[Womoz] Womoz Digest, Vol 11, Issue 10

[Melissa Draper]

What a way to be supportive of a woman being overwhelmed by the barriers
affecting her and venting on her blog; viciously blaming her for all the
bad things that happen to women in a big faily waterfall of "but what
about the men!? they are so hard done by! and oppressed! when women
don't explicitly excuse at least some of them!".

The expectation for every criticism of patriarchy to be accompanied by
an explicit "but this is only some men! probably not you!" is
problematic in itself. It's easy when seeing something negative about
your demographic that contains a "not all!" disclaimer to immediately
place yourself in the disclaimer, and refuse to change how you
personally behave. People who actually deserve those disclaimer cookies
actually don't need them. See the law of cookies at
http://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/04/29/no-cookie/.

Expecting women to /unfailingly/ provide that escape from responsibility
for men is not helpful in any way, shape, or form. It's really just a
continuation of marginalised people being expected to excuse bad
behaviour from privileged people in an actual conversation lest they be
considered one of those Bad Marginalised People (you know, the ones who
refuse to accept the blame for their own marginalisation). We've all
been guilty of it at some point; Think of times you or your friends
might have said "um, yeah, sure, you're not sexist" to someone who got
all up in arms over a discussion about sexism? Even if known to be
partial to off-colour, dehumanising or "housework is for the women"
"jokes". Merely knowing what is sexist is not an immunisation against
it.

I was under the impression that the purpose of this list is to help
support women who are battling barriers, not offer excuses to men who
might be offended at the thought that they benefit from privilege. Is
that really too much to ask of it?

On Tue, 2010-06-15 at 10:07 -0700, Tiffney Mortensen wrote:
> Agreed. It would have been nice to see some constructive suggestions for dealing with this issue, as well as finding ways to connect professionally with men. Not all guys are chest thumping frat boys. Perhaps Mozilla is unique but in general people take gender equality for granted around here. We don't have a full gender balance quite yet and occasionally it can feel male-dominated, but that's more of a byproduct of the fact that there are more male employees, rather than a "good old boys' club."
> 
> I like Katie's point about avoiding inflammatory communication. Responding to the jerks out there with "OMG SEXISM PATRIARCHS HATE YOUR FACES ALL OF YOU !!!1!!!!111!!!!!" just reinforces the stereotype that women are (a) nuts (b) less professional than men and (c) too emotional to get work done. Venting frustration can be useful, but only if it's done in a way that integrates humor, constructive advice, or self-scrutiny so that others feel invited to participate in the conversation.
> 
> T
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Majken Connor" <majken at gmail.com>
> To: womoz at lists.womoz.org
> Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 8:10:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Womoz] Womoz Digest, Vol 11, Issue 10
> 
> 
> I'm sorry, I didn't find this article offensive to women. I can clearly see that the author doesn't agree with all the stereotypes about women being incapable. However the author is more than happy to stereotype back and includes some blatant lies. 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Kate Guernsey < katie at mozillafoundation.org > wrote: 
> 
> 
> Majken- 
> 
> It starts at "Now, you certainly don't have to be obsessive and single-focused to actually be a good coder, but you do to be perceived as one. So if you're a woman, you're automatically not serious enough! Awesome, no?" 
> 
> goes until... "So I'm moving to DW for my feminist principles! \o/ " 
> 
> And I'm not saying s/he is speaking to other females. I'm saying s/he is speaking to the "majority of her colleagues" which we know to be mostly male. My anecdote about how I relate to men at times illustrates this pretty clearly. Read it again (and my message) and I think you'll see it... especially when she (I'm betting it's a woman) relates to being linked to "Dorothea of Caveat Lector." 
> 
> We can all agree it's poorly written... but we should recognize that she is using a communication style that is pervasive in her network. Perhaps that can be a point of departure at Whistler... attempt to change inflammatory communication! 
> 
> Katie 
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-- 
Melissa Draper

w: http://meldraweb.com & http://geekosophical.net