[diversity] Feedback, including a piece of friendly and hopefully constructive criticism

Dear Diversity Taskforce,

thank you so much for your work.

RIPE 77 was my first RIPE meeting and I really enjoyed it. It feels nice
to come into a community and see that the diversity work is already
being done, so I don't have to be the one to do the heavy lifting.
(A bit of personal context: I do diversity-related work in other
communities, e.g., at the Chaos Communcation Congress.)

Thank you in particular for the amazing presentation at the plenary on
Friday.

That said, I would like to provide some friendly and hopefully
constructive criticsm in the following, rather long, e-mail.
This is NOT a call-out of any individual person, but rather something
I'm asking you as a group to consider.
Feel free to pass it on to people not on your mailing list, but then
without my name, please.



1.) Please do not issue a general invitation for people to talk to women
about their experience at RIPE.

I was at RIPE to talk about technology, about my work, not about feminism.
Being asked about feminism in a work context generates a lot of stress
for me (details on that below, if you are interested).
I would rather have people talk to me about my work. I assume this is
true for many other women as well.

If you want to encourage people to learn more about women's experiences
in tech, how about "Consider reading up on this, here's some links, and
here are some people who volunteered to answer questions"?

If you must invite people to talk to women they know about their
personal experience, please at least include a very prominent reminder
that not every woman may be comfortable to talk about her experiences
for many very valid reasons.

Some details about my own reasons, just to illustrate:
I personally did not have any experience of harassment or discrimination
at RIPE that I recall. I'm sure this is the case for a number of other
women as well. Hearing "talk to a woman about her experience here", for
me, implies that you expect that everyone has experienced discrimination
AND is comfortable to talk about it. It also feels a little bit
infantilizing to me, like, "You poor women have it so bad here". This is
simply not true.
I know that there's still lots of problems, so I could talk about other
women's experiences, or about feminism in general. However, I have been
"the angry feminist" in a work context before. Even with coworkers that
I really like, if I disagree with them on some feminist topic, it can
create a lot of stress and a feeling of alienation on both sides. In
addition, I fear that having a public stance on feminism could damage my
future career. I don't feel like it's on me to "get over this", but for
the culture to change.
Your work is an important part of that change, and I appreciate it.



2.) Please do not misuse the term "intersectionality".

(Relevant context for the following section: I'm white. Please consider
reading the writings by black feminists on this topic.)
If I recall correctly, in the plenary the term was used to mean "we do
things for women and then other minorities / everyone benefits from it".
This is not what intersectionality means. In fact, it's literally the
opposite.

The term "intersectionality" was created by Black feminists to mean that
black women are discriminated in different ways than white women. They
experience racism AND sexism, so their experience of racism is different
from the racism black men experience, and their experience of sexism is
different from the sexism that white women experience.
This means that if you just "do things for women" without looking at
other forms of discrimination, you end up doing things that mostly
support white women, and leave other women behind.
Similar points apply to trans women (who also experience transmisogyny),
disabled women (who also experience ableism), and so on.

I think that the remark at the mic by the woman from the middle-east,
whose name I sadly don't recall, was exactly spot on.
Different discriminations exist, they are sometimes combined, and
working against them does not have to be mutually exclusive.

Do not assume that all women need or want the same. Do not assume that
there is a universal female experience or perspective. There is not. The
"universal" female perspective is usually the white, cis, non-disabled
female perspective. (Such as my own, technically and ironically, as I
have all those privileges.)
It's not a bad thing to have privilege, but one should be aware of it,
one should question it, and one should actively give space to others who
do not have this privilege.
In that sense, I try my best to be a cis ally to trans* people, a white
ally to non-white people, and a non-disabled ally to disabled people.

In summary, it's fine you focus on women, but please be aware that
there's different kinds of women.
It's fine if you pick your battles. It's fine that you cannot do
everything at once.
I'm simply asking you to read up on the term "intersectionality" and to
not misuse it.



3.) Please try to avoid gender binarism.

I heard gender-binarist language (e.g., "both men and women" used to
mean everyone) a lot this week.
I don't know if there's any openly non-binary people in the community,
but given that your registration form includes a non-binary option,
perhaps there's a way to find out if anybody was brave enough to out
themself on that form. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they exist.

You don't necessarily have to educate everyone about this stuff, at
least not for me. To me, just being conscious of your language, like
saying "Dear gentlepeople" instead of "Dear ladies and gentlemen", makes
a big difference. Also, consider having T-shirts in "fitted" and
"unisex" cut instead of "woman's" and "man's" cut.
Having some gender-neutral bathrooms in addition to gendered bathrooms
might also help to make the space more inclusive to non-binary people,
and maybe also to binary trans* people.


Finally, a but of positive feedback again:

I think the discussion on (male) allies is a really good and important
one, I was really pleased to see it.
I've met lots of male allies at RIPE, even those who aren't active
advocates and don't call themselves feminist (yet?), but who encourage
me in my work and mentor me.
If some of these men become more feminist, that's really awesome, and
thank you for working on that.


Hope to see you at a RIPE meeting next year!

Best,
Theresa

-- 
Theresa Enghardt
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin / Research Assistant
Phone: +49 30 314 78628
Office: MAR 4.032

FG / Group "Internet Network Architectures" (INET)
Technische Universität Berlin
Sekr. MAR 4-4, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin