On 01/13/2012 01:23 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
Bianca Gibson <bianca.rachel.gibson@gmail.com> writes:
I agree there. To me, were a lot of groups tend to fall short is including women or other minorities in the group without making us feel like the odd one out. Very similar stuff can be said for age, someone I know that is male and went to his first LUG at 15 felt like the odd one out, the next youngest person was 21 and he found it daunting.
Here is a relevant article, on the experiences of women and the sexism they encounter in what may be today's most-respected scientific project <URL:http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/07/20/is-it-cold-in-here/>.
As that article explores, sexism in such environments is less often overt harrassment, and much more often an atmosphere of being treated as strange and otherly, in somewhat contradictory juxtaposition with a plaintive why-can't-we-treat-them-like-the-boys attitude.
If I'm complemented like the example I don't take it in a bad way, to me it's just a complement.
Thanks for that perspective.
I must make conscious effort to give that account more weight than my internal imaginings of “how would I feel if everything else was the same but I was a woman”. That can't apply: if I were a woman, *huge swaths* of my upbringing would have been quite different, and “if everything else was the same” would not be the case.
So, as is the case far more often than we might like to admit: it's not about me. I have to listen to others describe their experiences, and suspend my own bafflement at not being able to empathise completely.
With all due respect, I think these articles which talk about sexism and racism still existing in some 'underlying' manner are nothing more than puff pieces designed to justify the livelihoods of people who making a living combating this. By maintaining there is a problem, you can then still rely on money coming in to 'fight it'. I will bet London to a brick on the fact that as long as someone will get published, paid or recognised for this sort of thing, there will be people writing about how we still got a bit of a way to go.