men make it absolutely impossible to practice humility
what you say: “I think this is the case”
what men hear: “I have no idea whatsoever, but here’s a totally random guess”
what you say: “I’m not an expert on this subject”
what men hear: “I don’t know anything about this subject and need its bare fundamentals explained to me”
what you say: “I could be better read in this area”
what men hear: “I have never read anything in this area”
like okay fuck it nevermind I’m actually an expert in every subject I’ve ever read or heard about. in fact I know everything.
If anyone’s ever wondering why I come across as such an arrogant bitch on Tumblr it’s because I used to work in science with a lot of men and never readjusted my communication style afterward.
This is one of my biggest seemingly low-stakes feminist soapboxes. Women are often encouraged to take hedging, consensus-seeking, and checking-in phrases out of their speech in order to seem “more confident”. And listen, of course you do not need to say “I think” when you actually know for pretty damn sure, or double-check every little thing you say, or apologize for things that are out of your control.
But there are men in my life who I respect, who I think are generally good communicators, but who have admitted to me that if they do not know the answer to something they will just state their best guess in a confident tone of voice, with no hedging or clarification to warn the listener that what they just said was pulled from their ass.
I once asked my high school boyfriend what noise a platypus makes and he confidently told me “oh they quack” and I said “really? that seems like they’d have different noise-making structures than ducks since they’re not birds” and he said “oh yeah you’re probably right. I was just guessing.” And had no idea why I was mad! I was like, so if I ask you a question you might just bullshit me?? What if I had believed you and gone and repeated that to other people? I could have looked like an idiot. I could have spread misinformation to a ton of people! But I have told that story to other men and had them say “oh yeah I totally do that.”
This is so much worse communication than just saying “I don’t know but I think…” There shouldn’t be campaigns training professional women to sound “more confident,” there should be campaigns training professional MEN to stop doing whatever THAT is!
[ID: Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place saying “okay, but that’s worse. You do see how that’s worse, right?” End ID.]
Oh god yeah.
…but damn. How do you train people out of a toxic behavior that, in current society, pretty much always improves the professional success of the person doing it, and has no negative consequences except for other people?
What incentive can you give them? “Oh, this improvement in your behavior will cause almost everyone in your field to respect you less, and be less likely to do what you want… but things will be better for them because there’s less bullshit misinformation going around. plus they may view you as a nicer person, which to them means you’re a pushover. Yeah you really should make this change.”
I hate when I look at the necessary steps toward improving something and step one ends up being “society would have to be structured completely differently to begin with”
