Storms In Teacups
Atlassian, provider of software development infrastructure, sends out a tweet to advertise one of their services:. Look closely and you'll see this pattern pop up more and more, in various forms. The key word is always educate , or more accurately, re-educate. The tone varies from feigned concern to outright hostility.
If only you weren't so ignorant, you wouldn't have made such horribly offensive statements. Apologies are dismissed as insincere, a refusal to admit one's true sins. But let's step back for a bit and look at what was said. First, Atlassian's reply is right, they weren't being gender specific, they merely compare a piece of software to prom.
a storm in a teacup
That's not what the indignant reader saw. They read between the lines, and substitute it with something like this:. For sure, everyone has their own interpretation and I hope I'm exaggerating. But the tweet's supposed sexism is not actually there. The speaker's intent is completely ignored, the hurt feelings of the offended take priority. The reinterpretation itself is sexist: The worst form of this behavior is what I call the Shametweet. This is when someone retweets a statement—usually a perceived insult directed at themselves—without any further comment. The tweeter seemingly considers it beneath themselves to address the insolence directly.
Instead, they choose to demonstrate their superior sensibilities to their followers. Those will then jump to his or her's defense, making the problem go away with a single click of a button, while they maintain an aura of innocent plausible deniability. To my lack of surprise, it's mostly women who I see doing this, voluntarily turning themselves into objects, letting others claim their agency, and usually men who are all too eager to jump to the rescue, even when it's not requested.
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Some celebrities do it too, sicking a million followers on a target who failed to stroke their ego that morning. More than a few of these fragile celebs are men. Anita Sarkeesian dislikes sexist tropes and objectification of women in video games and wants to bring this problem to light. As one might expect with anyone who does anything on the internet, trolls show up, and insults and accusations of sexism start flying around. Things get ugly , and valid criticism is lost in a sea of crud. Jezebel, billing itself as "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women" , is one of the sites eagerly siding with Anita.
It appeals to their readership: Her transgression was to appear on a fashion magazine cover "dressed in a braided wig, dull beads, and turkey feathers [ But they don't stop there. This tasteless display is in fact "akin to putting a picture of a Gentile in a stereotypical Jewish getup on the cover of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf".
Godwin triumphs once again. The writer may indeed have a point in there somewhere, that is, about stereotypes of First Nations cultures. But the irony is so thick you can spread it like Nutella. Jezebel eagerly celebrates the advances of women over male-dominated society at every turn, decries Patriarchy and rings the alarm bell whenever supposed standards of equality and self-determination are violated. Now they complain that an industry they focus on, which treats people like objects to be dressed and painted, didn't objectify a woman in a tasteful enough fashion.
Who is it really, that is pressuring women to be passive, immaculate and above all, politically correct dolls? Is it really all men's fault? Or is it fueled by media and advertising that bills itself "For Women" in giant pink letters, but really seems to be just about "Judging Women" instead, telling them they need to look better, be likeable supermoms as well as executives, but deserve to have it all, honest? On the other side, gaming sister-site Kotaku asks "She's Sexy. In this game's bloody quest of revenge, after a couple hours of brutally murdering several armies of mythological creatures one by one, you stab the Medusa-like Gorgon in the chest.
On top of its giant snake body, right where its breasts are. This scene summarizes "all [the] issues with violence against sexualized female characters in one nutshell. The game is presenting "a form of feminine beauty that associates exposed, large breasts as beautiful. Apparently if the Gorgon had been obese and flat-chested, there'd be no issue in putting it down. Which is exactly what Euryale looked like, the repulsive Gorgon the author must've killed in the previous game.
This attempted pro-woman analysis of sexualized portrayal seems to suggest that a feminized body is automatically sexual, but only if she's hot enough, like say, the "final, sexy boss. She clarifies exactly what she said and meant on a previous occasion. The comments then continue to argue back and forth about what it all means. It goes back to a t-shirt she wore at a conference , stating she "felt safe and welcome" and was "just a skeptic, not a 'skepchick', not a 'woman skeptic', just a skeptic".
This shirt was apparently so offensive and dehumanizing it reduced one of its victims to tears. All of this is fallout from the scandal known as ElevatorGate.
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A man at a conference asked Rebecca Watson up for coffee in an elevator, after a late night in the hotel bar, and accepted no for an answer. Cue the public shaming based on her one-sided account , using her position as a conference speaker, and the inevitable backlash. The man himself however has wisely chosen to stay out of it and remains unidentified.
It prompted Richard Dawkins to point to more serious women's issues to possibly worry about , who was then chastized for speaking from white male privilege. This scandal, entirely based on hearsay, is still going on a year later. In fact, Harriet's thread features an appearance from Rebecca herself. Which she says right after arguing over it. Does this sound at all familiar? She includes that she would be "concerned for [her] personal hygiene" for wearing one shirt several days in a row.
I'm not making this up. Like Dawkins, I wonder: Don't these people have more important things to get angry at? Are they just self-absorbed, seeking publicity through controversy? Some undoubtedly are, but for the majority I think it's far more simple. It's fair to ask: Was the t-shirt or the tweet a direct, personal insult? Did it insult a class of people they belong to?
Is it specific enough that someone could reasonably argue it applies to them, but not the next person? So why take it personally? It's because it reminds us of an uncomfortable truth about ourselves or the world. In Atlassian's case, it's that beauty has a dark side, and it gives some people an unfair advantage or disadvantage.
Did I get this job because of my talents or my looks? Do I present myself badly? Do people judge me by things beyond my control? Do I have a weird face? It reminds us of all the times we've experienced this ourselves, and if you have children, of all the times they will too. The internet becomes a mirror for our own insecurities, and we read our worries into everything.
a storm in a teacup
In Harriet Hall's case, it's the acknowledgement that life is what we make of it, that people disagree with us more than we like to admit, and that often the best thing to do is shrug and not let it bother you, and focus on results rather than labels. Though again, everyone's interpretation is different. But we don't want to admit that, our pride does not allow it. We'd much rather explain our unease by assuming it was inflicted deliberately, and we make up convenient reasons why that is so, why we were targeted.
See, Atlassian is just another sexist tech company, they can't even tweet without insulting every woman on the planet! Harriet Hall, born in , the second ever female intern in the US Air Force, must be an ignorant ditz when it comes to matters of feminism, because of one smelly t-shirt.
If you don't see it the same way, well, you're just not educated enough to read between the lines. It's both men and women who do it. We can argue who is more at fault until the cows come home, but when it comes to sexism it's fair to say men take the brunt of the blame, and are the ones expected to make amends. It's completely one sided, and it's another one of those convenient excuses that we substitute for the real thing.
We don't want to talk about the full complexity at play here. Indeed, the closest feminism gets to acknowledging this is, Patriarchy hurts men too! So it's not my fault, just the result of every single choice I've ever made? When someone points out that viewing everything through a uniquely feminist and female-oriented lens gives a skewed perspective, a rapid fire meme is returned: Showing that the feminist interpretation of history as unbridled Patriarchy is unrealistic , and that feminism has long ago developed its own oppressive and hateful character , is dismissed as misogyny, even when it's women saying it.
There's more handy tropes to end attempts at nuance and shut down discussion: The list goes on, and all of a sudden, concerns about gendered slurs no longer apply. The so-called "safe space" that these online social justice groups claim to seek, is just another word for a censored space, and a hypocritical one at that. It's one where certain ideas and thoughts are not to be uttered, and must be replaced by less realistic and less worrisome ones.
But no true safe space exists, as offense is always in the eye of the beholder. Statistics show that women observe sexism online to a higher degree than men, particularly in tech and open source. Recommendations are made on how to make the community more friendly to women, and most suggestions involve re-educating men to reduce their blindness.
More so, it's implied that once the atmosphere is respectful enough, women will join and equality will be achieved. Most open source projects start out as hobbies, created by one person in their spare time. Instead, I find that female-founded projects are far and few, and calls for women to participate consist mainly of inviting them into existing projects, and speaking at established conferences about existing technologies.
Is the increasing role of women in open source a consequence of empowerment and self-direction? Or does it stem from the fact that open source is becoming more important in commercial use, and now more women are tagging along? It's both, naturally, but the huge gap between the two gender ratios can't be reduced to abuse and sexism. For a multitude of reasons, women simply aren't as interested as a group. A big part of the problem is confidence, and starts much earlier: It took Google's Summer of Code to convince her to take the plunge and make the career change.
Programs like that are great to bring fresh talent into a community, but they won't cause the seismic shift in gender balance that feminism requires. If we want more women in open source, shouldn't we encourage them to just do their own thing, as those Open source is claimed to be a meritocracy, but it really isn't. Once two people start modifying the same code, politics get involved, and I can certainly speak from experience that decisions at the top of an open source project are more about people and their interests than code.
It isn't enough to create a good solution, it must be advocated and accepted, and apply to a wide variety of existing scenarios. If the work isn't good enough and fails, reputations take a hit. Linus Torvalds can act like a complete asshole , self-admittedly so, chew out his male contributors, and nobody in particular seems to mind. Linux is successful either despite or because of it. Linus builds and directs software millions rely on. His abrasive tone reflects the importance of the issues he deals with on a daily basis. So far, his peers have deemed it socially acceptable.
You may hate this, but you can't ignore it. Can we really say with a straight face that he could talk the exact same way to a female contributor, and nothing would be different? In a culture where "never hit a woman" is considered a valid rule by many, men are the default assumed aggressor in domestic violence, and expected to chase the burglar—another man no doubt —out of the house to protect their wife and children?
Or would it spawn thread after thread of discussions of just how bad the transgression was, and how to make sure it never happens again? Open source culture is quite competitive, but the biggest problem an open source contributor has isn't criticism, it's getting people to pay attention in the first place. Ironically, this is something women are innately privileged in: It's propagated in the popular stereotypes of the bumbling husband, the insensitive jock, the aggressive bully, and so on.
That perspective is dismissed by feminists as lashing out from male privilege, and the fear of losing it. But how privileged are men over women, when their life expectancy recedes further from that of women the lower the standard of living? Is there a Kickstarter I can donate to for that? No, instead National Geographic states matter of factly that it's a "troubling trend" and a "wake up call" that men's life expectancy is getting closer to that of women in the US, because it means women are gaining less.
They use the margin by which women outlive men as if it's some sort of index of prosperity. Hey, remember that time when Hillary Clinton said "Women have always been the primary victims of war"? Because they "lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Could it be that the sexism women say they are constantly subjected to online, is merely the flipside of a coin? One that allows them to cultivate attention with nothing more than a well-chosen avatar, and which men eagerly give to them? How many women forego the make-up in their profiles and videos before lamenting the unsolicited date proposals, awkward as they may be?
I'm not ignoring cases like Kathy Sierra and the persistent, real harassment she received, but let's not forget that it was inflicted by individuals upon individuals, not on womankind. When the overwhelming majority of open source contributors are men fighting for recognition, do you suppose some of them might feel some resentment that a woman can walk into a room, real or virtual, and make everyone's head turn?
If so, do women's concerns deserve automatic precedence over men's? The country I live in has a Minister for the Status of Women after all. To attend or speak at JSConf, you must agree to a code of conduct. They deal with problems that almost all women come into contact with - budding romance, difficult careers, betrayal, and love. I admit that it was hard to get into the story at first and it confused me a My first impressions of the book were the rich descriptions of the characters and their lives, almost a little too much at times, but it was very visual for the reader. I admit that it was hard to get into the story at first and it confused me a little bit when the chapters switched to each different woman.
I had a little bit of a problem keeping them straight in my mind.
It took about a fourth of the book for me to discover some conflict within their lives and it captured me from that point. And it's not all of that "perfect" romantic relationships for these women. There's a lot of romantic drama! It was almost too much for me at times and was a little confusing to remember which woman was with which guy, but it became very clear as the story progressed.
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