[Discussion] Feminism and social justice, plus FAQ!

This thread is for discussing feminist issues--from the narrow meaning (a movement for social justice in terms of gender equality) to the broader meaning (a movement for social justice, period), and from the scope of issues in gaming and geek culture to kyriarchy in general.

Basic questions are allowed here for now, we will split out a Q&A thread should it become necessary.

This has always existed, is everywhere, and is not unusual.

Yeah I saw "Uber" in the feminism thread and knew exactly what it would be. Can't bear to read the rest of the story.

Same here. I was sad when I read it, but unsurprised.

Uber is an argument for public transportation.

CEO says they'll investigate. Wonder how that will turn out when HR is legit making up sh*t and burying sh*t. They didn't just make up that policy themselves.

It looks as if Susan Fowler's blog post is sticking a bit.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick just announced that the company has retained an outside law firm, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's firm to be exact, to "conduct an independent review into the specific issues relating to the work place environment raised by Susan Fowler, as well as diversity and inclusion at Uber more broadly."

He's also flying out Arianna Huffington, who sits on Uber’s board, to join the review as well as conduct small group and one-on-one interviews with Uber employees.

All of this reeks of a crisis management public relations move considering the company hemoraged $3 billion last year and doesn't need something else making it look toxic to investors. But I suppose it's slightly encouraging that Uber's management is doing something instead of just ignoring the issue as they have for years and years.

Yeah, Uber is reportedly in full blown panic mode. The mass uninstalls after they were perceived to be strikebreaking at the airport protests already had them shaky, and now this post hit national news.

In a just world, they might become the poster child that actions have consequences, even for high-flying startups. Remember, Uber's strategy was always to force the competition out by subsidizing cheap rides and making their cash via IPO. If their VC funding dries up before their self-driving cars pan out, they risk going under, despite their billions in cash reserves.

Will sexism sink them? Probably not, if history is any guide.

Uber is in an interesting market, where they are more dependent on on Urban users than rural and the customers and drivers (other than the ones with leases through Uber) have low switching costs and so they really could run into where their culture drives (pun!! HA HA) away their business.

Gremlin wrote:

Will sexism sink them? Probably not, if history is any guide.

Yeah with a misogynistic, admitted sexual assaulter sitting in the White House, I'm not optimistic.

Hopeful, but not optimistic.

Oh ffs. Rape culture: now apparently the policy of the US Department of Justice.

DRAFT MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL

Hypatian wrote:

Oh ffs. Rape culture: now apparently the policy of the US Department of Justice.

DRAFT MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL

Figures. Title IX protections have been in the crosshairs.

Speaking of being unsurprised:
ALL THE SHADES OF UNSURPRISED

We’re all outraged at Uber – again. Because it turns out that the company that tolerates sexual harassment from their drivers, and in the government they work with, also tolerates and enables it… amongst their own employees.

And yeah, this was really bad, but it’s not like this is just Uber. I’ve heard similar stories from most tech companies and every woman in tech I know has a story like that. Often more than one. We all know that HR is there to prevent the company getting sued, not anything else. The only shocker here is how blatant it was – do they know what retaliation means?

One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn’t be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been “given an option”.

It’s safe to hate on Uber, because we know they are evil. The challenge is not tweeting something supportive when it happens at a company you hate. It’s how you react when it happens in a company that you’re invested in, to someone sitting right next to you. Many men have sat next to these things, known they were happening, and said nothing. Plenty of white women have done the same to women of color.

Perhaps we should talk about how even when the disregard for the law is flagrant, as it is here, it’s still better to write a tell-all blog post than to seek legal redress. Women know the consequences for that, and they don’t take them. Who can blame them.

Read the rest, if you're up for it. I expect most of the women here won't find anything surprising, of course.

Hypatian wrote:

Oh ffs. Rape culture: now apparently the policy of the US Department of Justice.

DRAFT MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL

Bullet point 2, slut shaming allowed as evidence. WTF.

Uber might genuinely be worried that #DeleteUber is working

Love the tone..... the sure and certain knowledge that the company is a bunch of scumbags.

However, a worrisome thing:

On Friday, Fowler reported on Twitter that she is now a target of a "smear campaign."

She says that research is being done on her, and to contact her if anyone asks about her.

Demyx wrote:

Yeah I saw "Uber" in the feminism thread and knew exactly what it would be. Can't bear to read the rest of the story.

You can now add "Tesla" to that list:

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...

A female engineer at Tesla has accused Elon Musk’s car company of ignoring her complaints of “pervasive harassment”, paying her a lower salary than men doing the same work, promoting less qualified men over her and retaliating against her for raising concerns.

The allegations of AJ Vandermeyden, who still works at the celebrated electric car manufacturer, paint a picture of a hostile work environment dominated by men where inappropriate sexual behavior is tolerated and women face numerous barriers to advance their careers.

More uber garbage:

I am An Uber Survivor

When I read Susan Fowler’s story, my blood boiled. I am not able to sleep. My friends kept sending me updates on the story and insisting on letting my own experience be made public. I am sure there are plenty of women still working at Uber’s San Francisco office who have many such stories to tell. Here is my story.

Crossposted from the Kickstarter thread, but totally relevant:

Delerat wrote:

Not games, but I thought I'd drop by and post my sister's Kickstarter for a coloring book full of women who have changed the world. She's been wanting to do this project for a long time and she's finally going for it.
Women Change-Makers

...buuuuuuuuuuuh. Wonder how many tech bros bought into Apple when they were kind of puttering around dumping stock from Intel while they went big on diversity during GG?

(Totally recognize this isn't likely what happened but... just... bleh...)

95% against is so overwhelming that I can't help but think there was something fundamentally wrong with the proposal.

Malor wrote:

95% against is so overwhelming that I can't help but think there was something fundamentally wrong with the proposal.

I do not know the specifics of the proposal, but Apple has a ginormous pile of cash and some investors in the past have tried to shake up their BOD to get people on it amenable to using that cash for dividends or buybacks of shares. I can see Apple's current management against any change in case it leads to the above scenario.

Because the proposal fell short of 6 percent of the vote this year, Apple has the ability to block future proposals that are similar to it for the next three years. Maldonado suspects there’ll be a way around it, possibly by being more specific about what a diversity initiative would entail — this current proposal left all the details up to Apple. He’s hoping to get the language worked out within the next couple months.

That doesn't sound like there was enough meat there to be "fundamentally wrong". Just "come up with a plan for recruiting to improve diversity within the top ranks".

If anyone has or finds that vagina laser gif, the one with the woman in the air, but without the text at the bottom, please pass it along to me.

My lovely facebook feed had several of my old highschool classmates linking to videos about how someone speaking at a National Day Without a Woman event was a convicted terrorist/murderer who had killed a bunch of people in Israel. Naturally this was then followed up with comments about how the entire movement was obviously some liberal plot to destroy the country and that anyone who took part in the Day Without a Woman protest should be ashamed of themselves. Snopes has a piece about the woman in question saying basically that the terrorism confession was obtained under torture and that she also had immigration issues for not disclosing her prior conviction. Anywho, so here we have one questionable individual who helped organize a protest and was a speaker and now it's being used by some to completely invalidate the entire issue being raised by the protest. One pastor I know even commented on the article that the wage gap is not real, that women have the same rights as men and that anyone who says otherwise is lying, but that we should still treasure our women as beautiful and strong people. The number of women who were hear-hearing the comment just left me confused. How is it we still live in a world where women talking about problems they are experiencing is seen as some devious plot to destabilize the nation?

Kehama wrote:

Anywho, so here we have one questionable individual who helped organize a protest and was a speaker and now it's being used by some to completely invalidate the entire issue being raised by the protest.

This is a common tactic. Every time someone rants about "liberals", you can almost count on the fact that the argument is focusing on some individual person (or even just some nameless, unverifiable people) and elevating them up to be a symbol of the whole group of people they refer to as "the liberals".

A similar spin: people ranting about "political correctness". If they even bother naming a concrete example at all, it will be some random incident, but it gets elevated to the position as if that exact same thing is happening absolutely everywhere.

Every single rant I see about "liberals" this or that, it's rarely ever citing the words of a left-leaning legislator or someone else of consequence, but rather a rant about some faceless people that totally exist everywhere and are all doing the exact same thing.

Kehama wrote:

How is it we still live in a world where women talking about problems they are experiencing is seen as some devious plot to destabilize the nation?

Left vs right politics. Or alternatively, people who benefit from the establishment vs those who don't. *shrug*

An interesting discussion on the gender death gap in Canada, iirc the US also has one, likely for similar reasons.

It can be argued that across all three major causes of men dying earlier than women—accidents, suicide and heart disease—men are wholly responsible for their own early graves: male life is cheap because that’s how they act. While such an attitude probably explains the overwhelming social indifference to the gender death gap, it doesn’t make it right.

I'll caution on the tone the author opens with in the below and annoyingly keeps revisiting throughout the piece; the discussion should be had, but it could and should be had without the sort of 'yeah women have problems but men DIE!' vibe that the author can't seem to let go of.
A gender gap that’s a matter of life and death

Irony, a large part of the gender gap on life expectancy is, itself, a result of patriarchal systems where men feel more inclined to take risks to prove manliness and masculinity and instead just get themselves hurt more frequently and more severely.

It's worse than that. When women bring their health concerns, they're routinely dismissed by their doctors (Independamt article). Plus, there's the misconception that women are protected again certain diseases (like heart disease).