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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

987 replies

YonicScrewdriver · 14/11/2014 22:56

Welcome!

This is the 14th incarnation of the Pub and is meant as a place to drop by with random thoughts and meandering chats, on feminist or other related themes. Anything you want to mull over but not necessarily start a thread about. Alternatively, flop onto the chaise lounges with some Wine

We have a pub goat, a feminist cannon for firing at crazy sexists and a variety of drinks and snacks. And stools/bar counters at female friendly heights. And a crèche in the back somewhere

Will link the last pub in the next post!

OP posts:
FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 19:22

Found it! (my asshole pre-Retina ipad probably going through scheduled obsolescence and slow as hell) [[http://www.elle.com/life-love/society-career/google-parisa-tabriz-profile]]

EBearhug · 06/12/2014 19:09

I'd be interested to read it if you could find it. Was it about Susan Landau, or someone else?

BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 06/12/2014 18:59

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FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 15:47

I think the article is only available if you download their ipad edition (frankly I wouldn't bother). The scenario was only one paragraph in the article so really difficult to judge without any more information, but my bet is that it was exactly what you described (and I do quite often - in fact, we have an IRC style communication system that just makes things easier as you can quickly scan the comments of the 100+ devs in the group).

I wish I could remember which one was, but an American fashion magazine did an article not long about about the female head of cyber security at Google. It was AWESOME and the kind of thing I'd really like to see more of.

EBearhug · 06/12/2014 14:47

Is it available online? I can't be bothered to go and find a copy (Yes, if you're prepared to pay. Would rather browse in the shop first, but I'm not going back, after the hassle it was earlier today.)

From what google implies, it looks like they did a similar article last year, which wasn't that well received - this article from last year. There were various other articles along the same lines (google "Vogue High Tech Heroines" for articles from last November/December.)

Pretty much every company uses technology these days, so I don't necessarily have an issue with them not working for Yahoo or IBM or whoever, but I would expect them to be in a tech role or running a tech department. Business is important - most tech jobs wouldn't exist, were it not because it's making money for someone somewhere - and techies who are going to get promoted will need an understanding of business, plus business people who want to get promoted will need an understanding of technology, at least in terms of security threats, current trends (pros and cons) in using cloud services and storage and also bring your own device and so on.

Anyway, I haven't read the article, so I can't comment on the detail. I do think that one of the issues with there being so few women in STEM careers, particularly tech, is because of the image, and it is cultural, because not all countries have the same problem to the same extent. There is still a tech culture, but some people cling on to it, rather than it's deeper embedded than ever, I think.

I have spoken to physically close colleagues by instant messenger, because sometimes that's easier, if you want to send them an error message or line of code or full command path or something, then it's easier to send that over so they see it rather than just describe it in speech - it does result in some conversations which probably sound disjointed to outsiders, as it's done in a mix of IM and speech. Also, I will sometimes ping people to say, "Give me a shout when you're free," so I don't interrupt them while they're concentrating on something. There is an issue if you only use one form of communication, so that you ignore others which make more sense, but IME, people mostly use what makes most sense. And certainly some techies are socially challenged, just as people in other jobs can be - but I think also that the sort of person who will thrive in an open-plan office is the sort who can learn to blank out distractions - I know my manager has sometimes been stood by my desk for about a minute before I've noticed, while I've been deep in concentration on something (he could actually just say, "can I interrupt?" rather than just stand there.)

Without knowing their office, it's difficult to know whether her comment is reasonable or not - but I was working on a project the other day, and we were contacting all the people who send data into this particular system. "I haven't heard from R," said the woman I was working with. "I assume her name is female. I'm not sure where she works." I pointed out she was sat about 3 banks of desks away (since the last office rearrangement) - they'd just never actually been introduced. I do find that in big offices these days - I know lots of names and lots of faces, but quite often, I don't know which face matches which name, unless we've worked on the same project. You get introduced to people sitting near by when you start work, you get introduced to people in the same physical project meeting and so on - but many people aren't even in the same office, or everyone's all moved round (more than once) when the office space gets reorganised, and you see people you don't realise you already "know" from conf.calls and email threads. I have no idea what the name of the bloke-who-looks-like-Ainsley-Harriot is in my office, and we've had too many conversations in the kitchen area now for me to want to admit I have no idea what his name is. I asked a couple of others, but neither of them knew, either. I know the sensible thing to do is just ask, but... Why can't he wear his name badge visibly! It may be this sort of thing that means the writer of the article does have a point!

In thinking about that little project scenario, I realise we were 3 techy women on the same project - server, application and data. Not usual, where I workl.

Anyway, back to Vogue - this US Teen Vogue article is more positive.

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 13:04

Good morning feminists, I need some help here with my thinking.

I bought Vogue UK (which I almost never do because they bug me enormously) because of their cover article about women in tech. This should be interesting, I told myself...

..and then I read it. To start with, many of these women do not run tech companies but retail companies that use tech (for example made.com). I admit I have only skimmed the article but so far, it looks to me like none of these women are programmers or CTOs either. All of them are on the business side, and there are dismissive comments about the tech culture:

"It was such a strange atmosphere", she recalls. "No one said good morning or anything. They just didn't really talk to one another." When the only other woman in the office wanted to say something, she'd send a message on Skype. "I was, like, 'I'm sitting right here! What's wrong with you people?'"

The rest of the article seems to focus on the brands they wear, how they attend Burning Man and the restaurants in Marylebone they attend to. There is a super brief passing reference to brogrammer culture and lack of female techies, and the answer seems to be "run the business yourself and you can do what you want".

As a through and through technical person, this article hacks me off big time because it seems really dismissive of actual technology, it seems to me that tech is just the latest buzzword or fashionable thing to be seen doing but in reality they are still thinking the nerds should be hidden in the basement doing the unglamorous stuff. I did the dotcom thing in the noughties and it really was about the technology and there were young women being technical directors! To quote MN, am I being unreasonable here? Maybe it's jealousy? Should I just accept that tech will never get proper respect and it's always going to be about "the business" and that no one cares about women with a brilliant mathematical mind?

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 18:26

By not getting promotions. Be the bottom of the pile and do exactly what you like. :)

NoUnauthorisedParking · 05/12/2014 18:12

Sad Academia seems so bloody inhumane. How on earth do all of you academics here manage?

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 17:08

I have just been navigating the bloody research council website. It's already a lot better than it was, when you had to google things rather than follow links. And such a lot of meaningless words!

SunshineBossaNova · 05/12/2014 16:08

Sad I'm not surprised by the stats but they're still hideous.

I'm meant to be writing an essay on postcolonial literatures but have been distracting myself with MN. And someone has posted a pornographic picture in AIBU.

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 15:58

Buffy Yes it will be about Big Data etc etc. Hmm And very very sad about the death. Sad Sad

BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 14:40

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DemistletoeAndWine · 05/12/2014 14:38

Taken from the Exec Summary of the 2013-14 State of the Future report from the Millennium Project :

"Although the empowerment of women has been one of the strongest
drivers of social evolution over the past century, violence against women
is the largest war today, as measured by death and casualties per year.
Globally, 35% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual
violence, and 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate
partners. While the gender gaps for health and educational attainment
were closed by 96% and 93% respectively, according to the 2013 Global
Gender Gap by the World Economic Forum, the gap in economic
participation has been closed by only 60% and the gap in political
outcomes by only 21% globally. Women account for 21.3% of the
membership of national legislative bodies worldwide, up from 11.3% in
1997."

Sadly not surprising to many on here, I know, but how awful Sad Angry

BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 14:36

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BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 14:35

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BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 14:34

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UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 14:23

buffy my turn to write begging letter grant application. Waffle about national importance. Hmm

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 09:55

How about nice decent people who don't challenge sexist views being aired when they know those are sexist views? They are just cowards, aren't they? I've been that too, I suppose ...

Anyway. Must get over anger. Calm down and chill out etc etc (just been reading a thread about a pregnant woman being told to chill out and not be noisy during labour because it would be annoying. Shock) I'm going to skive off and do a supermarket shop. I love supermarket-shopping. Retail therapy and you can eat the evidence.

BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 09:51

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UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 09:32

xpost!

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 09:31

Hmm. I guess then it's not so much the views you hold than how you deal with being confronted. Perhaps that's what decides if an a-bit-racist and a-bit-sexist person is fundamentally a nice decent person or not? Since we are none of us perfect? Damn. So much easier to just hate everyone.

EElisavetaofBelsornia · 05/12/2014 09:29

Today I will be at home with lovely DD2, trying to squeeze in some work during her nap. 60s feminist writing will take a back seat in favour of Stick Man for the umpty millionth time.

I was wondering the same thing LordCopper. I am embarrassed at how much sexist thinking I have absorbed into my unconscious, and at some opinions I expressed when younger and less reflective. I think the test of how 'good and decent' a person really is, is how they react to having these assumptions challenged, like Everyday's DH - or mine.

BertieBotts · 05/12/2014 09:26

Actually my DH has been known to say things like "He's a bit racist but nice really" Yes you massive twat, but if you were black or Chinese or Pakistani I bet he wouldn't be so nice. However if someone is hugely racist then he stops thinking they are nice.

(Disclaimer: he's not really a massive twat. Just fucking naive about his own privilege a lot of the time.)

It's easy to ignore sexism if you're a man. The thing is that a person who is sexist might be a perfectly nice person - to other people they consider people, ie men. They're not a perfectly nice person towards people they don't consider real people ie women.

Nice person with some sexist views = harder to call. As you say, a lot of people have sexist views without realising it. I am sure that as a white person raised in a very whitewashed area I probably have said or done some things which perpetuate racism without realising. I do try to learn and would always accept without arguing if somebody told me I was being racist but I think when you're not aware of it you can't know.

UptoapointLordCopper · 05/12/2014 09:20

I don't know anything about consciousness-raising. My brand of consciousness-raising recently is to shout at anybody who says anything sexist. Angry

Will someone tell me if I would go mad if I decided to not say people are nice if they are sexist? Would I have to say I'm not nice either if I catch myself being sexist?

DemistletoeAndWine · 05/12/2014 09:14

Today I'm trying to write an essay on economic divergence in the international system. It's like eating vegetables - I know it's good for me and hugely important, but I'd much rather be eating biscuits (aka reading 60's feminist writing). Buffy - I'm trying to ignore your consciousness-raising threads til next week Smile