Tag Archives: non-binary

GF-ish sessions at Penguicon this weekend

This weekend, April 28-30, people coming to Penguicon in Southfield, Michigan can catch a number of sessions of interest to Geek Feminism readers.

Coraline Ada Ehmke is one of the Guests of Honor (her Penguicon schedule). Ehmke “is a speaker, writer, open source advocate and technologist with over 20 years of experience in developing apps for the web. She works diligently to promote diversity and inclusivity in open source and the tech industry.” She and others are participating in a Women in Tech panel and Q&A on Saturday.

Sumana Harihareswara is another of Penguicon’s Guests of Honor (schedule). That’s me! On Saturday I’ll be conversing with Ehmke about what it could be like if free and open source software were more like fandom, a conversation which will likely include and expand upon some questions I raised here at GF a few years ago.

If you enjoyed the “Sorcerer to the Crown” book club Geek Feminism ran in 2015, you might be interested in a Saturday session I’m leading on themes in Zen Cho’s work.

Penguicon has several other Guests of Honor and there’s a wideranging schedule that includes a bunch of other sessions that could be particularly relevant to geeky feminists, and I’ll mention some here:

Perhaps I’ll see you at the con! Feel free to comment if you’re going to be there and mention any parties or sessions you’re particularly looking forward to.

Nonbinary inclusion in “women’s spaces”

Two different feminists I know recently brought my attention to “On the Design of Women’s Spaces” by Kat Marchán, and I’m grateful to them and to Marchán. The essay provides a useful “hierarchy of exclusivity” that helps all of us think about how our feminist spaces — geeky or otherwise — could make sure that our policies, names, and advertising are not accidentally being exclusive.

Recently, while speaking with a group of non-binary folks, a discussion came up about how many of us are uncomfortable in “women’s spaces”. We talked about what these spaces usually intend, how they word things, and how they could align what they want with what they say, in order to get more of us to feel comfortable.

I participate in some feminist spaces, some of which exclude men, and some of which fall under categories 2, 3, and 4 in the hierarchy Marchán describes. [Disclaimer: I am cis.] As Julia Evans describes, women-only spaces are a hack:

Imagine you have a program, and it has a pretty serious issue. It needs some deep architectural changes to fix it, but you can alleviate some of the symptoms by just changing a few lines of code. You don’t yet know the best way to resolve the larger problem, but you need to do something, so you start with a hack.

… and we’ve started with that hack, and now it’s one that dozens if not hundreds of online and in-person spaces are replicating. I’m glad for tools and examples that help us get past that first initial hack.

I’m one of the co-organizers of an up-and-coming feminist hackerspace, MergeSort NYC (next project night tomorrow night!). Our “About us” text already explicitly mentioned non-binary people. But after we saw Marchán’s piece and talked about it, we decided to more emphatically include non-binary people, by switching around the phrase from “women and non-binary people” to “non-binary people and women”:

We want to be a place where non-binary people and women can make things, learn, and work on projects without fear or intimidation.

It’s one small improvement, and one we’re glad to make. (And we continue to look into more ways — big and small — to be more inclusive, across many axes, and are considering where we’d like to be on Marchán’s hierarchy. Our membership policy evolves as our lead team changes, as our members’ views change, and as we consider new articulations and norms from feminist thinkers.)

If this topic interests you, and you’re near Washington, DC, USA, you might also be interested in “Being Nonbinary in Women-in-Tech Spaces: A Panel Discussion”, an event this coming Tuesday the 11th run by Spanning Tree, the DC-area feminist hacker/maker space. And I’d love to see links in the comments to additional essays on this topic.

The linkspam instinct (24 May 2014)

Announcements etc:

Long Hidden, a Kickstarter-funded anthology of spec fic centering marginalised characters, is now available for purchase.
Registration for Solutions Summit 2014: Women in Science Writing (June 13–15 at MIT) is open.
Model View Culture’s Queer issue is out! Individual articles will be scattered over the spam over the next week, but check out the whole thing.
FOSS4G — a conference for open source geospatial software, to be held in Portland Oregon in September — is dedicating 50% of their travel grants funding for women and minority attendees. Applications close May 30. They’re also looking for donations to the travel fund; you can donate when you register for the event.

Gender diversity data and tech companies:

Associated Press’s story Google to release diversity data about workforce | Washington Post (May 14) is all over the place.
Silicon Valley can change the diversity conversation by telling the truth about its workforce | Michelle Quinn at San Jose Mercury News (May 16): “The decision this week by Google to release information about its workforce’s gender and racial makeup is a challenge to all of Silicon Valley to do the same.”
The We Can Do Better page by Ri Liu is tracking how different technology firms do.

Spam!

A group of women leaders in technology have written An Open Letter on Feminism in Tech, available at Model View Culture (May 22) and at aboutfeminism.me (living document).
Managing Yourself: Women, Find Your Voice | Kathryn Heath, Jill Flynn, and Mary Davis Holt at Harvard Business Review (June issue): “The people described above have several things in common. They are all successful and ambitious. They are all admired by colleagues and superiors. Yet they have all failed to assert themselves in high-level meetings. And they are all women.” Mostly advice for women to speak up more, but some advice for organizations to enable it at the end.
Nerf Rebelle does damage – and not the good kind | Geek In Sydney (May 16): “There’s nothing intrinsic that requires girls to have pink Nerf guns. It’s purely a marketing decision and in my view it’s sad that it works. More importantly, though, every single time we go down this road it’s another brick in the wall that artificially separates girls and boys expectations.”
Not a Tech Bro, but Not a Tech Lady | Anonymous Author at Model View Culture (May 19): “If the purpose of the event is to support gender minorities in tech, then the event needs to be inclusive and supportive of trans individuals, regardless of whether or not they identify as women.”
Chelsea Manning may be transferred to civilian prison for gender treatment | Associated Press at The Guardian (May 14): “The Pentagon is trying to transfer Chelsea Manning to a civilian prison so that she can get treatment for her gender disorder.”
Growing Your Tech Pipeline: Build a Paid Internship Program for Moms | Tina Lee at the Anita Borg Institute (May 21): “Did you know that most women in the U.S. become moms?… In today’s tech-driven economy where cutthroat bidding wars for technical talent are par for the course, wouldn’t it be wonderful to tap into an existing, under-utilized pool of talent that’s already educated and have work experience and are hungry for a chance to skill-up so that they can bring those to bear?”
Transitioning in the Digital Age | Jessica Lachenal at Model View Culture (May 19): “What I didn’t expect, however, was having to take on the monumental task of going back across my entire online identity and having to filter every post, every tweet, every photo that was from a life that was no longer mine.”
Ignore data, focus on power | Cathy O’Neil at mathbabe (May 20): “I like data that shines light on powerful people. Like the Sunlight Foundation tracks money and politicians, and that’s good. But I tend to want to protect powerless people, like people who are being surveilled with sensors and their phones. And the thing is, most of the open data focuses on the latter… The power is where the data isn’t.”
5 Upcoming Female-Led Games to Get Excited About For the Rest of This Year | Lauren Puga at The Mary Sue (May 20): “2014 is already shaping up to be another good year in terms of women in games, and I wanted to highlight some upcoming lady-led titles that I think are worth getting excited about.”
Uses and Abuses of Girls | Janet at Dear Author (May 20): “However, the emphasis here is not on content, but on the production of celebrity as a function of teen girl fan loyalty, a commodity generated by these young girls, and then commodified by men and sold back to them in the form of celebrity stand-ins.”
Moving Tech’s Moral Compass From The Inside Is Harder Than It Looks | Kim-Mai Cutler at TechCrunch (May 20): “‘There’s this frustrating catch-22 for those of us in the tech industry who’ve been arguing for social good,’ [Justin Rosenstein] said. ‘Before you’ve achieved success, no one listens to you. And after you achieve success, you’re considered out of touch.'”

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Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

Is there life on linkspam? (21 March 2014)

Reason #140 Why Sexist Bullshit in Academia is Not Okay | Isis the Scientist (March 21): “Professor Righetti is continuing to publish his hilarious graphical abstracts and I suspect it is but a matter of time before we get more titties. He is also on the editorial board of several journals, including the journal with his hilarious graphical abstracts. He’s essentially using his leadership to be a huge creeper. Worse, the leadership of the journal is letting it happen.”
Women-only Calls and Non-Binary Authors | Polenth’s Quill (March 3): “I’ve talked before about the issue of non-binary gender in genre. Specifically that it’s difficult when the only gender or sex identity calls going out are for women. […] This doesn’t mean woman-only calls are inherently a problem. Much as it’s not a problem when we have race-specific calls or separate calls for different sexualities. The issue is the woman-only calls don’t happen alongside more general calls for marginalised sex and gender identities. It’s assumed that the way to counteract cis man dominance is to provide opportunities for cis women, rather than to provide opportunities for anyone who isn’t a cis man.”
How to break games out of the “act like a man” box | Dennis Scimeca on ars technica (March 19): “According to the boys Wiseman polled, strong people didn’t “act like a girl.” Being easily upset, awkward, or having disabilities were also things the boys identified as making someone weak. […] Empowerment is tied to “high status” traits like those within the “act like a man” box, but it doesn’t have to mean encouraging players to act like assholes.”
Why I Was Part of Creating a Thing Called Transtech | Lukas Blakk (March 19): “Last night I helped hold the third local meetup of trans and genderqueer people who are interested in getting together to hack on our projects. This is the third event since the amazing Trans*H4CK Hackathon (the first one of its kind!) that took place in October 2013.”
Debate vs Inquiry and “Reasonable Debate” as a silencing tactic | tigtog on Hoyden about Town (March 18): “[…] latest iteration of the pattern whereby people with uteruses are asked to respond to anti-choice arguments “as if they were just another interesting political topic for discussion and debate – as opposed to the grotesque violation of the right to bodily autonomy that they are”.”
Why I Don’t Want My Daughter to Work in Silicon Valley | Sascha Segan on PCmag (March 17): “[…] we’re talking about my daughter, right? I want her to go somewhere she’s valued, not somewhere she’ll have to fight every day against forces trying to grind her down. Yes, that’s what billions of people struggling on this earth do daily, but the goal of civilization is to lessen that particular struggle. I want her to live a life where kindness and understanding are important. And if she chooses tech, fortunately, she’ll have options.”