Category / culture

by Diane Tate

Progress or Compliance?

The Internet exploded this week when Adria Richards chose to use her social media audience as the first channel to air her offense at some comments made at Pycon. Much has been written about this, including further offense that people have actually questioned Adria’s response to her own offense. Everyone’s offended.

To be clear: offense and even outrage is justified considering the vitriol that ensued (including real, disturbing threats and job losses). It’s worrisome and harkens of regressive tendencies in tech and the job security and safety of many in this industry.

However, the bigger picture so eloquently outlined by Amanda Blum is very important. Blum calls out a pattern of social media dysfunction where Richards has reacted to multiple instances of offense through public channels, which invariably (if you use social media, it’s not surprising) led to incendiary exchanges and a general degradation of relations.

Blum says it so well:

All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”. If the outcome is “change the way these men are speaking” she’d have taken a different route. If “make as big a deal of this as humanly possible with no thought to consequence” was her outcome, she chose right.

When I look at this big picture – what do we want things to be vs. how do we feel about specific incidents – I have little sympathy for the “if someone is offended they are off-limits to criticism” approach others (whom I love dearly) have put forth. There are SO many reasons why putting a quarantine on any critique of an offended person’s reaction is counter-productive and leads to horrid consequences…here are just a few:

  • It confines the situation to feelings rather than uses those feelings constructively. Not to belittle feelings; if I suspend disbelief (and had not read the very salient context provided by Blum) and posit that she has for reasons of pure fate encountered a large backlog of awkward sexist situations, certainly frustration, insecurity, awkwardness, and fear are all rational reactions. But acting on them vs. weighing out what the desired outcome should be led to lots of disservices. Disservices to her, for assuming that is all she is capable of is reacting (or cyber-bullying, in this case). To the offenders, for not allowing them a chance to explain themselves before the world knew. And to the Internet, for escalating a series of reactions about an offense rather than healthier, more constructive conversations about what can be done to prevent them. Regardless of what Matt Lemay says about the conversation being good, it would have been *way* better had it not been launched by a shitstorm of threats and polemics. Easily avoidable.
  • It absolves the offended of any responsibility to think bigger and act in a way that actually helps others. In this sad case, giving Richards a self-centered carte blanche to do whatever she feels is ok wasn’t just therapy. It led to some real, horrid and significant backlash. Social media tends to do that. If she truly wanted a healthier environment in tech, her passive-aggressive “I will only Tweet and out them en masse” manner would not have happened. She could have followed Jolie O’Dell’s script. If she was too afraid or timid to do that, she could have addressed it with the conference officials who had already made it clear they care about this stuff – clearly a supportive audience. But she chose vendetta, not activism.
  • It leads to an environment of fear and compliance rather than freedom and enlightenment. Again, play it out: say some company hires her for PR purposes (it’s a leap to think someone would hire her for her commmunity-building skills; SendGrid’s explanation makes perfect sense). She joins the team. Do you think anyone would feel free to say _anything_ in her presence given her passive-aggressive terrorist approach to conflict? All ingredients to an environment of compliance, fear and resentment rather than an enlightened, educated workplace.

In short, when you choose to involve social media as the key channel for your conflict, you go beyond your personal therapy. You affect lives. Think before you point, shoot and post.

by Diane Tate

What will it take, indeed?

The spate of gun massacres in the U.S. has triggered renewed controversy and outrage. Rightly so. A friend recently wrote a nice post, “What Will It Take?” Indeed. What will it take to meaningfully address this unthinkable problem of mass violence when a ridiculously absurd amount of evidence shows a correlation to the presence of guns and gun-related deaths (of humans, not hunting game)?

Given the contentious nature of rationally-ensuing discussions on gun control (see evidence and mortal impact of gun ownership cited above), many instead appeal to mental health reforms. Given it’s easier to get a gun than to get mental health care (note a widely-circulating post by a mother calling herself “Adam Lanza’s mother”), once again the evidence calls for a different answer. In fact, the mental health conditions cited by the gunman at Sandy Hook have in fact no correlation to increased violence. In fact, mental health seems to have zero impact on violence. Out, then, go the arguments for mental health reform…at least, as it pertains to reducing these inconceivable acts of violence.

Ok, perhaps humanizing the problem will work? After all, a central principle of those seeking to educate people about the holocaust is to communicate the horrors not by raw statistics or clinical facts, but rather through the lens of individual stories. These custodians of history seek to illuminate the horror through photos, letters, and testimonials rather than theoretical, abstract facts. I’ve witnessed this at Holocaust museums in Washington, D.C. and Jerusalem, as well as the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive devoted to sharing and extending these stories through the generations

The thinking is that no amount of facts or theory will impact people meaningfully; it is only through personal stories that people can begin to grasp the most dark and absurd turns of human behavior.

Alas, and tragically so, hoping that this insane pattern of outrage followed by inaction have cause to be concerned. Incredulously, public opinion remains unmoved by such tragedies. Studies by the Pew Research Center show that even violent public gun massacres such as the ones in Aurora, CO and Tucson, AZ have had no impact on public opinions towards how guns are obtained or regulated. And some are even calling for the press to refrain from reporting the names of the perpetrators, keeping the issue more abstract and nameless.

Thus, despite all the facts above which demonstrate our only lever to reduce such violence is gun control, the public remains wed to its antiquated notion of personal rights and loves the theory of the 2nd amendment more than the reality of the bloody impact that its anacrhonistic implementation has in today’s society.

So if not facts, if not humanity…then what, what will cause us to change this insane holding pattern of death, outrage yielding no change? Didn’t Einstein call insanity the act of doing the same thing repeatedly yet expecting different results? Isn’t there a reason the rest of the world thinks we are on another planet on this issue? (If someone told me there was a society that allowed any citizen to own a weapon of scalable destruction, I would think they were crazy too…and then I realized, it’s us).

Those who fearfully clutch at freedoms crafted in an era of escape from armed militia  in today’s world — when civil liberties, due process and judiciary checks abound (as do the firearms and bloodshed they propogate) — mystify me. Now we live in fear that the person on the bus may have a bad day and whip out a rifle. Is this fear and death worth the “freedom” to personally own a death stick?

I’m too exhausted to play this out anymore, though. so I’m just appealing to what Joe did in the movie that keeps me relatively sane as the world grows more insane. I’ve decided to talk to plants. Please join me.

 

plants

by Diane Tate

The Yin-Yang Bang

It’s that time of year again. Yes, the decorations and trees and sales abound…but what I really mean is…it’s that time of year when we hear 2 familiar ballads.

Of course, I’m talking about “Happy XMas (War Is Over)” and “Wonderful Christmastime.” Both Christmas songs, both written in the 70s, both written by Beatles, and both tunes that stick to you like a snowflake on a Chrysler.

That’s where all the similarity stops. As a die-hard Beatles maniac growing up, I became enamored myself with the characters behind the music, and if anything could describe Lennon-McCartney, it would be “yin/yang.” The former raised largely by a single parent and a rebellious child of social services; the latter formed by prestigious education and organized religion. The former cheating on his first wife to marry a modern artist, the latter living 30 monogamous (so we think) years married to an establishment debutante.

For me, however, their differences are most poignantly illustrated by these two songs. The first is brooding, political, and social in significance and unpleasant to ponder (as was its writer in 1971, the year it was written). And the second? A jingle: catchy, light and easy on the ears…precisely like its writer the year it was written.

And despite all these juxtapositions, when they collaborated, these two musicians penned perhaps some of the greatest tunes of all time. It’s a nice reminder to me when my yin is countered by a yang. Rather than dissect what is “wrong” with that yang, I have instead learned to intentionally study the strengths that can be had when these forces combine.

All that said, don’t you think it’s sort of hard to take this dude seriously?