Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Blog, Internet resources, online reading groups, articles and interviews, Illuminatus! info.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Meredith Patterson on feminism and empathy


Meredith L. Patterson

Meredith L. Patterson, an American writer and software developer, published a piece in 2011 on Medium. com called "Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy," which I read this week as a byproduct of the ongoing "Gamergate" flame warms. I express no opinion on Gamergate, other than that women expressing opinions on the Internet should NOT be targeted with harassment, death threats, exposure of their personal files, etc., but I thought with all of the discussion about women in tech, Patterson's piece was timely. It's all about how labels should not be used to put people into boxes, a continuing concern raised by RAW over and over. Although Patterson is a feminist, she pushes back against the claim that she "should not" feel comfortable in the world of technology. A bit from Patterson's posting:

I’ve learned some lessons all by myself about what kinds of places I feel comfortable in. With all its warts, the tech community is still one of those places. I wish there were someone, anyone I could talk with about why that is, and how it happened, and how to go about making that scale. So it disturbs me, deeply, to hear that I am a “human shield for entrenched misogyny” and that the experiences I cherish “must be challenged and ultimately dismantled.”

She's on Twitter. 

No comments: