Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?
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merc,
The WOW zone.
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There is becoming an established PA tradition that Tze's threads run on ... for evar (welcome back BTW).
So in that vein I offer the following:
Shorter: What Juha said.
Hmmm, I might have agreed until recently. A few months back I mentioned a technical conference in Aussie where we were a (smallish) sponsor. Bigotry and misogyny got a surprising look in. Seems we are not the only sponsor considering our position for next time. Interestingly(!) Russell posted my comment on kiwiblog and sure enough abuse followed. There have been other recent instances of this that have caused me to pause and reconsider some more.
As for geeks, there are females out there, a good place to start is Linuxchix.
I am more and more convinced that the reason there are not as many of female geeks male has a lot to do with stupid white boys. Sometimes, in my case anyway, SWB behaviour has to do with thoughtlessness. That's where posts like this are an important wake up call.
For those who think I am trying to kick off the "white boy" debate all over again, please note the "stupid" adjective and the following smiley :-)
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merc,
THEAT__ ooh, it's marginal...
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(Answering NoIm's aside)
NoIm, you'll be pleased to know that the electrician was only a little late (and he rang to tell me he would be) and was fabulous. Very nice, very competent, and did a good job. Except he forgot to turn the power back on to the lights, but I just rang him and he said he'd come right back and do it and was v apologetic. Very impressed.
The plumber was almost an hour late, didn't call, did arrive and say they had to go get the right part (but to be fair, he did bring up another part that would clearly have done the job, had it been long enough), which they did. Took their time coming back, but then did a good job, tidied up, and left, with little impact on me puttering around the house and doing other stuff.
We'll see how I feel after I get the bills ;-)
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And no cups of tea were harmed in the process either. Which is good cos I'm crap at making tea.
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I see at LinuxChix "...activities will include... linux install fests."
wow, that's got to be up there with actuaries' "in-jokes" about Poisson distributions.
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A first and possibly last post...
I read Public Address to have my faith in intelligent thoughtful political debate renewed and restored on a regular basis. I choose to come to this site because the writing here is well informed (moreso than I am) and it tends to express opinions similar to my own often better than I can express them myself. It also provides me with links to become better informed. While after a couple of wines I may be happy to argue for the sake of arguing, I really don't see the point of posting for the sake of saying something that has already been said and said well. I'd rather keep reading, exploring links and archives. I doubt that that's a gender issue. Perhaps it's more the result of lifestyle + personality. I must admit I do feel bad that I'm not offering positive feedback to the writers I enjoy so much, especially here at Public Address. So thanx. -
merc,
Post again, right now, don't think about it, first thing to pop in your head, dare ya!
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yeah go on Trudy
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good to hear it Span!
(PA rules: tradesman talk = OK; pussykat talk = Not OK)
(yes, I hate cats)(and dogs) -
but it sounds like Span got a pussycat tradesman
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merc,
Bysshe's pussycat trademan (vet) is called Dr Bob, I kid you not, remember Dr Bob (the dog) on Sesame Street?
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Sorry, cats would be hopeless tradespersons. All the the pipes would be disconnected, the floor would be knee deep in water and the cat would be on the table saying, "You better do something about this"
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wasn't Dr Bob on The Muppets?
(Isn't he in TGN) -
and so fizzles the "Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?" thread ...
... not with a bang but a rousing discussions on who would be the better tradespet: cats or dogs?
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merc,
Damn, yup Muppets, blast, I have failed this thread and I apologize...the pressure got to me and now The Fizzle, it will be hard to come back from this.
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and so fizzles the ... thread
no it's just a slow burning fuse, this is the intermission.
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merc,
Yeah burning ember...thinks to himself this may be The Fizzle challenge.
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Kia ora Span,
Manakura, on the issue of raising the lack of women, I've been doing this out there on the other nz pol blogs for quite some time now and doing so buys a whole world of trouble most times
As most here know I'm all for the lone voice howling against the majority, but in my last post I was thinking of something a little more co-ordinated. Nothing complicated or time consuming just gathering together all that have the inclination to start methodically working towards a more equitable blogsphere... goddamn I hate that word.
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no it's just a slow burning fuse, this is the intermission.
Yup, Shakespeare had clowns too.
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precisely
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merc,
Bring on the empty horses!
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Manakura, I have on rare occasions emailed a few like-minded people in hope they will comment on particular bad threads, and sometimes it works. But I kind of feel like it's cheating. Not sure why.
On the cats vs dogs issue - I can see downsides in both. Cats would be all "yeah, I'm busy, what do you think your hands are for?" but dogs would probably be total over-promise-ers. I think donkeys would be much better.
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Manakura, I'd be all in favour of more female or, indeed, non-white-boy voices basically everywhere I hang out on the internet - but with that said, I'm not sure that specifically asking blogs to include more female or minority-sourced comment is going to yield the best results.
As an analogy, I play the drums. New Zealand had, for a while, a drum magazine run out of Wellington called Drum Connexions, for which I wrote a couple of articles. It was well intended, and edited by a nice lady called Bron who lived over in Wainui with her son, who's a killer drummer. One of the things the magazine would do every month was feature a piece on a female New Zealand drummer, who'd invariably get stuck in a little photo box-out on the cover with the caption "You go girl!" and a first name.
In theory, that's very nice - I mean, I'd love to see more women playing the drums. There's a distinct lack of them, and there's good reason for it: a lot of gender discrimination from musicians, a lack of teachers who're really inclined to push the girls towards the instrument, a lack of female role models on the instrument, peer pressure from other girls who don't get why they'd want to play a "Boy's instrument" etc. There's Meg White, but she can't play. And there's amazing players like Terri Lyne Carrington or Susie Ibarra - but no teenage girls have even heard of them, because they play jazz.
Combine that with the fact that even if you include the boys NZ isn't exactly overflowing with world-class drummers and the result was something I always saw as extremely patronising and hard to look at, albeit unintentionally - some poor teenage girl getting an interview and photo on the cover of a magazine next to a top-tier player like Steve Smith, yet obviously being utterly clueless and not knowing how to hold her sticks. That does nothing for girls in drumming, good intentions aside - if nothing else, it just re-enforces existing stereotypes about girls and drumming.
So while more content from women or minorities is wonderful in my book, I don't think you can just insist on an equal quantity and hope that it'll all work itself out - it has to come to whoever is going to publish it at a comparable level of quality. Different is good, but worse isn't. So while emailing Russell and asking for more french-Canadian black islamic lesbian chinese acrobat blogs might strike a theoretical blow for equality, if nobody fitting the demographic is offering him any decent content I don't think it's going to do much that's actually positive. And you reckon he wouldn't publish it if it were on offer?
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dogs would probably be total over-promise-ers
yeah totally, they'd be all japanese and never say no and remain really polite no matter how stupid your request... and then just not do it.
Finn of course you're right. i once worked with a jewish lesbian one-armed fur seal and she was hopeless. employed on some kind of affirmative action program. all the guinea pigs hated her.
but that's not to say there isn't merit in fostering an environment that's as conducive as possible to promoting a diversity of opinions (i know you weren't suggesting that, i'm just saying myself... squeak squeak). ultimately doing that would still lead to even better content, but just forcing it would indeed lead to poorer content.
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