Category: Weblogging

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Marriage Bashing?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Halley was kind enough to link back to me and Liz yesterday after we referenced her README post. However, she added a follow-up note about her post that caused me to choke on my morning coffee:

I guess I want to add that README is not about male-bashing, since I’m crazy for men, but rather marriage-bashing, which drives me crazy. There is something new coming along to replace marriage. I don’t know what it’s called, but I know it’s coming and it’s high time.

Halley is a lovely woman with a zest for life and smart and capable, but my first reaction reading this was an unqualified: What? Well, it was really: WTF!?

My original/edited response yesterday to Halley’s post is that I don’t think that weblogging necessarily does even the playing field for women. This week, during an email exchange with another weblogger – a well known A-List weblogger – he used the term ‘hysterical’ to describe both my disagreement with a procedure another group was following, as well as my reaction to comment editing – something he said no one else disagreed with.

(Before you ask, no it wasn’t Sam. Sam would never use a term like this in a technical discussion.)

I wasn’t going to talk about this online because I’m still thinking about the exchanges from this week, trying to figure them out, and my energy is elsewhere at this time. But when I read about Halley’s README post being a pushback against marriage, I had to say something. Had to.

Marriage has nothing to do with women and respect in our fields and other aspects of our lives. That’s the battle we’ve been fighting all along – that there are other options for women other than being caregiver and wife, though these are also valid choices. Women can be police, doctors, soldiers, nuclear scientists, and yes, even computer technologists – and still be content and happy to be a woman, be ‘feminine’, and yes, be happily married or otherwise paired.

To me a great marriage is one in which both partners are free to grow and to reach beyond their internal boundaries if this is what they want and need. However, we go through our lives being who we are, making the most of what we are, regardless of our gender – a good marriage should be nothing more than a perk.

Contrary to the songs, we’re not complete and made whole through the love of a good man or women; we should be complete in and of ourselves, by ourselves. But a good marriage or partnership, and children if this is what we want, can add to the joy, the contentment, the excitement, and the adventure.

Women and equality in our chosen professions has nothing to do with being married or not. Unless you want to be a nun.

I am a passionate person, and I freely admit I have a temper. And if someone were to tell me, Shelley, you’ve got a bad temper and you need to back off and cool down, I can live with this. And if they tell me I’m not listening, or I’m rocking the boat, I can live with this, too. I can even live with being called an a**hole. But when they use gender dismissive terms such as ‘hysterical’, well then I see we have a ways to go – even in this egalitarian world of weblogging.

But fighting the good fight because we’re searching for a replacement for marriage? Well, that doesn’t rock the boat, it misses it altogether.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Throwing the torch on

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I didn’t quite finish the proofs tonight – shame on me – but should have them to Simon tomorrow morning. I can only do so many pages a day before I start crawling the walls.

I also finished the nameserver for the Wayward Weblogger co-op and if the test domain shows up as scheduled then I’ll be ready to start moving weblogs over to the server this weekend. I’ve already had my first volunteer who’s going to get a shiny new MT weblog from exported blogger entries. The question then remains: will he or won’t he turn on comments?

I can’t wait to move my favorite webloggers off of blogspot and other tempermental and restricted servers to the new one. No more slow downloads, and hopefully few problems with posts. We’re going to roar where before we whimpered, and nothing will stop us now. Best of all, I’m going to be surrounded by people I greatly admire and respect. I am a lucky woman.

Speaking of being a woman and technology, Halley wrote something very interesting today about weblogging and women. She wrote:

Although the three women on the cover of Time Magazine were not bloggers, the women using blogging tools are doing a variation on daily whistle-blowing as they blog. They are using weblogs to tell their truth. Much of their truth has been silenced and not allowed to appear in main stream press which is dominated by men. I honestly don’t believe this is any conspiracy by men, but rather a shocking disconnect from the reality men live in and the reality women live in. Weblogs are not controlled or controllable by any one group. Weblogs are a no-barriers-to-entry publishing phenomenon. Weblogs are giving women a publishing platform unparalleled in history. Women are not self-editing their voices out of existence. With weblogs, women are telling their truth without even noticing. Weblogs are creating a level-playing field for women.

Liz has promised to write about Halley’s post, and my recent difficulties with email lists, and I can’t think of a better person to comment on all of this.

Back to domains, DNS, and nameservers for my literary friends, more stories about adventures in the Missouri Greens, and a Grand Co-op Opening.

Categories
Burningbird Weblogging

Taking a break

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

After today, I’m not sure I even want to continue weblogging.

The same people who question about my not ‘getting well with others on the lists’, – have you ever stopped to notice that it’s almost always the same people controlling the discussion? The format? The invitees?

Perhaps the issue is not that I don’t get along well on these lists – it’s that I don’t get along well with certain people, but they’re usually in charge. And I can agree with this.

I will say this – Sam made a statement in an email earlier, and in his weblog that shows he genuinely wants open discussion. So I wish him luck in all good faith. And I thank him for inviting me in, but I’m not sure why he did. Still – thank you Sam for thinking of me.

As for me – I’m going back to working on the server and writing my essays and taking my photos. And trying to decide if I even want to continue this weblog. At this point, I don’t see the point.

Categories
Weblogging

Data Model – Final

Due to recent emails accusing me of not playing well with others, barging in, being difficult, and other really joyful things such as the following:

Where do you get off barging into this list and pissing all over
everything? You were invited, presumably, because many people value
your opinion. But don’t think you can get away with your usual stunts
of recklessly flaming everyone and then apologizing later. Save it for
your blog.

I will not be working with any of the so-called ‘team’ members, those who believe that if you don’t go along, then you’re not part of the program. And you know who the fuck you are.

But I will be watching those who do – and I will not stay the fuck stay silent either. Go buy a cookie cutter if that’s what you want, and stop wasting mine and everyone else’s time.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Data Model Two

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Why was I disappointed in the wiki drilling down into the physical yesterday, with the statement about well formed HTML? Because it totally disregards the structure that I proposed yesterday, which sees ‘content’ as something more than just a simple blob of markup. By mentioning ‘well formed HTML’, it sets the context and makes it difficult to have a discussion about anything other than content being a simple blob of markup.

Some folks did respond, and I will respond later when I have more time. One person, Dare, responded to my post in Sam’s comments, addressing me directly, which I thought was bizarre and incomprehensible. However, Tim Bray and James Shell and some folks in my comments had some good points, and I’ll address them later.

First, though, I’ve also noticed that Someone is editing my comments in the wiki, and removed the link to my material and others. Doesn’t have to be Sam – the problem with an open wiki is that it’s completely open. Anyone could have done this. Anyone.

This didn’t start out well – now, how do we fix it?

update

It’s official – I hate wiki. I hate it with a passion. Anyone can come along and decide that they want to organize it, and remove or edit or move my writing. If I thought the comment thing was bad, this is worse.

The wiki has now been reorganized. Again. And someone has moved my stuff. Again. Based on their judgement they plunked my comments in a secondary page, with no hint or question from the group about whether their assessment is accurate, or even appreciated.

Wikis – nothing more than arrogance run amuck.

I can’t tell what’s going on where anymore everything has been moved and reorganized so much. However, it looks like we’re into XML implementation details now.

Question: has any non-techie made any input at all into this? Through comment, weblog, or wiki entry?