What you do not see can still hurt you

One pervasive and ever-annoying of our "autonomous thought system" (to use Daniel Kahneman's expression) is that it is always trying to take shortcut to make decision-making as easy and effortless as possible. The corollary of this tendency is that, unless we actively pay attention to a decision and devote some mental resources to it, we often oversee viable options but the simple reason that they are not all that salient. Kahnenman phrases it as "what you see is all there is" meaning that if you do not immediately see a possible solution you would not even consider it. Other academics, like British author John Adair, refer to the complementary strategy as "thinking outside the box", that is trying to break the implicit barriers that your mind forms. At any rate, there are many obvious events in life that we just do not see because we do not even consider they could be taking place.

A very salient example of this blindness is our situation with respect to privilege: the fact that you are and have always been a white, educated, middle-class man will typically lead you think of your situation as the "default", a state which is somewhat natural and the starting point for every one. Philosopher Marilyn Frye describes in her book "Politics of Reality" the concept of humanism, which puts the humankind at the top of the creation and therefore in power to dispose of the animal kingdom and the nature at large. The implication, of course, is that animal are less than humans, which is what gives us the right to impose our decisions on them. However, if you start to regard certain groups of alleged humans as lesser humans, the machine of oppression starts to move and the "default" suddenly does not apply to all or, even worse, not even to the majority: this is the case of sexism (considering more than 50% of humanity as second-grade humans base on the genitals they are born with), racism (the same with the color of their skin), xenophobia (passport), etc. And one of the key pillars that sustain those systems is the idea that all humans "in good standing" share the same rights and those discriminated are so for everybody's benefit, in the same way that you do not allow underage kids to vote or run around with guns. The supporters of these ideas really think they are the good guys, they are caring for those who cannot take care of themselves.

Photo: pixy.org

Let us just consider the phenomenon of "mansplaining": a man, considering that a woman is unable to give a coherent expression to her thoughts and ideas (because that is the way women are), interrupts her "nonsensical blabber" to provide an razor-sharp description of how she feels or what she thinks, frequently even to the woman self. And all that without even checking with her because men "naturally" know what women are thinking, their mind opens like a book to the supreme mental power of men.

This afternoon a friend of Karen's dropped in for a spontaneous visit and we ended up fixing the world for the best part of four hours, seeping tee, discussing sexism and invisible privilege. We went over the famous Ben Barres episode, where, shortly after he transitioned from being a woman, someone said how much better his work was compared to his sister Barbara (himself before the transition). We even watched the remarkable TED talk by CEO (and former man) Paula Stone Williams, where she points out how the reactions to her as a woman were much less polite than when she was a man. And I also presented the story about the man working in customer support that suddenly found his customer being much more reluctant to take his advice... because the email program was automatically signing as a female colleague.

All these experiences caused a shock in Karen's friend, even is she is an Equal Opportunity Officer in her office. She mentioned that she "instructed" female candidates on how to respond properly to potentially discriminatory questions and we both argued that she should instead stop the questions and even reprehend whoever was asking them. It is remarkable how even she, being an educated woman, can be blind to what sexism means. She also thought the the questioning of her opinions was regular practice with anyone, when the fact is that men's opinion are, as a general rule, much less scrutinized than women's.

Hopefully, it will not take a full century to overcome sex- and race-based discrimination. We have come a long way in the last fifty years, so it is possible that the next fifty will bring significant progress in that direction. But anyway, it is important to at least keep your eyes open trying to identify unjust situations which, if they cannot be solved, at least can be counter-examples of how to treat another human with all due respect. Have a nice evening.