Thread by @sqiouyilu

I’m so tired of “diversity,” I just want to call it “scope” from now on, because if your scope is intentionally broad then it’ll usually be diverse, but diversity does not necessarily indicate a broad scope, and “scope” can specifically address systemic exclusion

you can add “diversity” all fucking day but if your scope is “we want to hear from rich first-world anglophones” then it’s not true diversity

and people will be so busy diversifying broken institutions that they never stop to think, “what is the actual scope of this institution, how have we defined constituents and audience, and how does this definition exclude people and/or increase barriers; how can we broaden scope”

build something for those in the margins, and the centered can generally participate

build something for those in the center, and the marginalized are typically excluded

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 this, more to consume does not inherently mean progress and can often mean anti-progress

https://twitter.com/cour13r5/status/1567202236324790273

anyone in publishing who does not know the meaning or extent of “brain drain” needs to do some basic self-educating before building structures

fundamentally this is about understanding the unmarked and marked state, a linguistics concept that applies very, very well to analyzing power

as a concrete example: I keep bitching that clothes should be made with plus sizes first, then tailored down to smaller sizes

https://twitter.com/sqiouyilu/status/1567199026566828034

if you make plus-size clothes first, you (1) design something intended for those proportions that’ll fit better than scaling up small things (which does not work), and (2) ensure that you can go down to the small end of your range by just tailoring down larger garments

I mean, I’m not someone in the fashion industry, but I *am* unable to shop at stores that only go up to size 14, and it’s such a painfully obvious artificial boundary that relies on people’s assumptions of bodies and clothing being For Thin People, when clothing is for EVERYONE

so often, even if you very innocuously ask people to try a thought experiment of reversing the marked and unmarked states—“what if we designed for this instead of for this first?”—they’ll often get *angry* with you! because it challenges such core values and also the status quo

but like the null hypothesis, one has to understand what’s considered marked and unmarked, and any attempt to “diversify” by adding more marked states and never questioning the unmarked one is going to repeat the status quo and fail

the easiest way to exercise this muscle?

the “bold of you to assume…” meme format

I call it “shitposting” for short, but actually what I’m doing is intellectual play—people tend to give themselves more permission to experiment and to rely less on “should”s and norms when it comes to humor, especially absurdist humor, which makes new connections bountiful

if you think to yourself and give yourself permission to be a smartass “bold of you to assume…” and make yourself come up with an answer, even if nonsensical, you end up stumbling on an unexpected realization or introspection half the time

you don’t have to *post* any of this, it’s just a mental game to play as you go about through the world to make you aware of what you do and don’t assume, and like, understanding your assumptions is bias training 101

we all assume things and assumption is not inherently bad, what’s crucial is knowing that EVERYTHING in the world is *designed* based on assumptions, and it’s a *skill* that’s consciously developed to identify those assumptions

if you ever picked up a tool and it felt as if you intuitively knew how to use it and it suited your needs? that’s because someone else out there assumed that someone would have that need and be in certain situations and designed to accommodate for that

the key is understanding that just bc it suits your needs, does not mean it suits others’, or that it’s the right tool for a different job; only by broadening scope, expanding your theory of mind, understanding others’ experiences, and *imagining*, can you begin to solve this

anyway *sighs in I should probably eat during the last 10 min of my lunch break* that’s really what I’m getting at with #InTheWatchfulCity, it’s about storytelling and conversation creating a dialectic that makes clear marked and unmarked states, I wrote a model