Drupalcon isms

I think a lof of us (both male and female) don't think very much about things we do/say, so it's very good to get perspectives that challenge these so hopefully we can do better next time. I personally didn't find the beard comment offensive, but I did cringe at the "Some of us are really hot" slide in Dries's presentation. I didn't see the Flash presentation, but that sounds like that would've ticked me off. The "Engrish" thing didn't even come up on my radar, so it appears I have some work to do on being sensitive to racial discrimination. Thanks for making me smarter. :)

Do you have suggestions on how we can help better educate Drupalcon presenters to be sensitive with our ever-larger and more diverse community?

I have no idea, and I also do not like to curb anyone's right to free speech, most of what was said was done in a good-natured way, the flash speaker was aware that his wife would find his comments facetious.

Frankly, I admit I found some of what the flash presenter said to be sometimes true for me as well. I do not mind at all to use some feminine charm, say with my boyfriend to get him to do some work that I would prefer not to do. So in some ways, some of the interaction I have with my boyfriend might completely represent the the simplistic stick figure representation of flashy wife versus drupal capable husband.

However, being surrounded by a mostly male audience laughing at the comments, and not having the opportunity for a friendly retort, made me a little annoyed.

In a small group of people, I welcome the freedom for people to make any kind of comment, to allow for an opportunity to share in an open dialogue between peers. However, unfortunately in a one way conversation such as a lecture presents, it becomes a little trickier, as communication has to cater and consider a wider and diverse audience. There is a greater chance of miscommunication and misrepresentation, as well as others may take it as a cue to copy language and actions of those that they respect.

Also, I realize I am asking for a higher standard of awareness from the already well accomplished and great contributors, and I realize that I cannot compare to the awesomeness of all that so many have accomplished, and maybe it is too much to expect one person to be so much to so many. All I can do is express myself, and express how grateful I am for all that Dries and others have accomplished, and only share my perspective.

The ability for a person to express themselves and for a community to realize differences in perception are all I could ask for.

Hey, aufumy - I hear you. The beard thing and the "Some of us are really hot" slide that webchik mentioned both made me cringe; the "Niches, bitches!" slide in Chris Messina's keynote really grated. I missed the Drupal & Flash talk but wow, that's blatant.

Like you talked about, context matters. In a small group where there is either the possibility of response or the benefit of being familiar with all in the group, things take one tone. When presented in front of a room of dozens, hundreds, or 1K+ people, things take an entirely different and often more problematic tone. Sexism, even if it seems "harmless" to the (male) speaker, takes on a particularly problematic nature when it's part of one of the keynotes presented to a room that's, I dunno, 70% or 80% male.

I luckily didn't experience or witness any notable racist junk, though like the gender disparity it was impossible not to notice the extreme racial skew in the room. I noticed that tilt bleed into the images in some of the presentations I saw. And of course, with both gender and racial disparities in the community at large, there was bound to be similar imbalances in representation amongst the presenters (though I was happy to get to hear a number of women present and... er... a handful of people of color.)

It was kinda strange for me to be at DrupalCon because this was my first big tech conference (I've also been to 2 DrupalCamps in NYC.) All of the other conferences I've been to have been centered in activism or politics, often specifically focused on the politics or issues of people of color, women, trans folks, queer folks, etc. Even when there were problems of representation and isms at those conferences, there was more of a deliberate, explicit consciousness around those issues and, at the very least, some lip service paid to addressing the issues.

But at DrupalCon, aside from the DrupalChix lunch (yay!) and individual conversations with a few people here and there, these seemed more like non-issues, neither acknowledged nor addressed in an organized or institutional fashion. That was weird for me. It made me wonder - is there space for talking about these issues in the larger context of the Drupal community? Or would that just prompt dismissal, hostility, or even just weird looks or blank stares? Hmm.

Anyhow, aufumy - thanks for starting this conversation!

Honestly, I think most of the 'regular' activism hot buttons just are non-issues for the Drupal community. The community itself is pretty heavily liberal and also heavily European, where the politics are .. I don't want to say 'different', but... hm. I'll say it makes for a much more disparate crowd where the politics and issues aren't as important. Not that people aren't passionate about their causes BUT, at Drupalcon, they're passionate about two things: Drupal, and how Drupal can help them promote their cause. It's not about the cause itself. I might be wrong, but I would guess that the reaction to a "GBLT coders BoF" would probably elicit puzzled "But why?" or "Yeah, but I'm not missing FAPI with puppets for that!"

The biggest, best thing about Drupal's community is that what you do is what is most important. It's not about your views (Views maybe, but not views), your gender, status, color, or sexual preference. It's "What can you do for Drupal, and what can Drupal do for you?" It's not that those things aren't important, because they are. But they aren't what Drupal's community focuses on. And when it comes down to it, I could care less about any of those things myself - I care about competance. I care about not being a jerk. I am also known to be kind of a bitch sometimes, and I'm ok with that:)

Now, I grant that personally, I have a pretty thick skin. I don't freak out over things like Dries's slide - In fact, I looked at it as "yeah, there are a lot of guys with facial hair and a lot of experience. That's pretty cool. But HEY, his graph evens out, yeah? That indicates MORE people, and MORE women too." And, well, if you want to say "Obviously a woman can't get anywhere because she can't grow a beard" I call shenanigans. Cuz, frankly, last I checked, nobody but Dries is higher in the project than Webchick and she was looking pretty clean the few times I saw her. =) And well, if you want to refer to her as junior because she doesn't have facial hair, I'd have to say you're quite mistaken:)

This community has a huge number of men who are rabid about treating women equally. As someone else mentioned - one snide or lewd comment towards a female on IRC is likely to get you banned within seconds of it being uttered. Note though, that this extends to many ...groups? Minorities? Whatever. And people are going to get offended if they want to find something to be offended by; me? I'm gonna go work on some docs. If I'm offended by something, I'll tell the person so. and since the world is not actually all about me, I try to look at things from the perspective of the person saying it. If they were just being thoughtless, or something didn't come out the way they probably meant it or their word choice was poor, I shrug and move on. Because I NEVER EVER DO THAT.

This is Drupal. We've code and docs to write and sites to build!

jackaponte I actually agree quite a bit with esmerel, the drupal community in general is quite socially advanced, and really do promote a meritocracy. People are known by their login handles and judged by their drupal karma rather than the general characterizations that I have to deal with in the 'real' world. I love that about the drupal community.

Also I obviously know that women do get high up in the drupal community. However, just consider if the comment was not about 'us' maturing in life and in drupal, with facial hair growth as an indication but maybe instead what if the indication used was about 'us' getting a wife, getting married and fathering a few kids?

Yes I am nitpicking, and I feel terrible, and I feel guiltier than hell. For in the balance of things, the drupal community of people is one of the most enlightened communities that I have had the pleasure to encounter.

My own thoughts on this pretty much exactly mirror esmerel's. If somebody makes a comment to me that could be construed as sexist, then either it was intended, in which case I see it as a poor reflection on the person who made it and no reflection whatsoever on me, or it wasn't, in which case there's no issue.

I think people should be very careful asserting sexist or racist interpretations of comments by their peers. The statement "Chinese like to keep within their own group", for example, is no more racist than the statement "the Irish drink lots of beer". The latter could be seen to have a normative component (based on the assumption that it's not good to drink a lot of beer), but the former doesn't even have this. It's simply an observation (which is either well-founded or not) of a cultural tendency. Engrishisms, similarly, are just another example of the way that people of all cultures and tongues find amusement in mispronunciations and mistranslations in their own language.

Again, to use the example of someone making an ambiguous comment to me that may or may not have sexist overtones, if I interpret it as sexist and report it to a third party, then the resulting poor reflection on the person who made the comment goes beyond me, and this may be truly undeserved, if it was indeed misinterpreted.

I don't mean to deny the existence of any isms in the community - I personally have not been affected by any. I just feel it's important to assess very carefully the content of apparently offensive remarks to see exactly what the source of the offense really is - in many cases it can be one's own very tendency to be easily offended. In short, while sexism certainly can hurt, so too can being falsely accused of it, I'm sure.

This is a quote from another site, that sums up some ideas nicely:
"I used to work in the gaming industry and let me tell you anti Asian sentiments are extremely common. Somehow some people don’t see what they are saying as racism because they understand that racism is something that happens to blacks. When I pointed out that consistently critiquing English language skills as though they indicated some marker of intelligence was indeed racist I was silenced. The idea that Asians were every bit as much Canadian and not foreign interlopers was also soundly rejected. It seems to many Asian constituted the eternal other. Despite many sensitivity training sessions that the company ran most could not see past the black/white binary and admit the racism in their behavior."
http://www.racialicious.com/2009/02/02/asian-american-employees-underrep...

Engrish.com is a blight, consider for a moment if there was a website called yeDrunkenIrish.com, which is well visited. Each day, a different picture was posted on this site. Many pictures are quite harmlessly funny, such as an Irish person in a bar with a silly grin holding up his mug of Guinness with the foam pouring down the side, another is a pretty lady with a big 4 clover green hat cheering in a bar with a tight t-shirt on. Another is a noir effect with a wobbly Irish man stumbling home down an alley with the street light above. Another is a passed out Irish person taken from the angle so that it highlights his/her pot belly. Another is taken from the ground angle looking up at a toilet bowl, showing an Irish person puking into the bowl. Another is a passed out Irish person in the alley because they were too drunk to get home. Another is a drunken Irish person at their door-steps trying to go back home, where their wife or other significant other is blocking the way, bending over to yell angrily at them.

Consider if that site was highlighted almost every other day by people around you, mentioned in the sites you visited, the group conversations that you were part of. Oh let's look at yeDrunkenIrish.com, haha that is so funny, hey come over here everybody and have a look at that, haha! Oh those Drunken Irish, LOL that is sooo funny.

No that is not funny.

I would find that neither funny nor offensive. The British have made the Irish the butt of their jokes for centuries, though they caricature us usually as just stupid, rather than drunk, or sometimes both. I'm Irish, I'm not stupid (though I have my moments :-P) and the fact that some British people correlate Irishness with stupidity just makes me lament their ignorance. It doesn't offend me (how could it? It has nothing to do with me). And besides, the Irish have pretty much turned the whole thing on its head by proving there's nothing the British can say about us that we can't say about ourselves in a way that's a thousand times funnier. That's completely disarming - and it's a far more effective way of combating prejudice than any prescriptive set of rules about what you may and may not laugh at. Moreover, when I laugh at a mistranslation I am laughing at the bizarre and absurd image it inadvertently conjures up, not at a person or group of people.

About ascribing intent to people, especially when it comes to something like racism.

"I pointed out that consistently critiquing English language skills as though they indicated some marker of intelligence was indeed racist"

I totally agree with this statement. I'm pretty bright but my foreign language skills are terrible, and I'd hate to think anybody was judging my intelligence based on the accuracy of my French, or heaven forbid, my Danish. (For example, my ex-gf is Danish, and on my first visit to Denmark we were in a store where the cashier had been especially nice, and I wanted to say "A thousand thanks", but I couldn't remember if it was "Tusinde tak" or "Trussen tak"-- I'd settled on the latter but chickened out at the last second and thanked her in English, which it turns out was just as well since the latter translates loosely as "Your panties, please".)

Anyway, I think it's a pretty big leap from the above statement to "Engrish.com is a blight". Your analogy doesn't acknowledge the difference between finding the funny in random flawed language and mocking a group of people. If you read the FAQ on engrish.com you'll see that it is in no way intended to insult the intelligence, or even the language skills of the people who made the stuff:

"Q. Your site disgusts me. How can you make fun of others like that? They are only trying their best to use English as a second language.
A. Please remember that the point of Engrish.com is to have fun with the Engrish phenomenon, not to make fun of (criticize/mock/ridicule) the people who made it. The webmaster has taken great pains not to point out the faults of others or have a discriminatory tone - just to have fun with the results. Engrish.com does its best to stay away from any type of “ha ha – these guys are idiots” lines or insinuations. You will also find that the vast majority of the English examples on Engrish.com were produced by companies - not individuals and that most of the Engrish found within the site is not an attempt to communicate, but are examples of English being used as a design element.
At any rate, if anyone can point out anything in the site that is blatantly racist or otherwise uncool (and Engrish.com agrees with you), we will happily change the content of the site."
http://www.engrish.com/engrish-faq/

Personally I think most of the content on engrish.com is hilarious, and I would find it so whether it was Asian, European, American, or anything else. If it was intended to be insulting I wouldn't find it funny either. Intent matters.

I definitely do take note when sensitive topics are touched upon, but I also agree to an extent with Esmerel and Kat, in that statements like this reflect more on the person saying them than anything. I mean, I am all for discussing and being aware of these issues, BUT there is also an element of turning things into personal attacks that weren't meant as such.

Last year in Boston, I still remember walking out of Morten.dk's talk on "Sex, Drupal, and Rock and Roll" (or something like that), when he opened with some slides with images of women that were incredibly objectifying, and overtly sexual. It was wrong on so many levels, but all I could do was write it off as him having a huge lack of awareness about gender sensitivity, and moving on. Sure, I could confront him on it, but to be honest, I think often people who don't believe in being sensitivity about such things aren't easily swayed to change their ways. And it's well within my right to lose respect for him based on his words and actions, but I also know that doesn't mean that he is trying in any way to personally insult me or say anything about my intelligence as an individual.

And we also have to be careful not to take things to a point where being overly sensitive shuts down conversations. For instance, am I being racist if I say that I as a "white" (though I'm actually half Armenian, nobody would know it to look at me) person I say that I felt shunned by many of the Asian students I went to university with, because they did not socialize a lot with students from other cultures? I know it's a really touchy subject, but that doesn't discount my experience of being treated like an outsider and unworthy of being talked to, and how jarring it was after coming from a highschool where all of the students regardless of race/cultural differences were all very friendly to each other? I know that being "white" implies in a way that I am not allowed to experience racism, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, or that I am being racist by expressing my experience. It's the difference between making a commentary on individual people's behaviour rather than generalizing that to an entire group of people based on culture/race/gender/etc, or stereotyping anyone based on it. I don't assume when I meet someone new of a different race/culture that they are not going to want to associate with me, just as much as I would never assume that all men from Denmark have no sensitivity towards gender issues.

I think it's good that we're aware and make a retort about things that strike us as insensitive - but we shouldn't take it so personally that there is no space to speak (or joke within reason) about things and make them taboo.

Aufumy is right to bring these issues up. The position expressed by esmerel -- that the Drupal community is pretty enlightened on the issues -- shouldn't be taken a priori. The community is enlightened when these issues are raised and discussed with sincerity and openness.

I noticed many of the same things that others did... sometimes I think I like to be provoked, eh? While we're making that list, I found the conversations about DC neighborhood boundaries and safety -- "don't cross that street" or "I wouldn't walk there after dark" -- to give me the same irritation. I also think I might be more easily irritated by these banal but qualitatively bad statements because I'm in a new place, surrounded by strangers. Putting those defenses up!

On the positive side, it was really liberating to see youth be recognized for their objective expertise. How often do you see a room of adults sit down to hear a young person tell them what for and how to?

Like jackaponte, I don't have much experience attending tech conferences. It's a different crowd. Nonetheless, I'm quite happy to participate in this community... There's all kinds of people here, many interesting opportunities for collaboration. That only happens through challenging discussion, problem solving and work.

Cheers! oh.. is this the door?

I think the big danger (a little melodramatic perhaps, but REALLY!) with something like Engrish.com is the gap between intent -- and I'm perfectly willing to accept their disclaimer at face value, though I'm very glad to see they posted it -- and reception.

My personal feeling is that yeah, Engrish.com is a bit racist. Sure, unintentionally, perhaps, but I doubt that everyone's in on the joke.

If a stereotype exists -- that Chinese people pronounce English badly -- but their site is about poorly-translated printed SIGNS, maybe choosing a domain name reflective of an accent that doesn't use the 'L' phoneme isn't the best plan? It certainly doesn't help anyone if the implication is that it's one of a dozen Chinese accents -- and they include photos of stores clearly taken in Seoul.

"Badly-Translated Signs That Are Mostly In SE Asia dot com" is nowhere near as catchy, but it's a lot more honest and up-front about what the joke is meant to be.

Aufumy, your post earlier made me think of a photo I saw a few months back: a picture of a restaurant with a bilingual sign: "餐厅 - TRANSLATE SERVER ERROR". Now, if I'm a professional web developer or writer or a translator, I'm likely immediately reminded of clients I've worked with who also cut too many corners on a project. But what if I already think Chinese people are stupid? It becomes a whole new, reinforcing deal. Ew.

Just as two people can see the same picture and one can take offense and the other be amused, two people can see the same picture and both be amused for vastly different reasons. Were I to learn that the smile on my friend's face were due to some kind of horrible prejudice, I would be highly offended myself.

That said, I tend to think there are very few people in the Drupal community who wouldn't want to understand WHY someone could consider it offensive. They might not actually care that others DO, but the question is one they'd at least like answered. Then again, they might just chalk it up to oversensitivity. Still, at least it's out there and being discussed. Even if someone can't quite understand, just knowing that others do take offense could lead to them pausing and considering their own motivations, and that's valuable in itself.

I think the really big problem is not people posting offensive slides, it's people posting offensive slides without having any awareness that some of their audience might be uncomfortable with them. By talking about it, we can establish what's okay and what's not.

Moreover, from a totally self-serving perspective, if I'm looking at Engrish.com and say, "heh, did you guys see this funny sign?" it can be perceived as extremely offensive -- which reflects poorly on me. Someone might walk out of my talk, for example. Awareness of possible repercussions is in all our best interests.

Yes, that is the whole point, I do recognize the Drupal community as being more socially conscious, and of course most of us, likely may not have intent. Again, I would like to stress the difference between speaking to friends in a private setting, and giving a public speech to an audience. I myself might chuckle a little when viewing a joke on Engrish.com but would not like to see it become a defacto joke in a public speech, as common as lolcats. One the joke is about overly cuteness, the other is about laughing at the invisible other's foibles.

Also, I made a bit of a possibly offensive comment in my talk on distributed search, when the audience asked for a use case, I froze a little and gave an example that a friend had tweeted to me the night before. I mentioned that porn sites might find distributed search useful, because it is a network of sites that serve private content. Would someone find this comment offensive, probably, did I mean to be offensive, no. Should I think of a better answer next time, or find some other way to be cute and funny, yes I think so. I would like to hold myself up to that standard, and would expect others to call me on my transgressions. It is part and parcel of being in the public eye.

I agree with bangpound:
"that the Drupal community is pretty enlightened on the issues -- shouldn't be taken a priori. The community is enlightened when these issues are raised and discussed with sincerity and openness."

Yes Kat, you are usually correct, that humour wins the battle in a much better way, it is something that I need to practice. I am practicing the art of speaking my opinion, overcoming the fear of rejection and humiliation at this time. I still have a long way to go. Cause right now, yes I may be over-sensitive, which causes me not to necessarily approach these issues in the lightest manner, because I have kept a lot of things inside for so long.

While it may be possibly true that Asians may socialize with themselves only, I find that hard to believe, because on a personal level, almost every Asian I know is more international than the general Canadian, and most Asians I know, understand more about different cultures, have travelled more, and have friends of all ethnicities.

Do humans of all races like to mix with their own kind? Yes, just as there is a chinatown in most cities, there are also white towns, white neighbourhoods, white schools, white companies, as in 90% white, just nobody calls it that, it is just called 'Canadian'.

There have been Asians and other races in Canada as long as any Caucasian in Canada, but even if your grandfather was born in Canada, a person of Asian descent, will still get asked, where are you from, and get treated as the eternal other. Do I associate myself as being Chinese, yes, and have sympathy for other people labelled 'Chinese'. Did I always associate myself as being Chinese, no. In fact, in Asia I am considered to be not Asian and not Chinese.

Am I over-sensitive, probably. When I hear bad and false reporting on the news that causes more xenophobia, with it's glamourization of FUD, when I have friends assuming stereotypes about me, even if it is not true, when I get asked where are you from by new friends, eventhough I am probably more Canadian than most Canadians now, have participated in political and social events, know more about the history and politics of the land, do not speak with much of a foreign accent, can speak English better than most Canadians, all this builds up.

It makes me want to stop fighting, and become more insular than I was brought up to be. Since everyone assumes that of me, why fight? That is the problem with stereotypes, you yourself begin to accept the labels that society places onto you.