Category: Women

RIP Kitty Carlyle Hart

With everything else going on this week, the news of Kitty Carlyle Hart’s passing is likely to pass unnoticed, and that’s a shame. She was the kind of woman the world needs much more of.

She was known for her grace and charm, but by her own account she was slightly eccentric, a trait she treasured because she believed it gave her a lot of leeway.

She practiced singing every day, exercised every morning (and was the first to tell anyone that she had beautiful legs, which she did) and believed that discipline was the key to life. In her last decades, she became a popular lecturer. She often told her audiences, “With a soupçon of courage and a dash of self-discipline, one can make a small talent go a long way.”

…

“I’m more optimistic, more enthusiastic and I have more energy than ever before,” she said just after her 79th birthday. Energy, she said, came from doing the things she wanted to do.

“You get so tired when you do what other people want you to do,” she said.

On Female Bloggers and Threats

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?

Utterly Stupid Quote of the Day

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. 🙂

Friday Night Blog Drama

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.