
Don't Ban “Bossy” - atomical
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2014/03/dont-ban-bossy.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
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growupkids
That's funny, I actually heard the word used when I was a military cadet in
high school. It was used to teach the difference between being a a leader, or
just, well bossy. Don't be a boss, don't act bossy, and so on.

Bossy people, we were taught, boss people around by using their rank. No one
wants to follow them, they just have to. That's the worst kind of leader, we
were taught. don't be bossy was good feedback. A good leader inspires, sets
the example, is firm but fair, and through their behavior and actions people
will want to follow them.

Not sure what all this implied sexism stuff is, I only heard it used around
men, and it was and still is a damn fine term for the bad ones. What term
would they prefer be used for someone that's acting bossy?

~~~
calibraxis
In Sandberg-style liberal feminism (which preserves inequality except for the
more well-off white women and therefore doesn't help all women), I can imagine
they want to improve subordination to female bosses. So you should be ready to
follow her imperatives like you would Zuckerberg's.

In corporations, boss subordination is so complete that "bossy" only applies
to someone who isn't actually literally a boss. So I can imagine "bossy" is
used to question the legitimacy of female bosses. However, more serious kinds
of feminism directly attack the existence of bosses, since many more women are
at the bottom of hierarchies than the top.

~~~
hga
In alignment with your observation, this campaign is thought by some to be
battlespace preparation for Hillary's 2016 presidential campaign.

~~~
judk
Oh my. That is brilliant submarine marketing.

~~~
hga
I prefer "cover influence operation".

------
skore
(I didn't even know the "Ban Bossy" campaign existed, so I guess my comment is
more about that and goes along with what the article is saying.)

Looking at the videos - to an outsider like myself, they look massively
ridiculous. So there is a societal problem where girls are either not
empowered to lead or are discouraged from leading by others. To stop that
practice, we will get rid of calling them a specific word.

Words only have the meaning that we put into them. "Bossy" can be applied
correctly or incorrectly. How is the word at fault?

I think "only in America" applies here. Instead of understanding that this is
a complex, complicated issue in society, let's find a catchy campaign title
and rail against intangible things. Oh aren't we all happy we have dealt with
the problem in a format that we can easily post to our facebook wall instead
of, you know, doing the hard work of actually figuring out and dealing with
people on a deeper, personal level.

And yes, I get it, the campaign uses a reductive catchphrase to get a foot in
the door and then deliver a more nuanced message. But I think a campaign set
on a weird, possibly destructive premise may do more harm than good. It may
lead people to think they're doing something when they're actually doing
nothing apart from perpetuating a meme.

How about we all just stop and check ourselves before reducing others to
adjectives in general? Grown-ups and children, women and men alike?

Maybe this tendency to grasp for the simple answer, the quick phrase at all
times is the root of the problem and should thus not be utilized as a
solution.

------
orky56
It's funny but "bully" is more associated with males and "bossy" with females.
Both have negative connotations of forcing someone to do something against
their own will. It seems that the reason behind not banning "bossy" is that
females require this opportunity for leadership development. It seems sexist
that females should be allowed to impose their will on others but males
shouldn't in similar situations. I would argue that females already have a leg
up on their male counterparts with the fact that they mature earlier during
adolescence and perhaps use this to their advantage. As the article mentions,
other ways exist to exhibit leadership. Being bossy though is the worst
alignment of incentives: power & peer acceptance thru fear vs respect.

~~~
loomio
Oh yes, this must be why leadership positions in business, government, and all
areas of life are dominated by women. Oh wait...

------
uptown
"Ban Bossy" Spokesperson: Beyoncé

Beyoncé Lyrics:

Bow down bitches, bow bow down bitches

Bow down bitches, bow bow down bitches

H-town vicious, h-h-town vicious

I’m so crown, bow bow down bitches

Beyoncé's husband Jay-Z Lyrics Excerpt:

My nigga, please - you ain't signing no checks like these

My nigga, please - you pushing no wheels like these

My nigga, please - you ain't holding no tecks like these

My nigga, please - you don't pop in vest like these

~~~
someguyonhn
Firstly, I fail to see how the lyrics from a Jay-Z song from 2002 are anything
other than completely irrelevant to the Ban Bossy campaign. But if you're
going to bring it up, we might as well do it right.

1) Pharrell says those lines not Jay-Z. This is the same person who
wrote/sings/produced the Academy-Award nominated "Happy" song from Despicable
Me.

2) The context of lyrics within a song, the intended meaning of the song
itself, and intended audience of a song should obviously be taken into
consideration. On a site like HN, that so often seems to point out the
ridiculous nature of arguments against video games causing violence, citing
lyrics of someone's husband as somehow a statement about.... well I have to be
honest, I can't follow the logic of the point you're trying to make... is
disappointing.

And finally 3) Here are some lyrics from Jay-Z that seem pretty relevant to
your comment:

"...Rap critics that say he's Money, Cash, Hoes I'm from the hood stupid, what
type of facts are those If you grew up with holes in your zapatos You'd
celebrate the minute you was having dough I'm like f-ck critics, you can kiss
my whole a--hole If you don't like my lyrics, you can press fast forward...

...I don't know what you take me as Or understand the intelligence that Jay-Z
has I'm from rags to riches, ni--as I ain't dumb I got 99 problems, but a
b-tch ain't one, hit me"

~~~
uptown
Why'd you censor the lyrics?

"I fail to see how the lyrics from a Jay-Z song from 2002 are anything other
than completely irrelevant to the Ban Bossy campaign."

We're talking about banning words. If I had to guess, I'd bet more people
would support banning "nigga" than they would "bossy". Personally, I don't
think any words should be "banned" because it's simply not possible. Society
may evolve to not use a word, or shun those that do use a word - but a
campaign to "ban" a word does an injustice to the literal meaning of the word
"ban" because it's just not realistic, or possible.

~~~
someguyonhn
To your question: I censor myself on HN because I don't believe Hacker News,
which is often used by children and is a place that seems to wish to be more
welcoming to women and racial minorities, is the right place to have an
environment where swearing or using racially inflammatory language is okay.

Especially when readers don't know my relationship to the subject matter, or
my relationship to the individual I'm addressing.

To your point about relevance, I'm going to point out to you that zero people
are actually advocating banning a word. They're saying "hey let's stop calling
girls who express leadership skills "bossy" because that has negative
consequences". To which I think the average person would probably be open to.
They are advocating not using a word in the wrong context. Call kids bossy
when they're being brats, sure, but when someone, particularly girls are being
leaders and doing the same things that boys are complimented for, don't call
them bossy.

#WhenSomeonesBeingALeaderDontCallThemBossy is a pretty long hashtag and a
terrible way to quickly market your campaign. #banbossy is memorable, gets to
the point, and can encourage a conversation.

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jedmeyers
I understand that this is a touchy subject, especially on HN, but come on:
"Avoid editing what you want to say in your head, and try not to worry about
being wrong." This is straight from their Leadership Tips for Girls pdf. They
are encouraging girls to just say whatever comes to mind. What's next -
calling everyone who disagrees "sexist"?

~~~
Tohhou
>What's next - calling everyone who disagrees "sexist"?

If you disagree then you are automatically labeled as one of the obvious
sexist rapist rape apologist pedophile neckbeard supremacist spermjacked nerd
sperglord virgin libertarian losers. They can't possibly be wrong, so if you
disagree you must be one of the hell bound sinners of the most dire nightmare.

>"Avoid editing what you want to say in your head, and try not to worry about
being wrong."

This is very sexist of them. Their implication is that males are stupid and
don't ever censor themselves when they work to be good leaders - that they are
only gain leader status because they say every dumb idea they have, and that
saying stupid things shouldn't have any consequences.

~~~
pigDisgusting
You forgot "creepy stalker", you closed-minded male chauvinist ape.

~~~
Tohhou
That's female chauvinist ape, shitlord!

~~~
pigDisgusting
Well played, Tohhou, well played.

Now if you'll please excuse me, I've just stepped in some of my own doggy doo,
and I need scrape off my shoe.

------
gaius
I love the delicious lack of self-awareness with which these things are
delivered. Like people who pay $50,000/year for college to study a subject of
no practical use telling me to "check your privilege".

~~~
someguyonhn
This is a kind of long response. But I hope maybe you'll read through it. Just
saying "check your privilege" is probably not the best starting point for the
conversation, so I'll try to do a better job of explaining. I don't know if
you are misunderstanding what is meant by "privilege" or not, but the
privilege being talked about when someone says "check your privilege" in my
experience are the privileges that come from being part of the, for lack of a
better term, more socially accepted or socially powerful group. Things like
white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, you get the idea.

So regardless of your level of income or education, you can be, and probably
are, still privileged in the way society sees and treats you.

For example, as a man, I pretty much never have to worry about being told I
got a promotion because I was having sex with the boss, or that I'm only being
angry or "emotional" about something because it's my "time of the month".
Things that women have to deal with all the time.

Another example would be that I'm never worried wanting to have children is
going to be seen as bad for business, and result in me being denied promotions
or other advancement because of it.(Not to mention I'm statistically going to
be getting paid more than women for doing equal work.)

Hopefully you can see how these are the type of privileges men, or another
group of people in a similar situation, may never notice unless it is pointed
out to them. Or they "check their privilege".

In relation to Ban Bossy, an important example seems to be that I've been
conditioned my entire life to aspire to be a leader: team captain, salesman of
the year, best on the basketball court, you get the idea. And not once was I
ever, or will I ever, be discouraged from asserting my leadership skills as
essentially "not knowing my place" because I'm a man, which can be the outcome
when we tell girls and young women to not be bossy or other similar things.

Maybe a good exercise for you, and for all of us, is to listen to what people
are saying when they describe the privileges we have, or to ask them to
explain better because we would like to understand. Depending on our
situation, maybe we'll gain a better understanding of our heterosexual
privilege and being able to love who we want without having to worry that
their gender will result in violence against us or them. Or maybe we'll learn
about our religious privilege, and that we are able to practice a religion
without inciting fear, being called names, profiled, assaulted, or killed
because of the head covering we wear or for being "different".

~~~
gaius
_Things like white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, you get
the idea._

What you are talking about, if it even exists, is a _rounding error_ compared
to the massive good fortune relative to the entire rest of the human race that
has ever lived, of being born in the West in the late 20th/21st century.

Perhaps _you_ can see that dropping a few hundred grand on a _hobby_ makes the
speaker incredibly more privileged even within this already privileged group,
and gender is absolutely nothing to do with (as the majority of homeless, etc,
happen to be men, where's the white male heterosexual privilege there? Oops
your whole model of the world just imploded, sorry 'bout that).

~~~
someguyonhn
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. I tried to respond to you in what I
believe was a mature and respectful way.

You've responded with a breathtaking amount of immaturity. And completely
ignored any of the points I made. Perhaps one day you'll be more open to
hearing and responding to what I wrote to you. Maybe that day won't come.
Either way I wish you well.

~~~
gaius
_You 've responded with a breathtaking amount of immaturity_

To a post displaying a breathtaking amount of naivety. I didn't ignore your
points, they are, paraphrasing Feynmann, "not even wrong". And I am not sure
what "troll" even means these days, it seems to be a catch-all term for
"someone on the Internet who isn't a part of my echo chamber".

Likewise, I wish you well, and I hope that one day _you_ will come around to
what I wrote.

------
wyager
I'm immediately extraordinarily skeptical about anything that suggests solving
a cultural problem by changing language.

That's like trying to solve a math problem by changing the value of pi.

~~~
corin_
There is at least a theoretical logic to banning words like this: if being
called bossy is causing girls to lose leadership skills then maybe stopping
this artificially (even if people still think it without saying it) could lead
to less girls being affected, and therefore in the next generation the stigma
has disappeared. Obviously it's not that simple, and I have no idea to what
extent, if any, this actually works, other than in theory.

~~~
Crito
> _" if being called bossy is causing girls to lose leadership skills..."_

I don't think that this particular word is the root cause. More important is
the reason why people are using it. If you ban that particular word without
addressing why people are using it, then those people will adopt a new word to
mean the exact same thing. Creating euphemism treadmills doesn't fix anything.

~~~
jkestner
Yep. Some people are taking this too literally. (Nerds parsing? No!) The
heightened awareness of how word choice subtly undermines behavior we
presumably want to encourage, is the point. This article suggests that instead
of banning, women embrace the word as a badge they're doing something right (a
la 'nerd'), and undermining the undermining would work too.

------
mildtrepidation
From BanBossy.org:

 _When a little boy asserts himself, he 's called a “leader.” Yet when a
little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy
send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are
less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood.
Together we can encourage girls to lead._

So yes, as others have said here, the goal is not necessarily (or only) to get
rid of the usage of the word. But as is very evident from other responses,
that is not immediately obvious to everyone, in no small part because of the
arguably poor catch phrase being used.

I'm also not thrilled with some of the 'motivational' phrases being thrown
around. "I'm not bossy; I'm _the boss_ " (Beyonce) is not constructive. It's
puerile and is more likely to encourage actual bossy behavior (the negative
kind, as defined well elsewhere in this thread) than to help introduce
equality in the way we encourage leadership attributes in all children.

Not, of course, that equality seems to be emphasized here. Which is a typical
problem and one that's unlikely to help this campaign make a real difference,
as it's immediately exclusive to some degree rather than encouraging
_everyone_ to be confident.

------
iterationx
While feminists were busy telling the world about the dire need to ban the
word “bossy,” the Iraqi parliament was considering the implementation of a new
law that would legalize rape, prohibit women leaving home without the
permission of their husband, and legalize marriage for 9-year-olds.

“If passed, the law will apply to Iraq’s Shia Muslims, the majority of the
population. Provisions include prohibiting Muslim men from marrying non-Muslim
women, legalising rape inside marriage by declaring that a husband has a right
to sex regardless of consent, and prohibiting women from leaving the house
without their husband’s permission,” reports Breitbart.com. The law, which has
been denounced by Human Rights Watch as a violation of the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), would also
lower the age of marriage to nine years old for girls and 15 for boys. Despite
the fact that the law represents an egregious assault on women’s rights and
wouldn’t look out of place in the stone age, you probably didn’t hear about it
because self-proclaimed feminists were too busy concentrating on more pressing
atrocities being inflicted upon women – such as people using the word “bossy”.
[http://www.infowars.com/new-iraqi-law-legalizes-rape-
feminis...](http://www.infowars.com/new-iraqi-law-legalizes-rape-feminists-
too-busy-banning-words-to-care/)

~~~
chilldream
I agree with the article, but "There are Starving Kids in Africa" is a stock
bad argument

~~~
chongli
Yep, it's a fallacy too:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation)

------
adamnemecek
I saw the video a couple of days ago and it was flabbergasting that someone
thought that this whole thing is going to achieve anything.

~~~
mschuster91
It's just feminists. Western version of the Taliban, if you ask me.

~~~
Ambrosia
yes obviously feminists were the real ones behind 9/11

------
logicallee
Bossy is extremely specific and a terrible style of leadership. I've known
bossy women as well as women who were great leaders. The overlap has between
the two is the empty set.

How about you teach real leadership skills to girls who like to lead? Such as
understanding, empathy, reward, etc. Of course the same goes for men, and
bossy men are just as big a problem.

------
cushychicken
You can see how this campaign of proclaiming "bossy" to no longer be gender
neutral has caused me (a heterosexual white male) some serious gender identity
issues, as I was frequently called "bossy" as a child.

Does this mean I'm actually a woman?

------
droopybuns
"The number one reason that why girls are not turning into leaders is because
they are occupied with posting selfies on your fucking Facebook, Sandberg!"

-Adam Curry

------
theorique
"Bossy" doesn't refer to a person (male or female) who embodies _good_
qualities of leadership.

Instead, it is used to describe someone who takes charge in a rude and
disrespectful way. Examples include: giving others orders, shouting, emotional
manipulation, tantrums, and so forth. Anybody who behaves this way may be
"leading", in some sense, but they are not being a very good leader.

Conversely, a girl who leads her friends and peers in a kind and empowering
way is _not_ being bossy.

It would make just as much sense have a campaign to "ban douchebag" or "ban
asshole", as these terms are disproportionately applied to men. And those
terms don't apply to _being a leader_ , they apply to _being a rude,
disrespectful leader_.

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jamesaguilar
My brothers used it on me all the time, but that might not be the typical
experience.

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SnydenBitchy
Wow, the “discussion” here validates every negative stereotype about the tech
community, you troglodytes who I’m embarrassed to call my peers. I wonder if
it’s it too late, at 31, for me to change careers?

~~~
masterleep
Are there no online communities that you can't complain about?

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wcummings
I'm impressed by how much people are missing the point. It's just about
raising awareness of how young girls are treated, no one is actually banning
any words.

~~~
dkrich
Then maybe they shouldn't have led with the name "Ban Bossy?"

If you create a marketing campaign and it is misinterpreted by what is
presumably largely your target group (men who don't realize their words are
apparently harming girls during their formative years) the fault is yours, not
your audience.

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nsxwolf
Is there any empirical evidence this word harms girls?

~~~
sp332
It's not about the word "bossy". "Ban Bossy" is just the name of the campaign.

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stefantalpalaru
I bellyfeel banning words is doubleplusgood.

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tobehonest
I would rather "slut" gone, than bossy.

