I have to say I agree that, for better or for worse, this thread
alone demonstrates an occasional aggressiveness that puts me off,
never mind women who are, generally speaking, less likely to
weather the tone of voice often used here.
Karabuta seems to be a non-native English speaker and got laid
into for using the wrong word for women. He took the lashing in
good spirits but it doesn't bode well for the thinner skinned who
might otherwise have a valuable contribution to make.
On Thursday, 24 March 2016 at 08:39:01 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
wrote:
On Thursday, 24 March 2016 at 04:05:53 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
On Wednesday, 23 March 2016 at 10:46:22 UTC, QAston wrote:
I could point to the building you're sitting in. Most likely
made almost exclusively by males.
LOL. I happened to spend most the day today with a group of
women... building something. (I was there too, of course, but
I'm practically one of the sisters myself and they all did
more work than me anyway. The other five are all
non-controversially women.)
I read this message out loud to them. We all got a good laugh.
Yes, it was funny to me as my mother worked as an industrial
designer in the 1960s and designed a top-of-the-line radio
(within a group of men) called Tandberg Huldra 9. She spent a
lot of time on the backlight, and came up with acrylic
backlight as a novel solution (at that point in time). She
wanted the front to be all black, but the head of the company
didn't want that, so it was all aluminium coloured like the top
image:
http://nrhf.no/Tandberg/TR%20Radio/Tandberg%20Huldra/T'Huldra-9.html
After she quit Tandberg released the version with only the
bottom half in black... Which looks a bit silly. But guess
what, some decades later audiophile equipment was black
aluminium and acrylic backlights was standard... I am pretty
sure that there are many "invisible" women involved with the
products we use, but maybe men are spending more effort at
getting their name published. Incidentally, she had to correct
a newspaper earlier this year that wrongly attributed her
design to a male designer (he was hired after she quit)...
Later when she was teaching furniture design/interior
architects, most students were female, so they tried to get
some men in as well in order to get a more mixed group. Most
educators know that having some diversity in a group is good
for the social dynamics. The interaction in mixed groups are
usually more interesting than all-male or all-female groups.
Y'all should stick to arguing about the color of the bikeshed.
Maybe or maybe not, but meta discussions are important for
changing norms within a forum. If a given tone means that some
women hesitate to join in, it probably also means that a group
of men also hestitate to join in. Adjusting the tone might mean
that more people will participate which would be better for all.
