[hackerspaces] Women in Makerspaces

Fri Jan 18 02:35:15 CET 2013

I think justin's point here is great. Anyone up for continued discussion
re: women in makerspaces? How can social misfits, outcasts, and antisocial
hacker types work towards creating a welcoming environment?

Maybe we can talk about matt, whether his fly is open, and all that implies
we can see, in a different thread.  It would be a shame if we got derailed
by trolls. I know a lot of folks are concerned about this issue... many of
them the type to be easily silenced.

R.
On Jan 17, 2013 3:58 PM, "justin corwin" <outlawpoet at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was sorry to see Lyra beat me to the reply, although hers is great.
>
> My possibly unaddressed slice of this is that being nice is seemingly
> costless, but tolerating some patterns of behavior can end up costing you a
> lot, in terms of who feels free to step in to discussions, what kind of
> participation you get, and what resources are available to you.
>
> I've seen a number of communities choke themselves out by allowing
> poisonous internal behavior to scare off *any* new participants and
> possible sponsors who might have gotten involved, quite aside from
> unusually focused kinds of aggressive *we're not cool, don't join us*
> flags, like ageist, sexist, racist presentation tends to uniquely haunt our
> section of the subculture.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:43 PM, Al Billings <albill at openbuddha.com>wrote:
>
>> Lyra++
>>
>> --
>> Al Billings
>> http://www.openbuddha.com
>> http://makehacklearn.org
>>
>> On Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 3:41 PM, rachel lyra hospodar wrote:
>>
>> It might be an artifact of your social position in Amerika, Mr. Joyce,
>> as a white cismale who presents heteronormatively, that you believe
>> 'being nice' carries no added cost.
>>
>> Or it's an artifact of my position that any dissent is automatically
>> regarded as socially unacceptable - since women are always supposed to
>> 'be nice' and in fact in professional settings are statistically more
>> frequently punished, reprimanded, and fired for displaying the same
>> 'assertive' behaviors which are rewarded in men.
>>
>> When I find myself surrounded by people who evidence an informed respect
>> and understanding for me, my people, and the enormity of our oppression,
>> i find it
>>
>> so
>>
>> much
>>
>> easier
>>
>> to be nice.
>>
>> Yes, in general, I think people should be nice. Should women who are
>> being spoken to condescendingly be nice? How nice? How about people of
>> color who are being spoken to in a racist manner? How about trans
>> people being subject to hate speech? Where is the line?
>>
>> I think *you* should be nice, because Amerika has heard plenty of your
>> flavor of truth. I think I should be honest.
>>
>> R.
>>
>> On 1/17/2013 2:51 PM, Matt Joyce wrote:
>>
>> Cost nothing to be nice to each other.
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 2:46 PM, rachel lyra hospodar
>> <rachelyra at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "It could be that she host a class about e-textiles or whatever it is
>> females like to talk about."
>>
>> *headdesk*
>>
>> protip - sometimes women focus on the textile stuff *because* then they
>> can
>> be in a group that is at least 15% women. The Feminist Hacker Hive that
>> meets up at noisebridge has found that there is a tipping point - if a
>> critical mass of women are present in conversation, they don't get
>> interrupted by clueless neanderthal types.
>>
>> I used to make a living as a carpenter, welder, and construction manager.
>> I
>> left that work because of gender and age based disrespect.
>>
>> I sniffed around the edges of Silicon Valley but didn't dive in for the
>> same
>> reasons. I do work in soft circuitry now, but it's not because rigid
>> circuits are too difficult. It's a brute-force solution designed to avoid
>> people as condescending as you, david.
>>
>> If the tech industry truly wants to innovate on things like interface we
>> could do with re-examining how people interact, and what we are really
>> seeking. To do that, though, we have to change the culture.
>>
>> R.
>>
>>
>> On 1/17/2013 8:26 AM, David Powell wrote:
>>
>>
>> At Baltimore Hackerspace we have been 100% male until last month. We had
>> the occasional Female come through the door but for whatever reason they
>> never come back. We now have exactly 1 female member and about 20 male
>> members. The males ALWAYS go out of their way to make the place more
>> female friendly. For example we try hard not to use inappropriate
>> language around females. Whenever they show a desire to learn something
>> we stop what we are doing and teach them whatever it is they want to
>> know. At the end of the night when they are leaving we always have
>> someone walk them to their car so they feel safe.
>>
>> I highly encourage all members of our space no matter what their gender
>> is to make it their own. For example we have Programmers, Electronic
>> Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Accountants, Students, etc. and you can
>> pick anyone person from any of those backgrounds and they could tell you
>> a subject that they just don't care about. So if a programmer wants more
>> programmers to talk to and hang out with I encourage them to send out a
>> few e-mails and become more active online in order to help find more
>> people interested in programming. I don't however expect the mechanical
>> engineers to go find programmers if they have no interest in learning to
>> program.
>>
>> I would say the same should be true with the female/male issue. If a
>> hackerspace has one female and she wants more females in the hackerspace
>> then she should start a campaign to find more females. It could be that
>> she host a class about e-textiles or whatever it is females like to talk
>> about.
>>
>> If a female in the hackerspace wants to be on our board I would gladly
>> accept them but I would hold them to the same standards as I hold
>> everyone. As a board member you are "Responsible" for the future of the
>> hackerspace. This means a lot of work that really sucks. For us it is
>> not just making decisions but actually getting the work done. For
>> example we need brochures made to hand out to people who are coming
>> through our door for the first time and at special events. Ok we voted
>> that we need those. Now what? Well, someone has to actually design and
>> make the things. But we don't have a budget to just pay a designer. So
>> the person in charge of making it happen has to find someone with the
>> talent to make it happen or figure out how to do it themselves. "But I
>> just want to hack" is usually what most people say. Nobody wants to
>> actually do anything the is important. They want to do what is fun at
>> the time.
>>
>> As the president I spend about 40 hours a week making sure the finances
>> are straight, making sure our social media is up to date, sending out
>> request to try and get us stuff that we can't afford, making sure the
>> place is clean for the next wave of new people who come through the
>> door, making sure the projector works for the classes we host, making
>> sure the refrigerator gets stocked with soda. I could keep going.
>>
>> My point is it does not matter what gender you are. It matters whether
>> or not you actually do work which contributes to the future of the
>> space. If you want more women then go find them. If you want more say in
>> what is going on then offer to help take care of some of the task that
>> need to be accomplished.
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Justin Corwin
> outlawpoet at gmail.com
> http://programmaticconquest.tumblr.com
> http://outlawpoet.tumblr.com
>
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