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Hear, hear. I wonder what would happen if we all collectively decided to act like the revolution of diversity in tech has already happened?
by clavalle 12y ago
Hear, hear.
I wonder what would happen if we all collectively decided to act like the revolution of diversity in tech has already happened?
- EliRivers 12y agoWe'd keep sweeping everything under the carpet?
- clavalle 12y agoNot necessarily. Calling attention to divisions may reinforce the behavior -- like telling children only what not to do. By removing that reinforcement the behavior would be extinguished. Of course that assumes we can trust everyone to do the right thing...not a great assumption, I'll admit. Then again, I am not great at inter-personal psychology which is probably a big part of why I got into tech to begin with.
- makomk 12y agoHow would this argument apply to, for example, the issue of women being sexually assaulted at tech events?
- clavalle 12y agoThe same way it would apply, in general, to people assaulting other people physically at a tech conference. It generally wouldn't. It would assume that, in general, people are going to do the right thing and those that don't will bear the brunt of society's punishment for that behavior if they show they are willing to violate the enlightened norm -- be it criminal prosecution or negative social consequences or all of the above. And that bad behavior will be drawn in that much more stark relief because everyone will be acting under the assumption that everyone else will do the right thing.
- makomk 12y agoUnfortunately people don't seem to work that way. Instead you get stuff like men concluding that it's not a big deal because it never happened to them or any of the other guys they know, and failing to take action.
- mrbenjihao 12y agoExactly this. People are not going to suddenly change their behavior if they don't even see that there are issues right in front of them. Keeping quiet, pretending as though nothing is wrong, hinders progress immensely.
- clavalle 12y agoI am not advocating pretending nothing is wrong. We've all (for reasonable approximations of 'all') acknowledged what is wrong. What I'm advocating is moving from the 'raise awareness' stage to the 'implementation and experimentation' stage.
- scott_s 12y agoThe same thing that would happen if we all decided to never go to war. Yes, the outcome would be great, but the hypothetical is not a solution. It merely assumes the solution has already been arrived at.
- pessimizer 12y agoMore like the same thing that would happen if we all decided to never talk about war.
- mst 12y agoCertainly, but she wanted to speak about diversity overall, not just gender. Ignoring all the other parts of diversity in favour of only gender doesn't help solve all the other problems. Plus, having more awesome women speakers talking about technology rather than their vaginas would help set a precedent that women are just as capable of talking about technology, and the fact that precedent needs to be set still is a big part of that problem too. It's the fact that she keeps being asked to speak about owning a vagina in technology, rather than being a technologist who incidentally owns a vagina, that upsets her, and that's part of the problem, not part of the solution.
- scott_s 12y agoI am responding solely to the commenter, not the points of the submission. I feel that you are responding to notions that you imagine I hold, but I have never stated. I will, however, point out that the author of the submission does advocate for people to talk about women in technology. She just doesn't feel qualified, nor is she interested, in doing it herself.
- rayiner 12y agoThe industry would be 80-85% men in perpetuity? I can understand the author's desire not to have gender be such a big issue. But it is a big issue whether we talk about it or not, and if we don't talk about it, we'll never fix it.
- smsm42 12y agoI wonder how "I don't want to speak on the topic of 'women in technology'" becomes "desire not to have gender".
- clavalle 12y agoHow does talking about it fix it? Wouldn't behaving as if we are living in a world where there is no underrepresented group in tech be better? Where it is no surprise that a woman be interviewed and hired for a position? That a little girl building robots and taking apart electronics is just kind of the way things go? That encouraging all children to excel in tech is the norm? Where it is a little strange that a women be asked to speak about a social issue at a tech conference? It seems that calling attention to bad actors all of the time is kind of like calling attention to school shooters -- suddenly, to the younger more impressionable generation, there is a new alternative to their behavior that they were previously unaware of.
- 12y ago
- jayvanguard 12y agoThe existing power structure would continue to perpetuate itself? That is kinda how things work.