Comment on Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech
sudneo@lemmy.world 11 months agoI am fully aware that those barriers exist. I am arguing (in other comments I am more explicit) about fighting against barriers, not a particular barrier.
I am also a foreigner in another country, and despite being a privileged person from many point of views (I could attend public university despite my family being poor), I have experienced some form of discrimination myself, so please don’t make assumption about other people’s. I am not blind to those kind of barriers, I simply have different opinions on the actions to take to improve the overall situation, with the goal of removing the concept of barrier, not any particular one (if that makes sense).
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You’re arguing while shifting scope which is a problem. Are you arguing about averages or individual experience?
sudneo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Neither and both, depending on the context. There is no point to tell a person (who is maybe in need of a job and behind with the mortgage) “sorry, your group is privileged, fuck off”. At the same time it still makes sense talking generally about solving sexism, ageism and other form of discrimination still too common in tech. Both perspectives exist, but you can slice the population in many groups, with different “average” experiences, therefore is overall shortsighted to categorize people only based on “one slice”. Hence, the class analysis which is I find both more effective and more functional.
Touching_Grass@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The context is important and central to the argument. I would say its critical to discuss it in any kind of valid way.
That’s the because mixing the scope means you’re arguing about two different things.
Talking about how females or minorities or other groups are impacted by something is measured using averages across the whole population.
How would that make sense to the argue about the individual who breaks that trend? Because it doesn’t change the original point that a group experiences an event. Outliers are expected. I didn’t smoke cigarettes, I’m still able to get cancer. That shouldn’t mean that people who smoke shouldn’t quit if they want to be healthier.
sudneo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You didn’t mention in which context you are suggesting I am changing scope, so I am not sure what am I supposed to discuss.
Yes?
I didn’t negate any general trend using any particular experience. The only particular experience I mentioned is my own, with the sole purpose of responding to:
Which suggested that I don’t acknowledge the existence of certain barriers because I did not live through it (assuming a lot about my personal life). This is completely irrelevant to the overall argument I am trying to develop anyway, as I am not arguing that women don’t have barriers in tech, I am fully aware they do (even if at the individual level some might not). I am simply stating that since there are multiple levels of discrimination in tech, and people might be victim of many of those (classism, ageism, sexism, racism, homo-transphobia, etc.), workers - and in particular victims of discrimination (but also the “privileged” ones) - should acknowledge each other situations (in other words, develop a class consciousness) and join the struggle against the overall system that generates discrimination, not create fragmentation between them because of the specific discrimination(s) they suffer. To me, this rhetoric since to push for a kind of “feminism of the regime”, in which the status quo stays effectively the same, but the oppressor substantially are untouched, with a new coat of paint for supporting diversity.
That said, the population who attended this job fair is not a random sample of the “tech worker” population, therefore even in this case it might not make sense to use broad categories (like male and female) alone. For once, if you spend 600-1200$ for a job fair, chances are you are in dire need of a job. This probably means that at least a good chunk of those men are indeed outliers, so judging by broad categories (such as male=privileged in tech) might be especially wrong. This is my personal guess, and also why I would have liked for the article to interview some of them and understand why they were there.