Archive for the 'Just Sayin' Category
Posted November 25, 2007 at 12:09 PM | Tagged as: Just Sayin, Women! | Comments Off
Ah, the b-word: bitch.
It’s a word I don’t use much, if at all. I gave up the noun form completely a few years ago, and the verb form only comes out every once in a while, mostly in reference to myself.
I refuse to use the b-word to describe another person, especially another woman and especially in a leadership context. And I object to hearing others — male or female — use the word, since it’s so often dispensed with the very same properties that the speaker is attributing to the person being described: malice and spite. The b-word is a hateful, hurtful word, and I wish it could be cleansed from our vocabularies.
But since it’s clearly going to stick around, it might as well be redefined. I recently read Andi Zeisler’s definition of the b-word, and if everyone understood it to mean thus, I might just use it:
Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn’t respond to men’s catcalls or smile when they say, “Cheer up, baby, it can’t be that bad.” We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn’t apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn’t back down from a confrontation.
I know a number of women that fit the above far better than they could ever fit the dictionary definition of the b-word. Still, I’ll refrain from using it since I’m bound to be misunderstood. However, if I catch someone else using it, I’ve now got some great material to quote to help them understand what I hear them saying.
Posted July 18, 2007 at 4:08 AM | Tagged as: Just Sayin, Meeeeeeee, Women! | Comments Off
I tore this ad out of one of my skateboarding magazines in the mid-80s, and as you can see, it’s beat to hell, having been pinned and taped to various surfaces over the years.
Growing up, messages like this one really spoke to me. Even as a kid, I didn’t want to be seen as a girl. I was a woman, strong and self-confident, capable of doing anything that any guy could do. (Though, to be honest, I wasn’t a very good skateboarder. But the important thing is that I tried!)
So what I want to know is… where are the messages like this one for kids today? Everything seems so dumbed-down, or watered-down, with a “let’s be subtle, the kids will get it” type of approach, so as not to offend or oppress stupid boys. I want aggro, in your face, straight-up shit that burgeoning young feminists can get behind, dammit!
Hmm, that gives me an idea. Check back for more on this later.
Oh, and did you notice that the ad is pink, but that it still kicks ass? I had a pink Rodney Mullen freestyle deck, too… though I really wanted it in white, but the skate shop was out of them. Anyway, pink isn’t just for girls… it’s for real women, too!
Posted May 23, 2007 at 10:30 AM | Tagged as: Business, Just Sayin, Work | Just 1 Comment
Robert Scoble alerted readers to Jeff Barr’s post about Google recruiting. I had to laugh out loud here, because I’ve also been subject to some strange Google recruiting crap myself.
Most recently, I got an e-mail from a Google recruiter (who clearly did look at my Web site, because she commented on the pink-ness of my blog) with regards to a technical solutions engineer position. The first thing that struck me as odd is that, if you actually read my resume, you’ll learn that I’ve been in management positions for a while… so why would I be interested in an engineering position? The next oddity was the requirement that I complete a self-evaluation before discussions could proceed. Uh-huh. No thanks.
Of course, when I got that e-mail I was laughing pretty hard, because in the many years I’ve attended the Grace Hopper Celebration I’ve talked to Google folks many times about job opportunities there — and was basically told again and again that “Google doesn’t recruit Web developers because that’s not important to [their] business”. Whatever.
I have some friends that have gone to Google, but honestly, the more I learn about them, the more suspicious I am of them. I feel like they’re one giant social engineering experiment, and we’re all their guinea pigs.
Posted March 29, 2007 at 12:00 PM | Tagged as: Just Sayin, Politics, Women! | Comments Off
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
It’s amazing how many people believe that the above is already U.S. law. It isn’t — it’s Section 1 of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was not, in fact, ratified in 1982. It’s now known as the Women’s Equality Amendment and is being reintroduced in Congress. Isn’t it time, already?!?
Posted March 11, 2007 at 2:40 PM | Tagged as: Just Sayin, SxSW, Technology, Women! | 4 Comments
I’ll have more to say about other aspects of SXSW later, but I wanted to say that the Non-Developers to Open Source Acolytes: Tell Me Why I Care panel was the best panel I’ve ever been to at SXSW. The audience was diverse (about 50/50!) and engaged, and we had a discussion that even enlightened me about something I thought I knew quite a bit about.
Thank you, Elisa Camahort, for organizing such an interesting and engaging panel. Now I really want to attend BlogHer because I’m sure you organize a kick-ass conference.
It was also really wonderful to hear from Annalee Newitz (co-editor of the very awesome She’s Such a Geek), Dawn Foster, and my friend Erica Rios. Erica made poignant references to women’s involvement in creating technology and to the opportunities available to women via open source, which received a round of applause. Needless to say, that discussion needs to be continued.
Note to Hugh Forrest: Bring back Elisa as a moderator — or maybe as a keynote?! — and bring back these panelists to continue a discussion that brought everyone to the table!
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