systemic or structural, which is where affirmative action appears as an entirely legitimate option.

Victoria Rushton

But that doesn't mean members of other groups can't, after listening and thinking carefully, push back when they think a point of view is unreasonable.  Please don't tell me it's not my 'place' to do so.

Hate to break it to you, it's not. 

You said it yourself (which is why I think we're largely on the same page), certain oppressed groups have experiences you will never have. Same goes for me. Here's the thing, there is nothing to be gained by "pushing back" as a person with privilege. When, for example, a black woman tells me something she experienced or read that she thinks is racist, I have no ground on which to disagree with her. No matter if that's my informed opinion based on how well-listened or well-read on racism I am. In fact, if I say "I don't think that was racist," it will only make her less likely to speak up the next time she perceives an injustice. That is not what we want moving forward. Along all axes of privilege, we need to trust members of oppressed groups to be experts on their own lives, accept that there are imbalances that are invisible to us, and bite our tongues sometimes. I promise to if you will. 

I agree wholeheartedly that we need white men to fight systemic inequality, and they cannot do that with their heads bowed in the corner. I absolutely want to hear their suggestions for progress, to see their hands shoot up to volunteer for or donate to organizations that help women, to hear them call our their friends for casual racism/sexism/homophobia, but we don't need to hear their opinions on what's not oppressive. They already have enough of a platform in society anyway, give someone else the mic for like a second. 

Chris Lozos

I am trying to understand, I am listening, I am supporting but none of that will solve the problem.  I want to know what people think will solve the problem.  Just being a cheerleader won't solve the problem.  Can we at least address "the problem"? Are women being attacked at type conferences?  Is it by type related men? What are the circumstances we should watch out for to be in a position to help? Can we organize an escort plan to be sure women are not so open to abuse? Can we get together and devise a defense plan? Are women prevented from becoming part of the type industry do to gender? How does this manifest itself? Are their organizations or companies that seem to show this behavior? Can we boycott them? Are women in the type industry being overlooked for promotion? Can we devise a plan to help them? Is there a pressure for sexual favors in the workplace? What legal authority do we have under Civil Rights law or local law.
I am just looking for something actionable for men to do that moves towards solution. For some or all of the men in the industry to be sympathetic or accept that they are privileged is nice and all but all it does is make them look like nice guys.  I am less interested in men being perceived as "nice guys" as a group than I am solving the real problem that women face. I don't care so much what the categorization "women" thinks of the categorization "men".  I can't act on that.  I very much care about looking for a solution the the problems women face that we can act on.  Simply telling them "I feel your pain" does not solve a thing.  Their pain will continue until we act on a solution.  We have well established that there is some kind of a problem. Now we have to articulate the exact nature of the problem so that we can figure out how to act on it.  Forget about me. Forget I am a man, forget that I am white.  It is not about me or you, it is about doing something to solve the problem more than just sympathizing or feeling guilty.

Elizabeth Carey-Smith

For some or all of the men in the industry to be sympathetic or accept that they are privileged is nice and all but all it does is make them look like nice guys. 

Being in an industry where men look categorically like nice guys would be a great start. As we've seen, that is not the case. I think we have more than addressed what the problems are, Dyana's article explicitly detailed what women go through... we are talking in circles trying to explain privilege...

James Puckett

The other James banned me.

Because you requested that I disable your account, and in Vanilla, banning is the only way to do so. And the ban was immediately removed when you objected.

Ben Blom

Ray specifically said that more privileged people should not share their opinions on what shouldn't be considered offensive.

So, if I'm privileged, I should partially shut up?

So, if I'm privileged and work for Charlie Hebdo, then I can not express my opinion whether it is offensive or not to publish a picture of the prophet?

In other words—let's say goodbye to that good old freedom of expression.

John Hudson

Victoria,

When, for example, a black woman tells me something she experienced or read that she thinks is racist, I have no ground on which to disagree with her.

Well, I generally agree with you that it is a good rule of thumb, but there's a big assumption of reasonableness in it. So to briefly do the devil's advocate thing: does your statement hold up if a black woman tells you that she thinks it is racist that she has to stand in line at Starbucks? Isn't there a reasonable basis on which you, without presumption of privilege, might say 'That's not racism'?

We have to be able to analyse what constitutes systemic inequality, to describe it with some measure of accuracy, otherwise we can't begin to address it with systemic and structural changes.

Chris Lozos

@Elizabeth, I have read and again today reread Dyana's well written and unbiased article and I completely agree with it but it is only a start.  Surely there is more I can actually do than just nod my head approvingly? It is time we stop rehashing semantics and get down to defining actionable items. Many of us have been sympathizing and recognizing this since the 1960s.  It is now 2015, time to act. Please define positive action?

James Hultquist-Todd

Are some people being willfully obtuse? It’s not that hard to understand: as Indra’s avatar says “don’t be a dick”. We all know what that means. This isn’t preschool.

If you’re privileged, than accept that a level playing field will mean that you will be uncomfortable—that people who disagree with you will be able to be as loud as you.

Freedom of expression isn’t the same as freedom from repercussions (part of privilege).

Chris Lozos

@Dai Please explain "Male Tears" to me? I googled it and saw examples of cups but I just don't get it.

We should be taking it up with the dicks ruining it for everyone else

I have many times pointed out the error of the ways of "Dicks" but those guys are not listening to me.  Those guys are boosting their own poor self-esteem by dumping on others to ensure that there is someone lower than them to point to.  They are the sociopaths John spoke of and will not budge from their sadistic viewpoint. The only thing they understand is threat of imprisonment.

Elizabeth Carey-Smith

When we say something clueless, call us on it. 

Okay, well I think we're trying to do that. The assumption—no, the insistence—that white men's opinions need an equal (and let's face it, a majority, as you're still the majority on this and most other platforms) in discussing something they simply do not experience, is not an indication that you're understanding.

Victoria Rushton

John, sure, suppose a particular act someone calls out is not actually racist. Would it really be so bad for me to just not argue with them this one time? 

Given the high, high frequency of times a PoC calls something out that is extremely racist and it's met by a chorus white people going, "No it's not! Everything's fine!" I think I can live with shutting up about it. 

And I do understand your intentions are good, but for the record here is my Official Stance™ on playing devil's advocate. 

Elizabeth Carey-Smith

there's a big assumption of reasonableness in it.

Yes, there is. It's giving a marginalized person the benefit of the doubt that they understand their marginalization better than you do. And if someone tells you it's racist that they have to stand in line at Starbucks, you don't need to engage. That person is likely, rightly, angry at the society they live in— the one that sees their color as their predominant trait, and forces them to do so too.

Chris Lozos

The worst treated by society in America are Black Men.  There is no question in my mind about this.  They are not only treated rudely, they get shot by police.  They are hired far less than Black women, white women, and surely, white males.  The unemployment rate for Black men in this country is astonishingly higher than any other demographic. The worst problem is seen by young Black men.  While we are busy trying to attend to the injustices of Women, we should see what can be done for Black men as well at least in our industry.

Ramiro Espinoza

All discriminations matter, Chris.