Hoss, the dude who gave the talk, says:

“I would like to point out that, at the time of writing this, I have received considerably more positive feedback on my Flashbelt presentation than negative. This affirmation includes female attendees going out their way to stop me at the conference and thank me openly for my presentation.”

and

“I can be crude and my presentations can be risqué but I am neither sexist nor a misogynist. I am concerned that my presentation is being described as being loaded with both. Not guilty. I have a strong willed wife and two young daughters – I wouldn’t last two minutes with the merest hint of misogyny.”

Here’s the thing.

Tech is a community where women are marginalized. There can be as few as 1 woman out of 100 at a talk. This means that the audiences are predominantly men, and the women present are, generally speaking, women who have acclimated to men’s bullshit. You simply won’t last in most of these communities unless you have pretty well-honed defense mechanisms for dealing with crap. Generally the only women left in the room are pretty battle-hardened ladies, or they’ve adopted a pretty male gaze, or whatever. They’ve got a way to get by in a harsh environment.

Given that, the fact that most of the men and women at your talk think it is great and not at all offensive doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t mean your talk isn’t extremely alienating to a large portion of the population. It means the women who would be alienated are already alienated from the community.

You’re not pushing them out, you’re just keeping them out.

And that’s where it gets weird. If you want a marginalized group to grow, you have to start listening very carefully to marginal opinions. You can’t sit on your ass, satisfied with your 99% approval rating. You have to lose sleep about the 1%. You have to worry about the one person who had to close their browser when they read about your talk because they got flashbacks. You need to worry about that 1% because in that 1% is where you’ll find the clues to why 49% of the population didn’t come to your talk in the first place.

Or you don’t. But don’t pretend you give a shit about gender issues if you’re going to marginalize those voices.

mp3

1) They feel guilty about their own sins, and they feel powerless to bring about change in themselves.  So they lash out at easy targets, policing people they’ve never met, who they never will meet, who they know nothing about, who they will never know anything about.

It is a drug; a substitution for their own spiritual growth. Spend all your time screaming at invisible sinners, and you’ll never have to face the sinner inside of you.

2) They have made their choices, and chosen their ways, and they are terrified that they chose wrong.  They worry that they’re missing out on something, yet the feel powerless to change.  They feel their lives are a prison cell, they can’t leave, so they lash out at people outside the prison cell, trying desparately to make their lives miserable, as a way to prove to themselves that they made the right choice.

3) They’ve simply never met any same-sex couples.  They’ve never been forced to confront the reality of the pain that anti-marriage protestors (anti-same-sex-marriage is anti-marriage) cause.  If they had even a sense of the hurt they’re causing, they would stop.

Why pro-marriage (i.e. pro-same-sex-marriage) activists will win:

We have skin in the game.  We actually have lives being interrupted by this issue, or friends whose lives are being interrupted.  Same-sex marriage bans affect how we or people we love can raise our children, visit our loved ones in the hospital, whether people we care about get health care, it affects citizenship status.  It matters.

For anti-marriage (anti-same-sex-marriage) activists, they are only driven by fear and self-loathing.  Over time, a movement like that can only wane.  People lose interest, they get pre-occupied by things that actually make a difference to them: their families, the careers, their homes, their communities.

The anti-marriage movement is getting a lot of extra bouyancy because it is being falsely tied to peoples’ spiritual communities.  People feel they need to oppose marriage in order to support their church.  And their church is something that really does matter in their lives, even though same-sex marriages really have nothing to do with their church’s ability to provid a spiritual community for them.

But these churches who are draining their resources fighting this battle, giving in to fear and self hatred and self denial… these churches will not grow, because in the end, no one wants to go to a church of fear, of self hatred and of self denial.

And other churches, based on love and support and taking care of yourself and taking care of those around you…. those churches will grow.  And the anti-marriage movement will fizzle out.

It already is.

Watch.

And act.  Let’s fill ourselves with love.  Let’s build strong communities that support love for everyone, and marrige for all who want it.  Let’s help build coalitions that support same-sex couples who want to marry.  Let’s get out their and shine so brightly and work so hard that the next time there is a prop 8, the next time there is a propsed marriage ban, the next time someone says something bleak and hateful, that there is someone there with a kind word, or a protest sign, or a confrontation, or a clipboard, or an organization, or an army* to back up what is right.

* not the kind with guns, the kind with full hearts.

Your recent decision to prevent Amazon from releasing a device that provided excellent access features for the blind is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  It’s disgusting to me that your need to control how we use the books that we purchase with our own money extends to whether people can use accessibility features.

And your suggestion that people with disabilities be forced to register with the government and amazon in order to have books they’ve paid for read to them on a device they’ve paid for is just orwellian.  1984.  There’s a book y’all should read.

Furthermore, you don’t seem to care one whit about the environment.  I don’t buy new books because there are plenty of used copies, and it’s wasteful to make new ones.  Amazon is great because it makes it a snap for me to find a used copy of a book.  I am happy to pay for books, and I would be happy to purchase e-Books (I buy lots of music this way).  But not only have you fought the selling of used books on Amazon, you have fought so tirelessly to control e-Books so consumers can’t use them as freely as they use paper books.

You’ve created for me a choice between killing a tree, or buying a completely hobbled electronic version of a book.  You don’t seem to have any interest in other business models.  For example, you could be working with Amazon to set up a system where when I buy a used book in the marketplace, I can make a voluntary donation to the author.  I and many many others would do so, especially if we were able to give small amounts.

And lastly, you don’t seem to want me to discover new books.  Apparently you want me to continue to only hear about new york times bestsellers.  Because when Google came out with Book Search, a tool that would revolutionize readers’ ability to find new books from a wider range of authors, you fought them tooth and nail.  And you succeeded in hobbling their system just like you hobbled Amazon.

I’m sending you this letter because I want to be a customer.  I want to find great new authors and pay them for their work.  The world has changed such that this is no longer as simple as going to the bookstore and buying a book.

I want to be able to digitally search far and wide for books that interest me.  I want to be able to use the books I buy however I want to.  And I want to buy in an eco-conscious way.

You’re just not selling the product I want to buy.  And that’s a shame, because my money is burning a hole in my pocket.  I’m turning more and more to blogs and zines and other media not controlled by your “advocacy”.  As we turn further and further away from print books, everyone loses.  Your authors lose revenue, and we lose enrichment.

Please turn this ship around.

With love,
Erik Pukinskis

I remember first hearing Fiona Apple in Becky Enderle’s parent’s minivan in high school (was that Senior Prom?). Becky and my friend Tracy were really into it, and I remember asking who it was.  Some months later I had bought the album, and I was singing along to a song while hanging out with Tracy.  I don’t know how she knew it, but Tracy called me out, accusing me of listening to Fiona Apple only after finding out she and Becky liked her.

She was sort of right, and I was sort of embarrassed.  I think to some extent, I was interested in Tracy and Becky and that’s why I got interested in FA.  Yet to this day she is one of my favorite musicians.  I enjoy every one of her albums more than the last.  I love the way she speaks about her life and her music in interviews.  She’s both a role model and a fascination for me.

In my last relationship, this kind of copying was a source of contention.  I really admired the person I was with, and I would sometimes take on mannerisms of theirs, or appropriate their interests.  I think some of it was healthy (I developed an appreciation for Audre Lorde) and some of it was not.

The truth is, sometimes when you copy you’re finding something you’ve been waiting for, and a person just happened to come along and show it to you.  Other times it’s more dangerous.  You’re losing yourself and you’re copying others because you’re not able to see and love who you actually are.

I think I’m only now learning how to tell the difference, and that it matters.

I’m thinking we should start a San Diego Conscious Computing Circle, where we get together and try to figure out how we can remake the computer nerd world so it…

1. is open and welcoming to women, people of color, other underserved communities
2. allows the invisible people already in computing to make themselves more visible (if they are so inclined) and makes it safe for them to do so.
3. focuses on helping people, not just making money
4. is responsible in terms of impact on peoples’ lives and the environment
5. is healthy for geeks too, spiritually, physically, and so-on

Are there any other San Diego geeks who are interested?

Are there any other global geeks who have ideas?

Hogging the show. Talking too much, too long, too loud.

Problem solver. continually giving the answer or solution before others have had much chance to contribute.

Speaking in capital letters. Giving one’s own solutions or opinions as the final word on the subject, often aggravated by tone of voice and body posture.

Defensiveness. Responding to every contrary opinion as though it were a personal attack.

Nit-picking. Picking out minor flaws in statements of others and stating the exception to every generality.

Restating. Especially what a woman has just said perfectly clearly.

Attention seeking. Using all sort of dramatics to get the spotlight.

Task and content focus. To the exclusion of nurturing individuals or the group through attention to process and form.

Put downs and one-upmanship. ‘I used to believe that, but now…” or ‘How can you possibly say that … ?” Negativism. Finding something wrong or problematical in everything.

Focus transfer. Transferring the focus of the discussion to one’s own pet issues in order to give one’s own pet raps.

Residual office holder. Hanging on to former powerful positions.

Self-listening. Formulating a response after the first few sentences, not listening to anything from that point on, and leaping in at the first pause.

George Custerism. Intransigence and dogmatism; taking a last stand for ones position on even minor
items.

Condescension and paternalism.

Being ‘on the make”. Treating women seductively; using sexuality to manipulate women.
Seeking attention and support from women while competing with men.

Running the show. Continually taking charge of tasks before others have the chance to volunteer.

Graduate studentitis. Protectively storing key group information for one’s own use and benefit.

Speaking for others. ‘A lot of us .think that we should. . . “or “What so and so really meant was…”

Update: Atiya and I have taken to calling salad with this dressing “Crack Salad”.  I get a weird kind of buzz after I eat it.  Also, whenever I eat it I crave it the next day, and the cravings only get worse better.

Tahini Lemon Soy Dressing a.k.a. “Crack Salad”
Makes enough for a big personal salad.  If making it for a group as a side salad, I’d probably do one recipe per 2 people or so, depending on portion size.

• 3 T tahini
• 3 T soy sauce (do not sub Bragg’s.  It’s not the same)
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 T water (or more or less, depending on how thick you want it)

Combine, dress, and enjoy!