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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:
BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 05/12/2014 14:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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

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 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!

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 18:26

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

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?

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 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.

BuffytheFestiveFeminist · 06/12/2014 18:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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?

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]]

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 19:26

((Not sure what the MN parser has done there))

NoUnauthorisedParking · 06/12/2014 19:55

My local library subscribes to vogue and several other magazines - and you can read them online if you register/log in with the e-library. Worth checking what your area has, maybe.

I've never looked at them myself - only discovered it recently. i used to quite enjoy browsing through a magazine a decade or so ago, but when I see them now, I mostly think "wtf is this vacuous sexist consumerist crap?".

Same with tv adverts - didn't have a tv for years, so, without magazines either, went pretty much went going cold turkey on advertising. Now when I encounter tv advertising, I find it shocking - really, those same old, tired old, stereotypes from my 80s childhood, still there? Women are either efficient mothers or sexpots, men are crap fathers etc. But I guess i don't see it often enough to know - is this broadly the case still?

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 20:02

I have a complicated relationship with fashion magazines. On the one hand, I love love love clothes and makeup. OTOH, I actually own very few clothes because I tend to buy only what I love and am happy wearing it day in, day out until it falls apart, so I'm not a great consumer. I got frustrated with the British and Spanish magazines years ago because they are so effin' vapid, but the American ones are really good, and lately have tons of really good articles on women in IT and politics, which I really appreciate.

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 20:03

(But you have to get through 400 pages of adverts before you get to any real content in he he American ones)

NoUnauthorisedParking · 06/12/2014 20:14

Forgot to say - Fibonacci - yanbu re article and its perspective on tech, but perhaps yabu to expect much from vogue? (disclaimer - haven't looked at vogue for ~20 years so could be talking out of my arse)

EBearhug · 06/12/2014 20:15

Thanks, Fibonacci - interesting read. I followed it on to another couple of Elle links to women in tech. I might have to find the Vogue article now, to compare and contrast.

(This is all your fault!)

NoUnauthorisedParking · 06/12/2014 20:15

Oops, sorry, took ages for my post to go through and now it doesn't make sense.

NoUnauthorisedParking · 06/12/2014 20:18

Unrelatedly, there is (quite genuinely) a ukip voter reading the daily mail in my front room. Wibu to ask him to sit in the corner, so i don't have to see it?!

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 20:18

Oh yes, IWBTU to expect anything from Vogue UK. To be fair to myself, I'd stopped buying it years ago when that arsehole AA Gill wrote about someone's atrocious table manners and said it was because his mother was Spanish.

UptoapointLordCopper · 06/12/2014 21:58

Hello!

Only brief visit to give verdicts (because I'm worth it):

parking YWNBU to tell ukip voter to sit in corner.

fibonacci YABU to expect great depth and insight from Vogue.

HTH Grin

Anyway. Busy day. More busy day tomorrow. But all good. Had arguments about social justice, some feminist, but mostly not. Hope everyone else is having a nice weekend!

Zazzles007 · 06/12/2014 22:38

I love clothes and shoes as well, but really don't like or buy fashion magazines any more (unless I am flying, and the travel agent has mucked up my flight details, resulting in me flying out 3 hours later than expected Hmm). Tbh, I am tired of the consumerism that women have been encouraged to take on, in the efforts to catch the male gaze. Over the years, I have toned down my professional look more and more, so that it is less and less and less about the male gaze, and more and more about functionality, comfort, and most importantly, looking polished and professional.

However, there is one young woman in the office who is yet to learn this lesson (as well as many other lessons): I have dubbed her "The Patriarchy's Most Fuckable Blonde" (apologies to those who are also blonde, but do not fit this particular description, as this woman's Blondeness, is a key factor in her Fuckability). She would be a size 2 or 4 (UK sizes), and on occasions, the men buzzing around her desk is like.... well I don't want to say. She portrays herself as "The Woman Men Should Aspire to be With", "The Woman Other Women Should Aspire to Be", and is definitely A Mean Girl. What she doesn't realise is that there are some women in the office who have definitely twigged on to her game, and have figured her out, play for play

FibonacciSeries · 06/12/2014 22:41

Zazzles, I used to work with someone exactly like that. It bugs me enormously to admit that she benefitted professionally a lot (management were all men).

PuffinsAreFictitious · 06/12/2014 23:51

Parking did you also tell him to cover the offending rag with a large sheet, so that no one had to see any sneaky shots of cats bum mouths and rampant NIMBYism?