Re:Things You Think Aren’t Sexist, But Really Are
by ruthburr on Monday March 25, 2013 @04:29PM
(#5439507)
Thanks tonyarkles, and to clarify: I'm not saying that it's OK for me to indiscriminately go around hugging people, either. I'm saying that in general the only people I hug are people that I know well enough to know that a hug will be OK from both sides.
Re:Things You Think Aren’t Sexist, But Really Are
by Nate75Sanders on Monday March 25, 2013 @06:21PM
(#5440089)
That's not remotely what you were conveying in your original piece, despite whatever intentions you may have. Go read your original words about offering a hug vs what you just wrote as the parent of my comment -- they're just plain not the same.
That fine-grain material, your incorrect use of the word "sexist"/"sexism" and your stated desire to create a COMPLETELY de-sexualized environment in places that have thousands of people (PyCon this year had a larger population than the town in which I grew up) just makes this stuff really hard to read.
We're missing out on REAL sexism by people complaining about getting hit on and hugs and shit. It's depressing.
You say that as though male-male, female-female, male-female, and female-male interactions are all identical; they're not. I really don't think that she's saying she's going to indiscriminately grope people based on "whether or not she feels they're on hugging terms".
As far as a double-standard goes, it's a fact of (Western) life that a man going around offering unwanted hugs to women is seen as significantly creepier than a woman who offers an unwanted hug.
You're more than welcome to try to change that! Next time you receive an unwanted hug from a woman at a tech conference, make as much of a fuss as you want about it. Report it to the conference organizers.