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I don't think we're going to find the capital-T-Truth on this question.
Consider this hypothetical situation:
I want to explain something I know to some people. I'm not sure how
much, if anything, these people know about the subject, so I put on my
tech writer hat and explain it "so any six-year-old can understand it"
(was that Einstein, or someone else?).
Person A already knew something about the subject but appreciates the
difficulty of crafting a simple explanation and gains a new respect for
my mastery. Person B knew nothing about the subject and gains new
insight. Person C is insulted that I am being so damn patronizing and
walks away in a huff.
Now surely this scenario can take place whether the individuals are men
or women. I might associate the behaviors with personality types, or I
might (erroneously) associate them with sex. Similarly, the participants
in this little gedanken experiment might take away a variety of
conclusions, regardless of sex. One might assume I shaped my
explanataion in simple terms because I'm a sexist pig. Another might
assume I did so because I think he, in particular, is an ignoramus. The
third might think I really don't know much about the subject and am just
flapping my lips about trivialities.
This is the basic fallacy of audience analysis. We are not, as tech
writers, going to please all of the people all of the time. No matter
who we think our target audience is, someone is going to take offense at
some unintentional slight, or is not going to understand the perfectly
clear words on the page, or is going to have such a radically different
view of the world that nothing we write makes any sense at all.
By the same token, when we conclude that someone else is treating people
differently based on sex, we should be careful that we are not jumping
to conclusions. Maybe that person treats everyone just as badly.
Certainly, there are a lot of people in the world who are guilty of
blatant sexism; but not all bad behavior is rooted in that particular
malady.
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