(no subject)
So apparently there was a recent uproar in the Ruby on Rails community about a presentation that was clearly written with the assumption that the audience was male and sexualized women make excellent props for technical discussions. The up side is that it has lead to the best feminist technical post I've seen. It is always nice when someone makes my arguments for me, and more articulately than I ever could.
That blog post said everything I would have said, with one exception. However, this is something I don’t think really goes into a 101 “Why You Should Never Do That Again” or “Why Supporting This Guy Makes You An Asshole” post, which was more of that goal.
This presentation reaffirms the type of masculinity the speaker and the audience share. One of the other bloggers said, “I don’t believe any men were actually offended by hot chicks,” which misses that even if that is true, it is because society rewards them for not being offended with carrots and sticks. Men were offended, and they were offended not only because it alienated women and they are capable of empathy, but also because that vision of masculinity excludes them, for whatever reason. Any man who do not define himself by degrading women, whether because he is not heterosexual, or is confident in his own identity, or otherwise defies our cultural expectations of men, is shut out as surely as women are (not to mention those outside the binary). The presentation invites men in on the joke, but only if they are willing to conform. The expectations of how men are supposed to behave are in many ways more restrictive than women, since often the message to women is simply “you don’t exist here”.
If those men leave a community, their departure will be invisible. It will simply leave the community a poorer place, more prone to alienating presentations.
That blog post said everything I would have said, with one exception. However, this is something I don’t think really goes into a 101 “Why You Should Never Do That Again” or “Why Supporting This Guy Makes You An Asshole” post, which was more of that goal.
This presentation reaffirms the type of masculinity the speaker and the audience share. One of the other bloggers said, “I don’t believe any men were actually offended by hot chicks,” which misses that even if that is true, it is because society rewards them for not being offended with carrots and sticks. Men were offended, and they were offended not only because it alienated women and they are capable of empathy, but also because that vision of masculinity excludes them, for whatever reason. Any man who do not define himself by degrading women, whether because he is not heterosexual, or is confident in his own identity, or otherwise defies our cultural expectations of men, is shut out as surely as women are (not to mention those outside the binary). The presentation invites men in on the joke, but only if they are willing to conform. The expectations of how men are supposed to behave are in many ways more restrictive than women, since often the message to women is simply “you don’t exist here”.
If those men leave a community, their departure will be invisible. It will simply leave the community a poorer place, more prone to alienating presentations.