Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, talked with CNN’s Poppy Harlow recently to discuss many things… one of them being that interrupting a woman is a “microaggression”.
During the course of the interview, Wojcicki claimed that interrupting a woman was a microaggression:
Whenever you have a culture that is — whenever you have a majority and a minority, it’s gonna be harder for that minority. You know, even in a culture where people are really well-meaning … there are sometimes microaggressions, right? Like people who will just cut you off, and you’ll be talking and then someone will interrupt you.
So that’s actually become, like, a big pet peeve of mine. So, whenever somebody, like, interrupts me, I’ll be like: “Wait, I was talking. Do not interrupt me.” But I enjoy it even more, actually, when I see them interrupting someone else, and then I’ll be like: “Wait! She was talking. Don’t interrupt her.” And I think [every time] I’ve done that, people have been like: “Oh, thank you. I didn’t realize I was doing that.” And so I think just making people more aware of it is really important.
The problem with the idea of “microaggressions” is that they are inherently unclear. This lack of clarity allows for broad interpretation, and thus broad condemnation.