Merry Christmas!
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Wednesday, December 06, 2017
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
A bit more about #metoo
First of all, a disclaimer. You don't owe your story to anyone. It might be too painful. Or damaging for some reason. Or you are just not in the mood for writing.
Still, I was amazed at the number of people who felt that their story is somehow not worthy because they were only harassed when other people were actually assaulted or raped, or because they were not traumatized, or because it happened a long time ago, or less often than to someone else.
Whether or not you were traumatized is not the point. The point is that someone else did something that was wrong, and the fact that another someone else did something even worse to another person is not an excuse for them.
When a very drunk person drives his or her car into a yard of a daycare, chances are nobody will be traumatized either, at least if they didn't happen to hit anyone this time.
I don't think I was traumatized much. Not by the adult neighbor who molested me (no violence at all, hand-to-vulva contact only) when I was about 5. Not by the teenage boy who attacked me from behind, threw me in the snow and tried to rape me when I was 10. Not by the adult man who forced his way into my building after me, chased me into a corner, and tried to rape me when I was 15. This is not even the full list of rape attempts, not to mention harassment.
That was partly luck, partly violence, and partly me being a fairly insensitive person is some ways. If the rape did not succeed and I have suffered no physical damage I tend to recover from the psychological damage in several weeks. Those several weeks feel like a constant adrenaline rush, which is fairly unpleasant for me, and fairly hazardous for people who piss me off during that time. But again, I got lucky, and nobody pissed me off enough during that time to cause any violence. After that, it's just another story to tell. I got better. No lasting harm done.
I am sure this makes the next victims of the same assholes feel so much better...
Still, I was amazed at the number of people who felt that their story is somehow not worthy because they were only harassed when other people were actually assaulted or raped, or because they were not traumatized, or because it happened a long time ago, or less often than to someone else.
Whether or not you were traumatized is not the point. The point is that someone else did something that was wrong, and the fact that another someone else did something even worse to another person is not an excuse for them.
When a very drunk person drives his or her car into a yard of a daycare, chances are nobody will be traumatized either, at least if they didn't happen to hit anyone this time.
I don't think I was traumatized much. Not by the adult neighbor who molested me (no violence at all, hand-to-vulva contact only) when I was about 5. Not by the teenage boy who attacked me from behind, threw me in the snow and tried to rape me when I was 10. Not by the adult man who forced his way into my building after me, chased me into a corner, and tried to rape me when I was 15. This is not even the full list of rape attempts, not to mention harassment.
That was partly luck, partly violence, and partly me being a fairly insensitive person is some ways. If the rape did not succeed and I have suffered no physical damage I tend to recover from the psychological damage in several weeks. Those several weeks feel like a constant adrenaline rush, which is fairly unpleasant for me, and fairly hazardous for people who piss me off during that time. But again, I got lucky, and nobody pissed me off enough during that time to cause any violence. After that, it's just another story to tell. I got better. No lasting harm done.
I am sure this makes the next victims of the same assholes feel so much better...
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Equality and facts
If somebody asked me 25 years ago what I think about Damore's manifesto's claims that women are on average somewhat less (or more) suited to software jobs than men, I would have said "bullshit". 15 years ago I might have said "I don't know". Now, surprisingly, it's more of "I don't care".
A cynic in me would also add "and if anyone knows, they are sure as hell not telling us". Because if anyone really managed to measure the "natural biological" distribution of men and women in Computer Science, and it turned out to be less than 50% women, they'd look at what happened to Damore, and think again. And if it turned out to be 50% or more women, they would expect similar harassment from the other side. The subject is just too sensitive to talk about in public, which is kind of sad.
I find it scary that this is so important to so many people, because to me this means that our whole concept of equality is too strongly based of the idea that any two groups (at least groups that we want to be equal in a situation where we want them to be equal) do in fact have equal abilities. And I think this is a perilous path. "Group A is equal to group B at task X" is a falsifiable factual statement. Giving people equal opportunities is a matter of values, morals and policy, and should not depend on falsifiable statements.
A cynic in me would also add "and if anyone knows, they are sure as hell not telling us". Because if anyone really managed to measure the "natural biological" distribution of men and women in Computer Science, and it turned out to be less than 50% women, they'd look at what happened to Damore, and think again. And if it turned out to be 50% or more women, they would expect similar harassment from the other side. The subject is just too sensitive to talk about in public, which is kind of sad.
I find it scary that this is so important to so many people, because to me this means that our whole concept of equality is too strongly based of the idea that any two groups (at least groups that we want to be equal in a situation where we want them to be equal) do in fact have equal abilities. And I think this is a perilous path. "Group A is equal to group B at task X" is a falsifiable factual statement. Giving people equal opportunities is a matter of values, morals and policy, and should not depend on falsifiable statements.
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