[hs-equality] Equality Digest, Vol 14, Issue 4

[Ari Lacenski]

This discussion's revealed a split amongst people talking about it.

1 - people who went into C3 aware of gender issues and some of the
history here. These people are relatively unlikely to cause or stoke
incidents that are readily seen as harassment. Some of you are reading
this.

2 - people who went to C3 with a mental model of /not/ taking these
issues seriously, resenting the topic when it comes up, and blaming
other people for not finding everything so funny. These are the people
bitching about feminazis and terrorism.  It's not that most of them
actively think women are stupid. Most of them haven't even done
anything that by itself would be called harassment. They just hear
"sexism" and "feminism" and go "oh fuck, not this again" and declare
that they're not REALLY sexist.

I'm searching about in my mind for a way to reach that second group.
Statements of intention by respected groups of people seem like an ok
start. I thought CCC did an excellent job of that very thing at the
beginning (I tried to document this here,
http://tensory.tumblr.com/post/39731282531/fires-in-the-walls) but it
ran aground partly because issues kept feeding on each other.

About "be excellent to each other" I feel it doesn't go far enough.
The message I want to see out there is that nobody wants to be treated
poorly and made to feel an outsider. We want to be able to trust our
friends. I'm a pretty stupid optimist, but I hope the "lulz,
feminists" crowd would be able to wrap their heads around that.

Ari



On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 3:00 AM,
<equality-request at lists.hackerspaces.org> wrote:
> equality at lists.hackerspaces.org