a particular kind of interruption

I'm annoyingly interrupty, but am working on it. when I'm talking to another very interrupty person I'm so relieved because I know I'm not going to steamroller over them.

But, my personal style or social failings aside.

I noticed this pattern at WisCon:

1) a woman on a panel is talking,

2) a person asks a question of that woman,

3) A man either on the panel or in the audience answers the question.

(In fact often several men would shout out their answers apparently in competition with each other... before the woman originally talking could respond to the question she was asked. )

Each time this happened, I could feel the room bristle with anger as many of the women (and probably some men) recognized it as annoying... nay, deeply offensive.

In group situations this happens a lot and I look around and try to figure out which women are noticing it and which aren't. Sometimes I can tell who just got ticked off, and then we bond afterwards. And women will say "thank god you were there... or i would have thought i was going crazy... i was so angry." But often I have no idea at the time and will only hear the "real" response later. And the men doing it never hear about it.

People in general, but especially men, should be wary of this dynamic and should give the person who was originally talking a chance to answer the question or the point raised.

Over the course of the con, I noticed women apologizing for interrupting or talking too much, but rarely heard a guy say, "I'm sorry, I interrupted, I just got excited about the conversation... go on, please."

The *unusual* thing about wiscon is that women bothered to call men on this kind of thing at all. Usually, they just shut up, and then leave the room and go to the kitchen to talk. So, I think they should take the criticisms seriously. It's not like I'm pointing out anything new and I know I've read sociologists talking about this... and linguists.

As a side note, I appreciated it when panel moderating women were good at putting a lid on 2 or 3 men dominating a conversation in a room full of women. Laura Q did it, Suzette did it, Elizabeth Bear did it... and many others!

It takes practice, goodwill, and commitment on all sides to develop the skills to call people on moments like these & to hear what's going on & respond without massive defensiveness & denial.

Comments

[Susan]

There's a policy I've adopted for when I'm moderating, of prioritizing questions from people who haven't spoken yet. If you've already had a chance to speak, you don't get another until every other hand up belongs to someone else who's already spoken. It's far from perfect, but it goes a long long way towards minimizing the conversation-monopolizing abilities of certain audience members.

Good moderating can really make all the difference in these things. I've tried really hard to copy behaviors from good moderators--the tactic I just mentioned, for instance, and the firm-but-gentle "that thing you are trying to talk about, that's an interesting topic, but it's not the topic we're here to discuss." I'm a little surprised more people don't do these things.

[belledame222]

I have this about me, too, I know (also manifests online as multiple-post syndrome). I know where it comes from: bubbling anxiety that I'll never get a word in edgewise, as learned from my mother, who is both an anxious "flooder" and an interrupter herself.

[Lisa Hirsch]

Does Wiscon do any moderator training? For that matter, is it possible to discuss respectful participation in the user manu...er, program book?

[Jed]

Lisa: There's a tips-for-moderator document linked from the programming page. Unfortunately, the main version of that is in PDF, and the HTML version is badly formatted.

Here's my unofficial reformatted version; once everyone's had a chance to rest up from the con, I'll talk with the WisCon folks about replacing their HTML version with mine. (We talked some about it before the con, but the relevant people were, of course, swamped, so we left it on hold.)

All of these are closely based on the Minicon moderator tip sheet.