Günther Schmidt wrote:
One thing that I keep hearing is "I'm not trying to be offensive." I
think it's easy to get caught up on "not being offensive" so that we
don't make any progress. It's impossible not to offend people -- but
it is possible to take the time to listen and correct problematic
behavior and communicate what you've learned to others.
One thing I do notice, one starts with a harmless question and it out of
the blue it suddenly becomes political. In both ways. Is there really a
need for this?
Trying to offend (or not) bears no particular relation to causing
offense (or not). In particular, claiming you weren't trying to offend
is itself likely to offend many feminists. To understand why you should
read through
http://www.derailingfordummies.com/
Not that you were intending to derail, but because derailing is a fact
of social interaction which intentional communities must defend against.
Dealing with derailing and similar issues is a fact of life for
feminists. And all the women I know in CS or mathematics count
themselves as feminists.
Your "harmless question" was, by its very nature, a political question
because it touches upon many issues about the presence and role of women
within society (the HCafe society in particular). The "harmless
question" gave license to others to make misogynistic comments on this
thread, comments you'd now like to distance yourself from accepting
culpability for. If the question was really so harmless, surely you
wouldn't be so keen to distance yourself from the responses it created.
--
Live well,
~wren
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