[TriLUG] Work Meeting on Diversity, Jan 22nd 1:00pm

[John Brier via TriLUG]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Jack Hill via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> TriLUG will have an open meeting to discuss our efforts and future plans to
> increase member diversity on Sunday, February 22nd at 1:00pm EST. The
> location will be at Bostock Library room 039 on Duke University's West
> Campus.
>
> We will start of by reviewing the actions we have taken to date to promote
> diversity (adopting an anti-harassment policy, a panel about women in FOSS).
> Now that we've taken these first steps, it is time to asses them and plan
> for what more we can do. This will take the bulk of the meeting with the
> goal of assigning concrete tasks for the next steps.
>
> Parking will be available at the Bryan Center lot and garage for $2.00/hour:
> http://parking.duke.edu/parking/visitor_parking/index.php There are also
> four accessible spaces on Telcom Drive outside of the library (note: long
> ramp up to library).
>
> Room 039 is in the basement of Bostock library below The Edge. See
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=36.00289&mlon=-78.93833#map=18/36.00219/-78.94026
> for a map. The red dotted lines are walking paths.
>
> For those who are unable to join us in person, there will be a video
> conference (details to be sent out day-of, but it will require Chromium).
>
> Best,
> Jack

I went to the women in FOSS panel and thought it was great. It was
interesting to hear not only the panel's experiences but the
audience's experiences too, and to see the enthusiasm from people
(both male and female) for increasing diversity. Unfortunately, I
won't be able to come to this because I work weekends, but I want to
throw out some topics to consider for discussion regardless.

In addition to being into Linux I am also a cyclist, and while I'm not
currently a member of The League of American Bicyclists like I used to
be, I still get their emails and follow them on social media, and let
me tell you, if you want to be inspired by an organization who has
really flown with increasing diversity, look no further than the Bike
League. They have done research, social media campaigns, and even
hosted women specific conventions. Now, they are a big national bike
advocacy group, which is very different from a local/regional club
like TriLUG, but there is enough similarity to really take guidance
from, and they have been officially taking up diversity as an issue
since 2009 [1], so they have produced a lot of stuff to guide you. The
first thing it seems they did is something TriLUG is beginning to do
too, which is to take the issue seriously. That is evident by the
anti-harrassment policy that leadership and members have agreed upon,
the Women in FOSS panel, and the work group you're having tomorrow. I
can't imagine that would have happened if members and leaders ignored
the homogenous demographics of most of the gatherings. Which brings me
to my first suggestion:

Census and/or research
Years ago one of the first things that alerted me to the Bike League's
seriousness about increasing diversity (they now refer to equity more
often which is about "not just making sure everyone has shoes, but
making sure everyone has shoes that fit") was that they described the
statistically average member of their organization, he was a
fourty-something year old white man, AND I think they knew that that
wasn't representative of the average cyclist. They may have even had
data to back that up. Now, I'm quite sure they do. They did a "Women
Bike" campaign last year where they mentioned data that showed *more*
women bike than men! Can you believe that? I still have a hard time
believing it and I'm sure I'm not the only one. They connected this
with how little the bike industry caters to women (Women's clothing,
bike designs, etc. - it's minimal) with the obvious suggestion that if
more women bike than men, industry focus should be on par if not more
attuned to women. So the point is, you gotta know who your members
are, what race, nationality, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. that
people identify as. Then it helps to know who the Linux/FOSS users are
in general. I wonder if there is a similar discrepancy in minority
users versus members. Second suggestion:

In the discussion after the Women in FOSS panel I really, really,
wanted to bring this point up, but I was too nervous to do it, so even
though I'm not going to be at the work group tomorrow, I'm glad I'm
getting an opportunity to express what I didn't then. This is a
suggestion mostly for people like me, the white cis-gendered males. I
think the leaders and whoever else is involved with the
anti-harassment policy, the Women in FOSS panel, and this upcoming
event will understand this because to some extent, if you're already
pushing for diversity you've already had do some of what I'm going to
suggest.

So, without further ado, I suggest you guys (and I mean the guys!) do
inner work. Inner work is work related to your experience of life.
It's learning about that through meditation, journaling, prayer,
psychotherapy, contemplation, or philosophy, considering other's life
stories and differing ideologies. Now at this point I've probably lost
you, so let me bring it back home. You should do inner work because
it's rewarding in and of itself, but to do it with the focus on
increasing diversity and equity you should be analyzing how you
interact with women and people that are different from you to see how
you could be unintentionally and subtly reinforcing stereotypes or
otherwise making people different from you feel uncomfortable.

That's one of the confusing things about diversity. Everyone wonders
how we can bring more people into homogenous (read white, and/or male)
environments but the problem isn't that people that aren't male or
white aren't being invited, it's that they are being made to feel
unwelcome. Of course almost no one does this on purpose, and the few
people that do are easy to spot and call out (which allows the rest of
us to wash our hands of it and pat our selves on the back), but it's
hard to see something you literally never have to personally consider,
so that's why it's so important to do inner work - which allows you to
personally consider another person's perspective - in order to combat
this problem.

Let me give you an example of some unintentionally unwelcoming
behavior I have seen^H^H^H^Hheard in an even less diverse community:
ham radio. Ham radio in the US is even more white and male than IT
circles. There are even frequencies where people hang out and say
overtly racist, sexist, and homophobic things all day long. Probably
they feel safe doing that because they're behind a microphone, but
still.

In the Triangle we have several wide coverage repeaters, which are
radio systems with antennas mounted very high (on TV towers) that take
as input a VHF FM transmission on one frequency and simultaneously
retransmit on another frequency. With repeaters we can have round
table discussions over 60-100 miles, basically the whole triangle and
then some. Ham radio also has what are called nets where one person
will be a net operator and usually they will take checkins and then
get a "rag chew" from each person about whatever has happened to them
that day. You can recheck at later times to respond to someone else's
ragchew, or say something entirely new.

Well one day as I was driving back home from out of town while
listening to one of these wide coverage repeaters right before the
nightly net was about to start. There were already a group of guys
"chewing the rag" (talking in a long winded way) so the net controller
put out her call sign to let them know the net was going to start in a
few minutes so they could finish up their conversation. They gladly
did but there was one comment that caught my attention. I think it was
after they agreed to finish up soon, after she thanked them and signed
off with her call sign as is required by FCC regulation, one of the
men said something like "boy she has a nice voice." I cannot convey
the tone or remember the words exactly but let me tell you he wasn't
talking about the quality of her modulated signal. He said "her
voice." He was talking about what made her different from everyone
else on the radio that night. She was literally the only woman among
the probably twenty to thirty people who would eventually check in.

That he said that surprised me and it upset me. It upset me because I
felt it was something he would never say about a fellow male ham radio
operator but mostly it upset me because I was nervous about saying
something to all these men (and this one woman) who didn't seem to
think anything of it. I knew (or at least feared) that this sort of
"call out" or criticism would not be welcomed. I was so nervous I
literally drove almost all the way home before I finally got up the
nerve to say something.

I had actually already checked in and gave a general rag chew and not
said anything, but within a quarter of a mile from my house I
"rechecked."

After describing what I heard I told them basically what I've already
told you: because he described her voice as nice, and that he would
likely not do that to a male operator it was sexist. When I let off
the Push-To-Talk key on my microphone I immediately heard my worst
fears come true. I heard actual jeers and boos and other intentional
interference. I felt good though, because I had said it, even though I
was jittery and nervous as I was speaking the words I had to say to
convey my message. The net control operator, (the woman who was
described as having a nice voice, and remember, that man didn't say it
to her, he said it to his friends who he was previously talking to,
while she was presumably listening) said she didn't think anything of
it. That's fine. I'm not going to tell her she's wrong. I could be
wrong. But by the reaction I got I'd say there is definitely something
there worth talking about.

People's "inner" selves were "triggered." The man who made the
original comment rechecked himself and tried to tell me he was talking
about her audio quality, which is common in ham radio (signal
reports), but I repeated to him that he didn't say anything about that
at the time and was specific in referencing her voice, but like what I
alluded to earlier I didn't remember to say, and really am only
thinking about now as I write this, it was not just his reference to
her voice that bothered me, it was his tone.

Oh my God, I could almost see the squinted eyes and dirty desire of
his face through the communications speaker on my car's dashboard. I
don't know if it was that bad but it leads me to another revelation.
The real reason I was nervous about calling out this sexism, and also
the reason I was too nervous to make these points at the Women in FOSS
panel is because talking about this stuff forces me to further
acknowledge it in myself.

I am sexist. I am racist. I am even homophobic despite having recently
started identifying as bisexual in the past six months. I am 31 now
and have been doing inner work for around three years, including
taking up the mantle of Social Justice Warrior (SJW) and it's
incumbent requirements of being anti-homophobic, amongst other causes,
yet it took me this long to realize I was bi. That's an aside, but the
statements I made about being racist, sexist and homophobic aren't,
even though they're cliche amongst SJW's. Honestly sometimes I see a
male feminist or male pro-feminist (a new delineation I don't fully
understand, something about how Men shouldn't ID as feminist) say he
is sexist and I want to throw up. I reluctantly identify as feminist
right now only because I don't know what else to ID as to convey that
I think sexism is real and needs to be addressed.

The reason I'm reluctant to ID that way is not about the pro-feminist
issue (which I don't know enough about to decide either way) it's
because I think feminism and social justice advocates can be
unintentionally shaming. If you have ever seen Brene Brown's TED Talk
on shame you can begin to get an idea of why I might take issue with
that. In summary, she says guilt is the feeling "I made a mistake"
while shame is the feeling "I am a mistake," and with that feeling
shame can paralyze." But it's worse.

I recently read a book by a psychologist called "Real Boys" where I
learned that boys are traumatized twice in their upbringing. First
they are traumatized around the Kindergarten time frame when they are
forced to disconnect from their Mothers too soon. To explain this the
author provided an actual heartbreaking account:

In the story a Mother is taking her son to his first day of
Kindergarten. At the encouragement of the unpracticed teacher, who had
been mentored by other teachers to do this, she told the Mother not to
hang around even though the boy didn't want his Mom to leave yet.
After the teacher justified enough such that the Mother finally left -
kicking him off her leg which he was wrapped around in order to keep
her - the boy eventually went in a corner and cried by himself. This
process repeated for days while the boy got number each day. In the
book there is a reversal and happy ending, but that's not common. The
justification for this is that if boys are allowed to stay too
attached to their Mothers they will become over-feminized. This is the
first trauma, and from it comes sadness and grief that is not allowed
to be felt due to the well known mantra "boys don't cry" which itself
is a teaching that leads to the second "teaching" of a boy's life, or
what is better called, again, a trauma. When a boy is in adolescence,
in his teenage years the real toughening-up happens. Because of
puberty, he looks like a man to adults and with that image come
"manly" requirements. Hyper-masculinity is a term you may have heard
which includes an almost narcissistic stoicism, even-keeled-ness in
the most stormy weather, even a hurricane, impossible to maintain even
as an adult male, much less a boy. This hardening up is traumatic
because it is the further loss of the boys' self. He isn't losing a
complete connection to his Mother this time but a complete connection
to his whole emotional self and it produces an equally depressing
sadness and grief, which, because boys don't cry, certainly
manly-looking boys can't cry either. Or they get to cry even less. Now
I'm really going to have to bring this back. Is anyone still reading?

These two traumas produce incredible sadness and grief, and ironically
they are produced as a side effect of what feminists would call The
Patriarchy, which requires the narcissistic level of stoicism so that
the man can be more powerful and controlling, and to do that he must
sacrifice an emotional connection to women (because if he didn't, he
couldn't subjugate them) and even to himself (if he didn't, he
couldn't subjugate himself, and he must do that before he can
subjugate anyone else). So he ignores emotions or pain and rides the
hurricane while pretending hurricanes don't even exist.

When feminists talk to men about why feminism is not just about hating
on men - which is what it seems like at first - they love to point out
how the Patriarchy hurts men in the ways I just outlined. But I've
never heard a feminist talk about boyhood trauma, or the shame that is
used to enforce hyper-masculinity (which is another central point of
the book "Real Boys"). And that is part of the connection that's going
to bring this back. If you find the idea of acknowledging your own
sexism difficult, the idea that you could even be sexist at all, and
more than just in an abstract "ya I can't rule anything out for the
sake of the argument," but rather in a, "ya I probably hold some
pretty strong sexist feelings due to societial influence that are not
my fault but important to acknowledge nonetheless" way, then know,
this is why. Because not only were you traumatized so badly you might
not even know it because you were never allowed to feel or talk about
it, but... that's life. That's the way it is. That's normal. To
confront your own sexism is to confront not only yourself but the
world, and yes the world is fucked up but so are you. Wait, which is
worse? I kind of got the flow of those last few ideas mixed up. I
really don't know which is worse. It's just. fucked. up. And this is
why "the patriarchy" is inadequate. Even the Kyriarchy, which includes
the intersection of all oppressions acting at the same time, is an
inadequate term for this. This is really about the whole human
experience, to me anyway.

Individual psychology, group, class, and societal psychology are at
play here too, because even whole nations can be traumatized in ways
they don't know causing them to act out in harmful ways they will
inevitably justify.

Much of the contention around feminism seems to be about "who started
it" and the finger is squarely on the head of men but I'll just say
some men don't agree. Look up the philosopher Ken Wilber if you want
one divergent perspective on that. I am not sure where I sit in that
argument but I know I feel we can't fully deal with issues of
diversity that are seemingly caused by sexism of a traumatized group
if we don't acknowledge the trauma. Oh yea, I never connected this all
the way back. Do Inner Work. If you don't heal your sadness and grief
you'll just resent yourself and project grievances onto women, or
maybe they will be based in legitimate grievances against the mother
who disconnected from you too early, or the society which didn't and
still doesn't acknowledge your full self. These things are likely to
come out especially when women feminists and society in general start
criticizing you for your gender expression if it includes any seeming
sexism, especially if they are off base on your intentions. And women
are of course traumatized and rightly upset too, so they can't easily
see how sensitive you are. They're reacting. you're reacting! We're
all reacting and you'll just feel like you're getting shamed for
crying all over again. It will be different, but it will be the same
too.

After writing the above content a few hours ago, I realized I think I
am still struggling to further acknowledge my own sexism and other
isms. I do think women and other minorities can non-ideally respond to
their "oppressors," triggering their shame, which converse to their
intentions, entrenches them from correcting any problematic behavior -
but so can anyone. It doesn't make it their fault that it happens.

I don't know, though. I still want to be able to say who or what or
when caused this and then with my "root cause analysis" complete say
we should go from step one, to step two, to step three to correct it.
And that might be the hardest things about all of this. I have to
admit I don't know what caused it exactly, and may never know exactly
how to fix it. If I'm wise I have to admit that because "the traits of
the wise...include compassion and empathy, good social reasoning and
decision making, equanimity, tolerance of divergent values," and
"comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity." [2]

"Comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity."

"Comfort with uncertainty and ambiguity."

Things like that are very hard for someone who is an expert at
manipulating and configuring certain and unambiguous computers.


1) http://bikeleague.org/womenbike
2) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-real-roots-of-midlife-crisis/382235/?single_page=true