Hurt Feelings = Oppression?

Posted on | November 18, 2015 | 54 Comments

In her perpetual hunt for victimhood, Jessica Valenti devotes an entire column to a “perhaps more insidious” form of discrimination, “everyday slights women can’t tangibly attribute to sexism”:

These subtler forms of sexism that women face can be even more difficult to handle than explicit discrimination. If your pay is unfair or a boss makes a pass at you, most of the time you can go to human resources. There’s a process in place for how to handle the sexism we know about, but there’s less direction about what we can do about a work culture that doesn’t value women.

In her quest to encourage women to believe they are victimized, Valenti cites an account by former Gawker staffer Dayna Evans, “On Gawker’s Problem With Women.” That is worth reading if only because Gawker is a liberal organization and the complaints of sexism by Nick Denton and his minions thus demonstrate that it is misguided to blame conservatives for discrimination against women, as so many feminists are prone to do.

That Gawker is something of a “boy’s club” is not the least bit surprising, because we hear similar complaints about almost every major online news operation. We heard it, for example, when Michelle Fields left the Daily Caller. I recall such complaints at the Washington Times during my decade there; even though there were female editors and reporters who were manifestly successful and valued in the organization, there were other women who, dissatisfied with their jobs, complained they were treated unfairly. Without clear evidence of outright discrimination, it is always difficult to assess claims of “sexism” in any workplace, because you can’t quantify and measure hurt feelings — which is what these complaints so often are actually about.

Almost everybody, I assume, at times feel they have been treated unfairly by their employer, and perhaps rightly so. However, a corporation is not in the business of producing fairness.

A company makes profit by delivering goods and services to its customers. Nothing is more important than this goal, because if the company doesn’t succeed in producing profit for investors, the company will go out of business, and the employees will no long have a job to complain about. Of course, we could say that discrimination might negatively impact a company’s profitability in various ways. Discrimination could means that the company is failing to gain the maximum advantage of employees’ abilities, and obvious unfairness might be harmful to employees’ morale, undermining the sense of teamwork necessary to success. However, in a competitive marketplace, it would be foolish to think that real discrimination — bad treatment of good employees — could coincide with success, simply because the employee treated unfairly in one company would be hired by a competing firm, which would thereby gain an advantage. If Dana Evans is a productive employee and was treated unfairly by Gawker, we must assume, she would be able to find another employer happy to hire her — and, indeed, she now writes for New York magazine’s site The Cut. Here are Ms. Evans’ 10 most recent contributions there:

11/17/2015
Adele Knows That There Are More Interesting
Things to Think About Than Body Issues

11/17/2015 at 2:06 p.m.
Zayn Malik Is Shirtless, Pouting, and
Riding a Dirt Bike Back Into Our Hearts

11/17/2015 at 12:52 p.m.
Puppy Tries Desperately to Escape
Relationship With John Mayer

11/17/2015 at 9:27 a.m.
Like a Good Friend, Amy Schumer Is Helping
Amber Rose Work on Her Confidence

11/16/2015 at 6:05 p.m.
Eating Requires More and More Effort Every Day

11/16/2015 at 2:10 p.m.
$2,000 Seems Like Kind of a Lot of Money
for a Selfie With Justin Bieber

11/16/2015 at 11:35 a.m.
When the Rock Cries About the Special Bond
He Has With His Daughter, I Cry, Too

11/16/2015 at 10:47 a.m.
World’s Worst Husband Returns Late Wife’s
Glamour Women of the Year Award

11/13/2015 at 5:52 p.m.
The Supreme Court Will Hear
A Challenge to Texas Abortion Law

11/13/2015 at 4:42 p.m.
Diane Keaton, 69-Year-Old Actress,
Is Horny As Hell, and We Love It

Quick, somebody alert the Pulitzer Prize committee. We have a winner.

Who is Dayna Evans? She attended New York University (annual tuition $46,170), graduating in 2009 with a B.A. in creative writing, worked a little more than two years for Simon & Shuster and, since leaving there in 2011, has worked 17 months teaching English in Bangladesh, seven months as web editor for a California gift shop, and 18 months at Gawker before leaving there in July. This kind of job-hopping resume is certainly not unusual for a 20-something liberal arts major (by the time I was 28, I’d worked eight different jobs since my college graduation, including a stint as DJ in a strip club), but how does this experience qualify Ms. Evans as an expert on discrimination? Her article about the alleged sexism at Gawker carries a preface explaining that executive editor John Cook declined to publish it because he was “done with Gawker writing about Gawker.” And her article also included this:

Diversity in general is a blind spot for Gawker Media. On Monday, John Cook published race and gender diversity statistics for the entire company: Overall it is 79 percent white and 57 percent male. In editorial, the staff is 61 percent male and 38 percent female, though given the fact that Jezebel.com is almost 100 percent female, excluding the women-focused site from his stats would skew editorial to being only 28 percent female. The statistics were released by Cook after BuzzFeed did the same for their company in October, in an equally unsatisfying look at who exactly runs the media.

And . . .? Your point is . . .?

Who cares what percentage of Gawker employees are white or black or Asian or female or gay? All that matters is profit.

If Nick Denton could outsource Gawker’s editorial work to Guatemalan peasants working in squalid huts for a few pesos a day, I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate to do so. There is no feasible limit to Nick Denton’s unscrupulous greed, and this is why investors put their money into Gawker media, because they trust Nick will be absolutely ruthless in his quest to make a dollar, and “diversity” is only of interest to Gawker’s investors if it somehow impacts Nick’s ability to produce revenue.

At what point do we conclude that complaints about “sexism” are in fact complaints about capitalism? Because if Gawker is successful as a commercial enterprise — if it is competitive in the marketplace — this suffices to justify the company’s policies, from a capitalist perspective. It is only when we judge the company by a political calculus of “social justice” that there is any reason to demand that Gawker justify itself in terms of “diversity.” Well, I’ve got news for Jessica Valenti and Dayna Evans: Social justice is a mirage.

There is no such thing in the world. Never has been and never will be. You can run your mouth about “equality” until you’re blue in the face, but you cannot thereby conjure equality into existence. Sometimes hurt feelings are just hurt feelings. You are not a victim of injustice.

You can bet Nick Denton is glad he got rid of Dayna Evans, and after she eventually leaves New York magazine, they’ll be glad she’s gone, too. Nobody likes a whiner.

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

54 Responses to “Hurt Feelings = Oppression?”

Quartermaster
November 18th, 2015 @ 7:54 pm

After Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, one of his staff said it was so unfair. carter replied, “life is unfair.” That is the summation of all the law and the profits.
NeoWayland
November 18th, 2015 @ 8:01 pm

So again, f*** your trauma. If your past bothers you that much, get help. I honestly hope you come to terms with it. I hope you manage to move forward. I won’t say anything meant to dredge up bad memories, and don’t think anyone should intentionally try to harm your feelings.

But nobody, nobody, should censor themselves to protect you from your pathological, and pathologically stupid, sensitivities.
— Chris Hernandez, ‘Microaggressions’ And ‘Trigger Warnings,’ Meet Real Trauma
RS
November 18th, 2015 @ 8:04 pm

These sorts of articles tend to be written by those who have never in their lives actually owned a business, even if it was just baby-sitting for money or cutting lawns. They approach the employer-employee relationship with the presumption that business owners have nothing better to do all day than concoct ways to make their employees’ lives a living hell. At the bottom is the Marxist assumption that a product’s value is solely determined by labor which goes into it and that anything above that is theft from workers, so that the mere act of hiring someone to do something for money is in a way discrimination.
concern00
November 18th, 2015 @ 9:04 pm

If I understand the definitions correctly, I suffer from micro-aggressions, discrimination and hurt feelings on a daily basis. I used to call this living, but if there’s an opportunity to monetize it, I’ll call it what you like.
Powered by UNicorn flatulence
November 18th, 2015 @ 9:12 pm

Jezebel needs some real diversity
CrustyB
November 18th, 2015 @ 10:30 pm

Reading this article makes me less likely to hire women because they’re on a hair trigger to think that I treat them unfairly because they’re women.

Holy cats, it’s an infernal cycle!
Finrod Felagund
November 18th, 2015 @ 10:34 pm

I remember when Ellen Degeneres was still a comedian, she had a routine where she was talking about a friend of hers who was the type that always seemed happy, and was madly in love with her husband, and everything was going wonderful, up until the day she called her up sobbing on the phone.

(paraphrasing here, since I don’t remember it exactly from memory)

“This is so horrible, I think I may have to leave him”
“Well, hold on, it can’t be that bad, what’s wrong?”
“He leaves the toilet seat up.”
“That’s all?”
“But I ask him to not leave it up, and and he agrees, but he does it anyway, he must hate me or something”
(pause)
“Well, I don’t mean to minimize your pain, but when he starts hitting you and f*cking your sister, call me back, okay?”
Evi L. Bloggerlady
November 18th, 2015 @ 10:43 pm

http://thedailybanter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2014-11-12-at-8.24.42-PM.png
Finrod Felagund
November 18th, 2015 @ 10:43 pm

From the movie Labyrinth:

Sarah: “That’s not fair!”
Jareth: “You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is?”
DeadMessenger
November 18th, 2015 @ 11:46 pm

They need RSM to write some pieces for them.
Jason Lee
November 18th, 2015 @ 11:47 pm

“…slights women can’t tangibly attribute to sexism…”

Oh, gee. Really?

Old news: microaggressions

New hotness: nanoaggressions

Or is it homeopathic aggression? Or is it reiki aggression? Or aggessrion via ESP?
DeadMessenger
November 18th, 2015 @ 11:55 pm

That’s totally intolerant and discriminatory, patriarch! I denounce you, and the white horse you rode in on! I’m sick of your unfair, sexist treatment of women in your comments. And why do you say “hair” trigger? Is there something wrong with my hair? And then you talk about my “cycle”! As if that’s your concern! Do you know how hurtful that is? My back is killing me, and I have cramps, and I need chocolate. I have a medical condition, you know!

And making personal remarks to other commenters is forbidden in this blog’s commenter’s handbook and guidelines! Did you know that? I’ll see you in court, mister! And I know you’re staring at my butt while I walk out of here; you’re only making things worse for yourself!
DeadMessenger
November 18th, 2015 @ 11:57 pm

I say the same thing all the time, and nobody quotes me. Of course, I leave out the 3rd, 4th and 5th sentences, but I don’t think that has anything to do with it.
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:01 am

I denounce you and your picoaggressions, homeophobe!

This blog is supposed to be a safe spa……
….BWAHAHAHA
….I can’t even say that with a straight face.
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:01 am

“…the law and the profits.” 😀
Jason Lee
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:02 am

I wear your anti-homeophobe denunciation as a badge of honor.
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:10 am

I’m a senior manager, and what the executives expect from me is that I:
(1) keep lower-level employees from ever talking to them, and
(2) make their pain go away.

To those guys at the C-levels, “discrimination” is just something you give lip-service to managing, in order to get the unwashed masses to shut up and get back to work.

Corporate executives are just like parents: they don’t care about fair, they care about quiet. Because I understand that and its implications, I’ve never been unemployed since I was 14, and I never will be.
Daniel Freeman
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:13 am

World’s Worst Husband Returns Late Wife’s Glamour Women of the Year Award

Because they gave it to a man, so it was no longer an award for women like his late wife. Duh.
Quartermaster
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:15 am

I don’t have any chocolate, but I think I have some carob in the cabinet. It’s better for you.
Quartermaster
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:15 am

The place would reach critical mass before he posted the first article. The Nuke fallout would be horrendous.
Quartermaster
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:17 am

That just popped out. I read that line years ago in one of Jerry Pournelle’s “There Will Be War” anthologies. Or maybe it was a Byte column. I’m not sure, but he did write it first, long ago.
Daniel Freeman
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:19 am

Well, but those two should be enough.
Daniel Freeman
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:21 am

That is entirely too good of an impersonation.
CrustyB
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:22 am

Stop fat-shaming me, racist.
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:31 am

Chocolate contains anandamide, which helps open the synapses in my vast, pulsating brain, allowing feelings of happiness to transmit. Also, serotonin and endorphins are released when chocolate is eaten, stabilizing my mood, and giving me a sense of euphoria. It improves my cognitive function and is loaded with antioxidents.

So I sneer at your carob.

I must have chocolate. Specifically, dark chocolate with almonds. Don’t try to low-ball me; I need the real stuff.
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:32 am

That’s the way I figure it. Why should I have to sugar coat it or soften the blow?
DeadMessenger
November 19th, 2015 @ 12:36 am

Holy cow (!), I need to write that one down. I’m going to use it at work tomorrow or the next day.
RKae
November 19th, 2015 @ 1:02 am

Sarah: “That’s not fair!”

Jareth: “You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is?”

(From “Labyrinth.”)
RKae
November 19th, 2015 @ 1:08 am

Long ago, I was told, “If you give in to the demands of these leftist vermin you’re wasting your time, because they will just come back with crazier demands.”

The thing is: They don’t wait for us to give in anymore. They just come up with crazier and crazier demands. They’ve moved on to crazy demand #15 before we’ve even had an opportunity to heap scorn on crazy demand #1. The aggressions get more and more microscopic and more and more invisible. It’s like a band that segues right into a long list of encores before anybody’s had a chance to clap.
Fail Burton
November 19th, 2015 @ 1:59 am

The sense of entitlement, self-pity, paranoia and more than implied inferiority of men which bleeds out of that article makes this woman’s “problems” self-explanatory. It is always part and parcel of the exact same mechanism: these weird supremacists walk around with an ideological gender studies chip on their shoulder and attribute that to my short-sightedness as a man, not as an individual. The only real men are those who confess to their sins and align themselves with gender study theory’s irrational suspicions of every move a man makes. Any pushback is confirmation “misogyny” was there all along. It is a black hole of an argument men can never win and nor are they meant to. It is as much of a trap as is that of a boxer who is a counter-puncher. There are no individuals in that world of supremacy; there are only good women and bad men who don’t yet have the good sense to act like women. And she laughs at the idea of a quip like joking someone is a walking sexual harassment lawsuit as “misogyny.” All their sad devotion to “diversity” in male or white dominated spaces while consistently turning a blind eye to any female or non-white spaces tells the true story. These people are supremacists and ideological liars.
Dana
November 19th, 2015 @ 6:40 am

Our esteemed host wrote:

Almost everybody, I assume, at times feel they have been treated unfairly by their employer, and perhaps rightly so. However, a corporation is not in the business of producing fairness.

This must surely be news to the left!
Dana
November 19th, 2015 @ 6:44 am

You may download the Hurt Feelings Report Form here.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lfhsqak10H1qz4s6ho1_500.gif
Dana
November 19th, 2015 @ 6:48 am

Since my mother ~~inflicted a female first name on me~~ gave me a first name more often given to females, do I get to claim sexism if something negative happens to me at work?
Dana
November 19th, 2015 @ 6:50 am

If you don’t sugar-coat the blow, it’s an aggression; if you sugar coat it, it’s a micro-aggression.
NeoWayland
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:22 am

How dare you make cider go up my nose!!!
NeoWayland
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:23 am

When I saw that, I knew it was just perfect. So it went straight to the quote file.
NeoWayland
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:25 am

Only if you are a member of an Approved Minority.
Fail Burton
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:28 am

People are linking to a U of York comments policy for a feminist Facebook group. It is a long seething mass of insanity. These are Orwell’s children, and not in the good sense. Instead of listening to the principled warnings of their elders they have run headlong into the very traps Orwell warned of. What he warned of is that you can hide the most rancid ideologies within buzzwords like “Big Brother,” “diversity,” “social justice,” “progressive.”

It is a truism that there is no principle that can be shown unless there are contrasts of dark and light. If you have misogyny without misandry and homophobia without heterophobia, that is only dark, and a con game to boot. The same one Orwell warned of.
NikFromNYC
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:55 am

You just penned The Mediocrity Manifesto of our sad age, how middle management destroys company innovation by hiding, aggressively and punitively, company structural problems that destroy competitiveness. I could care less about discrimination, and in fact that’s also what management glosses over, as incompetent affirmative action hires are celebrated, and others, good people, are blamed for not covering other’s mistakes.

The be so proud of mere lowly job security is the mindset of a bully bureaucrat ass kisser. I pity you, for you are a moral loser, and the hope of every startup hoping to compete with your company and scalp your best talent right from under you. Yuk!

You just described every mid-sized company now suffering massive turnover and effective blacklisting due to the new great equalizer, the Glassdoor.com employer review site. You are cynically even nihilistically verging on sadistically celebrating your own encouragement of a textbook toxic workplace, having little to do with countering spoiled grievance culture.
NikFromNYC
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:55 am

You just penned The Mediocrity Manifesto of our sad age, how middle management destroys company innovation by hiding, aggressively and punitively, company structural problems that destroy competitiveness. I could care less about discrimination, and in fact that’s also what management glosses over, as incompetent affirmative action hires are celebrated, and others, good people, are blamed for not covering other’s mistakes.

The be so proud of mere lowly job security is the mindset of a bully bureaucrat ass kisser. I pity you, for you are a moral loser, and the hope of every startup hoping to compete with your company and scalp your best talent right from under you. Yuk!

You just described every mid-sized company now suffering massive turnover and effective blacklisting due to the new great equalizer, the Glassdoor.com employer review site. You are cynically even nihilistically verging on sadistically celebrating your own encouragement of a textbook toxic workplace, having little to do with countering spoiled grievance culture.
Squid Hunt
November 19th, 2015 @ 8:10 am

The thought that occurs to me when I read these comments about sexism or racism is the patronization with which their warrior heroes are acting. These women are too stupid to know they’re being microagressed. Blacks are too stupid to know who the right people to vote for are. Women need someone to go in and negotiate their pay raises for them because they’re incapable of making an argument for themselves. They need to be directed to the appropriate channels because they can’t figure out for themselves the proper response to these insidious and subtle microagressions. If I was being referred to this way, I would be insulted. You’re basically calling women and minorities children when you treat them in this manner.
Squid Hunt
November 19th, 2015 @ 8:12 am

Just make sure you vote for Hillary.
Squid Hunt
November 19th, 2015 @ 8:13 am

I just watched that the other day. Excellent.
Gunga
November 19th, 2015 @ 9:32 am

I love the episode of Star Trek that features your vast pulsating brain…many quatloos were lost that day, I can tell you…
Jeanette Victoria
November 19th, 2015 @ 9:36 am

I always hated having a woman as a shift lead. It was always women who got the rest of floor staff injured at work.
Gunga
November 19th, 2015 @ 9:47 am

“Orwell’s Children”…THAT is a title in search of a book…

Paging Mr. McCain! It’s your publisher o line one!
RS
November 19th, 2015 @ 9:54 am

I’m not sure DM’s comment should be taken that way, but she can speak for herself.

I think the problem exists in “economies of scale.” I’m a small business owner. I know my employees, their families, their personal travails and triumphs. I care about them.

Unfortunately, the larger an organization gets, the less those relationships can be maintained. That’s the problem, not because profit is bad, but because efficiencies of scale preclude them. At some point the owners/upper level management cannot focus on both employees and the goal of being a profitable business.

I don’t disagree with you about middle management. When I’ve dealt with large outside corporations, I’ve found that there are too many layers of people between me–the pointy end of the spear–and the real decision makers. Those interim levels seem intent upon protecting and justifying their own existence. Ironically, efficiency suffers.

I don’t know what the answer is. For me, it’s to remain “small.” Whether I can compete with the “big boys” is an open question, but at least, I’m happy and make a decent living.

Plus, I get invited to all my employees’ kids’ weddings, so there’s a lot free food and booze to make up for it.
dustbury.com » Small and Gawky
November 19th, 2015 @ 6:06 pm

[…] The restructuring at Gawker Media — basically, Gawker itself is going all politics, all the time, and some of the “lesser” brands are being shed — is likely no surprise to Robert Stacy McCain: […]
Daniel Freeman
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:05 pm

It must be incredibly frustrating as an Islamic terrorist not to have your views and motives taken seriously by the societies you terrorize, even after you have explicitly and repeatedly stated them. Even worse, those on the regressive left, in their endless capacity for masochism and self-loathing, have attempted to shift blame inwardly on themselves, denying the terrorists even the satisfaction of claiming responsibility.

It’s like a bad Monty Python sketch:

You should read the whole thing at The Dark Herald.
Matt_SE
November 19th, 2015 @ 7:07 pm

I am oppressed and victimized every day. EVERY. DAY.
But it’s so subtle that I’m not aware of it. The world owes me a million dollars. Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!