[...] I Am Not A Woman Blogger (41 comments) [...]

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Emma

Let's turn this argument on its head – I went into a bakery here in Austin many years ago, and asked for said item, and was told that it was a “Gingerbread Person”!

As an aside, noticed that you're coming to Austin. You need to stop by my and see my friends at Conjunctured, our local coworking place.

Thank you,

Lavanna

1. The article “HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux”
2. Dr. Ellen Spertus's 1991 paper “Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?”

(Use Google to find copies of both.)

While much has gotten better in the past 17 years, much bias remains. The technical conferences I go to tend to be overwhelmingly male. The above articles provide the background to explain why a “womens” conference might still be justified.

Having a conference that focuses on women is still needed because such bias still exists. Whether you choose to participate or not is your choice, but like race issues, the problems still exists even if we don't talk about them.

During the Q&A, a young man in the audience said, “You're one of the most famous gay playwrights in the world, yet your plays don't deal with gay issues.”

Albee said, “I don't think of myself as a gay playwright. I think of myself as a playwright.”

You may recognize me as your former housemate from Beeler house. I found you via Twitter.

[I was one of 30 women in a freshman class of 135. (The graduating class before I got there had more Daves than women — I shit you not.) Boys frequently came by my dorm room to see if I needed help with the homework. Not because I asked them, but because they assumed I needed it. They were wrong.]

Don’t I know it, having been from that same very freshman class as you. I had a male friend accuse me of having finished my homework assignments quicker than him only by batting my eyes at guys to do it for me, when I had completed them on my own. I was so mad that I made him sit in the room while I worked on the next assignment. I finished it in just a few hours. He then took the next two days to finish the same assignment and received the same score as I did.

[The thing I’m struggling with is the woman qualifier. Is a woman blogger someone who writes about women’s issues, or simply someone who has a vagina?]
[I’ve asked myself that same question. Do I sound different in the way that I write? Do I bring a female perspective to design and usability? Do I evaluate like a girl?]

I struggle with this as well. While I agree with you on the first point, for the second point I do think I bring a different perspective as a female. My blog focuses on technology from the point of a female software professional. In almost every professional situation I’ve been in, I have been the only female programmer. At my last code review, I received compliments on my coding style, commenting, and efficiency. The only negative remark I had was on my development environment; I was told I have too many colors in my syntax highlighting, which looks very feminine. You can tell I am a female developer by my choice in tech accessories, the stickers on my Macbook Air, my white iPhone, etc. I do like to emphasize that I’m a female. Just as you were stating, males assume females are not good programmers simply because they’re female. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m female. I don’t want to be one of those people who hides behind their first initial when writing so people don’t automatically discredit them for having a female name.

[I never had an interest in joining a sorority, never belonged to Hillel or Women@SCS.]

I’m a sorority girl (Alpha Chi Omega), but I found this more of a way to interact socially with females than as a statement of any sort. As you’ve pointed out, most of our class was male. I was tired of complaining about boy troubles to males (who would volunteer to beat them up, but that’s about it). Women@SCS, on the other hand, I actively disapproved of; advising females to take easier classes to get better grades is completely backwards.

I think where I differ from you is that I like organizations that encourage both males and females to realize that all the negative societal beliefs of inferior females in science and technology are not true, while organizations that are created under the assumption that females are weaker and need to bond together to become stronger and help each other reach the potential of men are completely bollocks (whereas it seems that you disapprove of both types of organizations).