Inside the Feminist Hackerspace

http://secret.is/inside-the-feminist-hackerspace/

by secretmag • 11 years ago

41 91 11 years ago

tzs• 11 years ago

This is a problem:

    “Our geek cred is constantly challenged or
    belittled,” Liz Henry, founder of feminist
    hackerspace DoubleUnion writes. “You might be
    there coding, and you want to stop for a while and
    draw in your notebook and think, but if you’re not
    staring at a black and green screen or, like,
    melding your brain with an Arduino every second,
    some dude is going to come up to you and act like
    you need his expert lessons in how to hack.”

On the other hand, there is a tendency among many newbies at hobbies to be shy and self-conscious when they first go to places where the hobby is practiced in public and in groups, and they end up just observing for a while and then leaving without ever jumping in and participating, so everyone ignoring people who aren't obviously participating would also be a problem.

Probably it would be best to have some formal procedure to identify and deal with newbies, such as having designated people who look for them and offer help, and asking others to let those designated people handle the new people.

drhayes9• 11 years ago

You could imagine something like some churrascarias use: you have a little badge near you that shows green when you're good, or you turn it over to the red side when you need help.

LordKano2• 11 years ago

This is a big problem.

If you think someone is stuck and you offer to help, you're being condescending or mansplaining but if you think that someone is just in their process and working something out so you leave them alone, you're being cliquish and not welcoming to the newcomer.

Is the subculture supposed to change to fit the needs of the newbie or should the newbies be expected to learn to fit in to the subculture?

Kalium10• 11 years ago

The prevailing answer right now is that the subculture needs to be infinitely accommodating to newbies.

This... is perhaps not the wisest answer, as it is the kind of thing that tends to provoke a backlash. Certainly, telling people that their culture has no value whatsoever does not generally incline them to welcome you.

The only viable solution I can see to the basic failure to communicate that you can describe is for either mind-reading machines to be deployed or for highly formalized channels to be adopted. The former are still being worked on and the latter just makes life harder for newbies, assuming they work at all.

seiji3• 11 years ago

The only solution is to formalize everything.

"Hello, may I speak further words to you?"

"Hello, would you be comfortable if I help with your project? Also, I do not want my help to be construed as condescending or demeaning or belittling you, but I have been doing this for 20 years and you seem to be stuck on an introductory problem."

Then you have both parties sign an official collaboration and non-harrassment document, get it notarized, then 6 to 12 days later you may begin working together.

angersock4• 11 years ago

The fact that they're stuck might be part of the fun. It's usually easiest, and frankly less intimidating/annoying, to follow a simple protocol:

  1. Ask them if they have a second to chat (if no, leave them alone for a while).
  2. Ask them what they're working on, and what they enjoy about it, and what is hard (if they don't want to talk about it, leave them alone for a while).
  3. Ask them if they'd mind a suggestion about what they're trying (if they don't want a suggestion, leave them alone for a while). This may also be in the form of a leading question.

It's really not hard to do that without falling into one of those two categories. Just ask quietly and politely, and respect their space. This isn't rocket science.

EDIT:

Also, some of my sibling commenters and even my parent comment have language that suggests some grumpiness over gender or feminism or whatever.

If you're there to help with tech, none of that matters, so don't bring it up. Just ignore it and focus on the tech--doing anything else is, by definition, being distracting.

Furthermore, complaining about it just makes you look silly.

gaius• 11 years ago

Is the subculture supposed to change to fit the needs of the newbie or should the newbies be expected to learn to fit in to the subculture?

What do other subcultures do? What is a culture of it has no strong identity? Why would anyone want to join it?

lukifer• 11 years ago

It may be a distraction from the larger, quite-real problem of sexism in tech, but I do wonder if there are sometimes perceptual misfires of bias that are byproducts of generalized arrogance. I have a bad habit of overexplaining or talking down to people in general, because it can be so hard to guess what people do and don't know, at least until you've spent significant time interacting. If I do this to a woman, she may perceive bias when I would likely have talked down to her even if she were male (which is still not okay).

There are obviously still gender-centric issues at play: men who are subconsciously trying to impress women with their knowledge, and/or "bro cultures" that are intellectually hostile and competitive by default. (And of course, no shortage of just plain ignorant sexism.) As with Smokey's forest fire advice, we all bear responsibility to improve our own behavior, make work/learning environments welcoming, and to assume that everyone has knowledge and skills to offer, regardless of their genetic details or background.

err4nt2• 11 years ago

I have a bad habit of overexplaining or talking down to people in general, because it can be so hard to guess what people do and don't know, at least until you've spent significant time interacting. If I do this to a woman, she may perceive bias when I would likely have talked down to her even if she were male (which is still not okay).

As a male front-end web developer (who uses 5 operating systems daily, runs his own web server, scripts his own shell functions for linux, and outputs hundreds of lines of code and markup each week) I get talked down to by most infosec and IT people at my shared office. Even when you explain that you're more comfortable on a Linux CLI than the desktop, they still feel the need to patronize you and use metaphors for everything to avoid using any technical terms in conversation at all.

I realize some people are just like that; it's a self-importance issue on their end, not a self-esteem issue on mine. I just let it roll off, but if I had the nagging suspicion it was because of my gender/age/race/height/etc I could be sitting here feeling victimized over nothing.

angersock4• 11 years ago

I used to attend a friend's women's coding club. There were usually a few men in attendance, and generally three behaviors tended to occur:

1. The dude in question would quietly work on his own project, and occasionally ask if anybody needed help, and otherwise be unobtrusive. This was generally the most helpful behavior.

2. The dude would (as an older techie, and an abrasive one at that!) hold court and fast-talk and denounce other languages and help-but-butt-in and be loud and act like he was some ancient wizened wizard handing down carefully guarded pearls of wisdom. This behavior was disruptive and annoyed everyone regardless of the practitioner.

3. The dude would kibbutz and babble with the women trying to work, and many of them would socialize instead of writing code. The dude was passionate and friendly and outspoken and not very knowledgeable about code or software engineering. But, they went to a lot of meetups, continually proclaimed their novice status, and thus they were able to perpetually distract attendees.

Of the three types, 2 & 3 were actually tied for obnoxiousness and toxicity.

If people want to learn a new thing, especially a somewhat introverted activity like development, I find it most helpful not to be super excited and energetic and scare them off. Shy new people will be turned off, unshy new people will feedback off of them and continue the group disruption. Calm, friendly, and helpful is the way to approach this, and without badgering to give assistance.

Further, talking about things not related to coding and development serves to undermine the learning and practice process for everyone. Things that fall into this category are: talking about your ex-spouse, talking about how hard it is to find a job, talking about how cool it is to be a minority in tech, talking about how hard it is to be a woman in tech, talking about how tech isn't something you grew up with, talking about how tech was something you grew up with, talking about the weather, trying to pick up men, trying to pick up women, talking about your children, talking about how great the last meetup was, talking about how great the next meetup will be, etc.

None of those are bad per se, but they distract and prevent people from getting maximum utility from the gathering. If they want to talk about non-tech things, they should do so elsewhere--if they want to reaffirm the industry biases against, say, women and technical ability, they should certainly be elsewhere.

I stopped attending these meetings after it was clear that there wasn't really anything of technical substance occurring there.

semi-extrinsic3• 11 years ago

Either way, is really the best solution that women create their own hacker spaces where they can avoid the guys? Surely interacting with your fellow human beings and letting them know how you feel is a better solution?

Now, I come from a European country, where things like wolf-whistling at a pretty woman on the street is an unthinkable act for a sane, sober man. And I sincerely believe that increasing, not reducing, the interactions between girls and boys, men and women, is the key to reducing gender inequality.

zem2• 11 years ago

i see no problem with their wanting to start their own hackerspace. in fact, it seems to fit will into the hacker mentality of "don't waste time working with a broken system; go build your own good one from scratch". if it gets applauded when elon musk does it, why not when liz henry does it too?

Fomite4• 11 years ago

"where things like wolf-whistling at a pretty woman on the street is an unthinkable act for a sane, sober man." This does not mirror my experience of Europe even a little.

rayiner• 11 years ago

Maybe. After all, there are studies that show that girls do better in gender-segregated schools.

kaitai5• 11 years ago

Read the comments here: lots of guys are very frustrated about women interacting with their fellow human beings and letting them know how they feel. Sometimes it's just less tiring to work on the hacking without having to do the interacting and talking about feelings.

teamhappy2• 11 years ago

VOGUE has actually discovered this problem some time ago. They interviewed a feminist and asked her whether she feels sorry for guys not knowing what to do: Opening the door for a girl is condescending and not opening it is rude. Similarly, a lot of people will advise you to be welcoming and offer your help to women hanging out in hacker spaces, but obviously that can be annoying (talking about annoyances, I'm somewhat tired of being called a white dude) if it happens every other day and they just don't need the help. Given that you can't guess somebody's skill level I really don't see any solution to this problem (to be perfectly honest: It doesn't sound like that big of a problem to me).

Kalium10• 11 years ago

Do you have a link to that article handy?

rogerbraun• 11 years ago

'As with many extensions of startup culture...' - is this true? Are american hacker spaces grown out of startup culture?

TodPunk2• 11 years ago

Not in the slightest. Hacker spaces are an extension of just about every enthusiasts club ever, and if anything startup culture is a product of THOSE. Nobody sat down and said "you know, these startups are pretty cool, I should start a casual place to work on such a thing." Most hackerspace projects aren't even for profit, they're just things to learn on or group projects to socialize and expand the craft.

Remember that Wozniak tinkered with hardware for fun and his day job at HP. Such things were possible then, but before that there was always clubs for engineers and creatives of all kinds. We often ignore history when we create these kinds of articles, because writing things in the context of history is hard and doesn't get as many clicks if you don't put more effort into it. I find this phenomenon deeply interesting, as we'd do much better as a species if we learned historical contexts for a lot of things we think are new and powerful ideas.

tl;dr: No, startup culture is a niche extension of hackerspaces. Not the other way around.

angersock4• 11 years ago

I disagree further--I don't think that startup culture (especially the pseudo Ponzi stuff we see nowadays) has anything to do with hackerspaces.

"Startup culture" is purely an invention of "How do I build a business with no resources"? Hackerspaces are the continuation of HAM radio clubs and electronics clubs and engineers bullshitting at bars and people letting folks goof around with their broken television sets and kids goofing around on BBS.

None of that has anything to do with startups--to say otherwise is pretty much just astroturfing.

peterwwillis• 11 years ago

Here's a good article on the evolution of hacklabs and hackerspaces and how they got imported into the USA: http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-2/peer-reviewed-paper...

VLM2• 11 years ago

Imagine a 2600 meeting merging with a school club to provide a 24x7 venue for stuff you'd see at a HOPE conference or in a 2600 magazine. For a semi-mythological origin story that's not too far off from how it very subjectively feels.

Yet the extension of startup culture is true in a sense of massive participant demographic overlap. Mostly white, highly educated, male, generally hands-off technical background, very young and inexperienced, generally far above median income, overachiever in academic or vocational or artistic or perhaps all three, anti-individualist because its a socializing space, overwhelmingly urban extroverts... A bunch of socializing young java programmers aspiring to learn how to solder could be a startup staff or could be a hackerspace, depending on where they're sitting and who's paying the rent at that instant.

Jun84• 11 years ago

"This kind of agenda evokes the start of a feminist dream sequence, or the basis of a Portlandia episode."

Summed it up pretty well.

daenz3• 11 years ago

most hackerspaces tend to be full of dudes, or more specifically, white dudes.
Women and people of color join hackerspaces all the time ... “Our geek cred is constantly challenged or belittled ... some dude is going to come up to you and act like you need his expert lessons in how to hack.”

If "white dudes" are becoming more aware that women and minorities are getting into tech and wanting to get into tech, many of them will want to help in any way they can, including asking if you need help. Saying that this is belittling is saying that there is malicious intent, which is alienating to anyone who wants to help spread their knowledge to new people.

comrh4• 11 years ago

"Hey, whatcha working on? Need any help?" is different then "act like you need his expert lessons in how to hack." It is a lot about tone and sincerity.

Kalium10• 11 years ago

I hate to be the one to say this, but at several degrees of removal it's impossible for us to know the difference. People can and sometimes do interpret and re-interpret statements or behavior from intended meaning into something entirely different.

Here's one such example I've personally witnessed:

"Maybe you should consider that your life choices have consequences."

"Is that a threat? Because I can go get the police right now."

gress• 11 years ago

"Acting like you need his expert lessons" is not the same as "wanting to help in any way they can".

Jun84• 11 years ago

What does "white dude" even mean? I hate this label and always mark "other" in forms (to the extent that I can, some only have "white/black/asian/hispanic").

What does it mean to bring it up in the context of this article, other than merge all people with skin spectral signature falling in a cluster. But then there's this idea: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/16/how-fluid-is.... You can't have it both ways.

I'm not "white", I'm not a "dude" and I hate to be labeled as such, probably as much as these people hate to be treated as clueless just because they are women. Unfortunately, it's a sad fact that people who are on the receiving end of abuse usually practice it themselves when they get a chance.

Crito2• 11 years ago

"Dude" is used when the man has not made an attempt to signal to others that he is different from everybody else by altering his appearance or habits.

For instance, if a man tells his barber "just a regular cut", he may be described as a "dude". On the other hand, if he shaves his hair into a mohawk and dyes it hot-pink, he loses his dudehood and becomes an individual.

Whenever you hear somebody use the word "dude" in a tone that makes it sound disparaging, what they are basically telling you is "I am bothered by my perception that this man conforms."

redml• 11 years ago

I've only ever seen anybody write "white dude" in a condescending and insulting tone, this article is no exception.

So... the author claims she doesn't like any special treatment that women sometimes get... but also doesn't want to be like a common, boring, ordinary "white dude"?

alukima6• 11 years ago

I am a female programmer in my mid thirties. I've had careers before tech, I learn new things all the time.

I have the ability to tell the difference when someone is treating me a certain way because I am a newbie or because I am a woman.

It's incredibly insulting that every time this is brought up it's written off as women not understanding basic human interaction.

yarou2• 11 years ago

If you actively look for something to be offended about, you will find it.

I don't think it stems from ignorance so much as forced, willful ignorance to reinforce your own cognitive biases.

It borders on delusion if you get offended by a friendly, non-threatening gesture in a cooperative environment.

Jun84• 11 years ago

"I have the ability to tell the difference ..."

But that's the whole point: it's hard to tell! Of course the classification is easy at the end points (super helpful guy vs total arrogant jerk) but towards the mean the probability of false alarm is much larger. Geeks are a diverse bunch, it may just be that the guy is from another country where interactions are different or it may be just that he's a bit awkward initially because he does not interact with women daily (it happens).

I think the correct approach is to give them the benefit of doubt for a while before labeling them as dudes or whatever. Isn't that the golden rule?

rtz12• 11 years ago

It happens to men too though. There are arrogant colleagues I have to stop when they explain things to me I already know. And I didn't even ask for it. I don't know if they just think that everyone besides them is an idiot or if they just like to show off.

On the other side, I am maybe a bit too conscious about these things. Sometimes it is very hard to judge someones skill level. There are a lot of people who somehow manage as programmers without knowing even the most basic things. I find it often hard to explain these basic things to them without seeming like an arrogant showoff.

lizzard3• 11 years ago

Thank you!!! Yes!

Animats• 11 years ago

They don't say much about what tools these places have. I heard about DoubleUnion in SF, and asked my feminist punk lesbian artist friend about it. "What tools do they have" was her first question. They have a laser cutter, a low-end 3D printer, some Arduino stuff, and sewing equipment. She wasn't impressed. She's taught at TechShop. She needs at least a small milling machine.

TechShop itself has many women members and employees. But that's in decline. TechShop used to let their employees take any class they wanted for free, and women were getting jobs there and learning all the machines. Their main welding instructor was a woman, and a cynical punker with colored hair overhauled the milling machines. Now TechShop charges their employees for classes and they have to take them on their own time. The result is receptionists at tool checkout who don't even know what the tools look like.

britta• 11 years ago

Double Union has never had a laser cutter, but it has two small milling machines (a Shapeoko and a Handibot). It has a bunch of other tools as well, such as screenprinting equipment (exposure unit, screens, ink, squeegees, drying racks, paper cutters, etc.), a Silhouette vinyl cutter, button maker, woodburning tool, Dremels, light box for drawing/tracing, hot plate for dyeing fabric, etc.

skyfon5• 11 years ago

I don't know, I would expect these places to have plenty of tools.

thiht• 11 years ago

some dude is going to come up to you and act like you need his expert lessons in how to hack.

Seriously? "The bad white cis-hetero male offers us his help", patriarchy right?

This is ridiculous, really stop it...

orionblastar• 11 years ago

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked in a community college computer lab with students and teachers.

I sat behind a desk and waited for the students to come to me to ask questions or ask for help. I wasn't allowed to go up to the students and ask them if they needed help.

I handed out floppy disks, and one of them logged into the Novell Network on a PC or PS/2 DOS machine. We had software on the Novell server and on floppy disks.

I debugged programs too, we had a debugger for that but when she couldn't figure something out or it was in a language she didn't know they sent the students to me to figure it out. Lady who was a debugger eventually took over the department. She taught me logical methods when I was a student there. I was let go in 1992 because I graduated (I went half-time and worked half-time there, had to be a student to keep the job).

We had women and minorities as well in the computer lab, I helped everyone equally. We didn't seem to have the issues that exists today in hacker spaces with feminists. I don't know what has changed since 1992.

What I do know is that not knowing feminism or gender studies terms can make one look like a jerk or people can take things the wrong way. For example transgender people, if you don't know to call a transgender woman as a she or her and respect that she has an identity as a woman you could get into a lot of trouble. The slightest thing you say can be taken out of context and found as offensive. For example we had a professor who told a woman that her method for solving a problem was 'bush league' and that his method was a much better one. He was talking about baseball but the woman complained he was talking about female parts and so he got into trouble for sexual harassment.

lizzard3• 11 years ago

Here a bit late but I wanted to mention at least one amazing and beautiful project that (at least partly!) arose from Double Union members' work. BubbleSort - zines about computer science. Have a look! They are more like gorgeous tiny books than what you may think of as a zine.

BubbleSort: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sailorhg/bubblesort-com...

Or check out Natalie Freed's work in electronics, bookbinding, and art: http://www.nataliefreed.com/projects/

Or Jayne Vidheecharoen's awesome projects and her Appaloosa kit for kids learning mobile app programming, http://seejayne.com/

That is just off the top of my head! So much skill, idealism, and energy, combined with hard work! We have many members who are also part of TechShop, Noisebridge, work in tech, in startups, teach coding to wide audiences, and so on. DU and the other hackerspaces centered on women are worthy of celebrating! Our motivation is also very much that we want to support each other so that we feel able to stay in our various fields, and continue exploring our hacking and making arts.

So many talented women have gathered at the space and want to support each others' work. That's what should be highlighted.

I'll stop now :) Really, it's nice, though.

Inside the Feminist Hackerspace

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