I’m so angry about this whole postal survey that’s not a binding vote run by a homophobic that I made a thing – here take it and put it up in places that will piss of homophobic it is the open source. regards
marriage equality, lgbti
and here is a downloadable pdf (a3) for free distribution to the angry fembot army. cheers
I recently invited to teach a free coding for women workshop in Sydney (Australia) as part of a festival. Im interested in teaching gender specific classes , I’m a vocal campaigner for women in all stem fields but Im also aware of the barriers to entry my gender provides.
The workshops were fun, my experiments worked well and clearly I got some women coding both html and css and enjoying it. however wanted to describe some random male responses that happened on the day because they remind me why I loathe my industry or some of the humans in it at times. I’ll just state that I pass as female , 40 something artsy & geeky.
attributes = “beard , dark hair, 30 something or younger ” ; attitude = “I know everything” ;
Pre workshop conversation “yeah I’m teaching a workshop on coding for women ”
gentle conversation about code ensues he codes, of course so we establish the what do you know pecking order bs.. where I establish that yes actually I’m pretty well over qualified to teach a free one and a half hour course and yes of course I already know that markup isn’t a “proper” coding language but that I’ve selected it as a good place to start for learners. (ho hum… )s..
dude1 :so what strategy are you using to specifically gender teaching code women ? (cause i’m interested )
by this stage I’ve already pegged him as somewhat passive aggressive and yet another male whoo is younger than me that thinks he knows better so rather than engaging in what would be a huge can of worms I toss him a throwaway line.
thisunit : I brought cupcakes.. they are red velvet
dude1 : mutters something about me bringing all the stereotypes …..
I shrug I’m nether willing to be challenged on my coding qualifications nor my ability to teach other females. I offer the obvious
thisunit : What can say ? I’m cisgendered female……. I guess its my privilege…. can’t win….
Conversation ends at this point he has no idea of the existential angst and process I’ve gone through to be at this point he’s part of the problem. He’s not actually interested in what barriers may prevent women from coding he’s looking for easy answers. I have a different understanding of how my gender is coded to him for me its quite complicated. Gender is performed but its also a construct programmed into me that I fight with. the construct of my gender tells me daily that other people (probably men) are better at everything than I am. The construct of my gender is like acid to self esteem and it is constant and supported by real life experience.
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attributes = “blonde , 20 something ” ; attitude = “Im a real programmer” ;
dude 2 just sits in on the class – smirks a lot – takes over a female students learning as his personal project teaching her something entirely different. I’m possibly supposed to thank him for his mansplaining I saw him showing her sass which is probably not where I’d start a beginner.. but hey what would I know its only my workshop …
I wonder if other women would be that rude..
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attributes = “dark hair , short beard, larger build ” ; attitude = “I’m watching you to see if your good enough” ;
Dude3 is teaching the next workshop on internet privacy leans over my shoulder looking at the html I have scribbled on post it notes he says :
Dude3: “oh html 5, i’m just checking to see if you’ve kept the presentation seperate from the structure you know proper css and stuff…”
I grumble a reply to him and pack up my notes clearing away my workshop …now your going to say #notallmen in code are dicks and sure I’ve met and worked with some male gendered humans who are for the most part not gender biased at all. However these three responses in less than 3 hours remind me my industry has a lot to learn to be even vaguely appealing to any female gendered person who is sane..
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While code may be not gender biased the people who do it still are. Its enough to battle the imposter syndrome and come out as a female who codes let alone a queer one. Without being challenged in every other sentence by male programmers who may have a very poor perception of how gender and privilege work in there favour. Not to mention the it professionals who don’t bother to ask what your qualifications are but assume they know better anyhow . It’s even more annoying when they are children and you were probably producing websites when they were potty training. It’s really no wonder the women not only don’t seek stem jobs but also leave them as they grow tired of the constant bs and weirdness. In other industries and if your male age and experience count for something.
Anyhow I really enjoyed teaching the loverly women and some guys who came to the workshop. Hopefully I’ve made it easy for them to play with some code even if it’s “only mark up”and they are only women.. and I’m only playing
Someone once said to me on twitter that they did not possess “factory standard lady parts” I found this statement so appealing I decided to not only illustrate it but to release it into the wild as stickers, t-shirts and stuff.
Because every girl needs to glorify her ladyparts in diesel. I made this in response to ex machina, because I really am more than just a mechanical v@gina and seeing as that is how I am often represented I thought i should just say it loud and proud.
So cyberpunk lady’s adorn yourself in the cunt of cogs, brazenly wear the skirt with your parts on public display. Or indulge in some random acts of sticker joy .
http://www.redbubble.com/people/glitchscatter/works/15027148-factory-standard-ladyparts?
“History never repeats”, but don’t you think its odd that Australia once a prison Island for colonial England has a policy of imprisoning immigrants and refuges on a smaller island just outside its own borders?
Its commonly thought that victims of sexual abuse may follow there parents behavior and abuse others in a similar fashion, I question whether this is Australia’s period of awkward adulthood there is a growing sense of ugly patriotism which unfortunately can only be seen as racist codswallop. It’s unsurprising given our colonial history that we think that imprisoning struggling people on islands is acceptable but is it.. really ?
Its this country’s policy to imprison “illegal emigrants” or refugees on a small island that is technically outside of the arbitrary border we imagine exists somewhere outside of our island home. It is also the governments policy to not speak about the tactics used to enforce police and govern all of the above infrastructure under the general banner of “operational matters” . So much for transparency and democracy right? Its a perfect example of how not to do open government.
But wait it gets worse there have been allegations of child abuse in prison facility’s..( yes australians put refugee children in prison ) and those in power responded by:
a) Abusing the woman put in charge of investigating the prisons and;
b) threatening to make it illegal to report child abuse in these facility’s
all of the above have driven me to make and open source the above map, available here as a pdf – feel free to reuse or modify Map of prison islands.
Just so you know whats happening down this end of the planet, its really not pretty ,it must change. consider this a message in a bottle.
*please help *
Catherine Livingstone president of the Business Council of Australia gave a lovely speech about the need for digital literacy and stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) in this country and for the most part shes right. Go see her full address if you haven’t already bca.com.au/newsroom/national-press-club-address-by-catherine-livingstone .
However for me this is so little so late, lets have a good look at digital literacy in Australia with a hard and logical eye. Our government uses the words “disruptive technology ” not to garner some street cred with the excitement of disruption and revolution but its spoken with a tone of fear loathing and blame.
Both politicians and business folks love to use theses catch phases but the sad truth is they really don’t understand them. One look at both government policy on the NBN, Metadata retention and the desire to sign the TTP (trans pacific protocol) clearly demonstrate the average politicians appalling digital literacy- honestly its like walking with dinosaurs.
Most of the major businesses in Australia including our local Government are addicted to Microsoft office and have no clue what the words “open source ” mean let alone open data.
when faced with government forms asking about how many languages I speak I’m always tempted to write HTML, CSS & Javascript 
.
Being multilingual changes the way your brain functions. Speaking any kind of code language fluently means grappling in some sense with the core illusions of the digital world. Everything online is made by code either human generated or machine generated. Noting is “real” everything is created and in that act of creation you the coder have both responsibility and choices.
But its not just learning to code its not just programmatic thinking that’s beneficial in this space. From the first moment you type hello world into notepad you embark on a journey which will require you to learn about file management, semantic naming conventions, accessibility and file extensions. Granted none of theses things are new or ground breaking, but they are the fundamentals of digital literacy.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
This fundamental part of digital literacy is so often overlooked in the smallest of ways, We seem to give it lip service but no take it to heart.
For instance its quite common for recruiters and job placement places to ask for a resume or Curriculum Vitea – The problem is most of them will actually ask for it as a Microsoft word document. Microsoft word is a propriety format that belongs to a specific company that not everyone has access to, it would be better to ask for a .rtf (rich text format or plain text file) but they don’t they ask for a brand name product because their digital literacy is so low they don’t know any better. There is politics in your file format people and your doing it wrong !
the funny thing about the internet is most sighted people assume its a visual medium. This assumption is not only completely wrong its downright dangerous. Not only are there screen readers that read out webpages to the visually impaired but some people are colourblind. So people who use markup understand you have to deliver information in a variety of formats . Pictures may make many people happy but they don’t work for everyone. Video’s need captioning and so many other issues. The web is a big place and not everything works for every-person so we ask – “what is your fallback position ? ” .
educate yourself about digital accessibility:
The funny thing is most machines cant see pictures either so just improving your accessibility will improve many other things like getting Google to see your content.
You may also start to think about the world in radically different ways, open source is not just a buzz word, a trend that will go away or become unfashionable, like a hipster beard.
Open source is about thinking collectively about sharing your code in the hope someone smarter than you can improve it or use it. This is a fundamental change from the traditional way of thinking about intellectual property and its one that Australian governments and businesses really struggle with yet its fundamental to digital literacy.
Its also about transparency – in a digital world we know that sooner or later someone will leak the truth. It’s the world wide web and attempting to take the world out of it is pretty stupid. Information is like water let it flow.
learn about open Source culture
learn it online – don’t be afraid it wont bite.. you will break things you will fail magnificently but you will learn, It may take some time so be patient with yourself It is never to late to start.
http://www.codecademy.com/courses/web-beginner
http://www.htmldog.com
http://www.w3.org/
So in the last few days while everyone was distracted by the fact that the visual feedback of there own eyes is not as reliable as they thought my thoughts are drawn to the debacle of meta data. A few things have come to light.
Our dinosaur government clearly have no idea what they are doing this monstrous piece of legislation will undoubtedly slide through the senate unopposed. though there own inability to understand the technology and though a general public apathy probably coming from the same source.
I doubt that people would agree to having a government geo-location device implanted in there arm tracking their daily activitys in the real world, so I don’t understand why they would ever agree to having there online movements tracked stored and collated but where is the outrage? frankly its beyond Orwellian. Last I looked we were still at least called democracy so WTF ?
Of course any sane and sensible government would consult the tec industry (and actually listen) here’s what some experts say:
so in short were on an expensive journey to collect and keep the meta data of every Australian – regardless of history (yup even your grans googling of cupcake recipes) and storing this mountain of data (somehow the ISP’s responsibility.. ) Safely and responsibly (cough) for at least 2 years. Which will undoubtedly mean you will end up paying more for the same shit internet but wont help police tracking terrorists ,because the terrorists and everyone else is using virtual private network or an encrypted service like wikr (apparently our attorney general is already using said service cause -hes so transparent).
So regardless of the pointless expense what about my right to privacy? What happens if the store gets hacked and my data is redistributed to ten thousand Russian bots?
Will I be even told if there is a breach? What safeguards are in place to watch the watchers? Recent NSW police disasters and court trials prove they can’t even be trusted to tell the truth to there coworkers?
And the best thing they can do to reassure me is to tell me if I’ve done nothing wrong I have nothing to fear?
this is a government with the innate ability to shoot itself in the foot please lets not give them a rocket launcher its not going to be pretty.
*gets up on soap box*
Are women under represented in tech.. lets play a little game in google to see
*apologizes feels shes an imposter, feels she has no right to speak mumbles incoherently*
I’m trying to connect the dots but they are all to far and wide, seemingly random I can’t see how the nodes interrelate and therefore can not make a coherent or logical argument .
I started to write about open source sexism, sexism in tech /it industry – And realized I cant speak for the masses I can only vent my own frustrations. I am currently what we call in the industry a “freelancer” that is I have no permanent job, to some degree this suits me down to a tee. I’m to much of a psychopathic bitch to ” work in a team”. I like working my own hours but I’ve been applying for “real jobs” lately and there are a few things that really bother me.
The look
So for guys its perfectly appropriate to wear a suit to a job interview easy expected for women not so much we fall here into some black hole of what is fashion and the expectations of “power” females : high heels tight skirt. Neither of which are necessary to do a decent job of coding . The expectation is that one will be above all corporate looking.
for the employer there expectation of “hot shot programmer” and my physical reality don’t mesh.
*inevitable failure is imminent*
Reasons : cultural expectation lets have a closer look at that shall we
lets do a visual sampling of the imagery we use to represent programmers
Method : go to google type programmer look at images..
OK , here’s my result :
so some basic math ?
out of 47 or so images there are :
3 or 4 which are “gender nuetral” sorta.. (I’ll count stick figures as that to be fair)
7 which have pictures of actual females..
3 of which (*) I’m going to not count cause a the female is not programming shes playing an x box , the female is not programming shes in bed with a guy with a bunch of computers and worse number 1 which is all about how programmers see a girl…
a) assuming all programmers are male.. that is and the girl is like the sleek code of google unobtainable but beautiful.. (fell free to wretch..)
that leaves us with 4 ! so 4 out of 47 ? I ‘m 11.75% represented!
We should probably do better than this don’t you think ?
I saw a meme going around of a bunch of folk sticking their heads in the sand as a salute to our governments policy on climate change and renewable energy. It was time to have some sort of official department of climate change denial . I know our government is far to poor to make a new logo for any such department, so I threw one together for them. Here it is the policy on climate change for Australia summed up in words even a bogan can understand.
If you woke up tomorrow, and your internet looked like this, what would you do? Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved “Fast Lane” sites.Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream Cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC’s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an “Internet Slowdown” to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality. Net neutrality is hard to explain, so our hope is that this action will help SHOW the world what’s really at stake if we lose the open Internet.If you’ve got a website, blog or tumblr, get the code to join the #InternetSlowdown here: https://battleforthenet.com/sept10thEveryone else, here’s a quick list of things you can do to help spread the word about the slowdown: http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/96020972118/be-a-part-of-the-great-internet-slowdown Get creative! Don’t let us tell you what to do. See you on the net September 10th!
via Battle For The Net.
