@deshipu Respectfully, I think you're reversing cause/effect of why diverse applicants may be reluctant to speak at conferences and leaning into a harmful stereotype of "women make great behind the scenes organizers and helpers" that has evolved from the history of women working in jobs whose primary purpose to facilitate the work of others (e.g. administrative assistants)
People are more comfortable coming forward and speaking out when they are in the company of peers.
@deshipu for white men at tech conferences, the general speaker pool is that peer group. Encouraging someone to speak and participate who may be initially reluctant (for understandable reasons, including having encountered prejudice when they've tried to do so in the past) is not "tricking them," as long as you are following through on the promises you are making of it being a safe environment for them to speak out. It is a chicken and egg problem, that, as you note,
@deshipu requires more diversity to gain more diversity, and making an extra effort to recruit outside the usual pool of candidates is necessary to counteract the natural tendency of people to recruit others who look/act like themselves.
@deshipu From personal experience, I am very nervous about public speaking and I spoke at Remoticon only because I was asked to do so. while I found the whole preparation process terrifying for it's unfamiliarity, I DID gain a great deal from going through it, including the reassurance that I do have something to offer as a speaker at a conference. I'll wager that most speakers from underrepresented groups DON'T feel tricked into participating and DO feel glad to have
@mobiuscog@deshipu I'm not sure what stereotype I attributed to white males other than the fact that they make up the majority of speakers at tech conferences. Can you please clarify what you mean here?
@mobiuscog@deshipu i can't speak to neurodivergence, but someone is FAR more likely to notice when they are different from the majority of the people at the conference than when the are in the same demographic as the majority of the people at the conference. So your personal experience at a tech conference is likely to be very different from a person of color or woman.
Second, you indicated that a negative stereotype of white males was presented in this thread that...
@mobiuscog@deshipu ... Would be offensive if it were applied to a different demographic. I'm curious about what you were referring to (either my comments or deshipus) since you didn't clarify.
@mobiuscog@deshipu if you want to understand how non white males who are interested in tech may not feel as though they are surrounded by "peers" in the same way you do, then you will need to listen to their various experiences, since they will be different from yours.
@mobiuscog@deshipu I'm not saying that you feel you fit in just because you are white and male, but whatever makes you feel like you don't fit in is likely less immediately visibly obvious than the differences a woman feels stepping into a lecture room filled with men or that the only black attendee feels at a 500 person tech conference. There are very well documented impacts on the effects that lack of diversity has on recruitment into a field, and they are significant.
@mobiuscog@deshipu I agree that multiple viewpoints are helpful to have in a field, and if you can be more specific in identifying the kind of additional diversity you'd like to see at tech conferences, then you should absolutely push for it. What you shouldn't do is minimize the impact that the lack of diverse representation has on diverse candidates seeking to enter a field, especially without trying to see it from their point of view. Your personal experience is
@mobiuscog@deshipu insufficient to fully understand theirs. In addition, there is plenty of scholarly research on the impact lack of representation has on people trying to enter a field, and it's worth looking into to fully understand the impact it has.
@mobiuscog@deshipu I'm hoping that I'm misunderstanding you here because you seem to be saying that the predominance of black speakers are a tech conference in Kenya mitigates the lack of black speakers at a tech conference in the US.
@mobiuscog@deshipu if it helps you to understand me better, I'll stipulate that I'm only talking about conferences in the US. And I don't know how to address the specific problem of the lack of non-white, non-male speakers at tech conferences without identifying it specifically. I'm not attacking white males, I'm trying to specifically identify the groups that are underrepresented. You claim that other kinds of diversity are equally important, but if you can't ...
@mobiuscog@deshipu my using the phrase "white male" describes a demographic and no more claims they are all alike than saying "people of color" implies non-whites are all alike. You're inferring far more than was implied. The only implication is that "white males" are all white and all male. The dearth of tech conference speakers outside the white male demographic discourages people from other demographics from applying to speak and tends to be a self-perpetuating...
@mobiuscog@deshipu ... problem without deliberate action. You will not be able to understand the impact the lack of women/non binary/POC speakers has on women/non binary/POC in tech without actually listening to what some of them have to say. Your personal experiences aren't sufficient to inform you here as they will differ greatly from the people most impacted by the situation.
@mobiuscog@deshipu you're failing to understand the point that no matter how different a group of white men are from each other, a woman or POC in their midst will stand out in a way that is not the same as any other distinction. I was a woman in physics graduate school. Sure they guys there were all different, but they got hit on a lot less when simply trying to find study partners than I did. After a while, it makes an impact.
@mobiuscog@deshipu and I'm not objecting to your claim that a group of white men are different from each other, I'm objecting to your minimizing the negative impact of a non white male trying to navigate that space. You haven't named a specific other kind of lack of diversity that has an equivalent impact, and you seem to be unable to do so.
Add comment