When I moved to Orange County, California in 2004, I had a serious case of culture shock. The OC didn't seem to have the same understanding of community that I know from every place else I've lived. I asked a local what I needed to know to understand the people. She replied, "They're self-absorbed." That was helpful, but it wasn't the full story.
One day I was working at a picnic table on a bluff overlooking a particularly lovely beach. Two women arrived with their large dogs, and sat at my table, continuing their very loud conversation.
I looked around. There were three or four other tables, and they were all empty. They were all pretty much the same, except that my table was a few feet closer to the ocean.
I could have moved to a different table, but I didn't think it fair that I should be the one to move.
Their conversation struck me as particularly inane and annoying. I fumed for awhile. Then I remembered the adage "be curious, not furious," and decided to be curious about why they chose to sit so close.
I struck up a conversation with them. Startled, they responded civilly. I asked whether they were from around here. Yes, they were from Newport Beach. Eventually I said, "I grew up on the East Coast, and I've been having a hard time understanding the behavior of people in Orange County. What could you tell me that might help?"
They thought for a moment, then one of them, who had spent some summers on the East Coast as a child, said "The difference between the East Coast and here is that people on the East Coast are rule followers." She made it clear that being a rule follower wasn't a good thing. According to her, people from Newport Beach considered themselves to be free and independent spirits who weren't constrained by something so banal as rules. Stop signs? Turn signals? Not for us.
They don't follow the rules that help people coexist peacefully in a civilized society. This was a revelation for me. It really has helped me understand people from Newport Beach (and why I find some of them so difficult to like). I was glad I asked.
A colleague once told me disdainfully about the only woman to have been Chancellor at our university. He thought she was a terrible Chancellor. I asked why. He said, "she's a rule follower." I've often heard people sneer at women as being sticklers for the rules. But if women in academia are more likely than men to be rule followers, perhaps it's because they're more likely to be punished if they break the rules.
I've spent a lot of time in academia in the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms" where decisions are made. What did I learn there? The in-crowd benefits from breaking the rules, and everyone else gets punished if we either break the rules, or break the unspoken rules we didn't even know existed. These Newport Beach women belonged to an "in" group that makes the rules, knows which rules can be broken, and decides who gets punished.
Some of the committees I served on made important career decisions about people. When my service on one such committee ended, I thought back on the experience.
I remembered that some of the people we evaluated broke the rules and got away with it. Some of their transgressions seemed serious, like changing dates on documents, or claiming full credit for work that was joint with others. Virtually none of the transgressors were female.
Some other cases were memorable for other reasons. Colleagues of the person being evaluated had visceral anger toward the candidate, and had the attitude "what's she trying to get away with?" Their accusations didn't come with proof or evidence, and there was no way for my committee to corroborate the allegations. The people under attack had pushed someone's buttons, but it wasn't clear to me that they had actually done anything that was wrong or that was a valid reason for the committee to issue a negative decision.
Who were the people who caused these strong gut reactions? They were disproportionately women, blacks, and Jews. Whether they were unempathetically viewed as the "other", or had violated unspoken rules that they didn't know, they weren't part of the in-crowd. In any particular case, any prejudice was subtle enough that it would have been deniable.
As my conversation with the Newport Beach women was winding down, I said I was curious as to why they chose this table, rather than an empty one. They beat about the bush for a bit, then admitted that it was because this was the best table (by epsilon). "Were you hoping I would leave?" I asked. "Yes," they replied.