Brianna Laugher <[email protected]> writes: > This comic about global warming has a person presenting at a 'Climate > Summit' conference with a list of all the benefits to the earth and > society of moving to green energy. A person in the audience stands up > and says, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for > nothing?"
Yes. The blank slate is (as Stephen Pinker details in his excellent book of that name) a myth long discredited. But the motivation for making our community more welcoming of valuable members is not undermined by that. > Dennis made a very interesting point: > > "We base the standard on male behaviour, because that's what > progressivism has defined as the goal. But to do this, is to assume > that the men know better. It is to assume that if women behave > differently, then it is the woman's behaviour we need to alter." > > (I don't know what you exactly mean by progressivism, but with > s/progressivism/patriarchy I agree. :)) That surprised me, too. I don't know whose definition of “progressivism” Dennis has accepted, but it isn't one I subscribe to. > Basically, traits associated with men tend to be lauded, and traits > associated with women tend to be trivialised and dismissed. This is true even when men are genuinely well-intentioned and supportive of the ideals of sexual equality. Matt Guica has perceived an accusatory tone; I want to be clear that these phenomena are going on *even though* most men don't want it to happen. No accusation of deliberate malice is necessary to these arguments, and I hope you can see that is not occurring in this thread, Matt. It can be very difficult for men to even acknowledge that this sexism happens in our own communities. Even once acknowledged, men can have difficulty from our position to perceive it as it happens. So even a well-intentioned man can face an uncomfortable ongoing situation when he realises the sexist practices that he tacitly supports, and even participates in, through not perceiving them as sexist or through ignorance of their effects. I count myself among that number. It's still difficult to perceive the background sexism, difficult to change habits, difficult not to feel ham-fisted when doing so, and difficult to resist the strong urge to self-justify my way to the path of least resistance. It's natural to feel defensive and to hear an accusatory tone in descriptions of this. Natural, and regrettable: please try to see past that. > Feminism acknowledges that this bind is bad for both men and women. > The restrictive sterotypes harm both men and women. Men face a huge > amount of social pressure not to embrace things associated with women. Men and women also are fully equipped with a broad array of justification and minimisation tactics when the subject is raised for examination. > I agree that the focus on 50/50 or any other particular ratio is not > super helpful. We will know when it is enough when women in X groups > fall apart due to lack of interest. That took me a few read-throughs to parse. I think you mean “We will know we have succeeded when groups named “Women in X” fall apart due to lack of interest”. > Please don't interpret this as a suggestion to quiz her about > specifics of precisely what she had in mind. Being expected to be a > bearer of all wisdom on the problem of women in free software is, > well, yet another reminder that there are few others to ask! Many > points in the HOWTO point this out. Those of us advocating software freedom should empathise with that position more, since we are frequently in an analogous position: We are frequently in the position of pointing out the injustice of non-free software to those who have never even considered the issue. The person we speak to has so long been immersed in a culture that accepts the injustice of vendor lock-in and user helplessness that they have trouble even perceiving that it occurs, or have trouble acknowledging the problem, or have trouble seeing the hollowness of justifications for the status quo. When those people trot out the same old discredited arguments – “you just want to avoid paying for anything”, “if it were really a problem why is it so popular”, “but I just want to get things done, why are you hassling me”, and hundreds of others – we can see that they are being defensive, even though they may not see that (and likely won't react well if we point it out). It's unreasonable to expect the messenger – the person pointing out the injustice – to be a one-person repository of all information and perfect rhetorical rebuttal to all attacks on the position. We know that for software freedom; please, let's be aware of it for feminism in our community. > I'm at LCA this week and if you would like to discuss this in person > please feel free to approach me and say hi. Ben Sturmfels knows who I > am so ask him if you're not sure :) I'll re-iterate my plea: find women willing to join us at our meeting on Thursday 2012-02-16 to discuss this. It would be wonderful for women to outnumber men, and for us to be awash in testimony that yes, this is really a problem in our community even though we men might have trouble seeing it. -- \ “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to | `\ persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” —Carl | _o__) Sagan | Ben Finney _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list [email protected] http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
