Fiat Lux

Kathy Sierra writes a blog - Creating Passionate Users - that anybody who is in the business of creating technology products should read. And today she’s running scared from a string of death threats and sexually-explicit online harassment.

Misogyny in the technology business is hardly new. And despite considerable advances for a lot of us women in the field, it’s still an issue — for just one fairly tame example, witness some of the comments about women in this thread posted over this past weekend on the widely-read ‘Joel on Software’ forums. There’s plenty more where that came from; I just don’t have the stomach to Google up examples right now. It sucks, and it needs to change, although sometimes I wonder if that change will come in my lifetime.

In the unlikely event that you’re reading this, Kathy, all I can say is, hold onto your loved ones for support, and keep your chin up. You’re right to be angry, and you’re right to be afraid. But don’t let that fear run your life, either. It just gives the people who do this kind of crap more power. It’s like net trolls. They live and gain power by generating response. Ignore them, and they wither on the vine.

That’s easy for me to say, of course; it’s been more than 8 years since anyone has seriously harassed me online. Plus, I never got death threats, and I didn’t have to worry about children. So perhaps her response is the right one for now, or at least for her.

UPDATE 7:11PM

Robert Scoble weighs in:

So, since she doesn’t feel safe. I’m going to stop blogging in support of Kathy, who I consider a friend and someone who’s voice would be dearly missed here. I’ll be back Monday.

The Internet culture is really disgusting. Today when I was on Justin.TV the kinds of things that people were discussing in the chat room there were just totally disgusting and over the top.

We have to fix this culture. For the next week, let’s discuss how.

And, Kathy, Maryam and I love you and are there for you. Don’t let these jerks get you down.

It’s this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop. I really don’t care if you attack me. I take those attacks in stride. But, whenever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn’t happen if the interviewee were a man.

It makes me realize just how ascerbic this industry and culture are toward women. This just makes me ill.

Great response, and I can’t say how much I appreciate some A-list recognition that this IS a big problem for women in technology. But taking a week off in support of Kathy? I’m not so sure about that. How about a ‘blog against sexism in technology’ week instead?

I’m sure Echinde or some of the other, better bloggers than I out there will have a field day with this:

[Author Laura Session Stepp] writes a letter to mothers and daughters, in which she warns the girls: “Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn’t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?”

I’ve only got two things to say in response.

First off, it’s outrageously sexist to suggest that an unmarried woman’s body is the property of her future husband, and that sexual activity before marriage devalues her assets. What rock has the author been hiding under?

Next, is that really the best argument she can come up with for why adolescents should delay sexual activity? If so, that’s pretty pathetic.

Kathy Dobie, the Washington Post’s reviewer of this book, had a good response:

It seems strange to have to state the obvious all over again: … one’s sexuality is not a commodity that, given away too readily and too often, will exhaust or devalue itself.

It’s certainly not seen that way for men. A man who’s had a lot of sex partners is seen as sophisticated (James Bond, anyone?). A woman who’s had a lot of sex partners, on the other hand, is all too often seen as a slut.

And books like this one don’t help matters any.

UPDATE 3:10PM
As expected, Echinde has weighed in. Score 1 for my predictive ability.

As Deborah said, it’s really simple.

It’s my body.

I get to decide what happens to it.

End of story.

There have been times when I’ve wondered whether I was doing the right thing by not hiding behind anonymity or pseudonymity on the Internet. Each time I’ve thought about it, though, I’ve ultimately decided that if someone were to get so offended by what I put on this blog that they would not want to hire me or allow me to keep a job that I have, then I wouldn’t want to work there anyway. My politics are almost boringly mainstream Democratic. Someone who found that objectionable would likely be a serious wingnut, or, since it’s no secret that I’m Jewish, an anti-Semite.

And after seeing the latest feminist blog-drama going on regarding threats of “outing” and anonymous blogging, I regret my decisions even less.

I have no beef with people who choose to not reveal their identities online. There are a lot of good reasons for blogging in anonymity. Ultimately, what matters more (at least to me) is the quality of your blogging. However, the trade-off is that anonymous bloggers with a higher degree of visibility — like Zuzu — can be subject to pressures that those of us who are less hidden don’t have. I have the luxury of not having to deal with those pressures, and I’m glad.

I’ve never been a big fan of “holier than thou” doctrinaire types, whether they call themselves Greens, vegans, or feminists.

Shakes summed up the subject very well:

The measure of feminism

This isn’t totally new news, but it’s worth noting:

Madrid’s fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.

[snip]

The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI — based on weight and height — to measure models. It has turned away 30 percent of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.

And a good thing too.

Grrr. First, Forbes.com posts a massively sexist article about how men should steer clear of marrying “career women”, but I was at work & couldn’t blog about it.

Then I get home & found that Forbes.com had gotten smart (or perhaps their female staff members & subscribers objected loudly enough) and pulled the article offline. I started to blog about it alyway, but somehow Movable Type ate my first version of this blog entry.

So just go read Echinde’s summary and takedown.

UPDATE: this Opinionistas piece is really good too.

This is what we went to war for?

Nearly five years after the ouster of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, President Hamid Karzai plans to breathe new life into a strict Islamic institution that many Afghans were happy to see die: the Amr Bilmaruf va Nahi az Mankar, or literally, “Do the good, don’t do the bad.”

Last month, Karzai’s Cabinet approved a proposal to re-establish the agency also known as the Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, whose police under the Taliban beat and imprisoned Afghans for violating Shariah law. For many, the revival of religious cops raises painful memories of ruffians zipping around Kabul in Datsun pickups mainly in search of women and girls who refused to wear the head-to-toe burqa, donned high heels, wore nail polish or walked down city streets without a male relative. Men were cited for sporting short beards, drinking alcohol, working during prayer time, playing chess or listening to nonreligious music.

Update 6:55PM:

Lest it be thought that I am suggesting that idiocy is confined to just one part of the world, how’s this for stupid?

British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action.

It’s bad enough that we’re all treated like potential terrorists every time we get onto an airplane, but now racist passengers also get a say in who gets to fly?

Peru. Here’s why:

More than half of all Peruvian women over the age of 15 say they have suffered sexual or physical violence by men during their lifetime — one of the world’s highest rates.

….

Some 51 percent of women in Lima and 69 percent of women in the southern Andean city of Cuzco said they have been victims of sexual or physical violence, [a study by Amnesty International and Peruvian organization Flora Tristan]added.

Indeed, the level of violence surges dramatically in Peru’s impoverished rural areas.

In the southern Huancavelica province where 90 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, the rate of sexual and physical violence against women is ranked as one of the world’s worst in a recent study by the World Health Organization.

The good news is that Peru’s President-elect Alan Garcia has made it one of his stated goals to try to combat this pervasive violence against women, but it remains to be seen exactly what that will entail and whether it will actually help matters.

Before the topic of BJ’s completely falls off the radar, I’d like to note that the whole kerfluffle over what goes on in the bedroom of two consenting adults generated orders of magnitude more heat and light this weekend than the fact that Louisiana now has an anti-abortion law that’s nearly as stringent as the one in South Dakota. And I didn’t post about it either, which makes me just as bad, I know. But then, I’ve never set up to be an officially ‘feminist’ weblog.

And as I was mulling over what I might say in a post about why, 20 years after first enthusiastically reading Betty Friedan and Adrienne Rich I don’t always feel comfortable calling myself a feminist, Echinde put up a long post about the Working Mommy Wars and related issues. It gave me some clarity.

It’s been 40+ years since the First Wave and we’re still stuck on basic issues like the right of a woman to decide her own path in life without being shamed? Women still struggle with discrimination in the workplace, don’t get paid as much as men do, and generally have a much harder time achieving economic security. Why are we worrying about who does what to whom in the bedroom when these much more important issues are still nowhere close to being resolved?

Why do I consider economic issues to be a primary focus for feminism? Because as so many women have discovered, if you don’t have the ability to earn wages sufficient to keep a roof over your head and food on your table, then you don’t have the autonomy to make your own life choices. And to me, that is the essence of feminism — the belief that women should be just as able to set and steer their own life’s course as men are. Without that freedom, the rest is meaningless.

If the Great BJ War has taught us anything, it’s that even the most intelligent and self-aware women are not going to make the same choices in their lives. The problem lies when people, for whatever reason, think that not only are they are better able to decide what another person should or should not do, but that they have a better understanding of the underlying emotions and motivations that go into the choice. And what’s worse is that much of the shaming comes not from “The Patriarchy” but from other women.

I won’t argue with the fact that it’s possible for a disinterested party to make a ‘better’ decision than someone caught up in the middle of a given situation, but when you start saying that a person is not feeling what they say they are feeling, then I draw a line. When last I checked, telepathy didn’t work very well. Even psychotherapy isn’t totally effective. To assert that an outsider better knows what is going on in a person’s mind from a cursory examination of their words or actions goes directly against my belief that personal autonomy is what feminism is about.

To get around this little issue, some feminists have employed Engels’ concept of “false consciousness,” whereby the person is told that she is unaware of her real motives and is therefore incapable of correctly understanding the situation. (Many of them, I suspect, are not aware of the Marxist roots of this concept.) It’s a great tool when you’re trying to impose your beliefs onto someone else, because it creates a no-win situation for the person being accused of false consciousness.

I’ve wandered a bit far afield from my original topic, which was supposed to be about why I’m not comfortable calling myself a feminist these days. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I don’t feel very simpatico with many of today’s feminist bloggers. I’m a happily married heterosexual with a ketubah hanging over my bed, after all. True, I didn’t change my name when I married and I don’t have children, but overall I’ve made pretty conventional life choices, and I don’t regret having done so. I care more about the problems that women as a whole face than I do about the possible impact of patriarchy on my own life.

Call it false consciousness or tell me I’m a tool of the patriarchy for not thinking radically enough, and I and say with all due respect, piss off.