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Re: undefined

#2
Sexism exists. This article is a great example of it in the way it implies it's only a problem for women.

Asking sexually reproducing mammals to treat each other as equals just isn't going to work. There are many other animal instincts which people have tried to suppress over the years, like greed. It doesn't usually work. Instead you have to learn how to live with it. But first you have to accept it. We'll start to see more acceptance in the coming decades.

Re: undefined

#3

Sexism exists. This article is a great example of it in the way it implies it's only a problem for women. Asking sexually reproducing mammals to treat each other as equals just isn't going to work. There are many other animal instincts which people have tried to suppress over the years, like greed. It doesn't usually work. Instead you have to learn how to live with it. But first you have to accept it. We'll start to…

Humanist mythological lore that was propagated heavily in mid to late 20th century.

See antihumanism.

Re: undefined

#4
Institutional sexism is a problem.

Also, the way this article describes the situation made me think there's probably other things at play too. So I searched youtube for the two people in question speaking. Karen is a really, really bad public speaker. I found her speaking style to be cringingly bad. So that's probably also a variable at play.

Re: undefined

#5
post #3

Sexism exists. This article is a great example of it in the way it implies it's only a problem for women. Asking sexually reproducing mammals to treat each other as equals just isn't going to work. There are many other animal instincts which people have tried to suppress over the years, like greed. It doesn't usually work. Instead you have to learn how to live with it. But first you have to accept it. We'll start to…

Humanist mythological lore that was propagated heavily in mid to late 20th century. See antihumanism.

Antihumanism is an edifice wrought of unsubstantiated assertions, self-contradictions and wilful ignorance of evidence.

Re: undefined

#6
To me the situation is explained too vaguely to tell: exec tells current charity director that he wants to talk with previous charity director before making a donation. If we weren't talking about donations, I would say that's definitely impolite, but in this case I'm not sure. And we don't have info about whether they previously knew each other or not, so I wouldn't dare to judge yet in this case without more info.

To me, this other fragment is more interesting:

>> I consistently say [...] that Karen is my boss. [...] But instead of taking that as the fact that it is, many people make comments like well, Karen's not really your boss, right; that's just a thing you say?.

Re: undefined

#7
Sexism and institutionalized sexism obviously exist. However, it's not very clear from the article whether the alleged discrimination was due to sexism or just experience-ism. If the BDFL of a project is replaced by a newer leader, people would obviously still trust the previous leader more, irrespective of the gender. I can easily see this story happening but with the genders reversed.

From their homepages:

  Karen M. Sandler is the executive director of Conservancy.

  Bradley M. Kuhn is the President and Distinguished Technologist at Software Freedom Conservancy, on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and editor-in-chief of copyleft.org.

Re: undefined

#8
Without trivializing institutionalized sexism, the author's highly submissive (almost grovelling) attitude makes me feel uncomfortable, not because of the genders of those involved but because he seems to let the workplace hierarchy completely define both himself and the boss. I am not familiar with the author, but is it unfathomable that he has accomplished something that some donor would like to speak to him about privately? Is that necessarily disrespectful towards his boss? Unless the author and his boss (in her tweet) withheld some information, they are being very assuming about the donor's motives and beliefs.

The other anecdotes mentioned in this piece appear to be stronger examples of sexism, such as the journalist who wrote an article about the charity without mentioning anything about the female executive director, and the comments made in that closed-door meeting with industry leaders. But I wish that the author hadn't diluted the message in the final paragraph by using sexist terms like "mansplaining."

Re: undefined

#9
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanist mythological lore that was propagated heavily in mid to late 20th century. See antihumanism.

Antihumanism is an edifice wrought of unsubstantiated assertions, self-contradictions and wilful ignorance of evidence.

Of course it is, which disregards a good deal of research in cultural studies accumulating over the past half of a century. But you know that, as you clearly have studied the field.

Re: undefined

#10
Karen made a mistake by writing the tweet, and Bradley made a mistake by writing this article. It became clear to me while reading it that Bradley is either not that socially aware or doesn’t really have Karen’s best interests at heart. He should have found a way to phase himself out of the organization, or at least refrain from writing an article that could be summarized as “I’m disappointed that nobody really respects Karen as Executive Director”
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