Bizarre pre-dawn experience...

After writing the last post, about a WaPo column by Alyssa Rosenberg, I clicked on my "Alyssa Rosenberg" tag. It only had 2 other posts. One, from a year ago, was to another WaPo column ("Hillary Clinton and I are done"), but the other was from 2009, about whether long novels are still worth reading. It was a clip from a Bloggingheads diavlog, Rosenberg with Matt Yglesias, and I needed to fix some code, so I clicked through to the Bloggingheads website. I saw that there was a new diavlog with Bob Wright and Christina Hoff Sommers. I'm interested in that, but it goes on for more than 2 hours, so I decided to click on one of the subtopics that jumped out, "Bob denies Christina’s charge of 'benevolent sexism.'" Here's the clip...



Hoff Sommers criticized Wright for "benevolent sexism" because of the way he'd diavlogged with a feminist philosopher. Instead of going at it with her, he babied the female philosopher with softball questions. Okay. Wright says he wants to defend himself and: "I've done dialogues with Ann Althouse that got so contentious that she accused me of being sexist in the other sense, of being too hard on her."

Bizarre. I'm just idly clicking around. I didn't expect to hear my own name. And now I feel called upon to correct the record. I didn't say it was sexist to be "too hard" or "contentious." I don't like that characterization, and now I feel sort of nauseated. Good lord, what all do people say about you when you're not around? Stumbling into one example, it makes me wonder! What a strange world!

Wright was referring to this diavlog with me from February 2017, which was the last time I talked with him. Watch this clip and you may see why I'm annoyed to be characterized as having called him sexist for being too hard on me. What's sexist is that he treats me differently and with far more hostility than he treats the men who engage vigorously and give him a hard time. He's never had me back on the show after this:



If you watch that clip, you'll see that I'm talking about how podcast listeners might not want to hear yelling. Wright volunteers that every time he talks to me he ends up yelling. "9 out of 10 of my podcast conversations do not involve this level of voice raising, however, all of the ones involving you do." That's what makes me want to do feminist analysis, which I introduce in the form of asking him "What's your analysis of that?" He says he doesn't know, so I tell him what my husband says: "He says that you should at least pretend to be enjoying speaking to me and that you should show appreciation for me and, whether you actually feel it or not, to make it feel like this is a fun, enjoyable conversation, this is a good place to be as opposed to an intense struggle."

I'm really talking about the aesthetics of radio at that point, the subjective experience of the brain between the earbuds, the listener. Wright repeats that he usually doesn't raise his voice, and I say, "but you do with me" and suggest again that it could be "analyzed." I remind him that I was the only woman on Bloggingheads in the early days. I say, "To some extent, I feel I'm being badgered and bullied because I'm a woman (and because you perceive me as conservative, even though I'm not)." I never use the word "sexism," but at 89:00, he tells me I've accused him of sexism.

Anyway, my objection wasn't to tough opposition and hardcore debate, it's about getting yelled at and treated with disrespect. Something about me triggers him, and he came right out and admitted it, but he resisted any sort of analysis of why. I think it's shallow (or repressive) not to want to consider whether there's a gender element to why another person is aggravating you so much. I'd go on the show — back when I got invited — and, as you can see, I'm smiling and really into the joys of conversation. Why is he yelling at me?!