Digital Web Magazine – News – Wonder Why Women Don’t Feel Welcome?

Digital Web Magazine – News – Wonder Why Women Don’t Feel Welcome?:

I think the subject of women in the web world is a complex one, not some easy blame-it-on-the-men, blame-it-on-society situation. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I find that the accomplished male web designers and developers have, almost without exception, been warm, generous, welcoming, respectful, and supportive in any of my little endeavors. Any advances I haven’t made in my professional life I blame entirely on myself. I’m not particularly interested in quotas and statistics. So, please don’t assume that my next comment is a simplistic, knee-jerk, anti-male response. What were these organizers thinking? It doesn’t matter a bit if this group is San Francisco’s hottest thing going or whatever, I find its presence at a tech conference repellent, offensive, demeaning, and, as a woman, humiliating. Why would a woman, seeing this, want to attend or speak at a future conference? I’m disgusted. If you don’t get this, You. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

I wonder how many people walked out, compared to the number busily taking shots on their phone cameras and shipping them off to friends and co-workers. I wonder how many (in the audience, not the organizers) even remotely wondered how the women in the audience were reacting?

And god knows, I’m not intolerant of behavior that would be easily classified, well, inappropriate by some. Or many. Or all of you. I just try to be careful to keep it limited to the people I know don’t mind, I don’t (well, I try not to) blare it out in a public forum for all to see and glory in.

The fact that women were actively (and, we assume, happily) involved in this stunt doesn’t make it appropriate. There are women who enjoy the “frat house” environment — but that doesn’t assume that all women want to party in a frat house.

Sigh. Folks won’t get it (again), but the reality is, the more public the thing you’re planning, the wider the audience, the less you KNOW who that audience is going to be, the more careful you have to be how you organize it.

You know, if instead of what happened here, they had a group of guys put on blackface and come out and sing an hour of Al Jolson tunes — we wouldn’t be having this discussion. No matter how good they were as singers, I doubt sincerely it would be very well received…

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