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Diversity Events of note People Photography

Pridefest

Pridefest 2005 Today’s outing to the St. Louis PrideFest 2005 parade did not begin auspiciously–we were hit from behind by a lady driving an SUV. Luckily my roommate, who was giving me a lift, drives a larger van and we could drive away after the insurance cards were exchanged.

(I hate the sensations of a car wreck: the screeching tires, the metallic thud, and the fast jerk as your car is pushed forward. I dislike more my roommate’s car being damaged because he was giving me a ride.)

Anyway, he dropped me off at the parade route, and I found a spot in front of a light pole in a little bit of shade, right next to a large group of gay women. Ironically, it was the group the lady who hit us was joining. That poor woman became the butt of several of her friend’s jokes, and one bad pun from me (“Nice running into you again.”)

They were a marvelous group to stand with : every time any car, float, or group went by they would cheer and cheer. Their exuberance added much to the event.

The Parade started right on time, and they kept the pace up, probably because they wanted to finish quickly. It was in the upper 90’s and humid and the air quality was horrid. The conditions were more than compensated, though, by the parade participants. They were a wonderful group, and more than once, I found my eyes stinging a bit from the gentle pride, and absolute joy you could see on their faces.

A Mother's Pride

There were participants from several companies, including several real estate firms. I gather that gay money, at least, is welcome in the housing market. Even in Missouri. Politically, the mayor was there, as was the fire chief and a couple of aldermen, and Ross Carnahan, a Democrat. There was even a small contingent from the Log Cabin Republicans, though they marched at quite a distance from the one somber entry, aptly named “Fear”.

Fear

There were some fun and flamboyant participants, but most of the marchers wore simple cotton shirts in various colors, with the word “Pride” over the chest. Even though they live right in the middle of that part of the country which condemns everything about them, they can still smile at, and throw pretty beads to, a crowd that has consistently voted down many of their rights. I think next year the St. Louis Pridefest organizers should consider adding the words “Courage” and “Determination” to the outfits.

Truth

Reflection in Glass

Everywhere

Categories
Diversity

The playing field

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I struggled for my first breath at 7:01 in the morning on the 18th of November, 1954. My struggle for equality began at 7:02.

Last week, Kos of the Daily Kos published a post supposedly in response to some people who were offended by an ad at his site. The ad features that silly new reality show based on that even sillier, but at least original, Gilligan’s Island. In the ad, two women playing Ginger and Mary Ann–busty and tight clothed–get into a pie throwing contest, to the titillation of the ersatz Skipper and Gilligan watching from the bushes.

Many folk found this ad offensive to women. Personally, and if you’ve read the Lehman poem Sexisim you’ll understand where I’m coming from, I found it offensive to men, as much as women. However, what became more of an issue than the ad is Kos reaction to those who expressed concern and outrage. We can only term it thoughtless at best, dismissive and arrogant at worst.

He responded first with:

So over the weekend, certain segments of the community have erupted in anger over the TBS ad for their reality show, the Real Gilligan’s Island. Apparently, having two women throw pies at each other, wrestle each other in a sexy, lesbianic manner, then having water splashed on their ample, fake bosoms is degrading to women. Or something like that.

Whatever. Feel free to be offended. I find such humorless, knee-jerk reactions, to be tedious at best, sanctimonious and arrogant at worst. I don’t care for such sanctimony from Joe Lieberman, I don’t care for it from anyone else. Some people find such content offensive. Some people find it arousing. Some people find it funny. To each his or her own.

Me, I’ll focus on the important shit.

He also made a crack about the women’s study set, which he later amended, writing

Hmm, after considering the early feedback, it seems most people didn’t have a problem with the ad, but had a huge problem with my sweeping generalization of the “women’s studies set”.

It’s a fair critique, and duly noted. I stand by everything else written, which is offensive enough to some people as is. But I honestly didn’t mean to smear anyone who has ever taken a women’s studies course, or majored or minored or gotten an advance degree in it. Just what is, to me, a small, extremist set looking for signs of female subjugation under every rock. So yeah, a poor choice of words that cast the net far too wide to cover the people that have, in fact, pissed me off.

Sorry about that, but not sorry about my broader point — that being sanctimonious about this ad is no different than the sanctimony we decry from people like Lieberman, Dobson, and the Family Values Coalition.

This unleashed a backlash that equals any other that I’ve seen in weblogging, and one that doesn’t look to be going away, because it’s really not about Kos. Not anymore. It’s tapped a frustration among many who consider themselves part of a growing political progressive movement.

I first heard about the discussion at Feministe where Lauren wrote:

Is the ad in and of itself offensive? Not necessarily. What is offensive is Kos’ dismissal of feminist complaint, concern and criticism regarding a pretty sexist ad designed for het male titillation run on the most widely-known progressive blog for his own personal profit.

Objectifying and demeaning any minority group for the sake of profit, be it corporate or personal, is abhorrent. This is exactly why I resist the Democratic party and most of its advocates. Women and women’s opinions don’t matter if they run contrary to the bottom line.

Others also responded, too many to link directly but among them are Echinde of the SnakesShakespeare’s SisterMediaGirlPandagonWaiting for Dorothy, and on and on — not just people responding to Kos’ statement, but also each other. (A cross-weblog thread I would surely love to capture in its entirety. Here’s a synopsis.)

I don’t care about Kos. I don’t find him particularly erudite or thoughtful in his writing; he has poor impulse control and is way too stuffed with his sense of his own importance. If this was about Kos, it wouldn’t interest me. But the focus on this discussion quickly went from Kos to the Democratic Party and even the progressive movement, and this does interest me.

Note in Lauren’s first post on this issue, the final two sentences: This is exactly why I resist the Democratic party and most of its advocates. Women and women’s opinions don’t matter if they run contrary to the bottom line. Shakespeare’s Sister also noted that this disregard for women among some of the more politically expedient of the liberal movement has deep roots, writing:

Indeed, the complaints about the male-centric upper echelon of the lefty blogosphere almost perfectly mirror the complaints about the male-centric leadership of the 1960’s anti-war movement—namely, that women were excluded from positions of power and influence.

Not only excluded, and I can’t find the original reference, but one of the original leaders in the Black Panther Movement was rumored to have said that the place for women in the movement was on their backs. Whether this is true, or, more likely, a misstatement, it is a known fact that women did not have full equality in the movement, even though they comprised the majority of the membership. From the paper, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense about the history of the Black Panther organization:

The role of women within the Panthers was an area with many problems. At one point, women comprised 70% of the membership of the organization. Yet, all the leading positions were occupied by men. This is not a petty point because it illustrated the different roles that men and women took on. It seems that many women were confined to secretarial, administrative, childcare or other traditional roles whilst men were encouraged to develop the political ideas, speaking and leadership abilities. Also, some of the brothers complained that they were not taking directions from a woman! At other times it was found that accusations of being a counter-revolutionary were spread about a woman just because she did not want to sleep with someone.

These problems would have cut the Panthers off from a whole layer of Black women who were not prepared to put up with this nonsense. However, we have to see that sexist attitudes were not unique to the Panthers – it is something that occurs in all organizations because it is related to the oppressive nature of this society and the way in which it exploits women. The Panthers did take action against these attitudes but they did not fully succeed – equality in the party was never achieved. And you cannot be a true community organization, fighting the oppression of society if women are being oppressed within your organization.

My own political involvements at the time were all under the direction of men, even though women were many times placed in the front when police would come to break up demonstrations. In a paper on the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), David Gilbert wrote on an early meeting of women members of the organization, and a reception to their findings among the general body:

Meanwhile, the inspiration of the civil rights movement, the key and assertive work of women in it, and the problems of sexism within the left, all led to a re-birth of women’s liberation. An early example was SDS’s first ever all women’s workshop at our 6/67 national convention. The air crackled with the energy and creativity the women generated. But their report to the plenary got a raucous reception — including catcalls and paper airplanes — from many SDS men. Given there had been little history of struggle, it isn’t surprising that men were still very sexist, but such blatant hostility was shocking for an organization that prided itself on always siding with the oppressed. That debacle was an example of the problems that pushed many women to leave the “left” and contributed to an unfortunate tension between anti-imperialism and feminism, which weakened both. Many principled women — strengthened by the often unsung examples and leadership of women of color — continued to struggle on both fronts, but it took an Amazonian effort to do so.

But let’s not stop in the Sixties–we can follow along the path for the fight for rights for all and find women all along the way; women all too often recruited to swell the ranks of the fighters, and all too often discarded as soon as the fight is either lost or won. We are just so damn convenient; that is until we are no longer convenient.

Now the women who are angry at the lack of voice for women in what is supposedly the party that represents women, are being accused of costing the Democrats elections. Lauren wrote another scathingly angry piece on the issue of humor and feminists. She wrote:

Those who appear to be our natural allies appeal to women during election time, forget about us after the election is over, dismiss us when we call bullshit, demean us when we demand integrity, and then use our bodies to sell their product

She also pointed to a couple of other posts that discuss our ‘badness’ for raising such issues.

Poetic Leanings wrote:

The most important thing I can say is that feminism and the strong women behind critical social issues are NOT costing the Democratic Party votes and elections. Gay marriage is NOT costing Democrats votes and elections. The media “experts” will tell you otherwise, and various talking heads will point again and again to how specific social issues are harming the progressive movement.

…What loses elections for Democrats is cowardice. Refusing to have the courage to stand up for our beliefs, or holding to a hypocrisy based upon the idea that we can only be righteously indignant on issues when it is politically expedient to do so, is the reason Democrats lose elections. We are not true to our convictions. Voters are given a choice between a Republican and a Republican, and they vote … well … for the Republican. It is time for Democrats to stop apologizing for being on the correct side of issues. Ways of defending these positions must be promoted instead until more voters understand that Republicans are anti-woman, minority, blue collar worker, the middle class, God, and on and on and on. People might listen to progressives if they trust that we believe in what we say. Cowering in fear of the extremism of Republicans is hardly the best way of doing this.

What loses elections for Democrats is cowardice. Elections? Or self-respect?

Rana at Frogs and Ravens asks the question: does this sound familiar?

“You lefties just don’t get it. Standing up for the environment /arguing against the Iraq war /defending women’s rights /rallying for gay marriage /questioning free trade /regulating corporations is going to drive away voters. Let’s get the next election over with first, then we can deal with those things.”

“Greens will never win. You have to vote for Democrats, or the Republicans will win.”

“Why are you offended by this? It’s no big deal, and we have more important things to talk about. Why are you getting all bent out of shape by trivia?”

“Let’s get Bush out of the White House first. Then we can talk about racism /sexism /homophobia.”

“It’s a two-party system; third parties are a waste of your time.”

“It’s not like Roe v. Wade is going to overturned — and maybe if it is, that’d be a good thing, because then we could have a better debate about it.”

“Women’s issues are small stuff. Let’s deal with the important things first.”

Oh, and lest you think this is just a woman’s thing and therefore easy to dismiss, read Charlie’s take:

When it comes time for elections, Democrats are all about the women’s vote. But when the elections are over, and it comes time to pony up and actually lead by example, we get this instead. If you don’t want to see the party divided, don’t ignore the people whose vote you rely upon. And Kos, I’m well aware that you aren’t setting the agenda of the Democratic National Convention. But we all know that you’re considered one of the most influential liberal bloggers. And from your contemptuous comment about other bloggers needing the patronage, I think you’re well aware of that.

If you want to know why the Democrats are having trouble pulling people together, look no further than yourself.

This discussion resonated deeply within me, considering the following post I was in the middle of writing last week:

I’ve been a straight voting Democrat for close to thirty years, and though there has been, twice, when I’ve voted for a Republican, the only other time I’ve waivered from a strong party line was when voting for independents or Greens. Never at the national level though–only locally.

Well, I should say, I was a voting Democrat because I have quit the party. It wasn’t due to this latest fiasco, though I’ll admit this helped confirm my decision. It also wasn’t due to the Party picking Howard Dean as Chairman, though I’ll admit this did have something to do with it. The decision came from a lot of different factors, and began even before the Presidential election.

It used to be that the Democratic Party represented a strongly social agenda, while the Republicans focused primarily on economics. Lately, this has been reversed, and not in a positive way for either party.

The Republicans who, once, represented a fiscally conservative section of the populace that preferred to keep social matters out of the government, have embraced religious fundamentalism at its core; abandoning restrictions on government spending in favor of restrictions on personal lifestyle choices. Oh it still irresponsibly waves about tax cuts, as a panecea to all problems. Yet the government dominated by this party spends, madly at times, wildly at others–and seems incapable of connecting the two and a growing and dangerous deficit.

The Democrats, on the other hand, once focused on bringing more social responsibility into the government, even at the risk of an inceased tax burden. Where is the Party now that once helped bring civil rights to the South and hope to the ghettos? Now, the Party focuses on Social Security and balance of trade and unemployment, with an understanding that it has to pick and choose which battles to fight. (And let’s face it, there’s not enough gays to swing the election, and the poor can’t pay for medical insurance much less donate to the Party coffers. As for women? Hey, no one is stopping us from being fully equal, are they?)

I watched in the last several months as Congress came dangerously close to breaking the barriers that separate the legislative branch of government from the judicial; selling ANWR out through the back door; passing bill after bill that erodes our freedom and our dignity, as it caters sometimes slavishly and unthinkingly to corporate interests. I look carefully to see how each party votes, and the only time I can tell the difference between the two, is whether a politician is smiling when Howard Dean is present; or whether he or she looks ready to kill.

(And that’s not a guaranteed Party filter.)

Even now, most of the energy of the Democratic Party is being focused on protecting the chairman, Howard Dean, as he jumps up and down. The Party says he brings passion, but what the Party really likes is that he brings in money. Oh, and yeah — we need to put some Democrats in Mississippi and Kansas. You know, the places where the guys in pickup trucks fly them Confederate flags.

It gave me such pride to read Lauren’s and Shakespeare’s sister and Rana and Amanda and the others as they expressed their anger and their dissatisfaction, openly and directly, not afraid of being either condemned or questioned; not once backing down from their beliefs even if, in spite of, ‘rocking the boat’ for the ranked political bloggers.

We’re told that change comes from within, and if we want to make a difference, we need to get along to get ahead. I haven’t seen this strategy work in my technology-related profession, conditions of which seem to have worsened since weblogging has started. I haven’t seen this work in my society, where women being concerned about sexism are dismissed as ‘humorless women’s studies types’ who can’t focus on ‘more important issues’. I haven’t seen this work in the Democratic Party, which spends most of its time scrambling for the tattered ribbon of ‘morality’. I definitely don’t see it in very many countries, where rape is still a favored weapon of war, and women are still considered property. Even in my own supposedly egalitarian country, women make up half the population but only about 15% of the leadership.

The game is rigged, so I’m picking up my marbles, and I’m going to find a different playing field, and different players. My most sincere thanks to the prominant Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian gentlemen bloggers for showing me the light.

As of last week, I am now an official member of the Green Party. At some point I realized that the only vote you throw away is the one that you cast because it’s the lesser of two evils. I will no longer compromise on full rights for gays, equal representation and application of the law for minorities, the environment, global health care, separation of church and state, corporate responsibility, and above all, women’s issues. But I won’t stop with being a passive member, I plan on becoming involved as deeply as I can with how this party is run. I am not going to let another political organization classify the concerns of half the population as a ‘bullet’ item in a preset agenda.

Categories
Diversity Photography

Flora

I thought I would share a photo of Missouri’s colorful flora. Yes, you never know what exotic bloom you’ll come upon when out walking in these hills.

This silk floral lei was hanging from a tree in the middle of the forest that surrounds the Illinois end of the the Chain or Rocks Bridge. For ‘junk’ it was surprisingly pretty and fit the lush green of a typical Missouri marsh in summer. Artful graffiti. That’s the surprising thing about Chain of Rocks — not that there isn’t graffiti, but that the graffiti is rather attractive, and somehow appropriate.

I discovered the lei when I went with my roommate early yesterday morning to the Chain of Rocks: me to walk the Bridge, him to take his new bike on the bike path that follows the Mississippi until downtown. We picked morning since with the summer comes the summer heat and humidity.

Yesterday was only a start on the festivities I’ll attend this week. Missouri has come alive with a rich tapestry of interesting, and free, events. Tomorrow my daily outing will be the St. Louis Zoo, to see the king penguin baby and the new Fragile Forest exhibit. Also tomorrow, the first of the weekly concert series at the Botanical Gardens; Friday brings the first of the musical evenings at the zoo. Forest Park features the Shakespeare play, The Tempest, in the wonderful outdoor amphitheater. Next week brings the finest ragtime festival in the world to Sedalia, Missouri. All nice breaks from the web page design, coding, and writing.

Not that I don’t spend a lot of time regardless with the latter. We finished Loren’s Wordform conversion this weekend, and I really do like the look of his site. The “Floating Clouds” design takes on new meaning with his sky blue photographs and use of transparent sidebar. I wish I could take credit for these design additions, but Loren decided on both, and it really works for his site and the overall layout and concept.

We also broke the “800×600″ barrier with his site — the center columns combine to 900 pixels. It was that or shrink Loren’s photos, and I’m not sure that the need to ‘rigidly’ follow this standard outweighs the effect of this shrinkage. If a person has an 800×600 monitor, they will need to scroll past the sidebar somewhat to get to Loren’s writing, but all of the content column will fit in the viewer, and I think this is the critical element. Hard to say, because I’m perceiving the design from monitors supporting 1024, or higher, resolution.

Speaking of perceptions. I, like some others, also listened to the Chris Lydon OpenSource radio program last night. I wasn’t even aware of it until people started mentioning it yesterday, and then I had to catch the ‘last showing’ in Seattle at 9pm (11pm my time).

From a radio perspective, I thought there was too many interruptions in the show — phone numbers to call, station breaks, notes about sponsors. I don’t listen to much talk radio so perhaps this is normal.

The guests were David WeinbergerDave Winer, and Doc Searls. As has been noted already elsewhere, this may not have been the best of choices for a show on Web 2.0–not that the people aren’t involved in it; but that this group has decidely focused viewpoints that don’t necessarily reflect that of the general populace.

For instance, a person named Catherine called into the show and noted that the internet fosters communication but in a sterile manner. This was mild criticism, but the guys didn’t necessarily address it so much as they tried to bury it with their enthusiasm. This seems to be all too common: critical debate has a very fragile existence in weblogging conversations. Discussions are either love fests or flame wars; there is very little in-between.

I also have one minor correction to make about what was discussed: Doc Searls and David Weinberger both mentioned how open source is owned by everyone and can be worked on by anyone, but that’s not entirely true. Open source is like proprietary source in that there are always those who control the direction and modifications of a specific piece of software–it’s just with open source, those who disagree with this direction can make a choice to start in a different direction, spun off from the main.

This is important to keep in mind because one misinformed criticism leveled at open source is that it is ‘too chaotic’–an assertion recently made as a reason not to release Java, as open source.

(Now what this has to do with Chris Lydon’s radio broadcast, leading to the title “OpenSource”, I have no idea.)

But I digress. David mentioned that he spent the weekend in a place with little internet access, and how cut off he felt by it. Lydon responded with the question: Is David addicted?

Riding over Drugs

Dave Winer made a statement in reply to another caller (Ruth) that jarred badly. In response to her observation about the use of the internet by people in Vietnam and her wonder how they’re using it, he jumped in with a quip that people in Vietnam are online primarily looking for sex. He said this also applies to LiveJournalers. He may have been semi-joking, but it showed little respect for the caller, and her comments. It was a glib, offhand response that added little to the discussion.

This statement aside, if there is one thing that would have given the show more grit, it would have been to include a more diverse group of interviewees. This particular group shares many of the same enthusiasms; without critical feedback, the show puffed a little overly much, becoming more of a pep rally than a true discussion of Web 2.0. This did, however, lead to the funniest part of the broadcast: after a particularly exuberant set of statements about how the web is going to change the world, a station break mentioned that the show, Living on Earth, would follow.

My biggest surprise of the evening was how nice Doc Searl’s voice is. I don’t think I’d ever heard it before, but he has a lovely voice. However, my perceptions may be a little biased because of something Doc said that was one of the most honest if quiet assertions in the entire program. When David Weinberger brought up how the weblogging environment still reflects the early dominance by Americans, and not just any Americans, but geeky Americans, Doc interjected, ‘…and males’.

For that, Doc earned a rose.

Categories
Diversity JavaScript

Ajax, the manly technology

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Seems that O’Reilly has had another one of its invite-only summits, but this time about Ajax. If you’ve missed hearing about Ajax, it’s the web development equivalent of tags (as taxonomy) and metaformats (as semantics). This is part of the technology that makes America, well, America.

A new twist, though: As you can see from the list of attendees, Ajax is the new manly-man technology. Or if you prefer, stud muffin technology.

Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey!
Macho, macho tech (macho tech)
I’ve got to be, a macho tech
Macho, macho tech
I’ve got to be a macho! Ow….

Macho, macho tech
I’ve got to be, a macho tech
Macho, macho tech (yeah, yeah)
I’ve got to be a macho!

What’s the tech equivalent of butt cracks and belching? Oh, yeah! XmlHttpRequest and Javascript!

Normally I would be all up in arms about the absolutely abysmal ratio of women to men, except we’re talking about Ajax. What did one statement from this summit say? Ajax is to traditional Web, what IM is to Email. Nice and catchy, except I can think of a better analogy: Ajax is to traditional Web, what Miller Lite is to beer.

Macho, macho tech. I want to be a macho tech…

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Diversity

Shelley, you suck

As was pointed out in comments, according to Bill Gates–a kid born rich who got richer– since I am an unemployed computer tech, I must suck.

Anybody who’s got good computer science training, they are not out there unemployed,” Gates said. “We’re just not seeing an available labor pool.”

What Gates means, according to David Weinberger, in light of recent discussions, is that there is a shortage of heterosexual engineers in the US. I think we could take it an additional step and say there’s a shortage of heterosexual engineers in the US willing to work long hours for little pay but the prestige of saying, “I work for Microsoft”.

I did submit my resumé this last week to Microsoft for an opening that someone (going nameless to protect his identity and job) passed on to me. Of course, we’ll have to see if Microsoft follows through, or if they look at my resumé and go, “Wow, this person sucks–let’s hire someone from another country”.

I’m straight, though: does that help?