Stage One: "People like you can't do X. If people like you could do X, then where are all the people like you doing X?"
Stage Two: "Even if people like you can do X, they do it badly. That's why we don't study people like you doing X. Because even though you did it, you were terrible at it."
Stage Three: "Maybe people like you can do X, but people like us are just better at X, that's all. Probably something genetic. It's science!"
Stage Four: "People like you can only do X with special help. People like you have rigged the system to discriminate against people like us doing X. If the world were fair, people like us would be the only ones actually doing X."
Stage Five: "No one ever said people like you couldn't do X. Why are you so sensitive?"
Stage Six: "I don't know why you keep making a fuss about all this -- who even notices what sort of person is doing X?"
ETA:
Stage Seven*: X is naturally meant for people like you. People like you don't need to be paid much for doing X, you should just be happy to do it because its so suited to you. People like us will be over here doing a better-paid thing that people like you can't do.
(I've watched this play out in the literary world in real-time, but yeah, it's everywhere.)
(This is on my mind right now, btw, because I've been reading Angela Thirkell novels, and the sheer contempt she has for women scholars as well as for anyone in the working class is just breathtaking.)
*Thanks to Nanai in comments
4 comments:
Stage 7 - X is naturally meant for people like you. People like you don't need to be paid much for doing X, you should just be happy to do it because its so suited to you. People like us will be over here doing a better-paid thing that people like you can't do.
That DEFINITELY needs to be added!
That last bit caught me by surprise. A female author has contempt for female scholars and thinkers? It takes some hardcore ignorance and denial to hold that disposition, especially since shes likely been margnizlaed by white men.
I assume this would be "moving the goalposts" fallacy, right? It's pretty ridiculous "reasoning" -_- I hope we can keep people like this out of our universities.
Thirkell was writing in the 1930s - 1960s. But yes, there are plenty of people like that still around, sadly.
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