I’ve been more active in online spaces recently and I am just astounded at the number of times I’ll be several comments deep with another person and a man will just jump in responding to us both with the least relevant most inflammatory take. The gender of the person I’m talking to is never relevant, but it’s always a guy that interjects. I know the internet is a public forum, and I guess there’s more guys on some platforms than women, but it’s just shocking how often it has happened. We’ll be talking about baking and some guy will come in and say that it actually costs more to bake bread at home or clothes and some guy will come in to say actually both our styles are bad. It’s not even a sexist thing I don’t think, I just think women are socialized more with a live and let live mentality and men are socialized to believe that everyone should hear their opinion. I don’t really have any solutions. I always want to reply with something snarky about how we’re not asking him or how his comment doesn’t need to be shared, but I don’t want to invite harassment. Their comments get upvotes or reacts in agreement and it just feels targeted. Like two people were having a casual chat and this guy comes in and derails and gets positive attention for it. I’m just venting now because it just happened in a gaming discord and I don’t really have people irl who understand how these communities are helpful and how that kind of community reaction is ostracizing.
I remember reading some study, years ago now, that if there’s a mixed group of women and men, the women were considered “pushy” if they spoke more 1/3 of the time. There was another study where they found that male Supreme Court justices were three times as likely to interrupt a woman Supreme Court justice than they were to interrupt a male Supreme Court justice. Another one that if a man expounded on a topic, he was more often viewed as an expert sharing their knowledge, but the same thing in a woman was seen as “too aggressive”. It’s exhausting, honestly :(
Yes. I think remember one where people read a story and the name was changed and when it was a male name they gave positive words like leader and decisive and with a female name it was negative like pushy and demanding.
This isn’t exactly what I was talking about but came up immediately on a search: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/10/study-finds-gender-perception-affects-evaluations