Interesting Links for 15-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Behold, the first photos taken from the moon in over 40 years!
  (tags: moon china photos )
• Disney's Frozen Is Headed for Broadway
  (tags: musicals disney )
• Sales of electric cars near double in 2013. (To 1% of all UK cars, but it's a start...)
  (tags: cars electricity )
• Man Poses As Woman On Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
  (tags: dating

Comments

[momentsmusicaux]

I've read another report of that guy with the online dating thing, and both (though this one in particular) were needlessly and stupidly harsh towards him.

It's not a gender thing that 'he can't simply ask women what their online experience is' (as the other article put it). It's a human thing.

Many years ago at uni, I and a bunch of others were relentlessly banging on to the student union and the uni people about better adaptations for wheelchair users. We got some sympathetic noises, and assurances that everything was ok. It wasn't until we did a silly stunt of forcing the union officers and uni committee members to go round for a whole day in a wheelchair that they actually understood that problems we were talking about: there's a lift but it's always full, the toilet has a stack of bar supplies in it, the door at the top of the ramp means you roll back down, another door smacks you in the face, and so on.

Humans are utterly lousy at really understanding what experiences are like for other people, even when they are repeatedly

[momentsmusicaux]

Of course, I am failing to understand how the authors of those articles are failing to understand this principle, in calling them stupid.

[andrewducker]

:->

It's true though - if your culture is so different to other people's culture then you find it very hard to see the world through their filter.

[erindubitably]

Humans are utterly lousy at really understanding what experiences are like for other people, even when they are repeatedly told.I kind of have to take exception at this - I think it's a lot easier for some groups to understand or at least sympathise with other groups' experiences, because they've experienced similar things themselves. I haven't experienced racism, but I damn well believe when other people describe situations in which they have, because I've faced discrimination of other flavours before and I know what people are capable of. I don't need to dress up in blackface and experience it myself to agree that it's a problem and needs to be dealt with

[andrewducker]

"I think it's a lot easier for some groups to understand or at least sympathise with other groups' experiences, because they've experienced similar things themselves."

Absolutely. But if you've never experienced that kind of thing (and an awful lot of people haven't, because they're in the majority) then it just never occurs to you. Which can make explaining things to them difficult, because they just don't comprehend that people would behave that way.

Edit: Obviously by "majority" I don't mean overall - if you're white and male then you're in one actual majority, and one about-parity. But you're not "in a minority" and you're in a massive group that frequently comes across as being "Everyone. Or at least everyone who matters."

[erindubitably]

I guess where I find that idea objectionable is when it comes to actually doing stuff about it - too often you hear about these types of stories where people go "wow, I didn't realise it was so bad, I'll definitely be changing my behaviour/trying harder/working to fight the problem now".

I don't want everybody to have to experience all the stuff other people go through in order to try and change it for the better, because a) that would take too long and b) I don't want _anybody_ to have to go through that stuff.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure what you mean by "objectionable" here. Either people act in this way/change their beliefs in this way, or they don't. (Obviously there'll be a spectrum of behaviours, but I'm talking about the majority case.) Do you mean that you like/don't like the fact that they do? Or something else?

I completely agree that I don't want everyone to have to experience stuff before they want to improve it. And I don't think they _have_ to. I think that education can do a lot of good (I wouldn't bother sharing a lot of the stuff I do if I didn't think it might help).

I know that, in the past, documentaries and dramas have had a massive effect on people's view of a situation - things like Cathy Come Home - and I'd have thought that we could do with more of that

[erindubitably]

I don't know, I think maybe I have extrapolated too much from the original example; I disliked the insinuation that it's human nature not to empathise with other people unless you're put in the exact same position as them. I agree that education is vital, but in the example above there are plenty of education resources/news articles/etc about the sort of crap women get online and the frustration many people have expressed that this guy couldn't believe it until he went through it himself is justified, I think.

Anyway, I think maybe I've gotten off the point and am arguing at cross-purposes now. I agree that the media seems to gleefully enjoy pitting us against each other more than helping us understand each other, and I'd like to see that stop.

[andrewducker]

I agree that there's a lot of resources about it. But people don't look at those unless they believe there's a reason to. It's a vicious cycle, whereby people don't believe there's a problem because they've never seen a problem, and they won't go looking for proof of a problem because they've never a reason to believe it exists.

You see similar things throughout history too - including things like factionalism in groups during the 60s (because the anti-racism groups couldn't empathise with the feminist groups, and the class-warfare groups couldn't empathise with either of them).

I think one of the great things that's happened over the last few years is the resurge of feminism that's happened because of the internet. It's been a fairly classic case of this - where society is held up in a great big cycle of false beliefs about minorities, and because there wasn't an easy way for individuals/small groups to connect and mobilise they weren't being successful at breaking that cycle - but connecting them over things like Twitter, and a

[marrog]

In support of Erin's comment with anecdata, as someone who gets into a shit ton of Facebook arguments, I've noted that straight white able-bodied (etc) guys are demonstrably and repeatedly far worse equipped and far less likely to understand what marginalised groups go through than people who belong firmly in one or more of marginalised group

[andrewducker]

I agree (as upthread, with Erin), that the problem is with a lack of empathy. And I'm not defending that (nor, I think, is Joachim) - just trying to discuss/understand where it comes from - which is, I think, a position of both never having been discriminated against in that kind of way, and (presumably) not consciously discriminating.

Certainly, it took me quite a while, coming as I did from a lovely family, and only ever having been bullied for being _personally_ odd to come to terms with the idea that there was systemic awfulness going on. Because it seemed (and still seems) so barkingly odd that I cannot empathise with it at all.

[momentsmusicaux]

I seem to remember that of the people in question, one was a black guy, two were women of whom one had been the women's officer the year before, and the college staff member was a woman too.

[marrog]

Well, that's the problem with anecdata, of course; you have no excuse to disregard outliers, consider variables (here, say, the pressure to find reasons not to spend money vs the pressure of being in a discussion on the internet), or argue about sample sizes or data cleanliness.

What I will say is that Andrew has the 'thrust' of Erin's argument a little wrong above. It's not really about empathy - I don't have to empathise with a black person to support their stance. It's about trust. It's about trusting that when a marginalised person reports their lived experiences to you, says "This is something I see every day" they are telling the truth, even if it's not a truth you understand. It's about saying "Okay, I don't see how that can be, but I'm going to trust that you are telling the truth because this is a world I do not see."

Making a metatextual analysis of this comment thread pretty funny :-P

[momentsmusicaux]

My point was precisely about empathy.

The people in my anecdote said to us afterwards that they'd never realized just how bloody hard it was to get from one side of campus to the other. They'd heard about it, but it didn't actually register until there was an element of experience.

So the OKCupid guy probably had heard how awful it was. But the sheer volume and intensity and impact of every damn message only really registered when he actually felt it.