Rhetoric - Blog Posts

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Until I started passing as a cis man, I didn't realize how horribly I was treated compared to them. Yes, I struggle being trans, but my life has improved significantly in how I'm treated by those who assume I'm cisgender. I honestly feel privileged that I get to experience both ends of the spectrum because I'm able to share just how drastic the change is.

things that happened to me when i was a woman in STEM:

an advisor humiliated me in front of an entire lab group because of a call I made in his place when he wouldn't reply to my e-mails for months

he later delegated part of my master's thesis work to a 19-year old male undergrad without my approval

a male scientist at a NASA conference looked me up and down and asked when i was graduating and if i was open to a job at his company. right before inquiring what my ethnicity was because i "looked exotic"

a random male member of the public began talking over me and my female advisor, an oceanographer with a pHD and decades of experience, saying he knew more about oceanography than us

things that have happened to me since becoming a man in STEM:

being asked consistently for advice on projects despite being completely new to a position

male colleagues approaching me to drop candid information regarding our partners / higher ups that I was not privy to before

lenience toward my work in a way I haven't experienced before. incredible understanding when I need to take time off to care for my family.

conference rooms go silent when I start talking. no side chatter. I get a baseline level of attention and focus from people that's very unfamiliar and genuinely difficult for me to wrap my head around.

like. yes some PI's will still be assholes regardless of the gender of their subordinates but, I've lived this transition. misogyny in STEM is killing women's careers, and trans men can and do experience male privilege.

I feel like the Hbomberguy plagiarism video has a lot of really good lessons about building an argument. Like, the thesis of the video isn't just "Plagiarism is rife on Youtube", although that point was certainly well made, it was specifically about James Somerton, who isn't mentioned until about halfway through the video. Before then, Hbomb goes through several creators who are already widely discredited as plagiarists, and in each section he introduces concepts that are later incorporated into the final takedown of Somerton, but each section also stands on it's own. Like, he starts with Filip, the game reviewer, which he uses to introduce the format of how he will discuss and expose plagiarists. Specifically, the graphic of displaying the source material while the plagiarist's voice plays, and marking up said source material every time the plagiarist changes some wording slightly. This is the method that Hbomb uses across the entire video. With Illuminaughtii, Hbomb introduces a few major concepts 1) The idea of Insufficient citation. Illuminaughtii "Cites" her sources by putting a plaintext pastebin link in her video descriptions with no indication of how each source was used. Technically, her source is CITED, but not in any relevant or useful way. She has a big list of stuff she read, and a random youtube link in there happens to be the source that she stole 90% of the video from. 2) He introduces the profit motive behind this approach. Putting out a lot of content very quickly is how one builds an audience, and therefore an income, out of making stuff on youtube. Plagiarism of this sort is a way to produce content very quickly and build a following. The Internet Historian section introduces two new concepts:

1) The behavior of an exposed plagiarist, taking down and reuploading videos with minor changes, awkwardly trying to insert credit without admitting guilt. 2) That the plagiarists are stealing not just research, but STYLE. Previous sections go over how the plagiarists are reusing the same words, but this section oozes over how much of the final product's quality was the result of how well the source material was written. TIH didn't just crib the notes from the Mentalfloss article, he created a video heavily dependent on the original author's skill as a writer. When TIH tried his own hand at presenting the same set of facts, it came out much worse. So that when the time comes for the Somerton takedown, Hbomb has already laid the groundwork to bring these concepts back. Somerton takes down and reuploads videos when he's caught, he declares this his video is "based on" work by somebody else without providing proper citation. He's not just stealing research done by somebody else, he's taking their insights and talent as a writer and regurgitating it as his own, and he's doing so to churn out a vast wall of content that he can financially benefit from, and he doesn't need to tell you why this is important, because he's already done so. He already convinced you that Illuminaughtii hiding a line in a pastebin didn't excuse her plagiarism, so you don't need to be told why Somerton saying his video is "Based On" somebody else's book doesn't excuse it.

Gad, this is so true in everyday life, too, isn't it?

Tips on how to fight the "if I overly explain, everything will be hunky doory" instinct?

Being genuine, as someone who does struggle with it from time to time. <- Like this!

No matter how good you explain, you are not immune to

person reading fast skipping words or sentences

person reading casually who is not interested in unpacking your statement to any degree of depth

person who decided what you meant three words in and is not internalizing anything beyond that point

person focusing on a part of the statement you literally never considered important and making that the sole focus of their analysis

person primed by an external conflict who is scanning your statement for dogwhistles that indicate whether you're on Their Side or the Enemy Side

When it comes to explaining, there's a baseline level of Good Enough you can strive for, to the point where someone who's paying attention, trying to understand your nuances, and not actively setting out to misinterpret you will most likely get most of what you're talking about. Beyond that, it doesn't matter how many words you use if they aren't being read or interpreted. All you can control is what you say. You cannot control how you're perceived or interpreted.