I really need a break from communities run by and for men, honestly. I know I sometimes come across as aggressive, but I rarely do in spaces run by women and other gender minorities. It's just that to exist as a woman in this area, it feels like you constantly have to fight.
And you have to be careful to fight just hard enough for the amount of power and privilege you have at any point, and in the right ways. And the last few months for me have been reminder after reminder that this is true. These are important things to know, but also exhausting.
Sometimes it's nice to just exist.
This is how I feel in same-sex relationships, for example. I can just exist. I don't have to fight for anything. I can like, walk around and look at flowers and enjoy sunshine. I don't even have to talk that much. I can just be.
I like the person I am more in those contexts. Because fighting often causes some pain, and I don't like seeing other people in pain. I just want to be kind and loving and respectful to everyone I meet. But when people cause pain, I feel morally obligated to act.
Anyways I'm just tired. Can we have like a retreat for women and other gender minorities in CS once this pandemic is over and everyone is vaccinated? And just hang out and make friends and so on? Not even a conference, literally a retreat? Like in the woods?
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Researchers' trust probably won't be regained without a more individual approach to this, though. We are a small and tightly knit community; there is not really a way to regain trust while ignoring damage to individuals in our community.
That Google can't see this is concerning. Also, losing researchers' trust has a contagious effect in the engineering recruiting pool by way of faculty opinions.
I guess to people confused, my research community is now discussing whether and, if so, how to remame a proof assistant called Coq. The name is meaningful in French, but the English innuendo was known and a part of the "joke" when it was first named decades ago.
The person who named it this has a pattern of acting harmfully.
And multiple women in the community (myself included) have been at best laughed at and at worse harassed for talking about our work in public or to students.
Quick Talia communication guide: When I propose something, I expect people to counter it by raising concerns combined with potential solutions, then I'll counter and propose in response, and so on until we reach consensus.
Similarly, when someone else proposes an idea, and I counter it by raising concerns and potential solutions, I am engaging excitedly and in good faith to work toward consensus.
The frame is collaborative: let's work together to think of better ideas than either of us could think of alone!
I know it's minor, but every pronoun use seeds the internet with more data, and I like seeing societal efforts to fight normative pronouns for professions
This is the main reason I switched from alternating pronouns to using entirely she/her and they/them in my papers.