Category: Diversity

The importance of supporting diversity

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Connecting Diversity People Places

The kindness of strangers

If you know San Francisco than you know the Castro district. It’s colorful, interesting, lively, unique, and the center of gay activities in a city that’s known to be very gay friendly. All in all, it’s a fun place to walk, shop, whatever, because the people in the area are about the friendliest there are in the city.

Every year, the citizens of the Castro area throw a huge Halloween party. Cross dressers will spend months creating the outfits they’ll wear this night, and travel — by limo — from place to place showing off their finery. Over time, the straights discovered that, hey, the folks in Castro are having a great time. Next thing you know, the street party in Castro is _the_ place to be, Halloween night.

Unfortunately, the last few years, there’s been some good Christian boys who have deemed it their moral duty to show up on Halloween in order to attempt to beat to death anyone gay they might find.

It’s interesting, but in my quest to see how many people I can piss off with my “left coast leftist liberal” bias, I’ve talked about every “right” in this weblog except gay rights and the right to die. I’ll leave the right to die to another day.

Gay rights: I’m straight. I have gay and straight friends. I don’t understand homophobia. And the government and everyone’s neighbor does NOT have to be involved with how a person practices their own form of sexuality as long as the practice is between consenting adults. And if two people want to get married, let them. End of story.

I was in Castro today to go the clinic. My doctor was wonderful. In fact, the clinic is full of doctors who entered medicine because they care about people rather than to make as much money as possible. Gives one a lot of hope for the medical community.

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Diversity

Words, words, them damn words

Andrea wrote an extremely thoughtful discourse on why she doesn’t like to label herself as a feminist. Her posting follows from a link to another equally thoughtful posting on the “feminist” label at Anita’s.

As we’ve seen, the word “feminist” brings with it so much baggage, good and bad. When I say I am a feminist, and don’t explain what this means to me, you’re going to attach to me whatever baggage you attach to the word — so I better define what I mean by “feminist” if I use it.

And when you say you’re NOT a feminist, if you don’t provide a definition of what you mean by your rejection of that label, then I have no recourse but to think you must be rejecting qualities I hold dear.

Words. Words. Them damn words.

It’s interesting because I read Andrea’s posting just after I read some essays about words and their effect, pointed out at another posting. Steve Himmer linked to a essay on the language of terror, and quoted part of it:

Words are pivotal for keeping us in this mess. And words may be crucial for getting us out.

Words. Don’t try these at home boys and girls, you could get hurt.

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Diversity

On I am not a feminist

“I’m not a feminist”

Yesterday I provided two definitions of what a feminist is: one from Merrian-Webster and one of my own.

Since then, I’ve seen “I am not a feminist” repeated, in particular at the Blogsisters weblog. I’ve also heard people say that they prefer to use “humanist” rather than feminist.

Shannon did an excellent recap of much of this discussion, ending with a question:

To say you are a humanist inherently implies you are a feminist; as a feminist, does it imply humanism?

To which I answer by repeating my feminist criteria:

    • 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

    • .

The operative term in all of this statement is “equal” — feminism is about equality. And there is no concept more precious to the humanist than equality.

Years ago when I was much more aggressive about my opinions, I worked on a large defense project at Boeing. During this project, I shared an office with another woman and two men, one of whom just had his first child.

Now, when this co-worker, let’s call hom Joe for simplicity, was first married, he and his wife made the decision that she was going to stay at home, be a homemaker, take care of him, the house, and the kids. When I asked Joe what his wife did and he explained that she was a homemaker, I was appalled! I couldn’t understand this concept and this idea in the least!

Think of it: In this day and age, a woman choosing to stay at home, becoming nothing more than a helpmate for her spouse. Indeed!

Needless to say, Joe and I got into several very intense conversations on this issue, to the point where our working relationship was becoming strained. Luckily, the other woman in the office, let’s call her Ann, decided to get involved.

Ann took me out to lunch and talked with me about women’s rights, feminism, and equality. When I started going into my usual spiel about Joe and his macho superior attitude, and how his wife sold out our sex, and so on and so on, she stopped me mid-rant.

Ann said that equality had nothing to do with roles, or sisterhood, or whether a woman chooses to stay at home or not. Equality had to do with a person being able to make a choice about what they want to do with their life and then be able to follow that choice. She told me my actions were negating the things that I was fighting for; I was denying Joe’s wife her right to stay at home if this is what she chooses. I was denying her equality because I didn’t happen to agree with her choice.

Have you ever heard the expression, “It felt like I was hit in the face with a 20 pound Halibut”? No? Well, that’s about what I felt like when I heard, really heard, what Ann was telling me.

Equality has nothing to do with sex, or color, or race, or religion, or any other social or biological factor; it has everything to do with individuals being who they are, about making choices, and then being able to follow through with these choices, without fear, without hinderance, and without discrimination. The only pricetag for this freedom is that the individuals must grant this same freedom to others.

I am a feminist. This doesn’t mean I deny equality for men. This only means I seek equality for women. And as I see the world today, women have a way to go before they achieve that equality. And someday if I’m lucky enough to live that long, I may see true equality for all people regardless of sex, religion, philosophy, orientation, color, what have you. And at that point I’ll probably stop being a “feminist” because my goal of equality for everyone will have been achieved.

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Diversity Just Shelley People

Stand and Fight

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.

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Diversity

I am not a feminist

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.