18 March 10
The YouTube Condensed version
This is not the entire talk, which came out to about 14 minutes and 55 seconds (I had 15 minutes total), but it is a decent overview. You can’t see the slides, but you can hear my voice.
And I have to say that I’m impressed with myself. The super-duper-nervousness I was feeling through the entire presentation didn’t come out as strong as I expected it to. You can also see several other videos on YouTube from SXSW. I highly recommend that you check out Baratunde Thurston’s presentation, and Samhita Mukhopadhyay’s presentation.
Comment [1]
16 March 10
You Win When They Call You a Bitch: Presentation with links
If you want to read more comments from people who tweeted during and after the presentation, you can view them on Twitter.com.
First of all, I want to explain what I mean when I say that YOU are the winner when
THEY call you a bitch.
Cause if you haven’t won an Emmy award explaining why you’re a bitch, you’re likely going to be taken aback when it happens to you. That’s understandable. That’s exactly what they’re hoping. They’re hoping that an insult will throw you off track, derail your argument, and result in you looking defensive. But, we have the power to alter the meaning behind the word.
So when you’re called a bitch, instead of letting the argument get derailed, recognize that you’ve outsmarted them. Reply with “I win! You aren’t smart enough to continue the conversation, so thanks for ending it.” Once they bust out the ad hominem attack. The personal attack that has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation at hand, the conversation is over. And you win, cause they don’t know how to continue.
They may not just call you a bitch. There are a lot of other ways this may go down, but there are a few that are really, really common. Especially if you’re a woman. If you’re a woman of color, well, then you get some extra options.
But there are only a handful of ways that arguments get derailed and if you can recognize them, you can fight them pretty easily. But the goal of all of these types of attacks, is to try to make you back down.
Social Media and general online tech can be used just as easily to keep women out of conversations as they can be used to include women. And as long as we have the confidence to continue being attacked, being called a bitch, we can not only use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house, but we can create our own tools as well.
Groan, right? I know. But if you honestly have wondered this, if you’ve been in the position of organizing a panel here at SXSW or at another tech conference, and wondered how you go about finding women to be on your panel
That’s the bitchy response, of course. In all honesty, sitting in a packed conference room looking for one person to place on a panel is going to be hard.
But, if you use a very popular website,
you may be able to find what you’re looking for a little easier. Sorry, that’s still kind of a bitchy answer.
But honestly, there are a multitude of websites and conferences and groups and organizations that can help you find people who you may not already know, to create a truly diverse panel or workforce. And these women are trying to get your attention, they even have a booth here in the trade show at Booth 219 where they are presenting themselves as a co-op of resources.
If you are organizing a panel, and you know every person on the panel, then you’re failing your audience because you’re presenting to them one voice, one angle, one side of the story. And, based on the many years I’ve attend SXSW, the panels that have been more interesting have often been panels where the people sitting on the stage don’t know each other before they get together and who often disagree with each other. Because it is in our differences that we find our commonality.
But, it’s going to keep happening that conferences happen and women, people of color, gay, bi, and trans people don’t get invited. And we can either all keep writing posts about it, or we can do something like what
Allyson Kapin did last year. She was invited to attend the O’Reilly produced Web 2.0 Summit.
There were 25 men and a handful of women speaking. A handful. So she took action using an online tool called “act.ly”.
It’s a wicked easy and simple idea. You sign in using Twitter. Type in someone’s name. Type in what you want them to do. That gets tweeted.
You explain your petition a bit more, hit submit. And then as long as someone includes the @handle of the person you’re targeting with the act.ly url, their information will appear on the petition page. It is the easiest petition creation tool created. And, as soon as the person targeted in the petition responds, you get a DM.
Allyson created her petition, and a O’Reilly got flooded (as did some of the other conference organizers). And you know what?
This “work smarter” technique was aggressive and she got called a bitch. But she also set up a conference call to discuss how the lack of women and diverse speakers wasn’t going to be tolerated. And several of the organizers said they had been struggling with this and asked for suggestions from the women in tech and social media community. The Web 2.0 Summit is currently creating this year’s list of speakers.
5 years ago I attended my first SXSW conference. In every panel I went to, I counted the women and the people of color and the white men and figured out the ratio. I determined that women made up about 20% of the attendees and less than that of the panelists. I estimated that 5-10% of the attendees were people of color. But I also emailed Hugh Forrest and asked him what he was planning on doing to change it. I wasn’t the only one. And I got an email from him thanking me for my comments and criticism and letting me know that my request for diversity wasn’t the only one he’d received. It’s important to voice our concerns to the conference organizers.
The following year 1/3 of the panelists were female (and I guessed that 1/3 of the attendees were female). Because there were so many more people, I couldn’t get an accurate count for comparison sake of the people of color, but it was improved enough to be noticeable.
Like many conferences, once a pitch is chosen the person who wrote the pitch chooses their panelists. So while we can grow frustrated with the people who run and organize conferences, we can and should also take our arguments to the people who moderate and choose panelists.
I know that the organizers of SXSW ask the people who are moderating panels to consider the diversity balance of the people they ask. They even have a great acronym (VOWEL) to encourage their panel organizers to have a diverse panel.
You likely have attended or will attend a panel where you have credentials to be on the stage as well. Find out who the moderator is, email that person (or meet them in person) and tell them how YOU could have made their panel better. AND ask them to consider you as a panelist for next year. If they put together a panel this year, they’re likely to put together a similar panel next year. And if you help them round their vowels you may stand a better chance of joining them.
But tech changes aren’t just in existence in the Ivory outposts, the intellectual brainstorming and barnstorming that happens at conferences and conventions. Technology has quite often changed the way that many women walk down the street.
I’d be horribly remiss if I didn’t mention the almost five-year-old site: Hollaback NYC, the parent site with links to their 19 sister sites. These people created a way that is a safe place for women to take photographs or write descriptions of street harassment and make them public.
They’ve also got their new iPhone app in Beta Testing. Once it’s downloaded, you’ll push a button, the site records your location using your phone’s GPS, and you get an email so you can reply back to tell your story. All you need is a Unique Device Identifier (which is free), and you’re ready as soon as their developers have the app ready to go. They’ll be able to map where the harassment occurred and they’ll create a “State of Our Streets” report that can easily be sent to lawmakers and the media to demonstrate where this harassment occurs. Sort of an anti-sexism Gowalla or FourSquare.
But this isn’t just an American invention. The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights has made public sexual harassment one of their central activism issues. ECWR estimates that 83% of women are verbally and physically harassed on a daily basis in Egypt and that 62% percent of men admit to perpetrating sexual harassment. . It’s a severe concern. Enough of a concern that last December leaders from 17 countries near Egypt met in Cairo to discuss public sexual harassment. Keep in mind that Egypt is a country where women are legally prevented from serving in judiciary positions. The Egyptian Parliament is currently considering legislation that would ban sexual harassment at work, in public, online, and through the use of mobile devices. And the only reason this has happened in the last five years is because of women sharing their experiences with harassment publicly. ECWR started out by surveying 2000 women to determine what was happening, who was going to the police for help, and where it was taking place. They published a report and then began putting up fliers, got a public service radio announcement, staged a demonstration, held press conferences and self defense workshops and public discussions about the laws.
All pretty basic grassroots mobilizing stuff. But, much like their American sisters at Hollaback, they’re looking for funding to launch the HarassMap Project to implement a system in Egypt for reporting incidents of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. GPS is illegal in Egypt, so they have to use other methods to reach their goal. which is to map the incidents online so they can highlight the severity and pervasiveness of the problem.
A popular youth magazine in Egypt, named Kelmetna was inspired to launch a campaign they call “Respect Yourself: Egypt still has real men”. They have seminars, self-defense classes, and street concerts.
They also have more than 53,000 fans on Facebook, which isn’t bad for a country where only 15% of the population has access to the internet. Unlike Hollaback, Kelmetna is targeting reaction against these on-street forms of harassment to young men as well as women.
But there’s a different type of tech that is most likely to be used by your bartender that can keep you safe as well. A group that started out as Drink Safe Texas has become Drink Safe USA. They’ve created a few things that can be used to help people keep their drinks free of being spiked with “date-rape” drugs. In fact, last October their Drink Safe Coasters were used to arrest an off-duty officer who had spiked the drinks of two women in a Dallas bar. The coaster, as you can see, has two colored dots on it. You can use your swizzle stick or your finger to apply a drop of your drink to the coaster. If either dot changes colors then your drink has been spiked with ketamine or GBH. The coasters cost around 40-cents each, which makes them very expensive for coasters, but a very cheap way to ensure that you’re drinking safely.
You can get them custom-printed with your logo and text and if you buy more than 10,000 the cost goes down to .30 each. I imagine the vast majority of bars right here on 6th go through more than 10,000 coasters during the course of a year. For anyone trying to figure out what kind of giveaway might be good for their company, some custom-printed coasters might be a way to care about your customer’s safety. I feel that it would be a far better technique to get your company noticed than paying for people to get their picture taken with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
But none of these things would have happened if the women who created them weren’t confident that they had an idea that could make a difference. And they continued to fight even though many people called them names, threatened them, and did their best to get them to give up on what they knew was right. Without the confidence to try their idea, and without the confidence to put up with the personal attacks they wouldn’t have made a difference.
And I doubt anyone who worked on these projects started off strong and confident, but that confidence grew as they continued to push for their goals. What these women, like so many other men and women, they adopted the “fake it till you make it” philosophy. Even if you have self-doubt about your ideas and your skills, even if you’re worried that you won’t be able to handle people calling you names, you owe it to yourself to put those fears aside, fake confidence if you have to, and then create, push, and win. Because if we believe everyone who calls us a stupid bitch, we won’t change anything, and we’ll continue to deal with harassment, we’ll be neglected, we’ll be ignored, we’ll be relegated to our small zones of influence where we know everyone. And nothing we’ll change. And that is what the people who call us all bitches want. Don’t let them win. Recognize that when they call you a bitch, you’ve won.
Comment [11]
15 March 10
You Win When They Call You a Bitch: Followup
In the next few days I will be posting all of the text, slides, and links I used to create my panel here. I want to share information about all of the resources and groups that I referenced and provide links to those I couldn’t include because of time.
But I wanted to begin a conversation here based on a question that was asked at my panel. A brave (talking in front of large groups while criticizing a speak is hard, yo!) woman of color stood up and asked me a question that she said was most likely semantics but that I think is a very valid and very good question.
I’m paraphrasing here, but “Using the phrase women and people of color implies that women of color are excluded. What is a better way to say this?”
I totally bombed the question, but more than 12 hours later I don’t have a better answer. I don’t know what a better way to say this is, but I want to have a better term to use. I don’t want to exclude anyone women of color from the description. However, because I’m a white woman I don’t think I should have the right to say what that better term is. I’m happy to brainstorm, I’m happy to tweak linguistics and semantics to make them work in a more inclusive fashion.
I asked people to take the conversation to Twitter if they had suggestions, but that excludes people who don’t have Twitter accounts and it limits what people can say because of the brevity of the format. However, because of Twitter I came across a suggestion from a woman living in Australia @tiaramerch girl who dislikes the phrase “people of color” and prefers “culturally diverse” or “ethnic minority” and then followed up with how in “Australia they’re officially Culturally & Linguistically Diverse (CALD)”.
But I think saying “women and the culturally and linguistically diverse” implies exclusion instead of inclusion as well.
So this post isn’t a better answer, just a recognition of the women who asked and a request for a more inclusive term from people who are more expert in this area than I am.
Even if you don’t have a Twitter account you should be able to go to this site and see all of the Twitter comments that people have created about the panel. I’m thankful for the compliments, am grateful that I’ve touched people, and look forward to the criticism. I have much to learn and am eager to do so.
03 January 10
So they think you've been racist?
Even when we don’t realize it we do and say racist things. Read that again, “even when we don’t realize it we do and say racist things.” The intention of making a racist statement is rarely there. It’s this subconscious racism that I want to address. If you’re proud to be a racist, chances are you’re not reading this site in the first place.
But I think there are many people, myself included, who have done something or said something that was perceived as perpetuating racism. (Of course you can insert homophobia, class privilege, etc. in that statement, but I’m going to stick with racism.) Even if you didn’t mean to say something racist, you may have. If you’re lucky, someone will let you know that what you said has a racist tone and ask if you meant it. You won’t feel like you’re being lucky, though. Cause if you’re someone who tries to be aware of their actions, finding out that you’ve said something that feels racist to another person is hard to hear. Very hard to hear. And even if you didn’t mean to be racist, even if you’ve fought against, written against, spoken against, railed against racism in the past, it doesn’t matter. Cause if you’re lucky, and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll be able to understand that you’re being told that you SAID or DID something that was racist. Not that you ARE a racist.
And that is the first distinction you need to make, to yourself, before you can respond to what IS being said. Are YOU being called a racist? or is your action, statement, piece of art, etc. being called racist? This is a huge distinction. And one that you need to make before you can proceed.
Once you’ve realized that something you’ve said has been perceived as racist. Instead of jumping and saying “But that’s not what I meant,” think about it. Cause if what you meant isn’t plainly understandable by the person saying it is racist, then it is probably because you didn’t clearly say what you meant. Or, it means that you are unaware that what you said has a racist baggage or history.
Here is an example: My senior year of high school there was this guy named Tree who was the class clown. He was hilarious. But sometimes he went too far with his desire to get the laughter of his classmates. And as the school year passed I began to wonder if he maybe had mental issues, if he was legitimately crazy. After one particularly awkward day I turned to a girl that I didn’t know very well, but who did know Tree and said “I think that boy is crazy!” Her eyes narrowed and it became apparent that she was instantly angry with me. And I hadn’t done or said anything wrong. I was honestly just concerned that he needed help. This girl and Tree were both black, and I am white.
A white classmate, came up to me later and said “I heard what you said about Tree. Now people think you’re a racist.” I was floored. I replied with, “I don’t think he’s crazy because he’s black, I just think he needs help.” This girl looked confused and asked me what I’d said about him, so I repeated it. Her eyes got wide. She replied with “For a smart girl you are really stupid sometimes. You don’t call black guys “boy”. Don’t you know that?” “But he is a boy. He’s only 17 and he acts like a foolish kid, he doesn’t even seem like a ‘guy’, let alone a ‘man’.” “Yeah, but you can’t call him ‘boy’. You just can’t.”
I was confused, and hurt, and worried. And I kept repeating to myself, “but I’m NOT a racist.” The next day in class, while I sat next to an iceberg I waited for a break and then turned to the girl I’d angered and said “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I didn’t mean anything bad by calling Tree a ‘boy’. I didn’t even know that was bad. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about him.” And the glare softened a little and it took months to go away, Tree remained crazy, and I learned something important that has stuck with me for a long time. Even when we don’t mean to, don’t realize it, and are appalled to find it out, we say and do racist things.
It’s easy. A lot easier than I would like it to be in fact. But when we do something and someone else says “that’s racist” the best thing you can do is stop and understand why they perceive it to be racist. When I was 12, if someone had called me “sassy” I would have felt proud and maybe even a little smug. But hearing someone call Malia or Sasha Obama “sassy” makes me pause. I can’t judge the person’s intent, nor can I judge the person, but I can (and should) let the person know that sassy has racist overtones.
I’ve seen several instances over my years on the internet and as a member of the blogosphere where someone has written something that could be described as racist, was perceived as racist. But sadly the number of apologies are few, the number of explanations and redefinitions are few. But the number of “Nuh uh! It’s not my fault you don’t understand what I meant!” or “How dare you accuse ME of being racist?” are high. And whether you’re a Hollywood star, or a blogger who honestly thinks that you know everyone who reads your website, this may happen to you. And if it does, there is a better way to handle it than getting defensive. Here is what I suggest.
Here’s the process:
1- Make a blog post, take a photograph, create a piece of, craft something cute, name your business
2- Someone who likely doesn’t know you looks at what you’ve created, done, said, written, etc. and says “That’s racist!”
3- Fight the urge to jump to your defense immediately.
4- If you can’t tell why it is racist, Google the phrase, name, image in question. Ask someone who knows you if they understand why it seems racist.
5- If you still can’t figure out why it is racist, say that to the person who brought up the word racist. “I’m sorry that you see this as a racist expression. That wasn’t my intention and I don’t understand why you see it that way.
6- Hopefully you’ll get an explanation or a link or information to explain why they see the racism but you don’t. You should at least be able to see why THEY see it is as racist, even if YOU still see the intent and not the cause of the reaction.
7- Apologize. Claim it. Don’t make excuses. Understand that many people may not believe you. Accept that there is a lot of racism in the world and that you have added to it, even if you didn’t mean to. Say, “I’m sorry that I made a comment that hurt and offended people. Even though I didn’t intend to do that, I did. And I’m sorry.”
8- Move on. Understand that you’ve learned something. And if you’ve done it publicly in the blogosphere, then there is a pretty good chance that you’ve permitted the people who live in an echo chamber to learn something as well.
8a- Understand that even after you’ve apologized, even after you have understood why someone disagreed with you, they may not accept your apology. You can’t change this. The scars of racism run deep, so deep, that even an earnest and heartfelt apology followed by an “I understand” will never be enough for some. It’ll be okay. After all, not everyone has to like you. You just have to know that you’ve done your best.
16 December 09
crafting + racism + hipsters + bacon = hot mess
It’s been quite a while since my brain has hurt this much at the end of the day like this. And I like it. But I think my brain hurts because it is out of practice in thinking about things like this and certainly out of practice preparing to write about things in a connected way.
So here are two links that you may want to read before continuing to read my post. It’s going to be disjointed and sketched and not coherent and before anyone criticizes me for that, understand that I’m aware of this ahead of time. I’m thinking, out loud. Nothing said here is final and I may change my mind drastically in the next hour.
First a couple of posts about Knitta, Please and racism. I came across this post yesterday read it, commented, and then mulled it over like wine and decided to read the other posts she linked to. Today I read this one at One Grand Home. And before I could figure out how reading this post made me think and how the comments that weren’t just ridiculously and intentionally offensive made me think, I got hit with a sucker punch by my lovely friend Veronica who makes it hurt so good.
She sent me a link to Vegan Feminist Agitator.
And in my head they’re connected. And I can’t quite put a finger on it, hence the disjointed disclaimer, but I know this:
• cultural appropriation happens all the time, but is it ever okay? Is it okay for an Austin-dwelling, crafting, educated, white woman to adopt and adapt a term used by and against a more urbane and hip-hop centered culture? Is it okay for an educated, urban-dwelling, pork-eater to base their identity off of a cut of meat that was created by and for people who couldn’t afford to throw away any part of an animal?
• hipsters are the cause of all these problems, right? I’m so painfully conflicted by the term hipster. I really don’t consider myself a hipster, but people have said that I am one. I’m not sure why, not sure of the distaste for hipsters (not completely anyway) and it just generally makes me feel uncomfortable. But thanks to reading Vegan Feminist Agitator I realize I’m too old to be a hipster, which explains my unease with the term. Or it doesn’t at all, maybe it just defines that I’m old.
• waste is a privilege, not a right. And I despise it, try to eliminate it, to not take things for granted, to understand that if you waste things now you’re likely to wish you hadn’t later on. I know this from experience. And whether the waste is related to the scraps left on a Thanksgiving turkey caracass, or the scraps of thread (I have a bag of every waste bit of thread I’ve cut off embroidery dating back to when I was 14 because I knew one day I would turn it into paper.) I don’t like it. I’m not always as diligent about eliminating as I should be. Bacon started out as a method of preserving food to make it last longer, keep it from going to waste. But I don’t believe for a second that the current bacon craze is related to a dislike of wasting materials. And while I know that Knitta, Please and other knitting graffitistas don’t see their work as wasteful, part of me does. Part of me has always wished that they put their work into creating items for charity groups. But I often wish that taggers would save their spray paint for a better purpose. Even if their sigs make me smile on occasion (thanks, “madeyoulook”).
• intent can rarely be addressed, just effect. One person can rarely say that another person’s intent behind a comment was racist. One person can rarely say that another person’s love of bacon is not ironic at all. UNLESS, that is, these two people discuss the issue. Many years ago I made a comment on this site that was perceived by people who didn’t know me as racist. I was appalled and sickened to realize that I’d said something that had caused that reaction, that I had caused people I respected anger and frustration. But I learned an important lesson. Intent can’t be addressed, only effect. Even if Knitta, Please doesn’t intend their name or stance to be racist, the effect is that it has made several people (who have bravely spoken publicly) feel uncomfortable. And I like bacon unironically. But I consider it one small part of a larger diet.
• The craft world isn’t white. It never has been. However, the current indie, urban-led, alternative, ironic, craft movement has a disproportionally large number of very vocal white proponents and faces in it. I am obviously one of them. However, I am incredibly fortunate to live in a town that is not entirely white. I am also incredibly fortunate to be one organizer of a larger, local craft show. and I am proud of the fact that we have the most diverse craft show that I’ve attended. And I mean diverse on many fronts, not just racially or ethnically, but gender, religion, style, and more. When we sit down to pick vendors I don’t think any of us pay attention to the names of the people we’re voting on. But once we have the vendors chosen, I like to do a tally of how many men we have, how many people of color we have, how many people make overt statements about their gender, sexuality, religion, race, etc. on their sites. And then I compare it to Chicago and I often find it lacking. I can always find room for improvement in myself and what I do. But I recognize that improvement is my goal, not perfection. That said, there need to be more voices about crafting coming from mouths that are not white. There are amazing crafts being made by people who aren’t white. Look at the Gee’s Bend quilts. The first time I saw them it was a religious experience. And that was before I knew who, where, how they were made. Craft and art can move the soul.
• I like Anthony Bourdain a lot. And he’s dissed vegans and vegetarians a great deal. But he’s also dined with vegans and vegetarians and exclaimed that if all vegetarian food could taste that good, he’d be happier with people giving up meat. He’s all about enjoyment, not murdering as many animals as possible.
• conversation leads to understanding when the possibility of listening is presented. A speaker won’t be easily heard, if it is apparent that they refuse to listen in response. “We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as often as we speak.” We bloggers forget that. And we’re more likely to recognize the troll who intentionally tries to derail the comment train more than we are willing to recognize the person who says “I’d never thought of it this way. Thanks.” Perhaps, sensitivity to criticism is just as much a part of hipster, online culture as irony is?
So not finished, not in anyway. But better. And possibly late for dinner.
Comment [16]
20 April 09
Pet Peeve of a Feminist Bent
So I read a comment recently that instantly made me angry. But I needed some time and some distance before I could figure out why it made me so angry. Actually, I needed time to think about all of the ways that I was angered. And I realized, eventually what it was. Since I don’t have a link to what angered me and don’t want to go look for it or add more links to it, I’m going to talk about the general perception that bothered me and explain how it relates to me.
There are a whole lotta people in Chicago that know Andrew because of Gapers Block and the work he has done with it. Occasionally I get to meet them. Occasionally, this is the reaction that I’ve sadly gotten from just as many men as I have women, “Oh, that’s so cute/sweet/nice/interesting that he lets you write for the site.” And this is what I stewed about and had to figure out. Many people assume that if there is one “famous” or “successful” person in a couple that the partner must either be just as into the exact same things (which I’m not) or completely clueless about what has made that person “famous” or “successful”. And in my case, and the case of other women I know, this isn’t true. I know a great deal about what Andrew has done. I lack the mad-tastic editing skills he has. I’ve not sought out fame through my role with Gapers Block, but working with the site has had an enormous effect on my life. Not just because our bedtime gets later and later depending on what Andrew has had to do for the site, or that I’ve been able to enjoy the occasional free ticket or dinner because of staffing outings. The site has affected me because of the people I’ve met on staff, the people who are in my life that I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for the site.
And it’s easy to explain the way I’ve been affected by the site and the way I’ve affected the site (there’d be less talk about food and crafting and feminism if I wasn’t around). But there’s another way that I’ve impacted the site. And here is the nugget of my frustration. If Andrew wasn’t with me, if I wasn’t in the picture, he’d still have created the site and still be doing it. But I think the stress on him would have been greater if I wasn’t there and I think his overall success with the site and with our aspects of his professional life wouldn’t have been as great. If I wasn’t with him, he wouldn’t have had someone making him dinner while he was working full-time, running Gapers Block, and starting up his freelance business. He wouldn’t have had someone congratulating his each achievement or listening to the stories of joy, frustration, annoyance, concern, or even confusion. He wouldn’t have had someone prodding him on ways to be a better manager, or a better businessman, or become aware of how the site affects parts of the city. He wouldn’t have had someone to help him take care of all the various tasks that involve running a home. (Andrew hasn’t paid a bill in years. If nothing else, because I take care of that chore he’s got an extra 4-5 hours a month because he doesn’t have to take over money managment.)
So yes I’ve gotten invited to an occasional free dinner as Andrew’s guest. But Andrew has been able to do what he’s done for the site because of the emotional, intellectual, financial, and professional support I’ve given him. And our relationship, our partnership, is the norm with people we know. But yet so many people have had a much more “traditional” view of what my role in his life must be. And this isn’t atypical. I see it happen with other people who are famous. If the man is famous, the woman must be attracted to his “power” or “influence”, which takes away his humanity while relegating her to a role of fame-whore or glamour-seeker, or even gold-digger. In my experience, it just hasn’t worked that way. The expected stereotype plays out better in the media than in real life. In my experience, relationships that are partnerships end up making it much easier for each person to engage in their life fully and actively because there is someone there to support them when they need it. So just because we aren’t active in each other’s realms, doesn’t me aren’t affecting each other’s ability to interact with our realms. We couldn’t have done it without each other. And we both know that.
Comment [8]
24 March 09
Women In Tech: Gina Trapani and Tiffany B. Brown
I’ve been trying very hard to figure out who to profile for Ada Lovelace Day. I know I’m supposed to choose one woman who has influened me in some realm of the tech world and write about her, explain why I chose her above all the other women.
And it’s really hard, actually. There are so many women I could have written about, and I’m honestly blessed that I have so many to chose from. I could choose Mena Trott who helped create Movable Type which revolutionized how people blogged and therefore my IRL life. Seriously, it was through MT 2.0 that I met many of the people that I now consider friends who are local and friends who are not local, but meatspace friends, flesh friends, IRL friends, real honest-to-gosh people.
I could also write about Anne-Marie Concepcion who is one of the top 2 InDesign Geniuses who have affected my daily work life. This woman has taught me far more about this Quark and InDesign than I can even begin to quantify. I owe her many beers or something because she has made my daily job easier.
But my job is not my life. And I’ve decided that I want to write in more detail about two women who have written about tech issues, and who have been writing about tech issues for 5 years or more. I know I’ve known about them for about that long. They’re two women who I met very briefly at my very first SXSWi, and I gushed to both of them about how they were both super-cool and I adore them and they’re awesome and like OMG, I totally ran away after going all fan-girl crazy on them after panels. I’m sure they both turned to the person beside them and said “Who was that crazy red head?”
Gina Trapani, creatrix of LifeHacker, writer of books, explainer of tech shite, expander of worlds, smacker-downer of unnecessary bs, expunger of sexism, and all-around super-fantastico amazingatrix! I don’t know how much more glowy fan-girl I could be. Seriously, this woman created a website that I continue to read daily (even though she no longer writes for it). I’ve learned about Firefox plugins, and Safari shortcuts, and time-saving tips that have helped my work-life and my non-at-work-life. And she’s written about super-techy stuff without the jargon. Even if I have no idea what Python is, and I so very much don’t, I’m convinced she could explain some command line that would make me say “Oh! I see now!” in my head. And that voice that she created at Lifehacker continues now. I admit I rarely read the comments. But in the beginning, when I had time, and when there were so many fewer websites and blogs to read, I did. And there were several “Oh come on, boys! Grow up already or get out!” comments that she would make in return to Beavis-style idiocy. And I feel that she did an amazing job of creating a female-safe tech-corner. And I thank her for that. Thank you, Gina! Thank you from the bottom of my geeky, geeky heart.
Tiffany B. Brown is the other woman in tech that I would like to point attention to. I first found out about Tiffany through a blog she kept about being a black feminist. At the time she also wrote another site about wine and she had her own personal site where she compiled all kinds of code and alphabet soup acronymy stuff that totally went over my head. But at my very first SXSWi conference I realized that I was able to parse CMS, CSS, and other web-related acronyms all because I was reading Tiffany’s posts about web-related stuff that I swore meant nothing to me, but some of it was was sticking and before I realized it, I was learning stuff I didn’t realize I knew. This woman still has a far more intense and complicated job than I’ll likely ever even consider, and I know there is so much of what she writes about that I truly don’t grasp. But, by reading her posts about code and actionscript and javascript and other stuff I’m not only able to keep up when my friends geek out on me, I’m honestly feeling like I understand it well enough so that this future of javascripting thing that may be looming on the day-job front is not so scary. I’ve also learned about several Firefox and Gmail tweaks and adjustments I could make that have seriously made running the DIY Trunk Show and Poise.cc so much easier. She’s saved me buckets of time, and that’s invaluable, people.
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22 February 09
Domestic Abuse and the Right to Own Your Image
If you have been lucky enough to come across the image of Rhianna’s beaten face, then consider yourself lucky. I’d heard that TMZ had come across a leaked image of the woman who was beaten by her boyfriend and I decided to actively avoid that image. I didn’t need to see it. I’ve seen enough women who were abused by someone they loved. I know what the police photos look like, I have several 20+ year old photos etched into my memory. Every cracked lip, swollen eye, bruised cheek, shattered jaw. I know what that looks like.
And you know what, so do you. Even if you didn’t have the same introduction I had to images of domestic violence. You know what people look like after they’ve been in a physical fight. It doesn’t make it any more or less real to know exactly how beat up she was.
So I (and I know I’m not the only one) was actively avoiding the image when I went to the Sun-Times website to follow a link to a completely different story. I clicke to their front page and saw, in their masthead, the image. It was just a thumbnail. But I didn’t need to even read the caption to know what it was. To know who it was. And I’m appalled by every news and “news” publication, website, program that has run the image. An image that was not supposed to be public. An image of a woman whose name was not supposed to be released to the public. An image that was illegally released by someone inside the police department for TMZ and others like them to profit off of.
And while I won’t say that reprinting this image is equal to hitting her, I do think that profiting off of this image is awful, unappealing, and just plain tacky. Rhianna lost control over her physical self during an incident that we can’t or don’t understand. Rhianna will likely lose sponsorship deals because her image now doesn’t match up to what it did before this incident. Rhianna should not have had to lose yet more control over herself because of an enterprising person who likely sold the images to TMZ. And if TMZ did buy these illegally attained images, I think they should be sued.
Because the only person who has the right to show those images is the woman who is in them. And that right has been taken from her. Yes, it is good that people now have visual evidence that domestic violence strikes at all income levels (OJ Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson, anyone remember that?). Yes it is important for people to believe that a “nice guy” like Chris could have done something so horrible. But, this image, the loss of control over the rights to this image, will not gain either of those things. It’s sad, but true. People will continue to believe that she must have done something to deserve it, or that maybe it was a mutual fight and we just need to see what he looked like, or that the images were mocked up or Photoshopped to make them look worse to gain strength for the smear campaign aganist Chris. No matter what visual evidence exists, those who don’t want to believe will find a reason not to believe.
Sadly, I didn’t need to see it to believe it. I know what it looks like. And now, thanks to the Chicago Sun-Times, I know exactly what it looks like.
edit Oops. I had Nicole Kidman instead of Nicole Simpson in this post. That’s what I get for ranting at 2am.
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