BurningbirdIn case you’re wondering, yes, I did pull an earlier weblog posting. Meryl had left comments with the post, but I don’t think she’ll mind that I pulled it considering that the nature of the posting was a joke, and a bad one at that.
Sorry, a break on earlier topic to jump back momentarily into technology:
In regards to the release of Userland’s Radio Community Server — there is no such thing as a full peer. Any machine that must be on 24×7 to serve a community of clients is called a “server”.
Why must some people seek to re-write the history of technology by re-defining terms and technologies in such a way that it looks like they are the “originators” of same?
Boggles. Boggles my friggen mind.
I wrote this on the 6th of March. Not sure why I didn’t post it then. One of those things. However, I looked at it again today and decided that today was a good day to post it.
Leaving the parking garage for my lunch appointment on Tuesday, I found the exit blocked, yet again, by the construction crew of the new condo across the street. I tapped my horn and when a couple of members of the crew turned towards me, I pointed to the pallets blocking the way. One of the guys holds up his finger in a gesture of “one moment”, walks over and moves the pallets — but not the huge truck behind them, basically giving me just barely enough room to turn the corner and not scrape the sides of my car.
As I fought to move the car around the obstacles, other construction crew members stopped working to watch and laugh at my efforts.
Last week when I took my car into the Ford service center, I missed the regular entrance and ended up driving through the actual center itself. At the center exit, a car blocked the way out, with a mechanic standing beside the car talking to another mechanic driving the car. I waited, not saying anything, not sounding the horn — I was a stranger in a strange land in this place. Eventually, the two guys finished their conversation, the car started to move, and I started to go…
…when I was stopped because the mechanic who had been standing by the car walked directly in front of me, slowly, looking at me, making sure I realized that he “owned” this territory, and that I pass by at his sufferance.
These two acts go beyond issues of courtesy. They were about power. These two individuals were the gatekeepers and I had to pay toll.
With the construction crew, my toll was to be humiliated as I tried my best to drive around the obstacles. At the service center, my toll was being made aware of the fact that I didn’t belong in this place, and I had best remember it.
There are well established (though often ignored) laws about driving to ensure we don’t kill each other. There are roads to enable driving from any point A to any point B. There is also a mapping and addressing scheme that works remarkably well in regards to location of same.
All of which can be arbitrarily shut down by one person who, in a moment of ultimate power, controls my only access to the organized but open system of the road.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I received a BS in computer science, the first one within a specific sub-discipline (programming languages and compiler design) that was issued at the college I attended. I also received a BA in psychology — emphasis on industrial psychology. I took courses for both disciplines at the same time, usually having computer classes in the morning, psych classes in the afternoon.
One thing both fields required was that I take math, sometimes very advanced math, including graduate level statistics. I had little trouble in all my subjects, but my math grades were heavily erratic. For instance, I did fairly well with my first quarter of College Calculus, getting an A-. You can imagine the puzzlement of the head of the Math department when I almost failed my second quarter of Calculus, taken with a different teacher.
We had meetings on the topic. He was puzzled because my first teacher actually had an reputation for being a bit of a hard ass when it came to not cutting any slack to any students. So why did I do so well with him, when I didn’t with the second teacher who actually wasn’t as tough when it came to tests and requirements.
I wondered about that, myself. It wasn’t until later that I realized the big differences between the two teachers: interest in answering questions.
Mr. Knobel was a no nonsense teacher who was also extremely adept at explaining concepts. There literally was no such thing as a stupid question to this man. If you asked him anything, he would take the time to answer you, dispassionately and in detail. He wouldn’t stop answering until you could prove to him that you understood what he was saying. An incredibly patient man.
The second teacher, whose name I can’t remember, was passionately in love with math, and loved to talk with others who loved math just as passionately as he did. If you asked him a question he would quickly flip off an answer and then get frustrated if you didn’t catch what he was saying the first time. The only way to get the detail you wanted was to “weather” the frustration until you got the answer you needed.
I did very well with one, and almost failed with the other. I’m not stupid. I am capable of learning. I currently own several math books and have pursued math on my own, quietly, since college. I like math. So why did I almost fail with the second teacher?
Now, I bet your first reaction about now is that I’m going to start a long conversation about how the second teacher needed to change, to become more approachable, to learn to work with women differently and so on. Well, I’m not. You see, he wasn’t the one that needed to change — I was the one who needed to change.
Other students in that second teacher’s class also had the same problem I did. However, many of the male students would pursue the question regardless of the teacher’s frustration. They wouldn’t stop hitting at him with questions until they got the answers they needed.
As for me, I now know that everytime I hit the teacher’s frustration, his disappointment that I didn’t understand what he was saying, I backed off. I couldn’t face his disappointment, even though it really wasn’t personal. I couldn’t face his frustration, even though it really didn’t impact negatively on me.
Skip forward, modern day weblogging world:
Elaine posted a note about Opine Bovine at both her weblog and BlogSisters. She says:
Once upon a time, there was a clever young blogger whose address was www.opinebovine.com. She’s disappeared off the web as far as any of us know, and she disappeared purposely. She made herself disappear because, as she explained before she packed up her bags and blogs and moved on, that she was being cyberharrassed and didn’t know how to make it stop. It makes me so mad to think that all of that pain is following us here. Is there so safe place for women?
I also talked via email with Elise about the problems she had. I was aware of the harrassment she’s endured for a considerable time. However, I am also frustrated that she left. My first reaction was, and I posted this in a comment at Elaine’s:
I had discussions with Elise about this before she quit. I respect her quitting, but I wish she hadn’t. What I would rather have happened is her tell the world about it and enlist several techies to help her in dealing with it. Then she could have continued and we could have taught some asshole a lesson.
Isn’t the lesson we’re learning from this is to run rather than stand and fight?
Stand and fight.
My first impulse to some (not all, some) of the reaction to my postings this weekend about BlogSisters, and ultimately about sexism was to drop the subject as being too difficult a topic to cover. However, that’s an action that women have been taking since the dawn of time — when faced with disapproval, anger, disagreement, fall back, give up, compromise.
Kath was right when she said in my comments, “Sexism is NOT ‘percieved’ if you are on the receiving end.” She supports this statement by a posting that discusses this topic more detail. And her sentiment was echoed by Sharon in a comment when she says “What bothers me is when people say things like ‘this *perceived* gender bias’….perceived?? Like we make this shit up??”
Jeneane says in a posting at BlogSisters, “…I have noticed that the posts of women bloggers are often overlooked when it comes to linking and discussion in the greater world of blogging. And I think that’s wrong. We do have something to say.”
These are topics worth pursuing. This is a discussion worth having. And if you’re not interested in listening, then turn the channel because I’m just getting started.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
“I am not a feminist.”
According to Merrian-Webster’s online dictionary, feminism is:
1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests
A feminist is a person who follows the principles of feminism, or one who actively promotes women’s rights and interests.
I learned the true lesson of what feminism means when I was once pontificating about being a “feminist” to a mixed sex group of people, only to have one of the guys pop up with, “Well, so what. So am I.”
Huh? A guy? But yes.
Anyone who believes that women should have equal opportunity for work, equal pay for said work, equal opportunity of religion, equal opportunity to education, equal opportunity to medical care, equal opportunity to speak, equal opportunity to vote, control over what happens with her body, equal say with what happens to her family and her children is a feminist.
If you don’t support these concepts, may I suggest that you read this story about the young girls who lost their lives in a fire in Saudi Arabia because they tried to run from the building and were beaten back because they were not wearing their headscarves.
And if that doesn’t turn your stomach, I can find you a hundred stories about the treatment and murder of women in Afghanistan.
And if that doesn’t get through, I can find you a thousand stories about abuse of women in this country. Matched by a hundred thousand stories of women not being paid the same as a man, even though women in this country head up over 85% of single family homes — a case of those with the most mouths to feed being paid the least.
And if that doesn’t enrage you, I can find you a million stories in history of rape and subjugation of the female of the species, touching every major religion on this planet, crossing every country border, and floating across every damn sea.
“I’m not a feminist”.
The next time you issue a dismissal of feminism, think about what you’re rejecting. And what you’ll get in its place if it were gone.