I think my gendered language is quite bad, or maybe I lack the fear of being called sexist and so am not afraid to speak clearly about how often my language is gendered and try to fix it. For example, descriptions that first come to mind for women I call geniuses:
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1. "Her work is amazing"
2. "She's a badass"
3. "She writes the most beautiful code I've ever seen, like poetry; I feel bad corrupting it"
4. "She's an amazing person"
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I like #3 a lot. It's so much more specific than the vague "genius" (I don't really use the term, despite being able to come up with an example if forced. It really ignores the breadth of intelligence and human capability.)
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To some degree, yes, but it also captures a pattern of complimenting something a woman produced rather than her directly, which I always seem to do for women I consider to be geniuses
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#3 doesn't like being talked about on the internet or I'd tell you who it is haha
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I vote for applying the praise-the-work standard equally to all genders. It also leaves more room for people to be multifaceted in their intellect. Let's just kill the term genius unless it's "a genius at <X>".
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Good luck with that
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The problem goes deeper, down to even words like "smart" and "intelligent." Language models seem to echo this
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I could only get the "g" word for Jeff though lol
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fwiw, to speak nothing of women geniuses, I definitely think that fetishization of genius men can be very toxic (and often this is fetishization of their resources, etc..), and many of these men's genius is derived in large part from their privilege (and sometimes spouses!)
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Yeah, I think it's a bit gross and dehumanising, especially for the person being labelled as the genius. Not to mention how it distracts from seeing the impact of the environment and systems, and of other people surrounding/supporting the person. See:
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Replying to @kamatsu8 and @TaliaRinger
I often see "genius" being used to excuse extremely bad and abusive behaviour (for a widely known example, see people calling steve jobs a genius and therefore excusing his shitty behaviour to his employees)
Like, if Liam's point is if you are comfortable with the term, it can enable a bunch of toxic stuff. If not, it makes it seem like people don't see your flaws and struggles, or that you are somehow not living up to your potential…
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