
Why All the Speakers at Schnitzelconf are White Men - ahoyhere
http://unicornfree.com/2010/all-schnitzelconf-speakers-are-male-white-have-that-flippy-do/
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notgonnatakeit
It looks like you're trying to manufacture conflict to market your conference.

~~~
ahoyhere
Nope. The conflict is going to come, and I wanted to head it off by adding a
sane, cool-headed voice to it.

Three female organizers, and one male organizer, contacted me privately to
thank me for being brave enough to say what I said -- because they, too, have
been harrassed and harangued in public about the "diversity" of their
speakers.

I am not surprised (though I don't consider myself brave).

If you don't read about conferences, or run one, you might not realize how
nasty people are about this one thing -- an accusation you can't defend
against. If you are accused of being racist in your speaker selection, what
can you say?

"Well I happened to invite a really awesome african woman and an indian dude
but they both turned me down"? Because then, of course, you're suggesting that
you DO think in terms of race - ergo you are a racist! Then people will list
women to you who have nothing to do with your conference, and you are
obligated to say "I don't invite speakers who aren't on-topic for my
conference" and then you are accused of hating women. Because if you loved
women, you'd invite off-topic women speakers to a conference where everybody
else would see the women didn't fit, and would assume that they got picked as
window dressing.

These are charges you can't defend against, and the people applying it are --
without fail -- privileged caucasian men, who use their power and their
smugness to make other people feel small and less righteous than they are.
It's some kind of Look, I May Be A Famous White Dude But I'm So Sensitive And
Feminist! signalling.

I, for one, am sick of it! It's selfish, divisive, and more importantly,
useless, assuming the people trying to kick up a fuss _actually care about
having more non-white-men in tech and business_.

I prepared this essay in advance - because I knew it would happen. Then it did
happen. An internet-famous white man (!) reached out to my very slightly
involved male co-organizer (!) and not me (even though he knows me, and he
knows it's my conference), and accused us of being "non-diverse." As if we had
to answer to him.

Note that he never answered our calls to our network for people from different
places and walks of life who were bootstrapping.

These brutal attacks have got to stop, and I figured if I could do it while
also reaching out to women bootstrappers, and non-white bootstrappers, to
convince them to step forward, so much the better.

At the same time, you don't make attacks stop by shrinking away from them. You
also can't do it by pointing out that the attackers are hypocritical assholes
just in it for the attention. The only way to do it is to shine a light on
just how silly the whole thing is.

So that is what I attempted to do.

I tried to make it _too embarrassing_ for anyone else to attack me publicly.

And now there is a resource that those other conference organizers, who don't
feel as if they can speak freely, can link to without fear of direct
reprisals.

In short, you could say I'm trying to bury non-existent controversy and then
tamp down its grave.

~~~
notgonnatakeit
Gah. I had no idea. Sorry about my snarky comment then. I didn't realize you
were _already_ fielding that kind of drama.

This is really stupid though... hey world, guess what, software development is
a field dominated by men, get over it!

I'm not a fan of forcing diversity for diversity's sake. If you give a spot to
a somewhat qualified person, forsaking a more qualified person, that is wrong.
If there are minorities that are talented enough to rise to the top, they
will. Agree?

