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November 30, 2003
playing dumb
While reading Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," Joi Ito blogged a passage on performance that is worth considering:
American college girls did, and no doubt do, play down their intelligence, skills, and determinativeness when in the presence of datable boys, thereby manifesting a profound psychic discipline in spite of their international reputation for flightiness. These performers are reported to allow their boy friends to explain things to them tediously that they already know; they conceal proficiency in mathematics from their less able consorts; they lose ping-pong games just before the ending.
Joi asks whether this is true today, and i thought that this is a good fodder for discussion. How relevant is this passage to the (lack of) participation of women in technology?
Posted by zephoria at 12:30 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Women who are planning to make a lifetime career of leeching off of the wealth of their male partners must quite naturally curtail public displays of their monetizable skills; otherwise they will have a hard time motivating their sugardaddies to fund their parasitic lifestyles.
This phenomenon is much more widespread than ladies are willing to admit. Try perusing through the personals sometime and count the number of ads by women who are looking for "professional" "ambitious" "career-oriented" men (read: rich) versus those looking for free spirits, slackers, etc. (read: not).
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 30, 2003 8:40:50 AM
And no doubt that when a woman wears a tight sweator or kisses on the first date, she really wants to get raped.
In 1959, society did not reward the intelligent woman, or look favorably on those who were smart. Men had fragile egos that tolerated little resistence to their perceived dominance. Ask yourselves whether this is true today and if so, then ask who is the victim.
I was disappointed to see this discussion brought around to the same old thing -- women are victims because women want to be victims.
Remember the statement -- there are no women involved in weblogging technology. Check the truth of this to see the true problem.
Posted by: Shelley at Nov 30, 2003 9:37:46 AM
Trolls are like raccoons. If you feed them, they just keep coming back.
Posted by: George at Nov 30, 2003 9:53:10 AM
"And no doubt that when a woman wears a tight sweator or kisses on the first date, she really wants to get raped."
Please present the chain of reasoning that you used to get from what I said to get to what you claimed that I said.
Thanks.
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 30, 2003 10:23:46 AM
Also, there's nothing at all victim-like about spending your life doing no work whatsoever, watching TV, eating bon-bons, and maybe cooking dinner every so often, while you are entitled to the exact same lavish accoutrements that your male partner's well-earning (and doubtless, demanding) occupation affords.
It's great work (or lack thereof) if you can get it.
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 30, 2003 10:28:29 AM
Hmm. Maybe this train can be set back on its tracks? I've recently been taking a class on education and I've noticed some tangential themes in a lot of the works we've read (writers like Laurie OIsen, Michelle Fine, Deborah Meier; generally writing ethnographic analyses of student culture at the high school level) about ethnic groups/gender groups/social groups disguising their potential from other groups in general to "fit in." Now, Goffman's work is considered seminal-but-dated but I'd say his core ideas about symbolic action and how people construct social identity are still very true. Sure, the "giggly girl losing a ping-pong match" seems awfully old-fashioned but I think this concept is still at play in the real world, sadly.
Posted by: Brian W at Nov 30, 2003 10:54:26 AM
Kendrick, I wasn't responding to you with my comment. I was responding to the implication associated with bringing up this study that women are, inherently, responsible for their own lack of visibility in technology, and hence lack of role model or whatever for younger women, and hence lack of women in the field.
We're bringing in work accomplished 40 years ago, and then making a stretch to say that women deliberately don't go into technology now because they're dumbing down to attract men. Not the fact that little girls aren't encouraged to play with legos rather than purses and playing dress up. Not that little girls aren't ignored in math classes. And not that little girls aren't subtly pressured into being primary care givers, precluding more time intensive jobs, or encouraged to enter more humanistic fields of study. Not that young women in computer science classes aren't talked down to by the young men, who have entered into this field of study with little of this baggage.
I do agree that people will diguise their potential to fit in, but how would you explain the strongly increasing number of women doctors, lawyers, and scientists in so many fields, yet we continue to see a decrease of women in technology.
Brian you say this concept is still at play today, but I see this rarely. More than that, though, brining in this topic then puts the responsibility for lack of membership and visibility for women in technology on the women -- it is women's fault. Yet we've seen recently, this is not true.
Not that long ago, it wasn't that uncommon that a woman who was raped was made into an accomplice of the act, rather than shown as a victim of violence. Bringing up this study now isn't really that much of difference, except in severity. It would be so much easier to blame women for women's problems, then society. So much more comfortable.
Posted by: Shelley at Nov 30, 2003 11:55:23 AM
"I do agree that people will diguise their potential to fit in, but how would you explain the strongly increasing number of women doctors, lawyers, and scientists in so many fields, yet we continue to see a decrease of women in technology."
Maybe women simply don't LIKE technology. Maybe they're no good at it. Maybe they're biologically negatively predisposed towards abstract thinking. (There's overwhelming scientific evidence supporting this.) Did that ever occur to you?
"It would be so much easier to blame women for women's problems, then society. So much more comfortable."
No, what's easiest is to blame society -- some grand, anonymous, faceless institution -- for all your problems. That's what all slackers do. Criticizing your own faults in good faith takes some maturity.
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 30, 2003 12:08:46 PM
Maybe it's because I come from a different country and I was raised in a family of scientists. Maybe it's because the big argument over my sister's career options was about whether she should study Computer Science (my mother's opinion) instead of Math (my father's), and she chose Math, to my mom's desmay. Maybe it's because being the boy I chose to study Literature after a brief stint in Engineering School and I wasn't disinherited and expelled form the family. Maybe it's because of all this, but I find it difficult to believe that women are still that strongly discouraged from going into the Sciences and Technology. Is it really true, is it a self-serving myth, or is the relatively low number of women in IT the result of a more complicated network of reasons?
Posted by: Ion at Nov 30, 2003 1:24:44 PM
the majority of women i know between 16 and 25 take no quarter and give none, at ping-pong or anything else. if you suggest to them that they might dumb down to pursue or secure a relationship, they respond with either scathing sarcasm or some admission that protecting guys' egos is tactically efficient. (as a card-carrying guy i can't dispute this.)
women participate sparsely in "technology" only if that term is defined in a male-centric, historically sanctioned, overly limited way. no, i haven't known many female hardware designers. it doesn't worry me much. my experience -- which may be biased in the opposite direction, but still -- has been in a cyberspace whose innovators are women in the majority.
Posted by: Kip at Nov 30, 2003 1:48:25 PM
I'll speak as a mother who's watching this phenomenon happening before her eyes. At age two, my daughter tells me she wants to be a doctor. At age five, she tells me she wants to be a veterinarian. At age seven, she wants to be a scientist. At age nine, she tells me she wants to be a hair dresser. You can imagine my heartsickness at this pronouncement, coming from a child who is head and shoulders above others in age bracket in math and science, who is enrolled in a gifted program. Within the last year she has become entirely aware of the appeal of physical appearance and that boys ignore the bright girls in favor of those who are attractive.
It happens right now, between ages 9 and 12, when girls begin to shape their own opinions about womanhood. There's a huge gap in the messages they are getting at this age, just before and during puberty, about their self-worth and value. Watch television, radio, video closely, the stuff these children see at their age -- how much of it is highly sexualized, how much of it is all about the bling-bling and who's making/taking the bling-bling. Look at the toys with which they've played until puberty. Look at how fathers are portrayed, not as the men who are the first in their daughters lives and supporters of their intellectual growth, but as creatures in pursuit only of sexual gratification from women who are sex objects (what does "Baby got back" tell a young girl, after all?).
I recall an even earlier message from a boy to my daughter when they were five: "No! you can't play with this tool set! Girls don't play with tools!" (You can imagine my reaction to this piece of tripe...) This, from a boy whose mother is an executive with a Fortune 50 company; absolutely appalling.
The trolls here can argue all they want that women are leeches, but society (of which these trolls are a part) starts with raising women to see themselves as sexual objects quite early. A wealth of negative messages will not stem this tide; only encouragement, role-models and education at the earliest ages will counter this trend. I ask all, the trolls in particular, what positive, constructive things they are doing to help young girls see all career paths in science and technology as viable.
Posted by: Rayne at Nov 30, 2003 2:43:58 PM
I'm pretty sure I'm the only college girl that is actually responding to this thread, so here I go saying my piece.
Do I play dumb? Absolutely. As a woman you have to learn this.
Do I always play dumb? No. Do I play dumb to get a man? No way. When pigs fly. I won't have a relationship with a man or a woman unless they are intelligent and respect my intelligence.
That being said - when do I play dumb and when don't I play dumb? The answer is all about the amount of energy I have. Not hiding who I am takes energy to defend it against those who don't like it. I wish I played dumb less often, but there is a finite amount of time in a day that I'm willing to spend defending myself against things I shouldn't have to.
Take for instance my Management Information Systems class. I am equal to or above my professor's knowledge because I've programmed before and my father invested a lot of time explaining technical concepts to me over tri-weekly breakfasts. At one point during the semester he tried explaining how an if/else statement would execute and was wrong. So later on I felt confident in challenging him on another point related to DSL. My classmates (there are 9 students in the classes because of drops and only one other woman) response was that of murmured shock that I would challenge a professor. There was also a student who called me a bitch. (It turns out my father explained this to me incorrectly so I was actually wrong and the professor was right.)
I'm not sorry if I don't think I'm a bitch for a) trying to make sure the class got accurate information and b) trying to see if I understood correctly what was being said. I'm not sorry if I think it was rude to call me a bitch when I have helped them all with their assignments when they were stuck.
I'll tell you one thing though, cash will grow on trees before I ever stop playing dumb in that class again. I don't have the energy.
Posted by: Alison at Nov 30, 2003 5:39:21 PM
I would have a hard time adding any anecdotal information to Joi's thesis, one way or another. I didn't date in college, choosing to put my studies and platonic relationships ahead of romance. There also tended to be a high ratio of women to men at my university, so I wasn't interested in "competing" for dates. And I think I never really bought into the concept of playing dumb for male attention. I want a partner who's not intimidated by my intelligence and abilities (and I have one).
Today, with a Bachelor of Science in Comp Sci, in the working world, I don't think I follow the "play dumb" pattern either. When I do appear to be dumb it is purely on merit. ;-) I do probably keep quiet more often than I should, which I think is a subtle but tangible difference.
Posted by: ARJ at Nov 30, 2003 6:18:41 PM
fwiw, i am a man who has found himself playing dumb under a range of circumstances: to attract women; to avoid the burden of the leadership role; to make others comfortable; to simply fit in. and i have found myself not merely playing dumb, but being (relatively) dumb: when tired, hypoglycemic, hungover, stoned, stressed, nervous, in debate, or in the presence of genius. playing dumb and being dumb are modes i enter and exit intuitively. they are useful and at times comforting. i am ashamed neither of being smart nor of being -- or playing -- dumb. people have been telling me how smart i am for thirty years; it's nice to take a break now and then, intentionally or otherwise.
Posted by: scott at Dec 1, 2003 4:37:50 AM
"It turns out my father explained this to me incorrectly so I was actually wrong and the professor was right."
You're dumb for thinking that your father is more trustworthy than someone who professionally teaches this stuff.
You make the classic female mistake of confusing trust through emotional rapport with respect for professional competence. The least you could do would be to double check your information before bringing it to the professor's attention in class. The civil thing to do would be to meet with the professor after class, explain your issue, and if it turns out that he made a mistake, to give him a chance to correct himself in the next session, without being put on the spot and made to feel embarrassed in front of his students.
But you wanted to pipe up in class because you wanted to take credit for being smarter than your prof. You're an attention whore and do not have the best interests of your peers at heart, by far. Your methods expose your intent. You deserve the criticisms you received.
Posted by: Julius at Dec 1, 2003 6:00:42 AM
there is a difference in acting dumb in a class and in social gatherings outside class. in classes i never act dumb but i am never ashamed to show my ignorance in order to expand my knowledge on a subject. in classes on the other hand i rarely act to attract people. how about outside then. well sometimes i just don’t tell people i meet in a social context that i study computer science even when asked. its not a question of trying to play dumb but more a question of being tiered of the blanc stare such an information results in. from both men and women. hence it is not a question of playing dumb but more about not wanting to be branded as a boring nerd right away. if i have the energy i do tell and answer all the obligatory questions about how many women are actually enrolled in my program, but i rarely get to the point where i can explain what i actually do.
Posted by: anna at Dec 1, 2003 7:56:40 AM
I don't play dumb, why should I? I never played dumb in school, university or now in my job. I think that never occurred to me. What I do though, is something different, I am not very good at presenting myself, so many people underestimate me at first. That happened both in school and at university. But I do not consider this as playing dumb.
A much larger problem are the women who do not accept that there are others who are the equals of their men at least education-wise (geez my English is rather flawed I am not sure this actually means what I want to say). I have been mobbed more often by other women for being smart than by men.
Posted by: Yashima at Dec 1, 2003 8:53:46 AM
Julius, you make the "classic male mistake" of *bashing* a woman who's made a fairly minor gaffe rather than coaching effectively.
Is this what you'd do with a young girl in grade school, call her an "attention whore" the first time she raises her hand in class and makes a mistake? What do you think will be the outcome from such name calling? (BTW, do you call boys and men who do the same thing "attention whores" as well? Highly doubtful.)
Herein lies one of the key reasons why girls "dumb down". I'd like to hear Julius or Kendrick explain what they would do to encourage young girls to stop playing dumb, what they would do to encourage girls to be more effective participants in classroom settings.
Posted by: Rayne at Dec 1, 2003 9:00:29 AM
"Julius, you make the "classic male mistake" of *bashing* a woman who's made a fairly minor gaffe rather than coaching effectively."
Disrupting the class with false information and then claiming moral high ground for having done so, can only seem like a minor gaffe if you're the gaffer's mother. For everyone else, it's a pretty fucking annoying stunt indicative of immaturity.
"Is this what you'd do with a young girl in grade school, call her an "attention whore" the first time she raises her hand in class and makes a mistake?"
Irrelevant. Neither this girl, nor you, nor me, is in grade school. Next strawman please.
"What do you think will be the outcome from such name calling? (BTW, do you call boys and men who do the same thing "attention whores" as well? Highly doubtful.)"
Sure. "Attention whore" is a gender agnostic term. It connotes someone who does preposterous things simply to receive lots of attention.
Posted by: Julius at Dec 1, 2003 1:18:57 PM
Playing dumb, as Scott pointed out in his comments, is often a smart -- if not the smartest -- strategy in certain situations, regardless of one’s gender. Both men and women tend to dismiss the people they perceive to be dumb -- and so they may well underestimate the quite, steady power of those who use playing dumb as a long-term survival strategy. In many a heated situation, in which the battle of wits and other prowess parading ends up in pyrotechnics that burn egos or reduce reputations and a good many future prospects to ashes, the “dumb” ones come out intact -- and that much smarter about what drives people nuts.
So, yes, playing dumb can be a very intelligent choice sometimes....
Brian W, in his comments has pointed to some recent work on “groups disguising their potential from other groups in general to ‘fit in.’” I think that looking at the “playing dumb” syndrome -- or strategy, which is how I like to think of it -- across gender is much more useful than invoking some outmoded manifestation of it -- the giggly girl -- from a bygone era.
Posted by: maria at Dec 1, 2003 2:09:04 PM
That phenomena that you describe, Danah, was always sure to bore me. I like women for their minds, myself, but having heard too many discussions in locker rooms, I have to say that the idea isn't universal.
Posted by: Joel at Dec 1, 2003 4:09:12 PM
>Disrupting the class with false information and then claiming moral high ground for having done so, can only seem like a minor gaffe if you're the gaffer's mother. For everyone else, it's a pretty fucking annoying stunt indicative of immaturity.Irrelevant. Neither this girl, nor you, nor me, is in grade school. Next strawman please.Sure. "Attention whore" is a gender agnostic term. It connotes someone who does preposterous things simply to receive lots of attention.<
I'll be waiting to see you use that term on a male elsewhere for proof. Right now I only have this thread to go by.
Posted by: Rayne at Dec 1, 2003 4:52:21 PM
"So what exactly does a person do if they GENUINELY BELIEVE they have correct information which is in contradiction to that presented by a professor, Julius?"
I already addressed this. Meet with the professor after class. Express your belief, note that you may be mistaken (always do this when addressing a prof, it's tact, it's respect) but note that it's worth double checking. If the prof has any integrity whatsoever (most do) he'll double check and correct himself during the next session if necessary. He may or may not credit you as the person who pointed out the mistake. It doesn't matter who pointed out the mistake if the education of one's peers is the main concern. Am I right?
Besides, this is SMART because you save yourself the trouble of coming across as an immature little twit should you be mistaken. Not only are you showing TACT, you're minimizing POTENTIAL DAMAGE. It's win-win.
"I'll be waiting to see you use that term on a male elsewhere for proof. Right now I only have this thread to go by."
Google is your friend. Use it.
Posted by: Julius at Dec 1, 2003 5:43:20 PM
Julius, your reaction to Alison's post was distractingly volitile. As a result, you'd counterpointed your own opinions by effectively classifying yourself as a man with a grudge. This is the sort of communication that rallies opinions against you reflexively, despite probable presence of like-mindedness. Perhaps you should state your initial opinions in thinking man's terms, without aggression, and avoid the ensuing internet fisticuffs in favor of more constructive debate.
As for the topic, tech careers come from tech interests. It's difficult to cultivate interests when such cultivation is retarded by playing dumb to keep the boys happy, therefore any girl who makes a habit of playing dumb would be hard pressed to make her way in the area of technology, or any area so dominated by men. It would be interesting to remove young girls from men and society long enough for them to pursue their interests without having to worry about how they should be acting, and then return them with enough education and confidence that they become their own primary motivations. I would like to think that men who want dumb, docile women are becoming extinct, but I don't think that's the case. Yet.
Posted by: isthaq at Dec 1, 2003 5:52:28 PM
IMHO - a differentiator between men and women that I have come across in IT workplaces is that women aren't afraid to admit when they don't know something. In my experience, it is rare that men do the same thing, especially your programmery types. Some guys I have worked with practically covet their own knowledge, and go to the extent of concealing it so they maintain an edge on their co-workers. This *could* be perceived as a hostile tactic to maintain a level of power within an organisation.
Yes - this is a generalisation, but i think it indicates an interesting difference in approach to things like teamwork or knowledge sharing.
On one hand, i suppose (unfortunately) that a woman may be perceived as playing dumb by a colleague for being forward about a lack of knowledge... On the other, I think that admitting that you don't know something is far from playing dumb. It would seem to me to be a sensible approach to gather better information on a problem, and to transfer skills and knowledge around an organisation. To me this isn't about "concealing proficiency".
Posted by: george oates at Dec 1, 2003 7:25:15 PM
