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Girl Tickets to ng-conf

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Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If women in tech don't want people referring to them as "girls", perhaps they shouldn't create organizations like "Girl Develop It", "Girls Who Code", "Girls Teaching Girls to Code" and "Black Girls Code".

They have completely different connotations...one is a self descriptive, the other is belittling.

Maybe it was a woman who initiated this? What then?

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#43
Wow, I find this pretty bad.

I've just come back from co-running my conference last week. We were way up on female attendance and speakers compared to last year, which I'm really glad with. Women don't need discounted tickets to decide whether or not to come to a con. They definitely don't need their own colour lanyards and if they had one it doesn't need to be pink.

Most importantly, what women need are reasons to come, not discounts. We're limited in what we can do at 44CON[1] to change the sausagefest nature of the industry by the number of women, but we're happy to help where we can. We should focus on improving the conference experience for women (and everyone) so they'll tell their colleagues and friends in industry to come along. Women buy tickets too, is it so hard to listen to customers instead of singling them out?

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the paper and better understand what you just quoted...

[deleted]

The paper is charting how sex and gender have been used throughout academic literature in the past few decades. In the last few decades we have learned swathes more about the complexity of gender identity and diversity, not just in western culture but it many others. Biological sex on the other hand it pretty well understood, and is certainly correlated with gender identity, but is distinct. It makes a lot of sense that papers about gender have increased while paper talking about sex have decreased, it aligns with new knowledge.

And the paper makes the point that new writers to the field often use gender in place of sex because they don't understand the full complexity of the word.

Or you know....delete your comment:

"I would love for you to explain what it is that I failed to understand about the paper, since I do enjoy learning new things. I'm not holding my breath though."

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#45
post #39
post #15

This discussion will go off the rails like always, but I just want to point out that not all women (girls?) are the same. Many women will take this positively and attend because this would make them feel welcome, while many others would be put off by this. Simply being female does not give you the ultimate say on whether this is fine or not. You are not some spokeswoman for your entire gender. I'd judge this as a suc…

I love this line of thinking. "As a random person with no stake at all in this yet a strong opinion on it, I can tell you that if your opinion is the opposite of mine then it doesn't matter even if this issue directly affects you". That's the kind of lazy, passive-agressive, statement that has no place in proper discussion.

Is this supposed to be some sort of meta comment where you are describing your own reply?

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#46
post #20

That's called neo-sexism, like affirmative action was neo-racism ( i dont deny the social implications of racial segregation and slavery, but these politics did not make people less racist). If I was a girl I would definetly feel offended. Now what about tickets for us black people ? We too are a minority in the IT sector... how does it sound now ?

You aren't the loudest voice in the room.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#47
post #38
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed the pink lanyard bit. That does tip it into demeaning territory. Like girls/ladies/women need to be highlighted any more at a tech conference.

The intent is so that men can't use the tickets. Sure, they could have used a different colour, but they needed to differentiate those tickets.

Because using a photo and name would have been too simple and trivial?

No need to talk about the max three people with epicene names and faces who maybe could have abused this, they don't matter.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#48
post #47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent is so that men can't use the tickets. Sure, they could have used a different colour, but they needed to differentiate those tickets.

Because using a photo and name would have been too simple and trivial? No need to talk about the max three people with epicene names and faces who maybe could have abused this, they don't matter.

> Because using a photo and name would have been too simple and trivial?

Using a generic ticket for every woman is more simple than assigning a name to each ticket... so no.

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#49
Conferences often offer "student tickets" at a much lower rate and I think these "girl tickets" should be thought about and handled in a similar fashion. Certain groups are allowed to attend conferences at a lower rate because they might not otherwise and it is advantageous to the conference or industry that they do.

Instead of calling them "girl tickets" they should perhaps be called "women in tech" tickets or the conference should partner with one or more women in tech groups and name the tickets after them (i.e. PyCon could offer PyLadies tickets.) Conferences could even use membership in the women in tech groups as a way of certifying that people deserve the discounts similar to how a student ticket might require proving that one attends a university.

(These are just some ideas; one problem may be that some women in tech groups may also allow males to join, although it could be enough of a hurdle to prevent abuse.)

Re: Girl Tickets to ng-conf

#50
post #4

This is one of the things that confuses me so much about the feminist movement in tech and in society at large. The conference organizers are trying to encourage female attendance by giving discounted tickets to women and someone immediately finds fault with them; however, if no effort were made then a multitude of posts would probably show up lamenting the lack of female attendance at the conference. This type of ca…

Are normal tickets called "boy tickets"? Are they required to be in blue lanyards? Will women caught with blue lanyards be kicked out of the conference? -_-

No. A woman with a normal ticket just missed out on a discount that they could have gotten (either because they didn't know about it or by choice.) Same thing happens if you're a student but you buy a full-price ticket.
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