Comments on: Responding to offensive presentations at conferences

By: Selena Deckelmann

Selena Deckelmann — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:24:02 +0000

I’d really like to see some WTF/FTW croissants. :)

By: pete

pete — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:03:49 +0000

since I’m the one who got offended, shouldn’t I be baking? I can do cookies or croissants. I’m nowhere near Portland tho, so you’re safe from the health hazard that is my cooking :p

By: koipond

koipond — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:33:42 +0000

Grocery stores are good too. They tend to not card you when you want to buy the ingredients to make said pie. Though you can cheat and just buy the pie crust and a can of whipped cream.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:07:53 +0000

Yes! Baking has a long and glorious revolutionary history. One needs look no further for proof of this than the fact that the canonical way of ridiculing a prominent personage is to pie them. You need a permit to hold a protest march, but they'll sell anybody an oven. ;)

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:08:37 +0000

I’ve elevated your great comment to the front page in a post of mine Melissa: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/01/from-comments-im-rubber-and-youre-glue/

By: Selena Deckelmann

Selena Deckelmann — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:04:33 +0000

You didn’t know all problems could be solved with baking?

I have some pumpkin bread I can share if you’re in the Portland area. ;)

By: pete

pete — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:53:47 +0000

oh, so just because we’re women we’re supposed to solve all problems by going into the kitchen and baking? I’m offended.

By: Skud

Skud — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:05:55 +0000

Good point, Melissa; reminds me of a lot of the arguments in Nadine Strossen’s “Defending Pornography”, i.e. that efforts to protect women often end up getting used — and getting used disproportionately — against women.

By: Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:52:09 +0000

*used to curtail (sorry, missed the most important word there!)

By: Melissa Gira Grant

Melissa Gira Grant — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:50:49 +0000

I think I get the thinking around these guidelines — and the totally male-dominated conference circuit that needs to hear this sort of guidance — but I just am stuck on this:

How do we keep guys (or anyone) from non-sensically using sexual or sexualized imagery and language in their presentations and preserve the right of people to use that information when it’s actually really, really what the presentation concerns?

This might be beyond the scope of these guidelines, but I am thinking back to the first BlogHer, during a “Birds of a Feather” session organized by self-identified mommybloggers, who were irritated that when they discussed the biological particulars of childbirth and childrearing, they were told they were being unprofessional, NSFW, or “overshare-y” — or, obscene.

It’s hard to address intent in this stuff. And I don’t want to sit through anymore stuffed-shirted dude “presos” on boring web marketing that just have some naked women sprinkled throughout to “sex things up” — because usually, those are the same dudes who don’t actually want to hear women talk honestly about sex, either.

In the FLOSS community, this may be a more specific concern with a history of problematic presentations, I know, and I’ve followed some of that through this blog — but tech/geek conferences can be pretty influential in establishing norms, and I’d not want to see a very flattened idea of what “safe” is promoted when those kind of norms can end up used to women’s speech & expression, too.