The three exclamation point problem
An essay about the choices underrepresented groups make to overcome and erase societal bias.
A long time ago, say around Y2K, I read a Cosmo article that told women to avoid using exclamation points in work emails. No link now, but I remember the advice very clearly: Exclamation points are seen as too friendly, too casual, and not authoritative. Because you are not a male corporate executive, avoid them.
Being a young and ambitious person who had previously used many, many exclamation points in emails, both work and personal, I was, well, highly targeted. I thought about it, and I decided I three choices:
- I could stop using exclamation points, exchanging them instead for aloofness, professionalism and authority points.
- I could keep using exclamation points, but write so concisely, so authoritatively, that I’d single-handedly change my coworkers’ view, and eventually society’s view, of exclamation points.
- I could soldier on, still using exclamation points in as much of a casual way as I could muster. But I’d routinely pointing out the bias surrounding exclamation points to everyone, with the goal that others would be educated about !!!, and change their view: either due to guilt, sudden awareness, or best of all, uncaring, unbiased opinion shift.
I thought, and I chose the first option. To this day, almost 15 years later, I debate very carefully every, every time I use exclamation points, about when I use them, and why.
On a practical note—Do you know what cognitive overload is? It’s that.
The three choices of the exclamation point problem map to the most obvious choices that can be made by people in underrepresented groups, in almost any setting, today. For example, you can:
- Identify biases and conform: normalize the fact that anyone can perform.
- Fuck biases: overachieve and destroy.
- Educate everyone on biases: create a woke population.
I almost always choose the first route: mimic the recognized standard. This route has a clear path and is useful to those who, like me, have access to information around what biases look like.
#1. Identify biases and conform: normalize the fact that anyone can perform.
I can’t overstate the advantage of knowing how you measure against the standard. If you don’t know what you’re measured against, you can’t conform.
Because of this, #1 is closed to those who have no access to training resources. ‘Training resources’ might include structured classes, but it also includes casual networks: hanging out with wealthy and successful people, figuring out how to blend, figuring out how best to work with them. Getting into a good school is a great way to get this training.
But for those who don’t have access, they may never learn how to work well in the current system. This is what leads to ‘pipeline problems’; you can’t interview well if you don’t know what ‘well’ means. This is what leads to well-meaning but tone-deaf WSJ articles about using initials to hide gender.
The Lean In movement is the best example of attempting to educate and teach techniques for conformity, and has been equally praised & criticized for exactly these reasons. #1 has some terrible biases built in.
But it also has some heavyweight advantages: those who routinely perform better than expected can quickly break down biases that ‘[x] group can’t perform’.
Therefore, those who choose #1 are useful, and important.
#2. Fuck biases: overachieve and destroy.
Number two is difficult. There are a few big hurdles. The first is that ‘overachieving’ — demonstrating an obvious superiority — is difficult by default: only the 1% is the 1%. And famously, underrepresented groups who are the 1% are only recognized as the 10%, or perhaps not at all.
Second, the idea of the brilliant sidekick has already been fetishized in popular culture: clever mathematicians, hardcore hackers, top-notch soldiers, inspiring world leaders. In movies, these can all be women, Asians, Latinos, Africans, natives, grandmas. You can likely name three movies off the top of your head with underrepresented actors playing these roles. You likely cannot name real-life equivalents.
The more I’ve learned about how the brain imprints and inherits bias, the more I think #2 might not work for changing social patterns. Brilliant people exist, but we put them in separate categories; we don’t normalize them. A simple example: African-American men have been dominating US sports for decades, but they have not achieved parity in society.
And yet, those who can choose #2 are the ones who inspire movies, novels, bedtime stories, career paths, and voters.
Therefore, those who choose #2 are useful, and important.
#3. Educate everyone on biases: create a woke population.
The third path, historically, was for those who had a fire in their belly: the ones who woke up early to travel on mules or carts or buses to faraway cities, shouting on soapboxes.
This was, for practical reasons, a select group; ones who could publicly complain and afford to absorb the backlash. This draws on emotional reserves, but also social and financial ones. You won’t get far with social change without a lot of help. Really — you need to afford to buy a mule or bus ticket.
In 2002, the early internet era, the third option was now more accessible, but it seemed reserved for the people who were angry. Those who would stay up late writing blog posts, essays, speeches. Those who would never be content to simply fit in, by dint of the obvious energy and tint of anger they could never fully hide in polite society. These people could be beacons, I thought; clear moral lighthouses to which we should all turn our paths, but never assimilators.
But, internet. I underestimated it.
When I first pondered the exclamation point problem, the social web didn’t exist. There was no clear path to disseminating alternative viewpoints encouraging people to recognize, and thereby change, their biases.
Now #3 belongs to everyone. There are bright beacons writing, talking, and singing clear paths, highlighting injustice, making it easy for the world to be aware of how it thinks, the conclusions it jumps to, and why that might be so. Some have funding. Some are on Netflix. It’s a great time to be alive.
Better yet there are ordinary people, thinking about what they’ve read, writing reactions, and sharing them. This also is a way of showing bias, comparing bias, and eliminating it. This awareness is awakeness: it is woke. It’s a population acknowledging and rethinking how it perceives the world.
Therefore, those who choose #3 are useful, and important.
#4.
Of course, dear reader, this whole time you’ve been impatiently thinking of step #4, the step that didn’t occur to me in 2002, the step that maybe only recently became a real option for those with much to lose:
4. Who says exclamation points shouldn’t be used in business emails? Fuck you guys.
Step four is cathartic; it is ideal. But it is also a real, low-cost option now because of the centuries, decades, and millions of work hours from people who chose the other three options.
The shift is huge. It percolates. And it is the realization of the dream of anyone who ever thought of this before: that such judgements were unfair, that exclamation points are fine, that there ought to be a multitude of ways to express yourself, in business and in life.
Therefore, those who choose #4 are useful, and important.
Special thanks to #girlchat, especially Morgan Holzer for proofreading.
