A Rant About Pale/Male/Staleness

Last week Clay Shirky, a new media guru and professor at NYU wrote “A Rant About Women.” His main observation is dead on: In a competitive work environment, particularly in his field of new media, self-promotion is an essential key to success. He’s also right when he says that women do not promote themselves as much as men do in the workplace. But his conclusions couldn’t have missed the mark more. Shirky’s rant epitomizes what some of us call the pale/male/stale syndrome: antiquated ideas applied ineffectively, perpetuating the problem instead of providing a solution. 

First things first, a small subset of women does not an entire species make. Shirky lumps his observations of his female students in with characteristics of all women and then blabbers on about our shortcomings. “Not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks,” he begins. He says we’re lousy at lying, and haven’t mastered the art of “behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives and pompous blowhards” — characteristics predominant among people who have changed the world.

His solution is that women just need to raise our hands more, be assertive, put ourselves out there. And then stop worrying about being ridiculed, all while being ridiculed for being bad at these very things. (A common ailment of the pale/male/stale syndrome.) Searching for his point, Shirky references the movie “Six Degrees of Separation” as an example of what he deems successful behavior. His character reference, David Hampton, lies his way into restaurants, clubs and celebrity guest rooms, and the lesson Shirky wants women to learn is that his hero is taking risks to get what he wants, without care of consequences. Just take risks ladies. “Until women have role models who are wiling to risk incarceration to get ahead,” Shirky warns, “they’ll miss out” on ultimately getting what they want. 

Ohhhh, the ignorance of pale/male/staleness. If Shirky needs a list of female role models who have risked their lives, lied, cheated or stolen in order to get ahead, and in some cases were even burned at the stake, I suggest he run not walk to the Brooklyn Museum to see The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. And, as far as fearless lady role models are concerned, oh ladies, IF only we had a few women willing to risk incarceration for something important. You know, not like being imprisoned, beaten, and force-fed while on a hunger strike for a little old thing called THE RIGHT TO VOTE.  But that’s sooo last century, we’re in the new age now, maybe Shirky’s looked to more recent role models who have risked incarceration to get ahead. Bernie Madoff and the entire subprime mortgage industry come immediately bouncing into mind.  Boy has that been good for our communities.

Which brings me to another example of staleness, because Shirky’s
rant lacks any communal vision. It’s derived from an individualistic
perspective, applying a linear solution to a complex systemic problem.
Do you see how this doesn’t comport? On top of that he has an outdated
understanding of gender norms, again, defining things in terms of a
line. Asking women to “cross gender lines”. What does that even mean?
This view — “you’re either with us or you’re against us” — is a
hallmark of a patriarchal system. In that system, people have to lie,
cheat and steal in order to get ahead. This system will probably never
go away, so people who plan to stay in it will definitely need Shirky’s
skills to survive. But, even as a new media guru, he lacks the
foresight to envision a digital future where people have the ability to
reject antiquated systems and instead build networks and marketplaces
based on the principles of their choosing. I’d like my marketplace
built on honesty, accountability and responsibility, thank you very
much.

That vision might sound far-fetched to some, but I was inspired when
Shirky posited that “there is no upper limit to the risks men are
willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for
women, they will succeed less.” Well then, problem-solver that I am, I
thought, I might as well blow the top off my ceiling of thought and
just aim for what I want; a new system.  Guys are apparently doing it
all the time.

To that end, I have some advice for curing the symptoms of pale/male/stale syndrome:

First, it’s important to recognize the responsibility as leaders,
mentors, and teachers to seek solutions to complex problems.
Finger-pointing and publicly belittling students while helplessly
shrugging about not having an answer isn’t just witnessing a problem,
it is the problem. While I don’t aspire to be a
“self-aggrandizing jerk” or a “pompous blowhard” I’ll take those terms
to mean strong, confident, and outspoken and will remind Shirky that
women act like this all the time. Maybe he’s confused because these
women are usually referred to as bitches and often the men who call us that get rewarded
. And when women speak up and are assertive, we don’t just get called a
bitch — we get ostracized from male leadership conversations, blamed
for failures not ours, demoted and sometimes even fired. We actually don’t get promoted or offered that grant.  In the media world , this struggle is especially predominant.  

Second, we must encourage women and provide resources for them.
Belittling someone is never a good way to reach them, but encouraging
someone can go a long way. If Shirky started recognizing and
encouraging his female students I’m sure he’d see more positive
results. As a professor at NYU, Shirky has a whole plethora of
resources to guide him in this endeavor.  I suggest he contact someone
like Sonia Ospina
from the Wagner School, who’s done some amazing work on the paradox of
leadership. She would be an excellent resource for Shirky and his
students alike.  I bet not only would he see more women in his
department promoting themselves, but those women will teach other women
around them to do the same thing. It’s called the Girl Effect — I encourage Shirky to look that up, too.

Third, and ultimately the biggest challenge for Shirky and other
sufferers of p/m/s, is to examine the space they’re taking up as
leaders, mentors, and particularly as teachers. I encourage our male
leaders to ask themselves what they can do to make more space for the
women around them to promote themselves. A teacher friend of mine
shared a trick she’s used called step up and step back.  At the start
of the school year, she asked students to think about how they behave
in a classroom.  Are they the person who talks often, or never? Then
she asked the quiet people to step up a little bit, and the talkers to
step back a little.  That’s the kind of thing that acknowledges that
men are complicit in the silencing of women, and actively makes it a
collective effort to ensure all voices are heard. 

In all of this it’s important to note that Shirky’s rant does
acknowledge that part of women’s handicap is sexism and I know there
are many people who really do need to just get out there and
raise their hand. But in order to overcome the historical disadvantage
that discrimination has placed on women we must all accept our burden
of responsibility and work together to find the solutions.