Seeing as this seems to be one of my "crusades", I'm sure I've gone on ad infinitum about the whole females in a male-dominated environment. What this made me think of, was a comment Paul made a long time ago, about how people should learn to speak English. I'm sure I blogged about it before but I'm too tired to search for it, and just saying it like that is completely out of context, so please don't think badly of him! It's not as bad as it sounds. Still, I'm starting to agree with him to some degree - if you want to go somewhere different, don't expect people to bend over backwards to accommodate you. Despite the fact that English is taught at schools in Japan, when I go to Japan, I am going with the expectation that people will speak Japanese, which is why I'm equipped with my trusty "Eego o hanasemasu ka?"
Ah, I tried to stop myself, but it seems like I'm going to go on my crusade anyway. I became an engineer with the knowledge that this is a male-dominated field. I didn't even pick chemical engineering, which is apparently starting to approach a 1:1 ratio of genders, I picked software engineering, which is stereotypically full of geeky guys, and based on my 151 class, probably holds true to the stereotype. If this were marketing, and some company designed an ad to appeal to a market sector which turned out to be predominately males, if such an ad were to feature scantily clad women lying around on sports cars, nobody would bat an eyelid. If a speaker wants to make his presentation more appealing to an audience of mostly males, and he adds similar images, it sparks debate. Why? Supposedly because the females in the audience felt that it was insulting to them and degraded them.
OK, I understand that. I would prefer to be treated as an intelligent (arguable) being, rather than a piece of meat. So this reminded me of something MrMan5.5 said to me at Manifest last year. I said that I thought it was disgusting the way that some of the people were looking at some of the female cosplayers. He argued that they dressed that way because they wanted people to look at them. Taken completely to the extreme, it leads to the whole, it's OK to rape girls if they dress like sluts, but that's not what he meant. He meant that these people put time and money into their costumes, with the intention of having people take photos of them and admire them. A bit like art. I disagreed with him at the time, but I see the point he was trying to make now.
What if pornographic images cause males to objectify those women who chose to be photographed and not every single woman in the whole-wide world?!
When my online gaming started involving more than tower defense maps in Starcraft, and I encountered more people, I was exposed to a large number of ways to be told to suck someone's balls, or something of that variety. At first, I thought, "What?! Did he really just say that?" and was curious as to whether this was how males really speak when there are no females around - which, admittedly, was part of the appeal of hiding my identity. Now it doesn't even phase me at all, and when someone drops the C-bomb, and if someone calls them on it with the excuse that "there are ladies present", I usually end up thinking that person is being oversensitive. To me, that kind of stuff is part of the "gamer lingo". Sure, it might be offensive and/or exclude people, but it seems the majority of people who are part of that community are fine with the way that it is.
Side note - the kanji for "bride" consists of the "woman" and "home" characters, which is meant to signify a woman moving to her new home after getting married. The kanji for "wife" consists of the "woman" and "broom" characters. Both of these seem pretty damn sexist, if you think about it, but nobody is up in arms about that!
All of this political correctness makes me want to cry. Sometimes I find myself censoring myself because I'm afraid of who I am going to offend (which is why I'm worried about posting certain things on Facebook, and given some of the things I've heard about that have happened due to Facebook posts, I might be right in doing so). What are you meant to call "black people"? I once saw some (I'm guessing) American tourists talking about a man playing a didgeridoo in Sydney. "We should give some money to this poor African-American man, he obviously looks like he's starving." Contrary to what some people seem to think, not all dark-skinned people are African or American! They seemed like kind people, but just wow...
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is:
- if you're going where no (wo)man has gone before, keep in mind that you're entering a place with its own culture and traditions
-political correctness is becoming too much
-if you feel really uncomfortable being where you are, perhaps you should consider moving somewhere else
Leaving you with something to think about, Violet Blue asks an interesting question in her article, "2010: The Year of Whining about Women in Tech":
Everyone, every single one of you who have whined about women in tech this year are full of it until you can tell me one thing. And then, I will believe you are of a worthy cause. Like so many women in tech, I will no longer avoid attending your “women in tech” events. I will stop despising this cultural segregation for being female. I will stop hating your pro-women-in-tech posts that single us out, all cloaked in goodwill that always feels like it has a darker agenda.
Tell me why we should have more women in tech.
If you’re telling me we should, then tell me why we should. Why it is better. What benefits it brings to business, to profit, to innovation. To development. To leading companies and advising them.
1 comment:
I enjoyed this post alot.
Also: political correctness is retarded.
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