Us behaving like Them: Do women get interrupted more than men in various corporate settings?
Apparently that's what the research says. Or so says the New York Times.
Yesterday, Susan Chira reported this topic for the Times, in the featured front-page report of the Business Day section. She pegged her report to the public outrage over the way Kamala Harris was interrupted while questioning Jeff Sessions this week.
In all honesty, Harris interrupted Sessions a fair amount during the course of her questioning. At one point, John McCain piped up. Here's the transcript of what happened:
MCCAIN (6/13/17): Mr. Chairman, the witness should be allowed to answer the question.It seems to us that this sort of thing happens in congressional hearings quite often. Under the circumstances, it produced lots of pushback this week.
CHAIRMAN BURR: Senators will allow the chair to control the hearing.
Senator Harris, let him answer.
HARRIS (to Sessions): Pleased to. Thank you.
This brings us to Chira's report. Plainly, Aristotle was wrong, or so this would seem to suggest:
CHIRA (6/15/17): Senator Harris, a former prosecutor, assertively questioned Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, interrupted and chided her to let Mr. Sessions answer her questions. Soon after that, Senator Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee chairman, cut her off, saying her time had elapsed.Chairman Burr "cut her off, saying her time had elapsed?" As people at the Times should know, there are ways to check such facts.
The PBS videotape of the hearing is here. Harris' questioning of Sessions starts at 2:06:48.
Burr tells Harris her time has elapsed at 2:13:31. At the time when Burr "cut her off," her allotted five minutes of questioning time had run almost seven minutes.
That said, Harris asked very good questions. The ridiculous question came from Ron Wyden, who somewhat excitedly asked Sessions this:
WYDEN: Last Thursday, I asked former Director Comey about the FBI's interactions with you, General Sessions, prior to your stepping aside from the Russian investigation.For the record, Comey did not say "that FBI personnel had been calling for [Sessions] to step aside from the investigation at least two weeks before [he] finally did." At any rate, Wyden wanted Sessions to explain whatever it was that Comey had refused to discuss.
Mr. Comey said that your continued engagement with the Russian investigation was, quote, "problematic," and he, Mr. Comey, could not discuss it in public. Mr. Comey also said that FBI personnel had been calling for you to step aside from the investigation at least two weeks before you finally did so.
Now, in your prepared statement, you stated you received only, quote, "limited information necessary to inform your recusal decision." But, given Director Comey's statement, we need to know what that was.
Were you aware of any concerns at the FBI, or elsewhere in government, about your contacts with the Russians or any other matters relevant to whether you should step aside from the Russian investigation?
[...]
WYDEN: General Sessions, respectfully, you're not answering the question.
SESSIONS: Well, what is the question?
WYDEN: The question is, Mr. Comey said that there were matters with respect to the recusal that were problematic and he couldn't talk about them. What are they?
How was Sessions supposed to do that? Wyden's semi-hysterical questioning made little apparent sense.
Sessions was right when he went on to say that Comey had been engaging in innuendo. The problem is, under rules of the game, you aren't allowed to say such things about Comey the God, who seems to be rather slippery.
The Comey/Sessions hearings have been analyzed very poorly. When a chase of this intensity takes place, all logic goes out the window. Consider one last example of what can occur when a great chase is on:
We refer you to Virginia Heffernan's unique confession at Slate. Our eyes were drawn to the headline on her podcast. The headline in question said this:
"The Testimony of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III"Interesting! We wondered how honest Heffernan would be about her region/race-baiting.
For better or worse, we'll give her credit for being extremely honest! In a classic case of Us behaving like Them, her discussion started like this:
HEFFERNAN (6/15/17): Today, we're talking about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. I want to hit that middle name the way my co-host Jamelle Bouie does because "Beauregard" is kind of the answer to "Hussein," and to those who used to hit Barack Obama's middle name hard, with the same kind of innuendo.For the record, she did hit that middle name hard.
We give Heffernan credit for honesty. She admitted that she was toying with innuendo, the same way The Others have done.
Heffernan is certainly right about the past focus on Obama's middle name. She now admitted that she wanted to play the same game, in which a person's name is used to mark him as alien, as The Other. When people like Heffernan pimp Sessions' name, they are telling us that he's the racial/regional Other.
It was a classic example of Us behaving like Them. People like Heffernan fail in these ways when a major chase is on and we're trying to lock them all up.
Your lizard will swear that Heffernan's conduct was right, even right on. As always, your lizard is wrong.
Aristotle was all wet too. He called us "the rational animal!"
reading your article about Plainly, Aristotle was wrong!its interesting and informative for all children for more click here JAN CARTOON
ReplyDeleteSomersby staring off into the distance, talking about everything but what happened. McCain has no authority to interrupt another Senator. That he did so and did not lose his place at that hearing was outrageous. No amount of rambling on about Ron Wyden changes that.
ReplyDeleteBob Gardner
Randolph, MA
Thank you for noting this.
DeleteThe reason why a Senator interrupts the person testifying is because those testifying have a strategy of burning up the Senator's allotted time by discussing non-pertinent things that are not responsive to the question asked. This strategy is explicit and is used with Democrats. Sessions was doing this to Harris and she tried to prevent it by interrupting him to refocus him on the topic at hand, the question that was asked, when he demonstrably wandered off topic.
Funny Somerby didn't mention that.
And yes, women do get interrupted more often than men do. Within the male sex, high status men interrupt those with lower status more often. Men and women talk about the same amount of time -- it is a myth that women talk more than men.
I experienced this first hand during my first week at IBM Research Division. I was at a meeting in which people were brainstorming ideas, facilitated by a moderator. I spoke several times and contributed a couple of ideas. Later, the moderator summed up by writing the ideas on the white board. None of the things I had said were listed. He then asked if he had left anything out. I raised my hand and said that all of my contributions had been left out. He asked what they were and I summarized them, at which point he wrote them. But I had to appear like Ms. B*tch in order to be included and it was made very clear that he not only didn't value what I had said, but didn't remember any of it. That is what women experience on a daily basis in the workplace. And if you correct the record or push back or complain, you are considered "difficult" and are marginalized. So you are damned if you speak up and damned if you don't.
So, Mr. Somerby, this is more than a rhetorical device to 50% of the population, including Senator Harris. That Somerby couldn't even figure out what the interruptions consisted of is very telling.
Why were Bernie and Rand Paul the only two senators to vote against sanctions on Russia? Why won't Bernie release his taxes?
ReplyDeleteFrom Digby today:
ReplyDelete"Jane Mayer notices, as have others, that people like Hodgkinson often have a history of domestic violence. Rebecca Traister made the connection last year:
Recent research done by Everytown for Gun Safety has found that of the mass shootings in the United States between 2009 and 2015, 57 percent included victims who were a family member, spouse, or former spouse of the shooter. Sixteen percent of attackers had been previously charged with domestic violence. A recent piece in the New York Times suggested that the impulse toward domestic, gendered violence may be the thing that draws a few terrorists toward the Islamic State, since ISIS’s practices include sexual slavery and a fidelity to traditional gender norms as recruiting tools for young men.
"Obviously, not everyone accused of domestic violence becomes a mass shooter," Mayer writes. "But it’s clear that an alarming number of those who have been accused of domestic abuse pose serious and often a lethal threats, not just to their intimate partners but to society at large."
Hello
ReplyDeleteI'm Marie Scott I'm from united states, i am married with two kids. Life has been a miserable for me and my kids for over six years when my husband dumped me for his new mistress due to some minor misunderstanding that we had. So he engage in a fight with me and throw me out of the house, so all through these sorrowful period of my life, i have been in pain. So one day, as i was browsing through the internet, i came across many post about spell casters testifying how they were helped by them so i decided to seek help and advice. but naturally i didn't believe in spells or magic powers but due to the fact that i was deeply in love with my husband, i decided to go for a try, So i came in contact with Dr.iyaryi of driayaryi2012@hotmail.com but before i contact Dr.iyaryi, i was scammed by a lot of spell casters who makes me believe that they can help me. So because of all these, i almost lost hope that i can't get my husband back anymore so when i contacted this Dr.iyaryi, he assure me that he will help me to reunite my marriage, so without demanding any single cent from me, he did a spell for me and he advice me to wait for my husband to come back to me in 3 days. I actually waited as he said, after the spell was done on the third day my husband actually called me on my mobile phone and started apologizing for everything that he had caused me and the kids. This was how my marriage was reunited again and Starting from this point till date, i and my husband has been living peacefully and happily. Anybody viewing this testimony should please stop by and read and if you are so interested in contacting Dr. iyaryi for any help, simply do that via his email id (driayaryi2012@hotmail.com) and remain happy. And also Reach him on WhatsApp Number: +2349057915709 Thanks Dr. IyaryI
HELLO EVERYONE.. FEW MUNINETS TO REDY THIS INFOR ON HERPES CURE 2018..
ReplyDelete2017 MY MOTHER WAS DIAGNOSED OF HERPES/ KNOWN AS GENITAL WARTS ,I SPENT A LOT OF MONEY ON HER MEDICATION TILL A POINT I EVEN LOST HOPE,BECAUSE MY MOTHER WAS GRADUALLY DYING AND LOST HER MEMORY TOO, I WAS SO DESPERATE TO GET MY MOTHER BACK TO NORMAL, ONE DAY MY UNCLE WHO LIVES IN LONDON UNITED KINGDOM TOLD ME ABOUT DR OLIHA ,WHO HELPED HIM GET RID OF HERPES /GENITAL WART WITH HERBAL MEDICINE AND HIS HERBAL SOAP ,I WAS SO SHOCKED WHEN HE TOLD ME ABOUT THIS ,ALTHOUGH I NEVER BELIEVE IN HERB BUT, I KEEP TO BELIEVE BECAUSE MY UNCLE CAN'T TELL ME LIES WHEN IT COMES TO HEALTH CONDITION I CONTACTED DR OLIHA VIA HIS EMAIL; OLIHA.MIRACLEMEDICINE@GMAIL.COM , YOU CAN TALK TO HIM VIA CALL OR WHATSAPP MESSENGER ON +2349038382931 , HE REPLIED AND ASK ME TO SEND MY HOME ADDRESS AND MY MOTHER'S DETAIL AND THEN I PURCHASED THE HERBAL MEDICINE,SENT ME THE HERBAL MEDICINE THROUGH COURIER SERVICE, WHEN I RECEIVED THIS HERBAL MEDICINE USED IT FOR 2 WEEKS, AND 4 DAYS OF USAGE THE WARTS FELL OFF, MY MOTHER I NOW TOTALLY CURED AND MY MOTHER IS LIVING FREE AND HAPPY AGAIN. YOU CAN TALK TO DR VIA HIS MOBILE NUMBER OR WHATS APP HIM ON +2349038382931.ALL THANKS TO DOCTOR DR OLIHA