Funk Babblings

OK, I'm way too tired right now to get anywhere near doing justice to this topic, but I came across an article today that relates to two things I've posted recently. First was the Roomba Cockfight article (written by geek woman Annalee Newitz) and Slashdot discussion, then (more to the point) was the talk and discussion at Notacon about the lack of women in technology and the bad experiences of those that are there.

So today Amanda over at Pandagon posted "The geek girl in ascendence", starting from the response of slashdotters and blog commenters to Annalee's writing (focusing on how hot she may or may not be rather than on what she actually says), as well as Annalee's reaction and ultimate optimism due to the people in that community who slapped down the first group.

Amanda goes on to talk about how men are basically trained to compliment women's looks to the point that that's sometimes how they automatically assume they're supposed to be positive or reassuring toward, not realizing that it can compound the problem.

I love this part, especially because the fact the she gets the Mars/Venus thing backward from the book makes the point even stronger that men and women aren't opposites as people so often assume:

I blame the Men are from Venus, Women are from Mars (or whatever it was–I remember reading the personality traits and I’m much more Martian, so that’s what women must be, right?) thinking. Or Adam and Eve or whatever you want to call it, but the cultural idea that men and women are both opposites and put here to conjoin sexually and that’s that, there’s no reason that men and women should be friends or whatever since they have nothing in common. This way of thinking creates massive problems when men and women have non-sexual interactions, because so many people are stuck in the sexual way of interacting they habitually apply it to these non-sexual interactions.

And her conclusion is similar to the conclusion I came to:

However, I’m optimistic that things like the ascendence of the geek girl will help, because if men are put in more and more non-sexual situations with women and are getting called out for inappropriate behavior, there’s bound to be a learning curve in there somewhere.