Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

Categories
Connecting Diversity

No other word works but great

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m at work on a longer essay for later today or tomorrow on another topic, but I wanted to make a comment about the gay marriages in San Francisco.

Watching the story online and on TV about Gavin Newsom’s carefully planned act of defiance against the State of California, the weekend of gay marriages in San Francisco, the ecstatic faces of the people married – among all the bad news lately, it is a true bright spot.

And it’s not just Newsom – city officials volunteered their three day weekend in order to grant marriage licenses and perform weddings. It was a pure delight to see it, and this is one of those few times I wish I had been back in San Francisco. I would have loved to throw confetti and rice over the newly married couples as they left City Hall.

And the weddings continue because judges have refused to issue immediate stays on the issuance of marriage licenses, even though two groups have tried to get them stopped.

And why are they stopping the marriages? What possible harm can it be to allow gays to marry? That isn’t going to encourage people to become homosexual. It isn’t going to undermine the concept of marriage for the straights. If anything, gays may bring a more stable element: some of the people who have been getting married have been together 30, 40, even 50 years. Fifty percent of straight marriages end in divorce. Exactly what have we done for the institution lately?

Look at this picture that I copied from the Chronicle – is this the photo of two criminals committing a crime against humanity?

marriage.jpg

Only if your view of humanity is very narrow, and your sense of what is criminal is very wide.

And the stories. My favorite is the following, from the Chronicle:

Melinda McCallister, 25, and Jennifer Kemmet, 23, drove Tuesday from Los Angeles. As they got to the door of the clerk’s office at 4 p.m., they were told that they’d have to come back today because the office was closing for the day; the couple before them was to be the last one to get in.

They sat down and cried. The door reopened and a worker yelled, “Hey L.A.! ‘’ and let them in.

They emerged from City Hall an hour later with a marriage certificate in hand.

This news coming out of San Francisco, is the first news I’ve heard in a month, over a month, of the triumph of the human spirit, the fire of those who will not accept the dictates of a hypocritical society, and the goodness of people reaching out to other people.

How can it be so damn bad?

Governor Schwarzenegger, that poster boy for good heterosexual behavior, talks about how this is a violation of an act passed by the California voters.

“I support all of California’s existing laws that provide domestic partnership benefits and protections,’’ Schwarzenegger said. However, he said, “Californians spoke on the issue of same-sex-marriage’’ when voters approved of Proposition 22, the 2000 initiative that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. “I support that law and encourage San Francisco officials to obey that law,’’ he said.

The beauty of a country that’s a republic rather than a true democracy is that majority may rule, but minority have rights – and if California has decreed that gays may not be discriminated against, then this law is a violation of that basic right.

Fuck the majority who have nothing better to do then react in fear to change!

I have heard the most outrageous attacks against gay marriage:

“What’s to stop mothers from marrying sons?”

“This will only serve to breed more homosexuality.”

“Marriage is a natural act, between a man and a woman.”

“Gays marrying will undermine the integrity of marriage.”

“Queers belong back in the closet instead of out in the open, kissing and things.”

That last is my own because most people won’t say this out loud, but you know that’s the true story behind the fear of gay marriage.

I remember one incident, walking home one night when I was in college, in Ellensburg a fairly conservative town in Washington. The Gay Students group had just broken up and I was following two guys who were holding hands. Just holding hands.

They heard my footsteps behind them and jerked their hands apart and hastily moved away from each other, both turning to look behind them in fear.

My god that people have to act this way in this country because others have such sad, pathetic lives that all they can do is interfere with the happiness, or needs, of others. My god, and that is the key isn’t it? My ‘god’. I bet it just burns you up when I use ‘god’ in lower case, as an average thing rather than a diety.

Why don’t you pass a law making this illegal?

No, the only reason I can think of for people to continue to get angry about gay marriage is that these same people are afraid of challenges to their sense of normalcy. They say:

Sex is between a man and a woman. A family consists of a mother and a father and kids. Marriage is for straight people only. Marriage is a holy state. God has willed this.

They mean:

My world has been upset too much the last few years, and I can’t handle any more change in it. I want my normal life back. I want the terror to go away. I want the gays to fade back into the shadows. I want everyone to believe like I do so that my faith isn’t questioned and I don’t have to listen to anything that might make me doubt it.

Because if I once begin to doubt my faith, I may start to doubt every aspect of my life, and I can’t handle that.

Your freedom is not worth shaking up my world. If I see you holding hands in public, my world will crack. If I see you married, my world will shatter.

I don’t want any more change. I don’t want any more change. I don’t want any more change.

But how do you keep them on the farm once they’ve seen Gay Pairee?

freetomarry.jpg

Too great not to pass on

From an SFGate.com story by David Kravets and Lisa Leff, AP writers:

Two judges delayed taking any action Tuesday to shut down San Francisco’s same-sex wedding spree, citing court procedures as they temporarily rebuffed conservative groups enraged that the city’s liberal politicians had already married almost 2,400 gay and lesbian couples.

The second judge told the plaintiffs that they would likely succeed on the merits eventually, but that for now, he couldn’t accept their proposed court order because of a punctuation error.

It all came down to a semicolon, the judge said.

“I am not trying to be petty here, but it is a big deal … That semicolon is a big deal,” said San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren.

The Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund had asked the judge to issue an order commanding the city to “cease and desist issuing marriage licenses to and/or solemnizing marriages of same-sex couples; to show cause before this court.”

“The way you’ve written this it has a semicolon where it should have the word ‘or’,” the judge told them. “I don’t have the authority to issue it under these circumstances.”…

Lawyers for both sides then spent hours arguing about punctuation and court procedures during the hearing, which was still continuing late Tuesday afternoon.

(via Language Hat)

Categories
Diversity History

Women’s Movement

I am ashamed to say that I did not know this month was dedicated to Women’s History until I read this lovely rundown of historical moments by Alas, a Blog.

In keeping up with the theme, bean is continuing posting events in women’s history that have happened on each particular day in January. These are in keeping with all the other exceptionally good writings posted at this site.

I am ashamed that I don’t write on Women’s Writing or history for that matter, as much as I should for someone with my interest in both. Too easily sidetracked into other things that aren’t that important.

Such as political speeches that focus more on steroid use in athletes then on providing health care for all the people in this country. But then, we have California’s example to go by – that state felt it more important to rollback increases in car license fees rather than ensure the children of that state get access to medical care.

Damn, I just got sidetracked again. I think I’ll spend some more time at Alas, and focus more on women’s writing than the President and his politics – it is a much more palatable subject.

Categories
Diversity

The little woman

Though I sometimes wish Dean would go out and hire a strong DC insider to manage his campaign and keep him from inserting foot in mouth, my estimation of him as a candidate was enhanced when I read about his relationship with his wife, Dr. Steinberg Dean, and the fact that she doesn’t have much to do with the campaign.

Finally, for once, an example of a political spouse who really does demonstrate that there could possibly be equality of the sexes in this country some day.

However, the mainstream media and all the little anal conservatives are just appalled at the fact that this woman is not giving up her career in order to stand by her man. But I’ll let View from the Loft speak my mind, he did it so well:

Go ahead and Google Judith Steinberg Dean–you’ll see many, many more examples of the we-like-independent-women-but-itsn’t-it-odd- that-Judy-is-never-seen-with-Dean-on-the-campaign-trail train of thought. Actually, “we”–that is, commentators, reporters, and throwbacks–don’t like independent women. They make “us” nervous. They have the unmitigated gall to believe that their own careers are important, not amusements to be tossed aside when hubby calls. “We” want to see a woman stand by her man, and if she doesn’t, well, “we” can’t be held responsible for the consequences. This is what underlies the rationalizations that “we,” as one columnist said, want to see the candidate “in context. And you can’t see a man in context without his wife.”

And here I thought electing a candidate had to do with his beliefs, policy proposals, position on crucial issues, qualifications for the job, and other trivia, when all the while it’s about whether he and his wife have a good (read: man-dominant, woman-subservient) marriage. Silly me.

(Thanks to Joel for the heads up)

(My, I’m making up for lost time not writing to the weblog, aren’t I? I miss my walks, though.)

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Best blog with a female spirit

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This is too tedious for words because I have things I need to be doing, but I would not be me, which would be remiss and inconsistent and therefore uncomfortable for you and that’s to be avoided at all costs (at least on a Tuesday, shaking your world being allowed on a Wednesday), if I did not make some form of response to this newest of weblog awards, the 2003 Weblog Awards. Normally I find these events to be, well, rather uninspiring except for the fact that the creator has created a Best Female Authored Blog award, as compared to we can only presume, Best Blog’s almost guarantee of male winnership.

Among all the plethora of nominations there would seem to be one criticism, whereby the author wrote that the award struck them as a Pretty Good Blog…For a Chick award. Both Misbehaving and Netwoman have responded, but my favorite response came from Feministe who wrote, after seeing herself nominated:

This is a sticky subject – being notable for being a female writer. I’d rather just be a marginal writer than a notable female author. While it hints of sexism, I have to acknowledge that I feel pride in being female, or feminine, or whatever, as I define it. I also feel pride in my writing. But they aren’t exactly related. While one informs the other, they are not correlational.

Thanks for nominating me, guys, and I apologize if I seem ungrateful. I just don’t want it suggested that I’m just okay.

For a girl.

Of course, one could say that this award is the result of conversations we’ve been having about women’s writing and weblogging and lack of acknowledgement for women’s writing. Many a man is probably slapping his head right now going, They wanted acknowledgement and we created their own special category. What more do they want.. True we do seem to be picky about such things and I realize that we are tedious with our demands to be seen.

How odd, though, that I read about this award following an evening spent watching National Geographic specials focusing on women: first one on the life of a Geisha, followed by one on taboos that focused on gender specific issues, such as the fascinating story of the Sworn Virgins of North Albania – women who eschew their feminine side, formally, in order to participate in all activities normally only allowed to men. It was an amazing contrast in stories: going from women who epitomize the art of femininity so strongly that this image transcends cultures; to women who with the blessing of the village become seen as men from the day they make their decision, and treated as such. So much so that they may hold any job and afterwards, sit down and have a beer and smoke a cigarette with other men in a place where women rarely leave their homes without shawls wrapped around their heads.

Completely opposite stories, and yet, they are strangely similiar because both feature women who wear a costume, of one form or another, to successfully compete in a world virtually dominated by men.

But returning to the Best Blog written by Female award. Rather than join in the voices raised in consternation at the seeming sexism apparant in this award, I want to congratulate the creator because, in my opinion, he hasn’t created an award to differentiate women’s writing from best writing – he’s created an award to recognize that which epitomizes the female spirit in our writing, regardless of our gender.

Or at least, that is how I seek to view it, and based on this I would like to offer some nominations of my own of weblogs who best demonstrate the spirit of Women’s Writing:

  • Mike Golby because no one better demonstrates the power of passionate commitment than Mike, and women’s writing is, above all, passionate.
  • Stavros the Wonder Chicken whose embrace of life in all of its highs and lows shows us life is not meant be accepted with trepidation, and women’s writing is the very verbalization of embracing life.
  • No one is better able to demonstrate the subtle awareness of others that is so characteristic of women’s writing than Joi Ito, with his tact and diplomacy.
  • Dave Winer because the best of women’s writing contains a little bitchiness.
  • Love of a child represents a sense of wonder in women’s writing and no one loves their child more than Papa Scott or Gary Turner so I must list them both.
  • Women’s writing focuses on true courage as compared to contrived – the type of bravery that rarely gets medals. This is best represented by Kevin Walzer who demonstrates courage by quitting his job to support his full time poetry publishing business.
  • Within some of the best women’s writing there is the figurative grandmother, the wise woman who sits in the corner spinning yarn and tales equally, and in the process helping to continue traditions without which our lives would be so much duller. But it is hard to find candidates from among the worthies who best exemplify this so I must list them all: Euan Semple, David Weinberger, AKMA, Tom Shugart, Rev Matt, and Steve Himmer.
  • The women’s touch is said to be delicate, so women’s writing can be no less, delicate and balanced like stones tumbled just so into art in a cold, clear stream. There is no better at this than Jonathon Delacour, Oblivio, and Wood s lot.
  • I don’t wish to imply that women’s writing is all that is noble and grand because women can also be sly in their writing; words flickering like reflections caused by stones dropped into a glassy lake, or the tongues of snakes smelling the air. To be assertive or even aggressive in writing is to court degradation or death and so women’s writing can be at best subtle, and at worst, devious. However, to nominate those who are good at this passive aggression would be an aggressive act, and therefore negate the categorization.
  • Women in their writing are aware of the past but they must by necessity be facing forward because women have long been held to be the care takers of the future while the men seek to influence the past by destroying the present. Three writers consistently demonstrate this concern for the future with their very strong awareness of the times today: Doug Alder, Allan Moult, and Norm Jenson.
  • Women write of what interests them and this interest can be natural and scientific, worldly and not. Technical writing is not beyond us, though we are not known for it. There are fine technical voices to nominate for this aspect of women’s writing but they are mentioned so frequently that they must be exhausted, and so we’ll let them rest this time.
  • My list of attributes of women’s writing would not be complete if I did not mention writing that nourishes the soul, with equal parts life and poetry, food and sex, with just a touch of mask, mysticism, and madness and for this I would have to pick Loren Webster, Joe Duemer, Wealth Bondage, Rageboy, wKen, and Jeff Ward. I will leave it to you to differentiate who writes about what.

And at the end of the list I can see so many more candidates for this award, and I sorrow leaving them out, but the list grows over long and I grow over tired. In fact, there is not a person I do not read, male or female, who does not demonstrate in one way or another the ancient and fine spirit of women’s writing, earning the only award I can bestow – my time.

And now a return to my offline contemplations, and women’s writing of a different kind.

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Wearing a Polite and Conciliatory Mask

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I woke this morning at 3:30 and I was determined that at least for the next four days, I was not going to make anyone angry, or hurt, or disappointed. While most of my fellow webloggers from the USA were stuffing themselves on turducken, I was, instead, going to regale my readers with delicious bon mots of wit, poetry, a little bit of technology as enticement, maybe even a tad bit of sex — verbal flashing of my breasts if you will. But I was not, in any circumstances going to engage in battle or respond to any other writing except in a complimentary sense. I was, in effect, going to put on a conciliatory mask, like these Japanese photo masks.

Well, thankfully, a couple of comments and a trackback cured me of such foolishness.

I wrote about Steve Gillmor’s response to Dvorak and the fact that he listed several ‘big time bloggers’, nine to be exact, without once mentioning a women blogger. Gina at misbehaving.net also wrote on this, which made me feel pretty good — my position on issues such as this usually doesn’t land me in a crowd. Donna Wentworth agreed in comments that it was pretty depressing, but I think Meg made the most telling comment:

He doesn’t realize that he just did a good ‘ol boys network thing yet. He’s just a dude writing about his favorite blogs, at least they weren’t all football related.

Football aside, Meg’s comment about the ‘network thing’ again, was dead on. Steve is interested in weblogs by technologists, geeks as it were. But there are weblogs by women who write about geek stuff — why is it that when people rattle a list of tech bloggers off the top of their head, they never mention a women tech blogger?

One comment, was that, Female bloggers can’t or won’t produce content that is interesting to men, which of course was an obvious troll. And yes, I did respond to it — the devil made me do it. The tone was troll, but what about the words — is that it? We don’t produce content that’s interesting to men, at least in technical venues? Or is it because when we are in this venue, we don’t speak the same language as the guys, and therefore are just plain not heard?

Still, this was a virtually anonymous troll and I wasn’t going to respond — that conciliatory mask thing, remember? I was going to be a good little girl and not bore the nice people with writing on this topic, at least for four days. I wasn’t that is, until I got a trackback from Richard this morning, bright and early. Richard wrote a post starting out with:

Okay, it’s getting stupid when you can’t even state a preference for one thing over another without being pecked to death by everyone who disagrees or finds your opinion not good enoug for public consumption.

Richard, what do you think weblogging is? We peck everything to death. If we didn’t, I’d have left this scene years ago out of boredom. If you put your opinion online, especially in a major publication, we are going to be crawling all over that thing like ants at a picnic. What do you think Steve’s response of John, you ignorant slut to Dvorak is?

There was little that Richard wrote I wanted to respond to except for a tiny bit he made in comments, when he wrote:

Of the people he did mention, there is an senior editor for Linux Journal, a person who was part of bringing us Groupware and who helped port Visicalc – the first spreadsheet. The co-inventer of the spreadsheet is there, as is one of the people mentioned in any discussion of the history of the XML spec. These are big time geeks, and people that Steve chooses to read.

If you know of GEEK blogs that are female authored, feel free to send them to Steve – steve_gillmor@ziffdavis.com.

Leaving aside the fact that some of those bigtime names mentioned have been blogging a year or less, Richard’s point about knowing of any GEEK blogs that are female authored, and sending them to Steve Gillmor is ironic considering he made the comment at misbehaving.net with a complete sidebar filled with women associated with technology.

However, he has a good point, and I’m sending a copy of this weblog posting with a link to my various GEEK writings to Mr. Gillmor — just to make sure that he knows that sometimes pocket protectors stick out.

Men have long used oppressive techniques to get women to stop talking, including labeling us shrill, unfeminine, making the word ‘feminist’ into an insult, deriding us when we do talk, and rewarding us when we don’t. They even encourage us to turn against each other, because if women teamed up, truly teamed up, all hell would break lose.

We also add our own problems to the mix. We are brought up to be ‘polite’, never pointing out that a man’s fly is open in the figurative sense. Sheila Lennon wrote about finding out her permalinks had been accidentally put behind a paywall from a comment in JD Lasica’s blog, pointed out by Tom Mangan. I knew this was so from linking to her the week before, but I was too polite to point this out, not wanting to give Sheila a hard time about it. Even between two strong women, the silence of politeness holds sway.

However, the most effective technique for silencing a woman is to not hear her speak — even when she’s shouting in your face. There’s no greater wound to a writer than to have her words bounced against a wall of indifference.

I came so close to shutting down all my technical writing this year. I have been battering at the gates of the tech weblogs and the tech publications for years now and just didn’t seem to be making any dents. Three years of weblogging about technical stuff, twelve books about computer technology, and a couple of dozen articles in major publications, and it seemed like I was standing still in my career. It was so nice to get positive comments on the photographs and the other writing, and I found myself drifting that way more and more. But though I am a writer, and a poetry lover, and a hiker, and a politically active person, and a photographer, I am still a GEEK; I’m not going to be abandon this aspect of myself because I haven’t made an impact. Yet.

And I’m not going to take on a ‘male’ persona to do it, either.

The only way we will make a dent in this world is to talk and keep talking and keep pointing things out and keep breaking into conversations, and disrupting networks, and annoying the guys until they give in from sheer exhaustion, if nothing else. Good stuff, bad stuff, doesn’t matter, as long as we keep talking.

Update

And though Anil doesn’t much like me — I do that to people a lot, it must be my own particular brand of charm and my even tempered nature — I appreciate his good writing, such as this Chicken Story:

Reheating some leftovers this evening, I was wondering why the chicken place seemed so familiar, despite its discomfiting social mores. It is a deeply misogynistic environment, filled with people paying a pittance and begrudging that they weren’t getting more for free, prone to arguing with and shouting at each other in a cacophony of languages while never bothering to even listen to the points they were arguing against. And somehow its allures were enough to keep drawing me back in. I’m realizing they probably should have named the restaurant after the place it most resembles: The Blogosphere.”

Maybe that’s what we women need more of — chicken.

Second Update

Seems that Dave Winer has checked into comments at misbehaving.net with:

Karlin, I consider you a friend, I’ve pointed to you many times, because you often have something to say and are professional about it. I don’t worry that I’m going to regret having pointed to you. I don’t point to Shelley because she’s very abusive of me, on a personal level, and I don’t want to, in any way, support that. And for the rest who are posting here, I honestly am not familliar with their work. If you want to start a blog to highlight the work of women technologists, I’d subscribe, and when something interesting pops up, I’d happily point to it. But if you use it as a place to bash men, I’ll unsusbscribe immediately. There’s already plenty of that in the world, I don’t need more.

So, imho, you’re wrong if you think it’s sexism, with Shelley and a few others (who are men, btw), it’s fear that keeps this blogger from pointing. Otherwise I just don’t know of any women technologists doing interesting stuff in weblogs. Hopefully you’ll take that at face value and won’t go somewhere personal with it. But if you do, there’s the demo of why you aren’t getting anywhere.

I didn’t want to respond to this in misbehaving.net’s comments — I guess I’m the kiss of death when it comes to dialog. But what Dave is doing here is using the carrot and stick I talked about earlier: do what I say, and I’ll link to you; start up with that ‘male bashing’ stuff and you’ll displease me and I’ll never link to you and you’ll stay obscure. This goes back to the conversations I’ve had about some A-Listers using the power of their link to control and manipulate the flow of information within our communities.

I’ve long decided that a link from Dave comes with too high a price tag. However, I consider his statement about not linking to people who are personally abusing rather quaint considering how much he’s linked to Mark Pilgrim lately, and I think we can all agree that whatever I’ve said or done about Dave, Mark’s beat me.

No this is a perfect example of the environment that Anil described in the Chicken Story — the men may argue among themselves and be abusive, but if a woman intrudes, even politely, the intrusion is never forgiven.

This wall of silence is what I referred to earlier and is the number one weapon to use against women who speak out in weblogging. Hell with that — it’s the number one weapon used against women who speak out, period.

And what’s sadder is that this wall is supported by women as much as men.