(however stupid my comment was (and, in my defence, I did explicitly consider that I could be wrong), I would strongly contend, my comment had nothing to do with the gender of the original post's author; I just didn't understand, what was going on and phrased it somewhat poorly)
OK, here's my take as the primary responsible for this screw-up: young women are far more likely to get doubted on their expertise than even young men. So, even where we may not recall discriminatory intent, we should consider the reasonable chance that, we, too, are part of this statistical fact. +
I'm not convinced the twitter knee-jerk response, which is to treat these screw-ups as failures of character, is helpful - leads to entrenchment & resentment IMHO. But it's not about us. What we said reinforced an environment where people are treated unfairly, & that's reason enough to apologize. /
Posting just to say to people who won't read the whole thing that I apologized. I think there is an argument to be had here. But, having initially taken the OP for a tourist in IL rather than an expert, forfeited any right I might otherwise have to nitpick!
Look, I'll be constructive here and say I think your original tweet was condescending on a young cat mom regardless of whether you knew she had a PhD or not, but yes your reaction was the correct one. I think the issue is that now there's a 2nd nitpicker and Sarah has a right to be frustrated
Thanks! In my (additional?) defence, I wasn't condescending - I genuinely didn't know it was the SG rather than the AG President who sends over AO requests to the ICJ.
So weird that the Court decided it has the power to do this though! UN Charter empowers only AG & SC to request AOs; the Statute uses the passive voice; in comes the Court and addresses SG as the primary organ required to transmit it AO requests. Sounds like there's some quirky little story there...
Comments