Actually, no. I think the point is that some behaviors are not so obvious but are undesirable.
How about the experience of millions of professional women who have routinely been assigned menial tasks while their colleagues who are men are not? It might not be a microaggression if it was random. But it isn’t. It is a pattern of the way men treat women. I think it is a crappy name, because the word aggression connotes a conscious action, and by their nature microaggressions rarely are. They are often simply ingrained unthinking habits of blithe contempt. They are only ‘aggressive’ becaue of their cumulative effect on the women who must either endure them passively or try to push back without angering the men who inflict them, who have the power.
I don’t know, because they didn’t give that information! If the video had the boss say “Jane, you’re a woman and thus obviously good at these types of things, can you take notes for us men”, that would have given the viewer a blaring klaxon horn and flashing red light that this was a microaggression and something to avoid. But as it was, it appeared that he simply chose her at random to undertake the customary and important job of note taking, which in my mind does not make this a microaggression, no matter how pissy she seemed to get at being assigned that role.
And you demonstrate why there are these training videos. Because men don’t seem to be able to see how any of this actually works. Or, they don’t want to.
so you don’t think a male supervisor could ever assign a woman a menial job like when there is a comparable man that he could assign it to, even if his motivations for doing so were as benign as simply randomly choosing one or the other?
That would not be a microaggression but blatant sexism.
I ask this sincerely. Did your training actually define micro aggressions for you? Is it your impression these acts are always unambiguous with obvious intent?
I had similar training, and one of the objectives was to make us mindful that something innocuous-seeming to white males like me might induce a different reaction to someone in a protected group the hundredth time they experienced it.
A video asking the viewer to assess how something was mishandled would be a shitty one if there was a voiceover whispering, “And please note, this is the tenth time in a row he asked her to take notes. Tsk, tsk!”
Why wouldn’t he just ask for a volunteer? Or bring in someone not involved in the discussion to take notes? Or record the call for later transcribing (perhaps automated transcription)?
I didnt mean a literal time clock. But calling somebody(male) back from the drive home, to add another half hour of work after leaving the premises, is not the same as taking notes while working your regular duties (attending a meeting).
A better comparison would be calling somebody (female)back from the drive home to tidy up the coffee cups .
You don’t think that you might want to question the assumption that the male is superior to the female?
Huh. As a white male, when my (female) director asked me to take notes, I said “sure no problem” and took notes. And that was that. I did not have a problem with it, and I expect if I’d told her to take her own ***ing notes, I’d be unemployed.
If she always, every time, asked you to take notes and none of the other team members, you’d start to bristle, right?
Here’s where someone might interject, “But how do we know that’s the case in the video?” We don’t. We do know there was one woman, and she was selected. My training would have pointed out this was pretty tone deaf, at best. If any of the trainees attempted to logic it away based on “facts in evidence,” the trainer would have explained how they were missing the point.
When I was still working at a world class progressive art school, we had some group training on reporting sexual harassment. Once the trainers had presented the scenario, and the canned answer, the group got into a very thoughtful discussion of how the nuances of gender fluidity and self discovery at said art school made the canned answer not ‘feel quite right’. The HR director admonished us for disrespecting the trainers and shut down discussion…
agreed, that would have been the best move of course
And if you learned that’s the best approach, the training worked. Congratulations!
When I was still working at a world class progressive art school, HR led some group training on reporting sexual harassment. Once the trainers had presented the scenario, and the canned answer, the group got into a very thoughtful discussion of how the nuances of gender fluidity and self discovery at said art school made the canned answer not ‘feel quite right’. The HR director admonished us for disrespecting the trainers and shut down discussion…
I think that was the point of the OP; the scenario did not give enough information to draw the conclusion that they were looking for in the DEI course.
I’m an oldish white male,
And I fully acknowledge that in the past, and in many instances there still are, a lot of sexist assumptions underlying this sort of interaction.
The thing that I’d be taking note of in this sort of situation, that is absent from the information given is whether it was a pattern of behaviour. There are two possibilities here -
a) The action was sexist - either deliberately or subconsciously. In which case he needs to examine his behaviour and change.
b) He had a rational, objective and fair reason for chooosing the lady that had nothing to do with her sex. What then should he do? Does he need to explain every decision? Should he have chosen the man to avoid the impression of sexism?
I find it unhelpful to immediately leap to the assumption that it is a microaggression. If this same video had been shown to female employee it also perpetuates the idea that if a lady is asked to do something that was historically “woman’s work” the defacto assumption is because she is a lady - there could be a whole range of reasons for asking her to do it that have nothing at all to do with her sex.
In other words - sometimes training of this nature teaches people to look for offense when there need not be any offense present
If I’m in a meeting, I assume that I’m there to participate, not to be a stenographer focused on capturing all of the discussion. The notes I do take will be ones pertinent to my responsibilities and probably not comprehensive minutia nor written in a way to be useful for (or even particularly readable by) someone else as I have my own peculiar system for notetaking. I can’t imagine asking someone else to take notes specifically for me, or expect that they would be what I wanted, especially when it comes to recording actions that I’m obliged to respond to. If you want comprehensive minutes for a film, hire a stenographer or take an audio recording and have an admin transcribe it. I’m here to interact with the rest of the team and discuss the issue.
Although I’ve never had a manager direct me to take notes, I did work for a couple of passive-aggressive jerkwads who would pull other shenanigans to reinforce my subordinate stature in front of others, and as the junior member of the team in one case I allowed it to go on for a while until a more senior member pulled me aside and said, “I wouldn’t allow him to treat me that way, and you shouldn’t, either.” And yes, that did cause some trouble with that manager but it also mostly put an end to the shitty behavior, at least out in the open. But, again, I’m not in the default position of having to prove myself in every possible way in the face of prejudice and doubts about my basic competence all day long.
Stranger
In many meeting formats, there is a designated note taker as one of the roles. It’s common, accepted, and valuable. The role is typically rotated through the many people involved, it’s usually many people in the meeting. Often it’s something like a retrospective, sprint planning, or other structured format. Taking notes is participating, and note takers are allowed to speak.
In the OP, it seems like the problem is the impression that the woman would take notes, in a stenographer-like role. The idea that the boss may be randomly assigning that role is certainly a possibility, and if all the members of the team were the same gender and ethnic background there might not be a perception of bias. The point is that when there are historical biases and common disrespect, the old ways may be suboptimal. Simply assigning tasks blindly can lead to issues, as explained.