Green Room - Week 26 - Day 1

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I thought this was interesting: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

***

Also of interest (to me) - and not at all related in any way whatsoever to the idea of a lessening of women in the field of computing over the years - Nope, none at all, was the number of people (both male and female) who replied to Felicia Day's statement about being "doxxed" (just found out what that is!) after posting some thoughts on Game Gate, by telling her how she is their celebrity crush and/or how pretty they think she is.

She works in television. I'm *pretty sure* that at some point there was another human being who thought she was pretty. ;)

I somehow doubt she is going to be reading and go "OMG, I am so flattered that someone thinks that I'm hot when I'm dealing with people putting my personal information out onto the internet. I want to go have massive amounts of sex with them right now!"

I could be wrong though. Based on the sheer number of people who are doing it, maybe it *has* worked before! ;)

***

Something that *always* works is eliminations. They are painful, but they work to move the competition further into the heart of darkness.

We had one such elimination tonight: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/797157.html
There was also a new topic for the main competition: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/797204.html as well as one for Last Chance Idol:http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/797508.html and a Work Room (for both) http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/797925.html

Comments

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Frist!

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

You

Are

*DEAD*

To

Me!

have a cookie.

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

Happy 1st! AW

Don't get me started about Women in Computing...

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

... 'cause I have just three words for you:

Admiral Grace Hopper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper).

PS: FRIST! DAGNABBIT!

RE: Don't get me started about Women in Computing...

[ryl.livejournal.com]

I'll see your Admiral Hopper and raise you an Ada Lovelace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace).

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

About the issue of being "doxxed," I think that we're rapidly entering a world where it's going to be next to impossible to keep everything out of the public eye that we want to. I guess the real question is: what strategies should people follow in order to cope with such situations when they do happen?

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Ellakite was too fast for me-- by the time I read the article and got back here, he'd hit me with the deadness! And the cookie, which kind of makes up for it.

I'm used to being someone who doesn't fit the typical model for women. Apparently, I don't fit the typical model for atypical women either. Or something.

I date from the era before PCs, but I liked math and science a lot, and wound up in computer science as my second career.

There still weren't and aren't a lot of women in the field. But when I started out, one of my coworkers had been a psychology major much as I'd been a music major. People sometimes drift where they find an affinity.

And for the women in my Computer Science masters' program, when the professor asked if we'd been encouraged in math and science... the answer for every one of us except the exchange student from Taiwan was "No." "So, why are you here?" he asked. "We didn't listen!"

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

I was a kid in the PC era. Computer science is my second(ish) career, although I've been working as a programmer since I was 28 or 29, so it wasn't a change I made super late in life. I am used to working with all guys. My current group has another female programmer in it. This is the first time in my 12 (!!!) years as a programmer when I have worked in the same group as another female programmer. And she's fucking amazing.

I was a psych major and went as far as working on an inpatient psych unit for about 2 years. I was going to go back and get a graduate degree (since you need one to do anything with a psych degree), but in the interim I decided I was not in the right field. The world is probably a better place without me as a therapist.

A lot of my formative years were during the whole "We girls can do anything" Barbie commercials and my mom, for all her faults, went back to school and became a lawyer while I was growing. Doesn't make her a better person, but I assumed as a female I could do whatever I pleased. Coming from a privileged background probably did not hurt in that respect.

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

Awesome story! AW

[favoritebean.livejournal.com]

So I don't think we had a PC in the house until I was a teenager, and the idea of going into computer science wasn't encouraged for women at all then, but schools were reaching out with the idea of recruiting engineers.With that in mind though, our math and (some) science teachers were very much chauvinists in the classroom, and it caused many of us to write off the idea of even going into the maths and sciences for a career. I couldn't imagine what it was like in that school even a decade before.

I ended up pursuing a career in the performing arts, but there are plenty of computer scientists in the family, one is even a professor.

I haven't asked them their thoughts about gamer gate at all, but I have asked the engineer spouse about it a little. It's really a colossal problem though, especially given that universities have been heavily trying to recruit women into the world of computer science. So I guess I'm looking at it from the developer side.

I think it's personally shitty how women are being singled out for speaking up about gamer gate. Doxxing shows poor sportsmanship and doxxing women for speaking out against the blatant sexism in the gaming industry shows that we have a long way to go to make things right in the world of gaming.

/long response.

[jexia]

I have an Honours degree in Computer Science (though I've been out of the workforce for four years. YAY twins). I was one of two females in the Honours program, along with 40 guys.

I have SO many stories about assumptions and biases.

But I also have a stinking headache, so maybe another time.

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

Funny thing, there. I went back to school for Computer Science (night school) while already working in the field. My peers assumed I knew what I was doing once they knew I already worked as a programmer. I am Teacher Kryptonite for some reason and teachers pretty much are always nice to me. I worked with nothing but guys for almost a decade and seriously kind of believed the gender bias did not exist, because I never saw any evidence of it in my life.

And then I had a child. Oh my fucking god.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

Lots of us writing fairy tale/fairy tale inspired work -

https://roseredreview.submittable.com/submit

submissions open up again in a bit, so maybe think about something to send them!

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the heads up!

In case you have decisions to make today/need to roll savings throws

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at that article as a difference in education then and now....teaching people who probably have zero or very little prior knowledge versus assuming "You people should know this by now!" Not if you're from a background of lesser opportunity or have special needs. I hate that assumption and wanted to smack that prof in the teeth. Even in college, you are there to learn. You pay big money to learn. Intro means "intro"!
Ok. Little rant is over.......

AW

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

So my mother texted me with her outfit choice for the Renaissance Festival tomorrow - she found an old fashioned blue jean dress that is 10 times too big for her for $4 at Salvation Army, and she is going to wear it over her clothes until it gets too hot.

She also offered to bring an old clown costume that I used freshman year of high school in drama for me to wear.

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

o_O

Your mother doesn't quite get the concept of the Renaissance, does she?

Even denim is not really period (and yes, it is ungodly hot-- color AND fabric), but a clown costume?

Or maybe she's just yanking your chain. ;)

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, misogyny. Do I get to go on an only-slightly-related rant?

Good!

I think doctors and nurses need to be instructed politically when they learn beside manner. By that I don't mean no one should get a job unless they're a Communist Party member, but they need to know how all of society's -isms are getting in the way of effective care, because it's really starting to piss me off.

Women get the worst of it (as usual). I hear all these stories about breast cancer - young women get told they won't recommend a lifesaving mastectomy until they get married (as if they don't already get the message that their worth as a human being is directly proportional to how nice they look in a tight sweater, and as if they can't make decisions about their bodies themselves) - and in some cases doctors will bring the patient's husband or son in and tell *them* about her surgical options. (One anecdote I heard involved a teenage boy who was just thrilled to be appointed authority over his mother's breasts.)

This is terrible care! First of all, if a patient needs a mastectomy ... well, I know next to nothing about oncology and whether this should be done as soon as possible, but BRCA mutation carriers will even get mastectomies as preventative care, and I'm willing to bet that at least once a single woman's life has been put in danger because medical professionals thought Save the Boobies was an actual priority in the face of human suffering. Second of all, medicine already makes patients feel uncomfortable and dehumanized and it might be nice if you worked to mitigate that. I even hear about doctors saying outrageous things, and so casually, one woman straight-up got told that after a mastectomy "no one will want you." Yes, please don't give the patient deep emotional scars, thank you.

My friend wanted her tubes tied and the doctor told her that some day she'll meet a man and her life will be centered around having babies ... she tore him a new asshole. Bless her.

(*edits comment to fix raeg grammar*)

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

OMG, fuck the whole "save the tatas" thing, too. SAVE THE PERSON.

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

I honestly think that things are getting better - we're more aware than ever of these problems, the cultural shift has happened so that we actually think they are problems, and a lot of different people are working to help fix things (grants for women and minorities who want to attend hacker school, stuff like that).

I see GamerGate as the death throes of an insular group terrified of criticism (like the kind from actual critics, like Anita Sarkeesian) or having to change their definition of "good" so that they can be better and different than what they are now. It'll pass. But damn, it's hard being in the middle of change. Which is sort of tricky, since the world is change on a continuum without a specific end state, really.

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

I think one of these days a woman is actually going to get killed and then this "movement" will either come to its senses and peter out or it'll get galvanized. Though everything about that is frightening.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say just why people would feel compelled to tell Felicia Day that particularly, in response to the content of what actually happened to her. I'm guessing there were some, especially women, who used that particular thing in an attempt to cheer her up or make her feel better, in case she read it. No, most of what we post online will never, ever been seen by the celebrity it's about/aimed toward ... but I suppose there's always that one chance.

(And what the hell IS "doxxed?" I'm guessing by context it's short for "documented" as in "we've put your personal documents/info/etc. online?")

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what doxxing is. Finding out people's addresses and stuff like that and publishing them.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Uhm... has anyone been following the school shooting in Washington State...

It's starting to tie in with our topic... and it's really bothering me that it is...


seems he may have had an argument with another boy over a girl. The fifteen year old shooter killed himself, a female student is dead and there are four more injured.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

It's heartbreaking...

WTF

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I am opposed to cryptic status updates and even worse, longer posts that assume the reader knows information that is obscure and not present in the entry. For example. What the flying monkey devil does "doxxed" mean? You even yourself note you didn't know what it meant before "just know" so why should I, who lives under a rock, know what it is? Lacking that information the rest of this post makes no sense whatsoever. I can't even sort it out from context. As such, this is the face I am making: >:(

Re: WTF

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

By the way, i'm not against guns, I believe in hunting, but not for sport and eating what you kill. I fed my kids many venison burgers and meatballs and such that kept us going a few winters. I don't want guns taken away either, I'd just like background checks and enforcement of the rules we do have, well and the repeal of open carry, because it just invites violence.

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

Yeah, um. I own a gun (locked in a safe with the bullets not in it but also in the safe) and while I don't hunt, I'm fine with it in theory as long as you're not just killing animals for a head on your wall or whatever. I know how to fire the gun and have practiced with it but would probably never use it unless there was a zombie apocalypse or something.

I am fine with background checks, enforcement, and getting rid of open carry. My guess is that none of those things would have helped in this particular situation (Marysville) but I have yet to hear a good reason we need open carry.

What I don't get is the psychology behind it. Why didn't this happen when I was a kid? People owned guns; there weren't a ton of gun control laws as far as I'm aware (I grew up in the South and you have been able to open carry here all my life, not that I have ever seen many people do it). What the hell is happening?