On 01/17/2012 10:20 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> Brianna Laugher
> <
brianna.laugher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> This comic about global warming has a person presenting at a 'Climate
>> Summit' conference with a list of all the benefits to the earth and
>> society of moving to green energy. A person in the audience stands up
>> and says, "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for
>> nothing?"
>
> Yes. The blank slate is (as Stephen Pinker details in his excellent book
> of that name) a myth long discredited. But the motivation for making our
> community more welcoming of valuable members is not undermined by that.
>
that.
>> Dennis made a very interesting point:
>>
>> "We base the standard on male behaviour, because that's what
>> progressivism has defined as the goal. But to do this, is to assume
>> that the men know better. It is to assume that if women behave
>> differently, then it is the woman's behaviour we need to alter."
>>
>> (I don't know what you exactly mean by progressivism, but with
>> s/progressivism/patriarchy I agree. :))
>
> That surprised me, too. I don't know whose definition of “progressivism”
> Dennis has accepted, but it isn't one I subscribe to.
>
>> Basically, traits associated with men tend to be lauded, and traits
>> associated with women tend to be trivialised and dismissed.
>
> This is true even when men are genuinely well-intentioned and supportive
> of the ideals of sexual equality. Matt Guica has perceived an accusatory
> tone; I want to be clear that these phenomena are going on *even though*
> most men don't want it to happen.
>
> No accusation of deliberate malice is necessary to these arguments, and
> I hope you can see that is not occurring in this thread, Matt.
>
> It can be very difficult for men to even acknowledge that this sexism
> happens in our own communities. Even once acknowledged, men can have
> difficulty from our position to perceive it as it happens.
>
> So even a well-intentioned man can face an uncomfortable ongoing
> situation when he realises the sexist practices that he tacitly
> supports, and even participates in, through not perceiving them as
> sexist or through ignorance of their effects.
>
> I count myself among that number. It's still difficult to perceive the
> background sexism, difficult to change habits, difficult not to feel
> ham-fisted when doing so, and difficult to resist the strong urge to
> self-justify my way to the path of least resistance.
>
> It's natural to feel defensive and to hear an accusatory tone in
> descriptions of this. Natural, and regrettable: please try to see past
> that.
>
>> Feminism acknowledges that this bind is bad for both men and women.
>> The restrictive sterotypes harm both men and women. Men face a huge
>> amount of social pressure not to embrace things associated with women.
>
> Men and women also are fully equipped with a broad array of
> justification and minimisation tactics when the subject is raised for
> examination.
>
>> I agree that the focus on 50/50 or any other particular ratio is not
>> super helpful. We will know when it is enough when women in X groups
>> fall apart due to lack of interest.
>
> That took me a few read-throughs to parse. I think you mean “We will
> know we have succeeded when groups named “Women in X” fall apart due to
> lack of interest”.
>
>> Please don't interpret this as a suggestion to quiz her about
>> specifics of precisely what she had in mind. Being expected to be a
>> bearer of all wisdom on the problem of women in free software is,
>> well, yet another reminder that there are few others to ask! Many
>> points in the HOWTO point this out.
>
> Those of us advocating software freedom should empathise with that
> position more, since we are frequently in an analogous position:
>
> We are frequently in the position of pointing out the injustice of
> non-free software to those who have never even considered the issue. The
> person we speak to has so long been immersed in a culture that accepts
> the injustice of vendor lock-in and user helplessness that they have
> trouble even perceiving that it occurs, or have trouble acknowledging
> the problem, or have trouble seeing the hollowness of justifications for
> the status quo.
>
> When those people trot out the same old discredited arguments – “you
> just want to avoid paying for anything”, “if it were really a problem
> why is it so popular”, “but I just want to get things done, why are you
> hassling me”, and hundreds of others – we can see that they are being
> defensive, even though they may not see that (and likely won't react
> well if we point it out).
>
> It's unreasonable to expect the messenger – the person pointing out the
> injustice – to be a one-person repository of all information and perfect
> rhetorical rebuttal to all attacks on the position. We know that for
> software freedom; please, let's be aware of it for feminism in our
> community.
>
>> I'm at LCA this week and if you would like to discuss this in person
>> please feel free to approach me and say hi. Ben Sturmfels knows who I
>> am so ask him if you're not sure :)
>
> I'll re-iterate my plea: find women willing to join us at our meeting on
> Thursday 2012-02-16 to discuss this. It would be wonderful for women to
> outnumber men, and for us to be awash in testimony that yes, this is
> really a problem in our community even though we men might have trouble
> seeing it.
>