Pretty Terrible

Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs

Links: 01/23/15

And with that link to a great article at Model View Culture, we move into a complicated and hard thing that is happening in tech right now (lots of content warnings for the links).  Late last week, Shanley Kane (co-founder of MVC) was doxxed after calling out Linus Torvalds for being (understatement) a jerk. Then Nero wrote a thing with lots of quotes from weev that I’m not going to link to because Nero and weev. Here’s Shanley Kane’s statement.  I read this and was sickened and tweeted in support, which caused my block button to get a mild workout.

Then, this morning, I read this post from Amelia Greenhall which discusses Kane’s verbal and emotional abuse of her while she was working with her on MVC.  Kane’s subsequent erasure of Greenhall’s significant contributions to MVC is also quite upsetting, to say the least.

Harassment is not okay. Abuse is not okay. Harassment and abuse in the name of diversity is not okay.

Instead of trying to articulate my thoughts–which are mainly along the lines of this being complicated and hard–I’m going to link to some posts that I found interesting reading. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I’m linking, but did find something of value in each item.

One of my personal goals this year is to work harder to be less black and white in my thinking; people are complicated and no one is all one thing or another. This is the part of Haibel’s post which I found most resonant and which I’m going to be thinking about for a long time:

In coming forward, Amelia Greenhall calls for a path of greys — for a path where we acknowledge that people can do good work and also do harm, for a path of nuance, for a path where respectful disagreements are possible.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Women warriors: “the notion that a 60-year old rural matriarch needs to pay attention to her weight would be risible, anywhere outside Percy’s hypersexual, anorexic milieu … No wonder the matriarch finally turns to Percy’s minder and asks, “What is wrong with her?” ”

    Hahaha!

    I really enjoyed Genevieve Valentine’s Miss Universe write-up (and photos!). I don’t get the Reign Division thing, though. Is it former Miss Universes? (and why do I want to say Universi?) Is it national costumes one could imagine a queen wearing? Some have tiaras/crowns, some don’t … O-o ? Anyway, “Miss Indonesia … like we’re moments away from watching her glorious transformation into a Baroque metallic bird and flying triumphantly away.” Whoo!

    Ice balls: Some interesting thoughts there, e.g., the part about men mansplaining to each other, too. The part about testosterone reminded me of http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/01/features/why-men-risk-it-all/viewall — differently-gendered effects of testosterone and cortisol on Wall Street behavior and decision-making (steroid feedback loops affect men more than women, as in male traders getting more caught up in bubbles/crashes).

    I also really liked the article about the inventor.

    Re Shanley: yep, doxxing is not ok, erasure is not ok, the same people can be forces for good and bad at the same time. I noticed this bit in Shanley’s “Also Elizabeth Spiers … move on with your life as a has-been. You are literally 10 years older than me, yet are relentlessly picking on a young woman with an up-and-coming media career like you once had.” I know Spiers says she hasn’t been doing what Shanley says, and I don’t know who is lying (maybe to themselves, too) or if they’re both being honest and someone else is playing both of them by impersonating Spiers. But even if Shanley were right and Spiers was jealous of her, that ageism is not right.

  2. The Reign stuff has to do with the television show Reign, which I don’t watch, but I know Genevieve does (and I believe she recaps it somewhere, too). The costuming is…interesting on the show.

    I agree about the ageism in Kane’s statement–absolutely not right and another kind of erasure. Kane also behaved a bit strangely after an interview with her ran in MIT Tech Review, if I remember correctly.

  3. Regarding my comment above, I do see the problem with the anorexia-shaming quote from the Women Warriors article. Although I think the article’s point is about US culture versus other cultures, the short quote I cited doesn’t give that fuller context.

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