On 01/13/2012 01:23 PM, Ben Finney wrote: > Bianca Gibson > <[email protected]> writes: > >> I agree there. To me, were a lot of groups tend to fall short is >> including women or other minorities in the group without making us >> feel like the odd one out. Very similar stuff can be said for age, >> someone I know that is male and went to his first LUG at 15 felt like >> the odd one out, the next youngest person was 21 and he found it >> daunting. > > Here is a relevant article, on the experiences of women and the sexism > they encounter in what may be today's most-respected scientific project > <URL:http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/07/20/is-it-cold-in-here/>. > > As that article explores, sexism in such environments is less often > overt harrassment, and much more often an atmosphere of being treated as > strange and otherly, in somewhat contradictory juxtaposition with a > plaintive why-can't-we-treat-them-like-the-boys attitude. > >> If I'm complemented like the example I don't take it in a bad way, to >> me it's just a complement. > > Thanks for that perspective. > > I must make conscious effort to give that account more weight than my > internal imaginings of “how would I feel if everything else was the same > but I was a woman”. That can't apply: if I were a woman, *huge swaths* > of my upbringing would have been quite different, and “if everything > else was the same” would not be the case. > > So, as is the case far more often than we might like to admit: it's not > about me. I have to listen to others describe their experiences, and > suspend my own bafflement at not being able to empathise completely. >
With all due respect, I think these articles which talk about sexism and racism still existing in some 'underlying' manner are nothing more than puff pieces designed to justify the livelihoods of people who making a living combating this. By maintaining there is a problem, you can then still rely on money coming in to 'fight it'. I will bet London to a brick on the fact that as long as someone will get published, paid or recognised for this sort of thing, there will be people writing about how we still got a bit of a way to go. _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
