Monday, May 13, 2013

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.


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. 

24 comments:

Etelmik said...

I feel I understand you both, and I hope that you both truly understand each other. Also, respect for the amount of civility and respect and lack of eyeball rolling.

I hate talking about or reading about loaded topics like this for this reason--but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed, and I'm glad you guys shared.

Khift said...

"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."

This is the most disgusting thing I have read in recent memory. I do not believe she even realizes what this is: a wholehearted, unironic endorsement of confirmation bias. I cannot believe that someone who said this expects to be taken seriously.

One should never, ever conduct research in this manner. Confirmation bias is a thing to be fought tooth and nail, not preached.

CallMeSarge said...

Fascinating read - thank's to both parties for publishing.

Sturek said...

I have to say I lean more towards Leigh's side of the discussion. Yes, more data and evidence is absolutely necessary, but it will never be generated or studied without the outrage and passion of activists. And what this discussion comes down to is just the wage gap, which is one part of a whole slew of (at the least) questionable practices in the industry. I think there is enough to be outraged by even when you take these kinds of issues out of the equation. Finally, let's not act as if this was just a games industry problem. Shawn is absolutely right when he mentions all the other influences that lead to the current state of the industry. Sexism is so deeply rooted in everyday life and our culture (most cultures, I guess), that singling out industry practices misses the big picture. However, you gotta start somewhere and other people are doing similar activist work in other areas, so why not try to make it better within gaming? It's just important to shy away from absolutes and overgeneralizing.

I do believe that many feminist discussions on the web make it very hard for well-meaning people to join in, by the way. There are so many strict rules that you can violate as someone new to the conversation. Especially if you are a member of the most privileged group on Earth, it may be hard to get over yourself (not just because you are blinded by your privilege, but also because everybody is pounding on you). It is hard for a guy to get excited and passionate about feminism, when the first discussions he witnesses just focus on how bad men (cis, white etc.) are. It's hard not to feel humiliated, insulted and hurt, to be honest. Yeah, it is unjustified, but many potential allies feel that way, I'm sure. I do at times. That's why I enjoy reading RPS and esp. Walker's opinion on those matters. Here's someone who does get over himself and shows just how passionate you can be and how you can actually do good.

Krystian Majewski said...

On the contrary. When doing research in the field of Humanities, bias is almost unavoidable. That's because there often can be no impartial viewpoint and the mere implication there was is a political stance in itself. The solution is to fully and openly acknowledge one's approach and use it as a part of the discourse rather than secretly disguising an agenda. In fact, the Natural Sciences have this as well, most scientists just never acknowledge it. Part of the scientific method is always a hypothesis BEFORE the actual experiment. Scientist rarely acknowledge that while an experiment itself may be bias-proof, the underlying hypothesis is often TOTALLY just a gut feeling or even carries a hidden agenda. For example of advancing one's academic career in a desired direction.

Unknown said...

Shawn, thank you for posting what you did. When people make invalid or illogical arguments, they make their side look bad, and only serves to arm the opposition. Critiquing an argument that bolsters your opinion will only serve to better your cause in the long term. Failure to critique (as Leigh seems to support) will weaken it.

xandermacleod said...

The problem as far as I can see is that there isn't a realistic non-sexist solution to solve the issue.

Whilst we can admit there is 'inequality' in gender-roles in the games industry, this does not logically entail 'wrong-doing'. For this inequality to be an issue demands that the inequality has been brought about by 'wrong-doing' (i.e. sexism). That's just logic. But how can an activist prove whether an employer (or at least the accused) is sexist or not? Without finding specific examples we can't, unless an appeal is made to an inherent sexism in ALL men (a very iffy argument).

It seems the pro-female side of the argument then has no way of attaining evidence of suspected wrong-doing, and are being silenced because of it. The only realistic solution is to attempt to force that the inequality be addressed rather than the underlying wrong-doing. Until the inequality is addressed, the pro-female party will (in many cases, but not all) continue to feel that there is an underlying wrong-doing responsible for such inequality. We can't realistically expect that by shouting from the rooftops, "Stop being sexist!" that those who are will stop being so.

But then, what are the proposed solutions? If more women are arbitrarily accepted during interviews, just because they are women, is this not also a sexist issue? We are simply inverting the issue until some kind of equality is reached. I would suggest that an even distribution of male/female employees brought about by sexist decision making is as bad as what our industry is currently being accused of. (I'm using employment distribution here as an example of a much bigger issue).

But then, what recourse do feminists have who feel they are being wrong done? Do bare in mind, that without evidence of wrong-doing its highly unfair to point fingers at anyone. But if there genuinely is sexism going on, then there seems to be no reasonable solution (as far as I can see). Like I mentioned before telling people to stop being sexist, is not something within the power of the activist. You cant force someone to stop being sexist, you can just deny them the powers they have with which to be 'manifest' their sexism.

I don't mean for any of this to come across as insensitive; because frankly I do believe sexism exists within the industry. If anything I'd call myself a male feminist, frustrated that there is no way of procuring evidence for the issue. The main point I'm trying to make is that we can't look at inequality as being synonymous with wrong-doing, and it's wrong-doing we should be trying to do something about, not inequality. After all, like the article mentions, everyone's decisions in their childhood affects the distribution of groups across all different areas of life.

Dave Cameron said...

When a bug is reported by someone in a piece of software you've written, you can react in two ways:

1. I haven't seen that happen on my machine, so probably it isn't really a bug and you screwed up. And then maybe, if someone forces me to, I'll try to reproduce that bug in order to prove you wrong.
2. Sorry you were affected by a bug. I'll try to systematically reproduce it so that I can fix it. There's a chance we won't be able to systematically reproduce it. If that happens, the chances we will be able to fix it are also much less.

Both approaches can eventually lead to the same conclusion. There are enormous differences in how they treat the initial report and reporter.

The first approach discourages your user from reporting bugs in the future, and then cuts off one avenue you have for improving your software. Especially if your treatment of that user gets out in to your greater user community and effects other users' actions.

The second approach encourages the user to report future bugs. It also has a possibility of engaging them in the process of gathering information to reproduce the current bug and future bugs.

In this caricature/metaphor:
Women as software users
The games industry as software you wrote
Accusations of sexism as a bug report
Shawn's initial reaction as approach number 1
Leigh's suggested reaction as approach number 2

Towersixteen said...

@Dave Cameron
I think there's a difference between taking someones complaint seriously, and taking an "the accused is guilty until proven innocent" stance. I agree much more with Shawn than with Leigh, because Shawn seems to be saying that we SHOULD take accusations of sexism seriously, and we SHOULD acknowledge that something is wrong. BUT just because someone is a position to identify that something is wrong doesn't mean they're always particularly qualified to identify where the real root of it is, and jumping to take all of their suggestions and steps rather than working to hear all sides and uncover what may be deeper and more diverse causes is rash. To use your metaphor:

Imagine that a person reports a bug, but also gives there opinion as to how they think it should be dealt with and what they believe the root cause is. You should take the bug report seriously, and work to find the cause. That's what I think Shawn is saying. You should not automatically assume that the customers suggested fix is the correct one. It may be the correct one! But you should not assume it is, you should do your due diligence to find out what really causing the problem, and what the best fix is regardless of the customers suggestion. And that's my problem with what Leigh says- it seems to say that women that raise concerns about sexism not only deserve to be taken seriously(they do), but that they also deserve to have all there corrective suggestions taken seriously regardless of merit, or that criticizing them is somehow wrong. And I strongly disagree with that.

Unknown said...

I get the feeling Leigh Alexander was desperately looking for a fight and you weren't giving her the "ammunition" she was looking for, So she kept repeating a lot of points that had already fallen to invalidity...

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