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Sign up“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley â A Dribble of Ink
aidanmoher.comI am going to tell you a story about llamas. It will be like every other story you have ever heard about llamas: how they are covered in fine scales; how they…
THIS. This is fantastic. *applauds* Also some fantastic artwork in the article.
“The question is how we react to this great prejudice against women. The rule of law and social activism certainly are crucial. But no matter how strong the social structure, there is always that cheek-slapped moment when you are alone with the anti-woman prejudice: the joke, the leer, the disregard, the invisibility, the inescapable fact that the moment you walk through the door you are seen as lesser, no matter what your credentials. I have no guidance for women who want to rise through the ranks into technical management. I have led a peripatetic life, moving on when a project was done or the next thing intrigued me. And I am not advising younger women (or any woman) to tough it out. You can lash back, which I have done too often and which has rarely served me well. You can quit and look for other jobs, which is sometimes a very good idea. But the prejudice will follow you. What will save you is tacking into the love of the work, into the desire that brought you there in the first place. This creates a suspension of time, opens a spacious room of your own in which you can walk around and consider your response. Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.”
—Pioneering software engineer Ellen Ullman, author of the fascinating Close to the Machine, on how to be a ‘woman programmer.’ Pair with Margaret Atwood on literature’s ‘woman problem’ and Caitlin Moran on how to be a woman.6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism
news.nationalgeographic.comThese six scientists were snubbed for awards or robbed of credit for discoveries … because they were women.
“But the prejudice will follow you. What will save you is tacking into the love of the work, into the desire that brought you there in the first place. This creates a suspension of time, opens a spacious room of your own in which you can walk around and consider your response. Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.”
—Former software engineer and current author Ellen Ullman had a fabulously thoughtful op-ed in The New York Times about her experiences being female in the tech world, and speaking about the changes she’s noticed (not ones for the better, really) in the world of coding and software for women.
I love this last paragraph (the one quoted above) in particular, partly because it’s so real but also so genuinely hopeful. It has real promise but it casts no illusions over what it means to be female in any sort of man’s world. Ullman is talking about a prejudice that women far afield from the world of coding can instantly understand. It may not be phrased identically, but the language of dismissal, neglect and prejudice is at its heart universally recognizable and understood, as is the process of structuring the reaction to it.
Definitely read the full op-ed.
“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley â A Dribble of Ink
aidanmoher.com“Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.”
A must-read for any writer of fiction. And for anyone, y’know, existing in this world. Kameron Hurley wrote an incredible piece here.
