Leigh Alexander and I agreed to move the chat we started via Twitter to email so that we could express and explain ourselves without the character limit. As Leigh tweeted, "Disagreement or the need for further discussion can't preclude respect among colleagues." The conversation:
Leigh Alexander: So
I saw you as being displeased that people too easily leaped to
attribute the wage gap to sexism, because they were eager to earn
accolades for being politically-correct, and that they saw sexism
where there might not be any in order to feel they'd won a moral
victory.
Shawn Elliott: What
bothers me is that they both attribute the wage gap to sexism on the
part of game industry employers by arbitrarily
banishing any serious consideration of alternative explanations from
the realm of possibility, and proceed to issue moral imperatives,
demanding that the accused address wrongs for which they haven't
actually been convicted. In other words, when someone admits that
they don't understand the actual conditions that contribute to an
unfavorable outcome, then sentences someone all the same, and
explicitly tells the accused that their “only valid response” is
to rectify the perceived problem, they're moralizing plain and
simple. I don't doubt or call into question their commitment to
equality (more on this in a moment). I believe their commitment is
sincere, and ask that you accept that mine is as well. But it's
possible to come to dumb conclusions despite having your heart in the
right place.
LA: On
one hand, I completely agree with you that if we're going to address
representational problems financially and otherwise, we do need a
complete picture of the disparity, in order to make a stronger case
that it can't be explained by other means. Logical fallacies don't
help anyone's case.
SE: We
need a more complete understanding of the causes of the disparity in
order to correct if it is indeed due to discriminatory policies and
practices. You can't fix what you fail to comprehend, no matter how
nice it makes a person feel to pretend that they have sufficient info
to tell a particular party that its their fault and that they need to
fix it. If it turns out that the problem is more challenging and
multidimensional, the finger pointing will not have helped anyone at
all – in fact, it can contribute to the problem. It can lead you to
overlook much more promising avenues for change. Poor reasoning can
allow people to dismiss your concerns as well as your
diagnosis. I'm taking pains here to clarify that I do not dismiss the
underlying concern.
LA: On
the other hand, that women are unequal in the games industry is a
fact of life for us. Sexism, hostility and general alienation are the
reality for many if not most of us. That isn't something that
requires data or is up for debate -- women in the industry have been
trying to talk about our experiences at increasing volume and at
critical mass over the past few years. Many men will find any reason
not to listen to us, but we are trying.
SE: I
absolutely understand this, however, I addressed wage disparities
among developers alone, not the treatment of women as a whole within
development, and definitely not across the industry spectrum of
reporting, blogging, streaming, forum-going, and gaming.
LA: So
I don't think it's actually such an intolerable leap for some people
to have seen that data and presumed some degree of
logical correlation. Women are unequal in the games industry; women's
pay is also unequal. You are right that we don't know the extent to
which one fact causes the other, and indeed,
it would help to know.
SE: It
isn't a tolerable leap to say that, since women are exposed to
persistent sexual harassment within games, for example, wage
disparities among developers are necessarily due to sexist practices
and policies on the part of employers. When you write that “Women
are unequal in the games industry” do you specifically mean that
devs are disproportionately male? (I'll pass on the pay aspect, as
that is the point of this discussion.)
LA: But
the correlation is a fair assumption. I would trade
my right hand if further research into the pay gap found that sexism
does not play some role (especially as you and
others discussed women being relatively new to the industry or
less-experienced -- why would that be the case, for example?). It is
absolutely, at least, an abstractly-related discussion even if the
data doesn't "prove" it.
SE: Again,
my argument is not that sexism is unlikely to play a part in
explaining why fewer women than men work in development, or even why
on balance women developers are paid less than their male
counterparts. When I wrote that “We
must also study the male-female ratio among qualified candidates from
whom studios receive applications. We must ask what percentage of
women pursue educations in programming?” I meant to imply that
sexism may enter the equation at any number of steps on the path from
a woman's childhood experiences and environment up to her ultimate
decision to pursue a career in development. I also cited the
well-documented effects that marriage and career interruptions have
on occupational compensation (and how this differs depending upon
one's field of expertise), and sexism may play some part here, as
well. But that blame is not necessarily
the employer's. And that doesn't scratch the surface of the
meaningful, multidimensional discussion occurring outside the walled
garden of gaming industry coverage. (See Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman on gendered competitiveness or Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox on political ambition )
LA: And
people are righteous about it because a certain degree of outrage has
accumulated in the discussion on sexism, and justifiably. Whenever we
talk about sexism, a man appears to find some way to either abuse or
discredit us (even when "we" includes our men friends, who
also increase their volume of outrage). A common derailing tactic
when someone has a hostile political agenda is to play the "I'm
simply discussing the facts" card, to veil the fact they're
refusing to have empathy for the party that's requesting it.
SE: I
find it a bit embarrassing -- as though I'm being put on trial – to
need to explain that I'm wholeheartedly for equality and intolerant
of sexism. Every woman who faces sexism (every woman alive?) has my
empathy. At times, though, you do need to discuss known facts (and
challenge unsubstantiated supposition), and doing so has nothing to
do with evincing empathy.
LA: The
numbers in the salary survey are not the entire conversation, you are
right. But they're the beginning of a conversation, and I would have
liked to see you frame your argument as asking it to go further,
rather than discrediting others in your desire to prize facts or
further research. At the very least, it shows more
care toward underrepresented people if you presume their instincts
about discrimination may be correct and you seek
data to support that, rather than asking for data before you will
consider their feelings.
SE: I
accept blame for my poor writing. It was my intent to expand the
scope of what I saw as constrained conversation, not to close it.
With available data, though, I can't presume that instincts that say
employer discrimination explains the wage disparity in game
development are correct. They might be, they might not be. Not coming
to conclusions about causes before adequate evidence is available
doesn't preclude the ability to consider someone's feelings. I don't
understand this argument at all.
LA: Because
the statements made that you criticized -- things like how we need to
train, hire and promote more women -- are pretty important goals for
the industry that I don't think you'd disagree with. I was
disappointed in your eagerness to banish them from a conversation
about wage gap when even in absence of statistics, we know there is
very probably some relationship.
SE: Did
I criticize the notion that “we need to train, hire and promote
more women”? I remember writing that “These
are fine policies to follow.” That said, more women working in game
development is a great thing – same for members of other groups
that are less represented than women by far.
LA: Border
House, or RPS, are allies of diversity. You say you want to enable
them to be better allies through more information, but your clear
disdain for their logic can unfortunately be read as derisive of
their long campaigns for equality.It's a destructive rather than
supportive approach.
SE: I'm
not aware of their campaigns and was responding to what I read. I
didn't intend to deride the spirit of their campaigns. And you're
right in that my tone was too combative. I think the tone I took from
the stories was “I'm going to tell you how it is and don't you dare
argue or I'll dismiss you for who you are and not what you say.” I
took that as a challenge and it immediately turned me off to RPS's
approach in particular.
LA: Maybe
I'm misreading you some, but then I'm not the only one. As it is now,
you have commenters whose takeaway may be that allies of diversity
are just getting uppity to score political points, or that someone
like John Walker is insincere (men who champion against sexism are
often accused of 'white knighting' or pretending to care in order to
get laid or something, so your insinuation that these kinds of
articles try to 'score points' is weighted). Or that "we need
less outrage," etc.
SE: Fair
enough. I hope that this discussion – if we publish it – will
help clarify my perspective. The logic was so loopy that I supposed
politicking or sheer naivete was at play. I found the former
assumption more charitable.
Again, my tone was too combative. And as I wrote on Twitter,
“Suggesting
that the potential causes for an outcome are more complicated than a
specific speaker insists they are in no way says that emotional
response to that outcome is improper. I'm not saying we shouldn't be
upset by it so much as I mean to say that we shouldn't prescribe
solutions when when we aren't certain as to the causes.” Although
to add to that, I disagree with directing a strong emotional response
at a group (“those
in senior positions at publishers and developers”)
before their guilt's been decided.
LA: When
I worried you'd arm our enemies, what I meant is that every time a
woman writes an essay about her personal experiences, there are
commenters complaining she is emotional, irrelevant, lacks 'facts' to
'prove' she has been a victim of a situation, and so on. The
commenters say things like 'we need to stop all this emotional
manipulation and stick to games' or whatever, as a way of silencing
people. And now they'll be able to grab your essay, which is about
facts over outrage, and which can be read as attributing vocal
writers' passion to an insincere 'political agenda', and use it as
ammunition in that kind of argument, which I'm sure is not how you
wanted to come across.
SE: I
agree, anyone who dismisses concerns about sexism because a few
writers used poor reasoning in one place is dumb.
I should underscore that. I imagine you've encountered plenty of
people who were willing to dismiss feminism as a school of thought
because Harding characterized Newton's Principia Mathematica
as
a “rape manual” or because Irigaray argued that E=MC2 is a “sexed
equation” or that “masculine physics” neglects fluids. (Not
that the arguments I addressed approach that now legendary lunacy. )
But
we can't be too timid to critique an argument simply because the
sentiments of those who make them are in the right place. Another
example: I believe that sufficient empirical evidence exists for me
to be concerned about anthropogenic climate change, and for that
reason I was upset by “Climategate” before it came to light that
the controversy was manufactured.
LA: You
totally could have made your point as regards all the things we have
yet to know about the salary data, and why it's important for us to
know them (so we can build better, more positive arguments for this
equality we all want). in a way that did not target
and dissect others who were only trying to express that commitment,
albeit imperfectly.
Does
that make sense? I think if you're joining the gender inequity
conversation you do want to be very sensitive about the format you
choose, and the tone and purpose of your argument, and which sides in
the discussion you are really best enabling and expressing support
for. Making fun of RPS for assuming 'moral DEFCON' just equips people
to think sensitivity is something suspicious or worthy of ridicule. I
really don't want to believe that was the tone you were going for.
SE: It
isn't. See above.
LA: This
isn't, unfortunately, the kind of thing we can treat with the same
dispassion with which we handle other journalistic issues. We want to
teach others to model compassion, too, and mobilize them to care
about equality on every frontier, not to feel justified in defaulting
to skepticism in every conversation. They already do that enough.
So
many people look up to and listen to you. Please teach your readers
that being angry about sexism, and wanting to enable more women to
participate in the industry, are meaningful, honest and moral
positions to take, not the province of the self-serving or
uninformed. And that the reason we need more data is so that we can
fight these battles better, not so that we can debunk outrage and
passion.
SE: I
understand and appreciate your concern.
