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Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech
(www.wired.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My point is that looking at this just as men showing up at a woman thing inherently fails to acknowledge the reality of the discrimination on the workplace, discarding specifically any debate on why that would be the case. In other words, looking at those as just "men" is a sign of the inability to look at discrimination more broadly, and in my opinion reflects really bad on the intention of people who are working towards the elimination of gender discrimination. From my leftist perspective I see these kind of events as a push to extend the struggle to other victims of the system, rather than as those people ruining your turf.
It's not an event for "all marginalized people" or "anyone who experiences discrimination" are you capable of reading
I am, and in fact I have explicitly challenged this very same intention. I have explicitly mentioned that I feel is harmful to certain objectives not to extend the struggle to more oppressed categories, by using the power gathered (arguably expresses by having such large sponsors).
If you don't feel like trying to understand my point and choose to just post edgy one-liners, there is no need to have the conversation at all. You can let me know, I will block you and I will spare some notifications to myself and some reading for yourself.
So leave it to a marginalized group to help a more marginalized group? Why not shit on the ones at the top who aren't helping anyone, rather than the group of women who managed to pull together resources over years to help a specific group? I agree there should be resources available for other marginalized groups too, but this reads like rich people pitting the poor against the middle class so they don't realize who is actually taking almost everything for themselves.
I would say that if you have the concrete power of organizing an event with tens of thousands of people and huge sponsors, you might have some power and are less marginalized. Possibly (and I mean possibly) this is not the case for the average men who attended that event? If this is true, then I don't see why it couldn't be possible to help each other, using the power obtained (with years of struggle and effort).
Ultimately, you do need exactly that kind of solidarity and reciprocal recognition to be able to join the fight against the top.
Also, in this case "helping" is also very generous. Those people paid 600$ for basically nothing. The chances that recruiters who joined the event will care for anything else than recruiting women (to boost diversity in their company) are extremely little.
Either way, I still don't understand what the alternative is. For example, if you are a foreigner who needs a job for your visa, the chances that you will have a) a network of people, b) the resources and c) the overall possibility to organize something similar are nonexisting. What is our proposal for this people? How do we ensure that we can fight the top, if workers are splitting among themselves? I am asking genuinely, because for example, in my opinion, if today you go to some of those guys and you say "sorry, fuck off this is not for you go do your fair", tomorrow, in the workplace it's not going to be as easy to build a union with your woman colleague. It's going to be easier to see yourselves as part of two different groups than the same class.
So what can we do instead that leaves the necessary space for women while not alienating this people?
I'll do us both the favor, actually.
Thank you, whenever you feel like having an actual conversation, you can reply to the comment.
So we shouldn't help anyone because it doesn't help others from different groups. That's straight stupid.
I was going to answer, but then I realized that if this is what you chose to understand from my comment(s), probably that means you don't want to have a conversation. I will save my time, if you don't mind.