Terrors of the past
Apr. 24th, 2011 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleI had an experience nearly twenty years ago that kind of freaked me out. I was about 20, and had just written a few custom scientific applications for the Macintosh II, so John and I went to a conference on Mac scientific computing in Santa Barbara where I gave a talk about one of them.
After the talk, a group of three women approached me and accused me of having sexist graphics in my presentation, which insinuated that women were not competent programmers. They were quite aggressive about it too. At the time, I rebuffed them and said I thought they were being ridiculous, but in my heart I knew they were right. For years, I thought of the whole affair with dread, and felt ashamed at having used inappropriate and offensive graphics for the sake of being clever.
Well, just today, while cleaning out my office, I came across the slides from that talk. And you know what? It was very different from what I had remembered. Looking at them, it's obvious that the charge of sexism was completely ridiculous.
I had used a lot of borrowed art to add witty touches to the slides, and among them was a campy photo of a woman in 50's style dress, looking shocked and alarmed at something. I suppose it was this one that fired them up. This image was among several other slides showing male figures in various states of distress - Rodin's thinker falling off his chair, Zippy the Pinhead falling off a cliff - all used to illustrate the terror of undertaking custom software projects. It was actually very gender balanced, depicting both men and women in successful and unsuccessful endeavors.
I cannot believe that for 20 years this weighed on me, as if I had completely embarrassed myself. But it was all over nothing.
After the talk, a group of three women approached me and accused me of having sexist graphics in my presentation, which insinuated that women were not competent programmers. They were quite aggressive about it too. At the time, I rebuffed them and said I thought they were being ridiculous, but in my heart I knew they were right. For years, I thought of the whole affair with dread, and felt ashamed at having used inappropriate and offensive graphics for the sake of being clever.
Well, just today, while cleaning out my office, I came across the slides from that talk. And you know what? It was very different from what I had remembered. Looking at them, it's obvious that the charge of sexism was completely ridiculous.
I had used a lot of borrowed art to add witty touches to the slides, and among them was a campy photo of a woman in 50's style dress, looking shocked and alarmed at something. I suppose it was this one that fired them up. This image was among several other slides showing male figures in various states of distress - Rodin's thinker falling off his chair, Zippy the Pinhead falling off a cliff - all used to illustrate the terror of undertaking custom software projects. It was actually very gender balanced, depicting both men and women in successful and unsuccessful endeavors.
I cannot believe that for 20 years this weighed on me, as if I had completely embarrassed myself. But it was all over nothing.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-25 06:19 am (UTC)The only men they get along with are clean-cut fem type men.
*Hugs*