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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
Really enjoyed this read. Haven't devoured an audiobook that quickly in ages!
informative
tense
fast-paced
Really mixed feelings about this one: Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell, and #Book3of2020 #2020readingchallenge
TW: rape, sexual assault.
I'm generally a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I find his social science books fascinating, and I'm also a big fan of his podcast 'Revisionist History'. This audiobook is like several long episodes of one of his podcasts; you can hear the interviews, rather than hearing him reading them, and it includes audio recordings of the events he discusses. It works well.
Talking to Strangers is about how we are bad at reading strangers and forming correct opinions of them or their intentions. It includes lots of really interesting discussions around topics ranging from race and stop and searches, to how good we are at telling if people are lying, to suicide and whether it is coupled to the method. It is all pretty interesting.
There is a chapter, however, that as far as I can tell, is making excuses - on behalf of the perpetrator - for rape and sexual assault. It begins by talking about the Brock Turner Stanford sexual assault case. Gladwell talks about how intoxication might mean signals between men and women are misunderstood. But it uses Turner's account of what transpired that evening; it doesn't account for the fact that Chanel (the girl he assaulted) was so drunk she couldn't remember the event and so couldn't provide the counter-events in court.
It suggests that alcohol causes a form of myopia - that it prevents an intoxicated individual being able to focus on anything but the events immediately in front of them. I quote: "How can you determine consent when at the moment of negotiation, both parties are so far from their true selves?" Sexual assault is not a failed negotiation.
It talks about being "blackout drunk", and the fact that women are more susceptible by saying "and what are the consequences ... it puts women in a more vulnerable position ... when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chance of attracting someone who might not have your best interests at heart." He claims this is "not blaming the victim, but trying to avoid more victims". Sure. Put it on the woman who is vulnerable, not the man who takes advantage of that vulnerability.
To suggest there is a "misunderstanding" or drunken state which ends in (more often than not) men assaulting women, ignores the underlying societal misogyny that allows entitled men to believe that they can act that way; that they are somehow owed sexual access to a woman's body, whether she herself does or does not consent, and not face consequences.
It does at least refer to Chanel's statement, and quote from it, so we hear her experiences and the trauma she experienced afterwards.
It can take a long time unpick the narrative and the guilt that you self-inflict as a victim after the event. "Why didn't I listen to the red flags? Why was I kind to him? Why didn't I fight back harder?"
Part of that is because people like Gladwell try and explain away why someone might assault someone else, ignoring the obvious - that they wanted to, felt entitled to, and didn't care about the violation they were inflicting.
TW: rape, sexual assault.
I'm generally a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I find his social science books fascinating, and I'm also a big fan of his podcast 'Revisionist History'. This audiobook is like several long episodes of one of his podcasts; you can hear the interviews, rather than hearing him reading them, and it includes audio recordings of the events he discusses. It works well.
Talking to Strangers is about how we are bad at reading strangers and forming correct opinions of them or their intentions. It includes lots of really interesting discussions around topics ranging from race and stop and searches, to how good we are at telling if people are lying, to suicide and whether it is coupled to the method. It is all pretty interesting.
There is a chapter, however, that as far as I can tell, is making excuses - on behalf of the perpetrator - for rape and sexual assault. It begins by talking about the Brock Turner Stanford sexual assault case. Gladwell talks about how intoxication might mean signals between men and women are misunderstood. But it uses Turner's account of what transpired that evening; it doesn't account for the fact that Chanel (the girl he assaulted) was so drunk she couldn't remember the event and so couldn't provide the counter-events in court.
It suggests that alcohol causes a form of myopia - that it prevents an intoxicated individual being able to focus on anything but the events immediately in front of them. I quote: "How can you determine consent when at the moment of negotiation, both parties are so far from their true selves?" Sexual assault is not a failed negotiation.
It talks about being "blackout drunk", and the fact that women are more susceptible by saying "and what are the consequences ... it puts women in a more vulnerable position ... when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chance of attracting someone who might not have your best interests at heart." He claims this is "not blaming the victim, but trying to avoid more victims". Sure. Put it on the woman who is vulnerable, not the man who takes advantage of that vulnerability.
To suggest there is a "misunderstanding" or drunken state which ends in (more often than not) men assaulting women, ignores the underlying societal misogyny that allows entitled men to believe that they can act that way; that they are somehow owed sexual access to a woman's body, whether she herself does or does not consent, and not face consequences.
It does at least refer to Chanel's statement, and quote from it, so we hear her experiences and the trauma she experienced afterwards.
It can take a long time unpick the narrative and the guilt that you self-inflict as a victim after the event. "Why didn't I listen to the red flags? Why was I kind to him? Why didn't I fight back harder?"
Part of that is because people like Gladwell try and explain away why someone might assault someone else, ignoring the obvious - that they wanted to, felt entitled to, and didn't care about the violation they were inflicting.
I wanted to enjoy this book but unfortunately, I couldn't. Gladwell used well known examples (Sandra Bland, Amanda Knox, Sylvia Plath etc) to "prove" ambiguous but also obvious points such as, "We think differently when stressed" and "Alchohol affects our judgement".
It felt pretty gross using these tragedies as click bait and blaming the outcomes almost entirely on communication.
It felt pretty gross using these tragedies as click bait and blaming the outcomes almost entirely on communication.
Malcom Gladwell addresses the human tendency to misread and how this impacts us.
I usually enjoy anything by Gladwell but I had trouble with this one. It raises more questions than it answers. The most troubling thing for me, (and I suspect potentially really triggering to others) was the treatment of the Sandra Bland example and the discussion of the Kansas City police training. The incident is one that has really stuck with me, despite Gladwell's assumption that we may need our collective memory jogged. I haven't forgotten. To read even pieces of the transcript between her and the arresting officer was enraging. To see this line later: "The death of Sandra Bland is what happens when a society does not know how to talk to strangers'---was almost equally enraging. It comes across as flip, reductionist. Racism is addressed in a mere footnote. Gladwell attempts to go further with this in the afterword but it feels like a response to something... as if an editor told him that he had to do more to acknowledge the disproportionate amount of police brutality issues, so he drops a few examples but then in the next breath basically defends the officers in one of the prominent cases. It does not sit well with me and I can't imagine how a Black reader would feel.
All in all it feels like a hasty coverage of a complicated subject and does not age well.
I usually enjoy anything by Gladwell but I had trouble with this one. It raises more questions than it answers. The most troubling thing for me, (and I suspect potentially really triggering to others) was the treatment of the Sandra Bland example and the discussion of the Kansas City police training. The incident is one that has really stuck with me, despite Gladwell's assumption that we may need our collective memory jogged. I haven't forgotten. To read even pieces of the transcript between her and the arresting officer was enraging. To see this line later: "The death of Sandra Bland is what happens when a society does not know how to talk to strangers'---was almost equally enraging. It comes across as flip, reductionist. Racism is addressed in a mere footnote. Gladwell attempts to go further with this in the afterword but it feels like a response to something... as if an editor told him that he had to do more to acknowledge the disproportionate amount of police brutality issues, so he drops a few examples but then in the next breath basically defends the officers in one of the prominent cases. It does not sit well with me and I can't imagine how a Black reader would feel.
All in all it feels like a hasty coverage of a complicated subject and does not age well.
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
fast-paced
dark
informative
medium-paced