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A comment on Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology. Parent comment

Re:Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology by smsm42 on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @06:22PM (#7880777)
As I am reading it, the problem is not reaching out to talk. It is the assumption that is the only topic she should talk about. Meaning, if you're interested in person enough to give her a keynote, wouldn't it be better to let her actually decide what the topic would be instead of putting it as "you're a woman in tech, so you'll be speaking about women in tech or we'll find somebody else who will!"? That would be much better solution than arguing what form of genitals more appropriate to represent a fixed topic. If you're interested in the person, let the person speak.
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Re:Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology by hsod on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @06:36PM (#7880843)
It seems like your core point is that it is wrong for a conference organizer to seek out people to speak on a particular topic.

I disagree. This strikes me as exactly the kind of thing organizers should be thinking about.

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Re:Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology by snipeyhead on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @06:42PM (#7880865)
The problem is, women in tech isn't a topic I speak on, so by your logic, they should never have reached out to me in the first place.
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Re:Please Stop Asking Me to Speak About Women in Technology by smsm42 on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @07:49PM (#7881094)
No, it's not wrong in general. Don't try to make the argument about some abstract principle reduced to absurd generality. It was "wrong" in this specific instance to limit the topic to one narrow topic which is related to speaker's gender without letting the speaker to speak on more broad issues in which she's actually more knowledgeable and interested. "Wrong" meaning that if I visited a conference I'd wish the organizers didn't do it. Of course, it's their conference and they can make all the speeches be on any narrow topic they want, regardless of how displeasing it to me - I just say it would be better if they did not limit their horizons this way.
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