While back in the day being a smart-ass in public often led to some success, depending on the public, being one nowadays, especially on the internet, is certain doom.
Not only will you be schooled on multiple levels by educated internauts, but you’ll also have to deal with the shame you’ve just experienced. So, don’t do it.
But this is exactly what happened on Twitter lately, and though the moral of the story is ‘don’t be a smart-ass,’ it also carries a deeper message of the current state of unconscious gender bias.
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While you'd think gender bias wouldn't be a problem in 2022, it is, and this judge went to Twitter to talk about it
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English arbitrator and founder of Greener Arbitrations, Lucy Greenwood, has recently gone to Twitter to discuss one issue, which spun off into a completely different one.
She explained that her daughter became ill at school, and so the school decided to call Lucy and explain the situation, most likely with the intention of telling her to come pick the daughter up.
Now, before the call even happened, the daughter explicitly said that her mom wouldn’t pick up the phone, so they'd better call dad. In spite of this, the school insisted on calling mom. The tweet was accompanied by the hashtag #BreakTheBias. This also happened on International Women’s Day.
However, amidst the discussion, a tweeter popped up who didn't get what the big deal was
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With the tweet, she aimed to point out how there is a ‘default’ to calling the mom first instead of the dad. And while many came to point out that there is no bias issue, and that there is a much simpler explanation—schools call the first number in the contact list.
Now, Lucy did point out that her daughter specifically said that they should call her dad because her mom wouldn’t pick up. Besides this, she is also quite sure the dad is first on the list. So whatever reasoning the school assumed is a bit of a mystery in this case.
It did cause a bit of a debate among tweeters, but not as much as the next thing that happened once Twitter user @realBREXITnow joined the party several hours later.
One back-and-forth later, the person still wasn't getting that not everyone can pick up a phone at work, especially in court
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Until this inevitable 'mic drop' happened that made everybody's day better
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What effectively happened is the user said no matter what, if it was them at work and they got a call from the school, they’d know it was serious and they would pick up. End of story.
Well, some back-and-forth later, multiple people tried to explain that you can’t just stop doing whatever you’re doing in court and ask the judge to give you a time-out as there are court rules, and, besides, she would have missed the call in any case as phones are often not allowed for safety and efficiency reasons.
The person wasn’t buying any of it, until Lucy herself chimed in with a very brief, but very accurate explanation on the situation—she was the judge. And with that Twitter instantly went like everyone in the Supa Hot Fire meme and, needless to say, they loved it.
Needless to say, people on Twitter loved it, roasting the person even further
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But we digress as the Twitter thread seems to have gone viral because of the issue of unconscious gender bias. Besides everyone pointing out it might just be the contact order in the school’s registry, there were those who shared similar gender bias stories.
Regardless of reaction, the original tweet managed to get over 103,000 likes with 8,000 plus retweets in a day. There currently aren’t any more responses by Lucy regarding the issue, save for her retweet of one of the reactions to the thread by Katherine de Vos Devine, who said it was the International Women’s Day content she wanted.
But back to the topic at hand—the school defaulted to calling the mom, despite being told not to, leading to discussions and stories online
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So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think the school was being biased, or was it just the case of them dialing the first number? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!