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

Hi Theresa,

Thank you for your feedback - I am, above all, really happy that we are
finally starting to see some engagement at the RIPE Meetings on our D&I
efforts (both from the Diversity TF and also the RIPE NCC). I am really
happy to also see people active in the D&I circles coming to the meetings!

I'm replying here as myself and not a TF member. It can be a bit of a
gray area, since I'm involved in the TF initiatives too.

The WiT Lunch is not a TF initiative, just to clarify. It was initially
proposed by our board member, Salam Yamout (who is the woman that you
mentioned from Lebanon that spoke at the mic after my presentation).

Replying inline now...

On 21/10/2018 11:27, Theresa Enghardt wrote:
> 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.
When I said "talk to women about their experiences", my intention was
not that it be about their experiences with being othered, but just to
speak to them about their experiences period. About their work, yes.
About their aspirations in their career, about the projects they're
excited about. But also about the barriers they face that their male
colleagues may not have any understanding of. It was certainly not meant
as an open invitation for men to ask women about how they're being
harrassed or discriminated against. It was related to my previous slides
of what it means to be a male ally, and that the first step to advocacy
is awareness.

I want men to start recognising and advocating for the work that their
non-male colleagues are doing so that hopefully we see more
representation at the meetings, on the stage, etc.
>
> 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.
In our first diversity workshop before the TF was formed, we understood
the phrase to mean how the struggle to combat sexism and racism (and
other forms of discrimination) intersect. Yes, Crenshaw's original
definition of the phrase has taken on ambiguous meaning over the years
and I should have chosen a better phrase there. However, her original
intention of the word to frame the struggle that someone belonging to
more than one marginalised group faces is still relevant for our
diversity efforts I think.

>
> The term "intersectionality" was created by Black feminists
Kimberlé Crenshaw
>   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 agree that we need to tackle diversity from every angle and I know
that we will get there. We are working within an almost 30yo community
built on 'legacy' and achieving the change I believe we need to see
means building the foundation for inclusiveness of women, period. Once
we do that, then I hope that it'll be easier (and quicker) to improve
the meeting and community experience for all under-represented groups.


>
> I think that the remark at the mic by the woman from the middle-east,
> whose name I sadly don't recall,
Salam Yamout
> 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.)
I fully agree here. And while we don't aim to speak on behalf of all
women, I also don't feel comfortable speaking on behalf of another
group. Making our meetings more inclusive for women will (I hope) make
it also more inclusive for non-white/cis/non-disabled women. We have to
start somewhere.
> 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.
There was one person that identified themselves as non-binary.
>
> 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.
Funny about the t-shirts, we have had the opposite feedback from women
in the community. For this meeting, we had unisex t-shirts, but previous
meetings we've had different cuts for m/f (which was requested from our
female attendees). We can certainly be more inclusive in how we label
the shirts at the table though (although, annoyingly for this meeting we
had two colours of unisex shirts and some people were still referring to
the burgundy shirts as the "girl" shirts :/).

For the bathrooms, I will certainly pass this feedback back to our
meeting organisation team. Not sure what is/isn't possible given that
the meetings are always in hotels.
>
>
> 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.
Thank you Theresa for your valuable feedback and for engaging in the
diversity discussions!
>
> Hope to see you at a RIPE meeting next year!
>
> Best,
> Theresa
>