Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

Categories
Diversity Political

Color-blind

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I have been enjoying the take down of Trent Lott this week. In particular, the Washington Post and a weblogger, Eschaton have done an excellent job of roasting this man’s chestnuts over an open fire.

What really caught my focus about this whole thing was Trent Lott’s statement, and his talk about a color-blind society. We want a color-blind society that every American has an opportunity to succeed… he says, and to a point, I agree with him. But I also disagree with him.

You see, I want a color-blind society, but I don’t want it now. Now I want people to look for color, to see color. I want them to look at those in power and see, really, see, face after pure white face. And I want them to look at photos from conferences and businesses and within state and federal leadership and I want the lack of diversity to sound a jarring note. And I want us to be uncomfortable, and to squirm in our chairs because we know that for all our finger pointing at Trent Lott, all that white isn’t the result of one man’s action, or inaction.

Personally, I think we’ve been color-blind too long.

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Diversity, Inc

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

All that talk the last two days about diversity gave me a great idea for a business. I am so excited, I just can’t tell you how excited I am about this incredible new opportunity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you:

Diversity Dolls

Yes, you heard about it here, first! Diversity Dolls! Now, the next time you have an important meeting or conference and you want to show that you’re interested in diversity, just blow up one or more Diversity Dolls, dress it in the appropriate clothing and position it in the room or around a table. Instant diversity!

Diversity Dolls are very lifelike, and you can order them with the hairstyle of your choice: sophisticated short or slightly weedy, techy long. And you can get Diversity Dolls in all races, sexes, and ages.

Not enough Blacks and women coming to your meeting? No Problem! Order a couple of black female Diversity Dolls and you’ve solved two problems with one purchase. You can’t beat that! Need to show religious diversity? No problem! Rent a Priest Diversity Doll!

These dolls inflate in minutes, can be posed sitting or standing, and all have lifelike expressions. In fact, you’ve seen Diversity Dolls at the last conference or meeting you attended and didn’t even know it, that’s how lifelike these dolls are. And unlike real people, Diversity Dolls won’t drink up all the Starbucks Lattes, eat up all the Krispy Kremes, or ask questions during the meeting!

However, for those times when Diversity Dolls just won’t do, then step up—rent a real Diversity Person! Yes, you can rent a real live, walking, talking person of your preferred demographic, attired in appropriate garb, and with characteristics and speech to match the focus of your meeting or conference. Is this a deal or what?!

Business meeting? Diversity People will wear suits and make a lot of useless marketing statements. Technical conference? Diversity People will wear jeans, button down shirts, and talk about Linux and Open Source a lot.

But what if you don’t need a real person? What if all you need is a name? For instance, if you’re holding a technical conference and the ratio of men to women speakers is 10:1, you don’t need more women — you need more women’s names.

No problem! Diversity Inc. is proud to offer you a fine selection of Diversity Names, names guaranteed to sound female regardless of culture and language. For instance, one of our choice Diversity Names is the following:

Shelley Powers

Now, isn’t that a nice name? Well, it’s yours for a small fee! You can rent this name by the day or week for an incredibly low price. What’s more, if you need to have your Diversity Name blog the conference, we can provide this service for an additional, nominal fee, and no one will be able to tell the difference between the weblog of a real attendee and a Diversity Name weblog!

Folks, I have to tell you, it’s not often that I can fulfill a genuine need for my fellow webloggers. It brings a tear to my eye when I think about all the good I’ll be able to do here for you, at Diversity, Inc. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Air to blow up dolls not included

inflatable_doll.jpg

Categories
Diversity Technology

We are out there

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Clay Shirky left a gracious comment attached to the Dripping with Irony post. I’m glad because this helped the thread reach a positive note, rather than continue into a downward spiral based on the old “she said/he said” pattern (of which I, unfortunately, contributed my share).

When I replied to Clay, I repeated something I told Tim O’Reilly in response to a statement that Tim made in his comment:

Not to mention the dripping irony that, with three women out of twenty-odd participants, this group was more sexually diverse than the typical computer geek gathering…

I told Tim and Clay: We are out there.

The diversification they want, we all want, we all need is out there. There are women, and Blacks, and Latinos, and accessibility challenged folks and other non-represented people out there. But we can’t continue following the same old patterns of connectivity and communication and expect to see something other than the same old faces, time and again.

If we are discussing social software, then we have to first understand the society we’re trying to enable with this software. And to do this, we have to understand the limitations and challenges each of us, as individuals and as a members of one or more “categories”, is facing.

Clay mentioned that he did try to ensure more even representation of gender at the meeting, and I’m sure he did. As he commented, some of the women invited were academics and most likely couldn’t attend because of school commitments. And two women cancelled at the last minute.

However, rather than not have this representation, couldn’t Clay have used technology to enable these women’s participation without their physical attendance? Most people now have access to conference call capability, and most have access to video cameras for their computers. In fact, the software application Groove enables this type of participation, and the creator of Groove, Ray Ozzie, was there — could this not have been used? What a wonderful opportunity this would have been.

With this type of already available technology, these women could have participated and every one would have been richer.

And let’s take a moment to consider the reasons why the women couldn’t participate. Was it just school commitments? Or was it other constraints, such as family responsibilities or finances?

Speaking only of the United States, over 31% of families are now single parent, and only 5% of these families are headed up by men. When you’re a single-parent, especially if you don’t have extended family around you, it becomes virtually impossible at times to physically attend conferences. Or to even attend meetings of user groups at night.

Additionally, money could be more of an issue to both women and minorities. Statistically, women do make less than men, and are not as prevalent in the positions of technology leadership. I believe the same could also be said of many minorities. Both of these circumstances can make it more difficult for a person to buy a ticket to come to a meeting or conference; or to pay for the priviledge of attending the conference. Or even be in a position whereby the company pays the costs.

If we’re discussing social software, isn’t the first place the discussion should start is the constraints preventing potential audience members from becoming full participants? By doing so, we might begin to understand that what we don’t necessarily need is ways of getting the under-represented to meetings and conferences and training; but ways of getting meetings and conferences and training to the under-represented. This outreach, to me, is what social software is all about. It isn’t about sharing music files in such a way that one isn’t busted by Hollywood.

I don’t want to keep picking on Clay and his social software gathering, because I happen to know that he is a decent person who is trying very hard to open closed doors, and give voice to those who are quiet.

However, I will continue speaking out when I see these opportunities.

Categories
Connecting Diversity

Two things

Two things today:

Jonathon posts an apology to Dorothea and Tish that I thought was well done. And both Tish and Dorothea deserved it.

Sheila has much good to say about feminism and girlism. As does Suzanne in my comments to the posting “Looking Glass Self”. She writes:

Okay, so I took some time to follow the thread a little and I have some questions. Not abstract, big academic questions, but practical, nuts and bolts, if you will, questions. And let’s assume for a moment that the “girlism” theory is posed by someone who has little real education about the concept, scope, or history of feminism, and she’s struggling with what she sees as the possibly limited avenues of power for a woman in her world, which apparently consists of some type of office job, possibly professional, possibly not, and a culturally normal amount of pop tv and and other media influence. Given these assumptions, and I realize they are only assumptions, it’s not surprising she adopted this kind of theory, nor is it surprising that her particular culture is highly invested in her embracing this type of theory. But I digress to abstractions, forgive me. Now to the practicalities.

If a woman is to use girlism techniques as a way to negotiate her work or career situation, I wonder how she would succeed if she didn’t have the requisite physical characteristics, such as relative youth, between 18 and say, 25 in some arenas, maybe up to 40 in others. She’d need to be conventionally pretty, this would include thin, and possibly blond. (depending on which geo-region she’s operating in) If the woman in question has most or all of these characteristics, she may be able to leverage certain benefits, such as getting the freshest cup of coffee from the lunch room pot, preferred vacation days, the bigger corner cubicle, help with aspects of work she may find daunting, or distasteful, maybe even high level kinds of benefits like the good clients, or a chance to attend an important business luncheon. Would she actually be able to pull off a raise or promotion with girlism tactics? Maybe. What happens when a younger, thinner, blonder “girlist” appears on the scene, and we know the laws of nature dictate that there’s always someone younger and thinner and prettier eventually. Does the original girlist get to keep her skillfully won advantages, perks, benefits and even promotions? Does she have to employ ever more advanced levels of “girlist” techniques to compete such as flashing or lap dancing?

What about the women who are in their 50’s or 60’s, or fat women, or physically disabled women, or women with mastectomies, pregnant women. How are they to negotiate power in this situation? Now this is assuming girlist theory takes into consideration all women. If it does, what about women who are muslim, let’s say, and culturally and religiously restrained from interacting in sexually flirtatious ways with men who are not their husband? (yes, virginia, feminist theory encompasses these women in dignified ways) If girlists care about other women, how do they account for the extreme disadvantage suffered by these non pretty, non-young, non-thin, non American-pop-culture defined, non-blond women? What about lesbians in the work place? Or workplace shuch as hospitals? How does a resident surgeon use girlist techniques with success? For real, how does she?

What about other settings, let’s say school. Do girlists train 12 year-old girls to expose their cleavage to their teachers in order to be considered or recognized for academic achievements? And how do we help them deal with the problem of competition with other girls in the classroom for the teachers attention? When do we introduce the more advanced girlist techniques to our young women? 12? 13? 15? Of course, just as with adults, there’s the pesky problem of physical diversity that turns a girlist playing field into a steep hot metal slide. I’m assuming again there’s room in girlist theory for consideration of all girls.
Seriously, how far does the power reach? How far does a girlist have to go to leverage it? And how does girlist theory account for women who are prohibited in some way from using it? And who else benefits from the operation or this theory besides the girlist herself? Yeah, you better believe there’s serious benefit to other interests besides the girlist herself, and I’m not just talking about the lap sitee.

Just a few questions I thought I’d throw out.

 

If you don’t have a weblog, Suzanne, you need to get one. Please.

Categories
Diversity

New Voices

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

New voices are entering the discussion on feminism and girlism. Brave souls.

AKMA has joined the conversation, but carefully, aware that the discussion related to this topic has achieved a level of emotion and engagement that transcends previous topics:

One reason I haven’t joined in earlier lies in my fondness for everyone in the room, and my sense that I can see the admirable heart in what each one says, whether or not they’re on the same page as me. And it’s awfully hard to enter this sort of discussion without treading on some toes that already ache from others’ stomping.

As one who has participated in the tromping as well as being a trompee, I can understand AKMA’s caution. There is something about this topic that seems to touch the core of us, generating strong agreement or disagreement, but not indifference. Perhaps its because men and women remain men and women, with all the age-old complications, confusion, and concerns, regardless of socio-politico events.

I almost wrote David Weinberger to ask him, “Well, David. Here’s your pieces. Now where’s the glue?”

But AKMA does discuss the issue, albeit being careful to separate the message from the messenger (to quote one of the comments to my posts) and talks about the effects of girlism:

Effect One: it severs women who can and will use this tactic from those who don’t have access to that tactic. I get very edgy about strategies of resistance that engender division; we don’t have to look far, though, to see that girlism doesn’t only advance the cause of “girlists,” but distinguishes “girlist”-women from “non-girlist-women” (and that can pretty quickly be elided to “fun, cool” women versus “uptight, bitchy” women). Effect Two: girlism tends to reinforce men’s latent notions that women are there principally to titillate and delight them. Lots of fascinating women (whom no one has grounds to assume sexually inhibited, though I can’t claim empirical research on this point) don’t want to go anywhere near re-affirming the Playboy Bunny image that haunts men’s expectations of what women should be like.

As somewhat of a directly unrelated counter-point, the second person to join the debate today (that I know of ), Elizabeth Lawley, writes:

I spoke up in defense of Halley’s original post, and I stand by that. I consider myself a feminist. Unlike Halley, I don’t think feminism is dead. And I definitely don’t agree with her assessment that it only encompassed lesbian sexuality to begin with. But one of the reasons that I–and, I think, many other women–have become frustrated with feminism is its renouncement of…well…femininity.

In Shelley’s blog, she reposts and comments on comments by Suzanne, in which she expresses concerns with “girlism” because it’s limited to those with the physical attributes to use it. But all strengths, all power, is unbalanced. Some women aren’t beautiful, true. (Though far more are than realize it.) But some women aren’t smart. Some women aren’t hard-working. Some women aren’t charismatic. Life’s just not fair.

I respect Liz’s reaffirmation of feminism, and appreciate it. However, my opinion diverges from her’s when the discussion returns to ‘girlism’ (if I may continue to use the original term). To me, the argument against Elizabeth’s assertions is actually contained within her argument. How can we equate hard-working, a state a woman can control completely, with beauty, a state that is not only outside a woman’s control, but is also ephemeral and changeable based on society, culture, and era? In some ways this forms the basis of the feminism/girlism debate — control from within (feminism) versus control from without (girlism). I’ll bank on control from within, myself. It’ll last me when gravity finally wins all.

(As a side note, it is a puzzle to me where the confusion arose about feminists not being feminine; unless you equate femininity as being derived only from a male consumers point of view.)

I can respect that Elizabeth has worked hard to develop a body that she’s proud of. And she should be proud, it’s not easy maintaining the discipline to keep yourself in shape. I knew a quadraplegic at Boeing that worked equally hard with his body to be able to lift a finger to control a computer console we were designing for him. I can respect hard work.

But when Elizabeth writes:

The men who tended to view me as an object were flummoxed. And I was okay with that. More than okay–delighted. I loved watching people who had no problem ignoring me (or worse) when I felt like a shlump caught so suddenly off guard.

I am unsure how to respond, except that I know I would not experience delight if someone who previously treated me with disregard and disdain suddenly started noticing me because I had a body that they now found acceptable.

One last thing before closing today’s post, and this message is specifically aimed at Doc — but in the friendliest non aggressive, non-attacking, non-categorizing way I possibly can:

Doc, personally, I don’t care what you call either feminism or sexism, as long as we’re all agreed that something is about discrimination based on gender, and something else is based on the continuing effort to ensure equality, safety, and control of one’s body for all women. However, you might want to consider leaving the labels, because it’s a lot easier writing them out rather than the definitions each time we discuss the topics*.

Regardless, if the label seems too constricting, then we’ll change them and see if we can get the world to agree. Or we’ll continue to use the definitions, instead. As long as you agree that the important thing is what the labels represent, not the labels, themselves.

And one other note: I have said this before, more than once, but I will say it again. I respect Halley’s opinion and her courage in expressing this opinion. Because I don’t agree with the words, doesn’t mean I don’t value the speaker. If I am vehement on this topic, it’s because it impacts on my core beliefs about being a woman, not because I am ‘angry’ at Halley, or at anyone who agrees with her opinion. Halley should be proud that her words started what has become an incredible conversation.

Just a quick note, for what it’s worth.

Now, it’s been a long, long, long day, and this tired, unsexy, unfun, roughshod riding, unloving, toe-trodden, anti-male, non-girlist feminst (or whatever) is going to bed.

* This is my last posting on this topic for this go-around. I don’t think I would have anything new to contribute to the dialog that I haven’t already said — in excessive detail.