5 years ago in Quotes
I find it easiest to live with people that are different enough that you end up needing to use kindness to relate to each other.

After having felt isolated in my previous living situations, I'm now in a complex where we all hang out in the parking lot most afternoons. I'm a software engineer, my neighbors include bus drivers, clerks, landscapers, those who have no visible means of support, etc. It's a nice relaxed environment, which I don't experience when people who are too similar are around.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
The conversation took a turn towards how should we handle harassment at our events. During this discussion, a fairly well-known member of the programming community joined the open space. This person, who had not participated in the first half of the open space, quickly took over and steered the conversation. He stated that if put in a similar situation, he would stand up for himself and tell the harasser to leave him alone. Not only did he state that he would do this, but he also felt this was the responsibility of any person being harassed.

At this point, I felt it was relevant to explain that a white male prominent in the programming community is not being put in the same situation as a woman attending the conference. The privilege and power differentials are completely different, and it is bullshit to act like they are the same. I was then yelled at by another man in attendance for “making assumptions” about the speaker. At the time, I apologized to move things along and avoid derailing the conversation, but I find this deeply problematic. Despite popular opinion to the contrary, pointing out someone’s privilege in a situation is not an insult.

It’s privilege that says it’s the victim’s responsibility to make a harasser go away, and that the situation will turn out well if they try to do so. What may be reasonably easy and safe for one person may not be for another. Women are often socialized differently than men to handle conflict, and the harassment they receive does not always take the same form. If you want to get an idea of what women often deal with, try reading @EverydaySexism. It isn’t exaggeration. This is the daily lived experience for many women. The situation is not the same, and claiming so is misguided in the best of cases and harmful in the worst.
 1 decade ago in Quotes
The web is for everyone, whatever technology stack they use. The reason we have standards is to enable people to make their own choices about what they do in the privacy of their own servers. We don’t have to use the same libraries, so long as we implement the same standards. It doesn’t matter if you programme with Ruby or PHP or C# or Scala or XQuery, you can build a web application because we have the standards of HTTP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and so on.

Just as in wider society, we need to find compromises that balance the needs and desires of different constituencies. We need to balance the rights that everyone has to code as they wish against the rights that everyone has to have a web that works. We need to make sure that the quiet voices are heard, and support the equal rights of those who tread the less worn paths.