The lamp: taken.

[jazzfish]

I wonder...: "I wonder if people would say that we shouldn't rush to levy judgement on Dave just because I blogged that he punched me in the face." (Context is everything.)

Are polyamorous relationships hard?: "I just don’t buy that relationships are anywhere near the hard work that self-development is. Once you start focusing on the self-development part, the relationship part seems to be a pretty nice side effect of that." Word.

Tobias Buckell makes a good point in the steampunk war: "[S]teampunk is a just a modern iteration of the previous generation's pastoralism. Tolkien was looking back a couple hundred years to a time just outside his horizon and thinking of it as 'a better age' ... Now in the 21st century, our previous age was industrialization, that’s the age we look back to that’s *just* outside of our horizon where we can strip out all the negative stuff of the Industrial Age and think of it as a simpler age." Fair enough.

(Somehow when I linked to Charlie's rant I neglected to also link to Kate Beaton's definitive takedown of steampunkers. Now I can rectify that, and can also link to Eeyore's steampunk infestation of Star Wars.

Speaking of Star Wars, Ben Kenobi, Private Jedeye: "That's Greedo, the guy Han Solo shot first!"

---

The showing of GET LAMP and discussion afterwards were neat ("When Dave Lebling was writing Shogun, he'd write to Clavell's agent and ask 'why is this character doing this here?' and after awhile the agent would write back and say 'James doesn't remember.' I have footage of Dave apologizing for Shogun. It's great."). Seen a second time, it's... not exactly unfocused, but sprawling. It touches on an awful lot of stuff. The Richard Bartle rant ("Wouldn't it be great if we had the technology to tap directly into the imagination, so you could see all these things... well, we do, it's called text, and it's been around for about three thousand years") is still my favorite bit. I do want to sit people down and make them watch the Infocom "featurette" and the bit on A Mind Forever Voyaging, though.

And it was good to briefly see plumbob78 and baranoouji, and to hang out and talk with daghain and LJless-as-far-as-I-know Jen for awhile. I'm no longer feeling either shut in or overpeopled, which is kind of nice. Balancing the proper quantity (and quality) of People tends to be hard.

But I have books, and writing, and a shiny new computer, and when I need good people I can generally find some. It just takes some looking, sometimes.

Comments

[jazzfish]

That came off a lot harsher than I'd intended. I'm not saying "you assault people," and I'm not saying "all your friends assault people," and I'm not saying "you're a bad person for being involved with this culture." I'm saying, "the culture fosters and protects members who assault people, and that you are personally opposed to this doesn't change the culture."

[rbandrews]

I'm going to respond to this comment because it'll be considerably more civil than my response to the other one.

Not all of the culture protects members who assault people, and there is far more than one culture at work here.

When I heard that someone had shown a slide deck with porn in it in a Rails conference, I was barely surprised. If I were to hear that that happened at LSRC, I'd react much differently. And it's not just because I went there; if I heard that something like that had happened at the VTLUG I wouldn't be too shocked.

Hearing her story about ApacheCon has taught me a lot about that community, and that I really have no interest in it, but it doesn't make me feel any differently about Austin on Rails or LSRC or Houston Ruby. I object to the idea that all tech groups are equivalent as much as you object to the idea that nothing on the internet matters.

"Technology" is not a culture that fosters and protects abusers, "Twitter / Hadoop / Apache" is. I find that shocking about Apache (since my mental image is suspenders Unix guy), mildly surprised about Hadoop (since my mental image is shy Indian grad student) and totally par for the course about Twitter (those guys have made some dope fiend moves in the past).

[jazzfish]

Fair enough, and I apologise for lumping "technology" into one large culture. That's something I ought to know better than to do, and I got lazy, and I'm sorry that I did and that it got you mad.

I find that shocking about Apache (since my mental image is suspenders Unix guy)

Ah. I don't. Suspenders-Unix-guy, if he's anything like Old Skool Hard-SF Fan, has a vague distaste for the wimminz getting all emotional and user-friendly in his command line. He despises anyone without a grasp of Assembler and he assumes that women by their very nature fall into that category. He may allow for individual exceptions sometimes, but if it comes down to a he-said versus she-said where he knows both the he and the she, he'll side with the "he" just about every time, and may not even realise he's doing it.

Again, I acknowledge that not all 'tech culture' is like this. I suspect, based on things I've heard from other women in technology fields, that more of it is than you think, but I cheerfully admit the possibility that less (maybe much less) of it is than I fear.

[rbandrews]

The thing about Suspenders-Unix-guy is, he may like his no-gurlz-allowed sign, but he's also probably married, with a couple kids, and maybe some grandkids. Sure, he does a double-take when he sees a feminine name on a commit comment, but he's not going to get drunk and grope someone at a bar. :-)

The problem might be more widespread than I am aware of, I'll grant. I have only been to conferences in Texas, and Texas, as a rule, is a lot better-behaved than the national average. After all, you never know who's packing. If you get a large conference with attendees from all over the world, the chances go way up that some of them will be frotteurs. At LSRC, there were maybe 300 people, at least 50 of which I knew by name, and at least 10 of which I had previously worked with. Smaller, close-knit groups may be more likely to defend their members, but they're also less likely to admit members who would do something like this, or to be willing to do something like this in front of the 300 people who will collectively be your coworkers / partners / references across your entire career.

[vond.net]

I have studied the history of computing a lot, and I think things have been getting LESS egalitarian since the late 90s.

I have some theories why, but they're not particularly grounded in anything so I'll keep them to myself.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Will Suspenders-Unix-guy laugh at sexist jokes? Will he comment that [most of] the women there are just there because of affirmative action? Will he agree that she was probably asking for it, even though he would never dream of sexually assaulting anyone whether she was "asking for it" or he was drunk, or not?

Because studies of "non-violent" (get 'em drunk acquaintance rape, the most common kind) sexual predators show that they actively LOOK for crowds where that kind of thing is NOT loudly objected to by multiple people, because that's the kind of environment that favors their getting away with assault, because even if the victim screws up the courage to tell people what happened, the odds are better that they won't be believed. The predators may tell a sexist joke just to test the waters ... even better if they don't have to expose themselves even in that mild way because someone else there is already telling sexist jokes, of course! So, I think it matters a lot to speak up against such things, even if I just spoke up against them yesterday, or an hour ago. It's partly a matter of personal safety. And it's important for it not just to be me/women speaking out against it.

I do not think the people who do not object (out loud, not just in their head) to sexist comments are trying to support rapists, or are responsible for the rapists' choices. But I do think their silence encourages rapists, no matter how much against rape they may be *inside their heads*.

I know some people are sick and tired of being held responsible for not actively discouraging rapists. I point them here (links to studies inside):
* http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/
We need to spot the rapists, and we need to shut down the social structures that give them a license to operate. They are in the population, among us. They have an average of six victims, women that they know, and therefore likely some women you know. They use force sometimes, but mostly they use intoxicants. They don’t accidentally end up in a room with a woman too drunk or high to consent or resist; they plan on getting there and that’s where they end up.

Listen. The women you know will tell you when the men they thought they could trust assaulted them; if and only if they know you won’t stonewall, deny, blame or judge. Let them tell you that they got drunk, and woke up with your buddy on top of them. Listen. Don’t defend that guy. That guy is more likely than not a recidivist. He has probably done it before. He will probably do it again.
...
Rapists know what works. They like to rape, they want to keep doing it, they want not to be caught. It is in their interest to be very sensitive to which accounts of rape are believed and which are attacked and to know which targets and methods are lowest-risk for them.

* Predator Theory: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/03/25/predator-theory/ follow-up, with good analysis in comments

[rbandrews]

As far as I know, I have no idea who you are. I could be mistaken, but do you know me at all? If you don't why do you assume that I laugh at sexist jokes? If I am too afraid to speak up about gender issues, why would I start this thread at all?

[selki.livejournal.com]

I only know of you from comments on Jazzfish's journal and possibly other DW/LJ friends in common, but I didn't assume or imply that you laughed at sexist jokes or were afraid to speak up about gender issues.

[jazzfish]

Please reread Selki's comment. Nowhere in that comment did she assume or suggest that you laugh at sexist jokes.

This is Not About You. None of this has been about you. None of this is targeting you. I regret that it's caused you to feel targeted.

[rbandrews]

I'm angry, and so I would also just like to say this:

I do not condone rape or randomly groping peoples' junk. I don't hang out with people who do. I don't even hang out with people who do hang out with people who do.

And I am sick and fucking tired of being held responsible for the comments of assholes on the internet for whom those statements are not true. What do the other 99% of us have to do, as a community, to show that we really and truly do not condone this?

[jazzfish]

Call the assholes, and the defenders of assholes, out on their shit. That's not just you personally, it's any and every person in the community who's interested and invested in not being seen as an enabler of assholes. By not calling them out, you ensure that the voices that get heard are the ones who are defending the assholes. Rightly or wrongly, the impression is: this is acceptable behavior. And that impression not only goes to the outside world, it goes into the community as well. The assholes see that "hey, if i get caught being an asshole, tons of people will jump to my defense, and there's no social cost in terms of this community!"

I'm not blaming you, singular or collective, for the actions or words of assholes. I'm noting that when the assholes are the loudest voices, the community looks like, well, a bunch of assholes.

(When I read your comment I immediately thought of Stuff what boys can do, which doesn't /directly/ address your question but kinda does.)

[vond.net]

I've seen this exact same comment from secularists to moderate Christians and Muslims.

[jazzfish]

With good reason. It's applicable to any group, really. You always run the risk of being defined by your most vocal elements; on the flip side, you run the risk of alienating your staunchest supporters by smacking them down. Sometimes it's a hard choice. I'd like to think that when it comes to something like misogyny or racism, that's not one of those hard-choice times.

[rbandrews]

In the same way, until I met Cassie, feminism was defined (for me) by people like you and Kelly, who attack anyone who doesn't agree hard enough.

I am a feminist. I agree with you. I am on your side. I am therefore a bad target for comments like your first one.

[jazzfish]

I genuinely appreciate your willingness to self-identify as a feminist.

I'd correct "Doesn't agree hard enough" to "agrees in theory but not in practice," and "attack" to "get frustrated with."

And having said that, please reread that comment. It wasn't targeting you. Nowhere in there did I attack you. None of that was about /you/, with the exception of the first line, which suggested that perhaps these spaces that you think of as being non-asshole-friendly aren't as much so as you might think, since there's a very low chance of you having been exposed to that type of asshole behavior. /I am not saying you're an asshole./ I think you're a good guy. I also think it's remarkably easy to be blind to things that don't directly affect one: gord knows I am.

If I say "there's some crap here, and a lot of people are denying loudly that it's crap," and you say "well, there's no crap in the part where i am," how do you expect me to respond?