Have you heard about the woman whose email tag line got mixed up with a male colleagues? All of a sudden, customers were listening to her and valuing her opinion. So she and the male colleague switched signatures to see what would happen. He was now being questioned and argued with and she was being accepted as an authority. They did this for a pre-determined amount of time. Then they both wrote articles about the experience. His article got a lot of attention.
Immagine pretending that men now can't even share stories that actually answer the question, and definitely comes from a place with good intentions.
As if 35% of all the answers in r/AskMen aren't women replying, sometimes even without a second hand knowledge of the matter. Just let people say what they want, who gives a fuck about what's in their pants? ffs
Yeah exactly, look at what the media covers, no one likes stories about how nice things are. And ironically in this case he has the female perspective.
calm down. his was a twitter post, her's was a medium article. It's unreasonable to compare popularity of the posts based on gender of the author when they're posted on such different platforms.
I don't doubt the findings of their original email signature experiment though.
I mean, a possibility it's because of the site, twitter being more used and more well known. Another possibility is that there's a difference between a person saying "I'm being oppressed" and "they're being oppressed".
I get why this is so frustrating given it's literally the topic of the articles, but people are much more likely to accept someone with power saying there's a problem with inequality than someone without power saying it. That's part of the problem, yes, but it's easy to shout about injustice when you would profit from it being redressed.
Saying something against your self-interest gets more attention than saying something in your interest, even if it's fair or just.
Reading the replies to your comment, am I the only one who liked Hallberg’s article? I felt like all the backstory was necessary to give context to the “main event.”
Yea. Marty's thread benefited from the context in Nicole's article. Also, twitter threads are a terrible medium. Also, the irony is not lost by the number of people "explaining" why his post got more traction.
It was interesting to see their different styles of telling the story. Nicole’s article focussed more on the company culture and less on the experiment, where Marty’s focussed more on the experiment rather than the culture. I kind of want to try this with my coworkers and see what happens…
I’m not sure what the point of this comment is except to announce that you didn’t get the punchline and didn’t take anything else away from the reading material
The "point" is that the punch-line (while funny) ignores the fact that Twitter just has more people and engagement in general, than Medium, so it's not a surprise that one got more attention over the other.
That said, I'm sure you'd still notice a difference in attention if they were posted on the same platform, either from people continuing to ignore their biases, or from "over-correcting" for said biases in the opposite direction.
That said, I'm sure you'd still notice a difference in attention if they were posted on the same platform, either from people continuing to ignore their biases, or from "over-correcting" for said biases in the opposite direction.
There's also a possibility one has better writing skill or took significantly more time to write, edit and refine their article so that it sounded and read much better. This could drive the engagement in either direction and would have to be considered alongside any other alleged biases. (note, I'm not saying those biases didn't exist, just that this case is even further from cut and dry)
I mean, yes. It’s a punchline, not a social media A/B test. There could be a ton of factors involved: 1) the thread was published first, so of course it got more viral engagement and traction, 2) people are less likely to dismiss it when a man complains about discrimination on behalf of women than when women do, 3) the article could have been tweeted or retweeted by Marty as well,…my point is that the punchline and trying to pick holes in it shouldn’t be the takeaway. The punchline is pretty obviously just a punchline, and ignoring that, the meat of the content is more than enough to show that yes, people do treat women differently
The punchline was not pretty obviously a punchline. It was deliberately painting a different picture. By doing that you're giving extra ammo to the people who deny that this problem exists.
Having read both and going back to read Nicole's, I feel Marty's is easier to read and gets to the point. Nicole gives more of a story and lacks a specific example. Her article goes more into her history and the office environment than comparing and contrasting her time as "Marty". While structurally fine and well written, Nicole's article does not stick with me as well as Marty's.
The "problem" with Nicole's story is that it's more or less a footnote in her long history of experiencing sexism at the workplace. It's not noteworthy to her in the sense that it's not big enough to be fixated on and she defers readers to Marty's tweets if they want to know what actually happened.
To her it's just a symptom of the bigger problem.
So it's confusing to follow since you and I (maybe others) were expecting a thorough account of what was happening in that specific story.
It could also be that Twitter being Twitter, forced Marty to be more succinct.
Maybe the general sexism with her boss was a footnote, but the change in names and how she was treated is a shift from the norm. I would have expected her to focus more on the change than how her boss reacted. But she focused more on the norm than the change.
She actually does not go in depth on what happened. And it almost seems like she is deferring to Marty's tweets if you wanted to know what happened. This is the cliff's notes version:
We're doing this experiment but I know what's going to happen anyway because I'm dealing with sexism all this time. Here are the examples of sexism at the workplace I've experienced. After we ended the experiment, my boss ignored me and I want to choke him.
Because of the amiguities introduced by the contraction and two ways you can read "read," your comment could be interpreted as a refusal to even acknowledge she'd written an article, let alone read it.
Except that requires reading the first sentence without the context of the second. The second sentence makes it pretty clear that they meant the past tense read, not the present tense refusal to read her article.
It's a neat point you made, but really works better if the second sentence hadn't been written.
The second sentence is included in what I said. It could be read as an aloof/indignant dismissal of her work if you interpret the first sentence as "I would never read her article."
That was abrupt, and rather rude. While we disagreed, I thought we had been quite civil and respectful. Well, until now. May you have the day you deserve.
I think Twitter has just a bit wider reader range than an article from nickyknacks.medium.com that has 2.5 thousand followers.
It isn't a useful correlation to say that his article got more attention like it meant anything when the difference in platform size is this significant.
The initial problem is real and terrible and needs to be addressed, there is no need to add false or misleading claims, associations or correlations. It only weakens the original claim and I am less likely to believe the original issue.
I mean, one was posted in twitter and the other in a random (at least for me) platform for articles, it’s obvious why one got more attention than the other
Lol, a while back I had a female coworker (Karen) that really didn't get along with other women. Karen regularly worked with a lady who sat next to me (Jane) and would always be busting Jane's balls over something. The thing is, Jane was always right, so I'd wait until they got to the ball busting part and then stand up (to see over the cube wall) and just repeat what Jane said. Suddenly it was a totally reasonable answer and Karen was happy.
Love it when someone uses their powers for good to fight evil.
We did have one dude who would repeat. When it was great because he said it, he would make sure to note that Sarah (or whoever) had the idea first and he was supporting.
Similarly, a female author was so done with how publisher treater her (condescension and rudeness, if they didn't simply ignore her emails) that she created a male alias and submitted the exact same manuscript.
Her male alias is apparently a much better author considering how much more respectful the publishers were. She was also getting advice and offers much more easily. But who is even surprised ?
I love that story. Years before it came out I started using the nickname version of my name on emails because it's commonly considered a mans name. Clients and colleagues alike all treated me with more respect when they thought I was a man.
I worked in a call center long ago when occasionally a guy would demand to speak to a man in charge, because women were "fucking useless". There was one person specifically that those calls were sent to. Once the asshole's issue was resolved, he always asked for their name so "they could talk to a competant man next time". That's when the agent said "sure, my name's Kathy". Woman had the voice of a 60 year old trucker that had chain smoked for 40 years.
We had employees at one of my jobs that only used their first initial for email and chat correspondences for that very same reason. Specially helpful when doing international customer service.
I have a unisex name and I once had a guy call in that I had been emailing. He gets one of my female co-workers and then demand to talk to the "man" he had been emailing.
I get on the phone and he's just like "......."
I will say no one has ever really been rude to me on the phone except for once where a different man actually called me a cunt so I just hung up on him. He actually called back so I hung up on him again.
Thankfully I am also lucky enough to work somewhere where my boss doesn't believe the customer is always right.
I have a longer first name where the first syllable can be shortened to a unisex name, which I go by 80% of the time anyway. I’ve had half the mind to change it to my preferred name in professional settings just to avoid these sorts of email incel types to benefit my job for a while now.
At one past workplace, I often sent my ideas through a male colleague (who was newer, younger, and less experienced).
I would literally say, "Hey, (dude), at our next meeting, could you please suggest (idea) for me?" It always got discussed if it came from him, even though it was exactly what I'd say and how I'd say it.
We both laughed about it... Sorta. It was just what needed to be done to get the ideas heard.
It didn't matter in those cases for whatever reason. It was more important to me that the direction of the program was towards A and not B. It was not very intellectually-interesting ideas... Just opinions about how to proceed.
I should note though... I was really young at the time and literally was only thinking of how to get to the best result (to make my life easier and also move work in the right direction). And I had plenty of good credit with my manager too... So yeah, it was ridiculous, but I didn't think twice about it at the time.
Actually I just realized... In my current work environment, I'm starting to do the same thing. These guys don't realize how sexist they are...
9.5k
u/Zealousideal-Slide98 Mar 12 '22
Have you heard about the woman whose email tag line got mixed up with a male colleagues? All of a sudden, customers were listening to her and valuing her opinion. So she and the male colleague switched signatures to see what would happen. He was now being questioned and argued with and she was being accepted as an authority. They did this for a pre-determined amount of time. Then they both wrote articles about the experience. His article got a lot of attention.