X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2Fdrafts%2Fscattered-personal-reflections-after-a-tech-conference-or-smile-more.md;h=a32655486f331eda1764a0c47ad01d0d4963fa7c;hb=da08629ea7a1c521d53a04cc2b1e48f4db2b0bbc;hp=946dd559494c2fb12d443b67e09061e260af94c9;hpb=5f8c1a223e49197874bbe3e6474bf8a1fdd43433;p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git diff --git a/content/drafts/scattered-personal-reflections-after-a-tech-conference-or-smile-more.md b/content/drafts/scattered-personal-reflections-after-a-tech-conference-or-smile-more.md index 946dd55..a326554 100644 --- a/content/drafts/scattered-personal-reflections-after-a-tech-conference-or-smile-more.md +++ b/content/drafts/scattered-personal-reflections-after-a-tech-conference-or-smile-more.md @@ -4,21 +4,25 @@ Category: commentary Tags: discourse, software industry, anecdotal Status: draft -> _There's a heart that must be free -> To fly -> That burns with the need to know -> The reason why -> Why must we all conceal -> What we think, how we feel? -> Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide?_ +> _This is where the party ends +> I can't stand here listening to you +> And your racist friend +> I know politics bore you +> But I feel like a hypocrite talking to you +> And your racist friend_ > -> —"Reflection", _Mulan_ (as performed by Christina Aguilera) +> _Out from the kitchen to the bedroom to the hallway +> Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way +> He let the contents of the bottle do the thinking +> Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding_ +> +> —["Your Racist Friend"](https://genius.com/4498157) by They Might Be Giants -_(Attention conservation notice: rambling Diary-like post that I felt like writing anyway for psychological reasons; probably not worth your time.)_ +_(Attention conservation notice: rambling Diary-like post that I felt like writing anyway for psychological reasons; likely not worth your time.)_ -I took half a week of vacation from my dayjob recently to crash with a friend in another city and attend the conference associated with an open-source technology I've been pretty involved with lately! It was really fun and inspiring, getting to hear all the talks and putting faces to usernames! I thought I'd write a blog post about the experience and all the exciting technical things I learned! +I took half a week of vacation from my dayjob recently to crash with a friend in another city and attend the conference associated with an open-source technology I've been pretty involved with lately! It was really fun and inspiring, getting to hear all the talks and putting faces to usernames! I thought I might write a blog post about the experience and all the exciting technical things I learned! -This is not that post. By cowardice and convention, we speak in accordance with the paper-thin pretense that this is someone else's story on someone else's blog, about "Taylor Saotome-Westlake" visiting his friend "Jerrica" in "San Francisco" to attend the conference about this software called "[Blerp](https://xkcd.com/1692/)-d9aa89fd". +This is not that post. By cowardice and convention, this is someone else's story on someone else's blog, about "Taylor Saotome-Westlake" visiting his friend "Jerrica" in "San Francisco" to attend the conference about this software called "[Blerp](https://xkcd.com/1692/)-d9aa89fd". Again, the conference was great, and I had a lot of fun, but—I don't know. Some aspects of it induced me to feel a little bit stressed and a little bit sad, even though that's entirely my own fault and entirely my own problem. @@ -26,10 +30,11 @@ Again, the conference was great, and I had a lot of fun, but—I don't know. Som It started with the pronoun stickers. -This year, there were pronoun stickers in everyone's conference swag bags ("[...] so we can all help each other get things right. Wear them in solidarity with others too. Help us make [the conference] welcoming and inclusive for all"). Leaving aside [philosophical objections](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/#anchor-pronoun-sticker-discourse) for the moment, +This year, there were pronoun stickers in everyone's conference swag bags ("[...] so we can all help each other get things right. Wear them in solidarity with others too. Help us make [the conference] welcoming and inclusive for all"). Leaving aside [philosophical objections](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/#anchor-pronoun-sticker-discourse) for a moment, I want you to consider [the stress this can inflict](https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/172800552516/so-i-havent-posted-about-this-since-college) on people who have [_some_ form](https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/05/using-gender-neutral-pronouns-could-actually-misgender-people.html) of gender-related problems but who have chosen some [set of mitigating interventions](/2017/Jan/the-line-in-the-sand-or-my-slippery-slope-anchoring-action-plan/) other than transitioning. +Which sticker am I supposed to put on if I am to show solidarity? The _he/him/his_ sticker would be the obvious, straightforward choice. After all, that is, in fact, the third-person pronoun people use for me. But in a context where I'm being offered a _choice_, I _don't want_ to choose the male option, because that makes it look like I "identify" with my maleness—as if I were _cis_ in the strong sense of having a "gender identity" matching one's "assigned sex at birth", rather than in the [weaker sense](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-default/) of being a reactionary coward whose pathological need for a backwards-compatible social identity is preventing her from becoming her best self. -https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/172800552516/so-i-havent-posted-about-this-since-college +At the same time, the _she/her/hers_ sticker [...] @@ -52,5 +57,13 @@ he did not know any nonbinary people "peering through reverent fingers" "but the situation is fraught" +My Little Pony convention was more ideologically tolerant + +https://meteuphoric.com/2017/08/30/what-you-cant-say-to-a-sympathetic-ear/ + "There are views we have decided are unacceptable and we will ostracize you for having them." https://twitter.com/seldo/status/714272018976284672 + +find the contributor covenant PR where someone wanted to carve out a personal Twitter exemption, and the counterargument mentioned naming the project in the profile + +https://where.coraline.codes/blog/oscon/ \ No newline at end of file