It took a couple of Michio Kaku videos on youtube, a full night's rest, ranting to MS, JM, JK, SS, NP and other women, breakfast and a couple of ciggy breaks to finally calm down after watching "The Labyrinth of the Butterfly" last night. I was prepared for it because The Turtle told me about two years ago that the play (and the book that it was based on) totally dissed Michio Kaku.

Now, if you have any clue about me (or had at least traveled with me twice, or asked me about my favourite things in life), you would know that I would lose an arm to be Michio Kaku. And that I absolutely love his work.  I owe this man for bringing physics back to me, who has made me feel less of a Failed Physicist-Wannabe. This man is one of a handful of theoretical physicists who have de-mystified phsyics and quantum mechanics for regular human beings. He is one of the few scientists who actually take a stand against nuclear weapons and war. He is one of the even fewer physicists who write about women physicists and the lack of such women in the world of physics. This is a man who may not necessarily be gender-sensitive or feminist, but is not a sexist.

This is how I've always perceived Michio Kaku, so I was absolutely gutted when last night's play painted him as a sexist loser who designed "Molly" the highly-sexualised female robot straight out of sexist geek fantasy. First things first, Kaku is a theoretical physicist. His life's work is the M-Theory (one of the major strands of the Theory of Everything, whom he also calls "The Mother of All Theories"). He is not an applied physics person. I can't imagine him building a robot at all. I've heard about photos of him and the robot he invented, Molly, who was a mechanical Angelina Jolie of sorts. I have never seen that photo of Molly.

Secondly, here's a clarification of how Kaku wrote about Molly the robot: 2020 Vision (the 4th article on the page). I have to rely on the internet for actual quotes at the moment, I don't have my bookshelf with me (I haven't had it in over a month, in fact). I have read Kaku writing about Molly before, but she had never struck me as a highly-sexualised mechanic representation of the dirtiest male fantasies (of a subservient woman with big tits). It's been a while since I revisited "Visions", Kaku's book around the future of science and tech where he talks about Molly, but I've always thought that Molly was kind of like the voice in your head that reminds you of things and makes your life easier and safer. Not necessarily the sex-bot that was acted out in last night's play. I think our own discomfort at male girl-robot fantasies were assigned to last night's Molly, which resulted in Kaku being totally villified. Which is unfair.

Lastly, I've been thinking about last night's Molly and some of the points that were raised about a year ago when I was doing a gender evaluation training for a software localisation project.

So Nepal, 2007. We were talking about the fact that in text-to-speech software (which was particularly useful for illiterate communities), the male voice was much easier to use. It has to do with the differences in the decibel and frequency ranges of women's and men's voices. According to the geeks, in Asia, we did not have the skills and capacity to work with a female voice in text-to-speech software (the skills are available in the US, they said). This results in the absence of (literally) female voices in software that is localised in Asia.

We, the gender advocates in that meeting, said that it was important for women users (especially those who were dealing with their own fears of tech) to be able to hear voices in their software that they can relate to. Simply put, there must be a way to have female voices in the localised text-to-speech software.

So back to Cape Town 2008. If the premise is that having female voices in technology is empowering to women, why then do we have a problem with female-looking /-sounding robots? Wouldn't such an entity be empowering to women as well? Wouldn't such a creature be something that we can relate to as women (as opposed to a male robot)?

Or is the problem we have with Molly the fact that she was presented as a thing that did household work? That she had big boobs last night? That she was highly-sexualised?

Or is the problem because Michio Kaku is male and he was represented as having created her? Is this a problem even if nothing of Kaku's work point to his sexism?

Would Molly and Michio have been saved from ridicule and mockery if they had switched sexes?

Tags: activist stuff, awid08, awid2008, feminist rambling, geekery, pop culture, reviews of everything, tripping away, women and tech
coordinates: cape town
state of mind: grumpy
background noise: people buzzing at the FTX Hub

I'm procrastinating again. I have a few documents that need some work before I head out to hang out with friends in Malaysia next week. But I'm kinda stuck. So I checked the blog, which I haven't seen in over three weeks. And then I see this from angelicsmile:

Thank you for your opinion. If you read the stories provided by the Filipinas around the world, you will see the Filipina activist, the Filipina mail order bride, the Filipina working against domestic violence, the Filipina daughter, the foreigner hurt by his Filipina girlfriend, the Filipina mom, the Filipina daughter and so much more. We show hundreds of stories both positive and negative.

FilipinaImages.com is a collaborative effort of all the bloggers who believe that the The Filipina of the Future deserves a more empowered, diverse image online. Multiple, complex, and whole. " We are not out to change the Filipina perception but to balance the search engine results of Filipina websites. It's that simple.

I hope you take the time to read their stories.

Which is pretty cool. I generally blog for myself, and I don't really expect anyone other than my friends to comment. So receiving a stranger's comment, and a dissenting one at that, is good.

And the comment is fair enough.

I have to admit, when I wrote the The Filipina Paragon (Part 1), I was knee-jerk-reacting to a site that seemed to be trying so hard to improve the Filipina image -- with images that make me cringe. So I went back to the Filipina Images site to give it another go.

One of the things that are currently featured on the site were the WikiPilipinas Filipina Stories, a contest of one-shot blog entries on the modern Filipina. So I went to the winners of this contest as a starting point. Let it not be said that I am not willing to have my mind changed (ADHD kind of dictates that I do that at least once every thirty minutes, anyway). So here we go:

The winning entry was titled, The Filipina Doctor: Coming Full Circle, which expounds on the evolution of the Filipina healer from the pre-colonial babaylan to the Western doctor that she is now. It nods to ground-breaking Filipinas in the medical field. And it was a nice trip down the history of women in the medical field.

The entry the placed second was called, The Evolving Beauty of the Modern Filipina. The metaphor the blogger used was that of beauty products -- how beauty products have evolved from sabila to an entire fruit cocktail of products, and how that evolution was very much like that of  The Filipina (the modern Filipina is as well-developed as the current beauty products out in the market)... And the blogger also compared his effort to define the Filipina to a reader analysing a book., failing to realise that a woman is not the freakin' book, she's the freakin' author. Not objects or subjects, but creators of that so-called evolution... And don't get me started on how the history of the modern woman is compared to the history of beauty products... How the heck did that entry get second place?

The third place entry, the  Cyber Feminisation of Poverty: Mail Order Brides and the Image of the Filipina, should have won. The title was not a faked intellectual one. It actually cohesively looks at how the Internet has exacerbated the Mail Order Bride Dilemma (it sites sources and all that). It was well-written and the fact that the blogger didn't go all "We're Filipinas, we're so awesome" was pretty cool. It was the most intelligent one out of all of them.  My only problem with it was that the blogger posted pictures of women from mail order bride sites. What about their privacy, eh?

All in all, I was pretty pleased that the comment from angelicsmile prompted me to go back and read those blog entries.

But here's the thing. The objective of the Filipina Images site is to revamp the image of  The Filipina  from an exoticised  Mail Order Bride to that of one that is empowered and  not-a-hoe.  Good for them! But I still have an issue with who the subject of all of this is: Filipina Mail-Order Brides; Filipinas who go to these dating sites so they can bag a foreigner.

To me, it reeks of self-righteousness.
Let's all change the image of the Filipina into something more like us because we have careers and families and jobs and empowerment. Let's not let those Mail Order Brides ruin our image.

The whole thing speaks to a foreign audience.

Look! Filipinas are more than Mail Order Brides, we are empowered! Please change your minds about us!

I can't help but hear that underneath the pretty words.

I can't help but think that what this is doing is further alienating those women who think the Mail Order Bride thing is the only way out of their miserable lives. Further making them into objects of pity / scorn / analysis as we middle-class, empowered few sit in front of our machines and try to tell the world that we are not them.

_____

I'm not done. When I have free time, I will go back to that site and read some more.

But for now it's back to those concept briefs.

Tags: feminist rambling, life in manila, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: at home
state of mind: blah
background noise: aircon humming

I seem to be on a roll here.

I blame being stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a place with no pool table. I blame running out of Bleach episodes to watch. I blame the fact that the internet is the only entertainment and distraction right now. I blame the low yellow lights at night here that don't allow me to go back to Briane Green and Fydor Dostoevsky...

Anyway.

I stumbled upon this online community and campaign: Filipina Images.

I don't know. I don't know... On one hand, I'm glad such a thing exists. I'm glad that these women have banded together to combat negative images of Filipinas online. So good on them for doing that...

But then I saw how they defined 'Filipina' and nearly hurled:

Tags: feminist rambling, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: Sonya's Garden
state of mind: sleepy
background noise: people talking and wind chimes

Everyone's their own porn  producer / director / cameraman / lead actress these days.

The stories vary.

One story is of girl who gets her dead computer fixed and her files retrieved, which includes racy photos taken at a particular kinky moment between her and her lover. It's Jackpot Day for the pervy computer technicians, who not only view the photos, they put them up on the Web. She becomes a momentary object of fascination and fantasy.

Ditto, a girl who loses her cell phone that has the naked pics she took to MMS to her long-distance boyfriend. The bastard who gets her phone MMS's her photos to his friends and everyone on her contact list.

Another story is of a girl and her boyfriend. They break up. He wants revenge. So he releases their sex videos to their common friends.

The degrees of separation of the girls involved has significantly decreased in the last year. From last year's overheard conversation at a restaurant, to a friend of an acquaintance, to a friend of a friend, to a girl who sometimes parties at my place. It's becoming a regular story -- just another story of a girl who inadvertently became a porn star.

On one hand, I'm all for people being able to make their own porn. With video-enabled cellphones becoming more and more affordable, being one's own porn producer / director / cameraman / lead actress is becoming more and more possible, Besides, if taking a video during sex makes it more exciting, yay! I'm all for better sex for everyone.

And that ambitious little Bolshevik in my head hopes that this would be key in toppling huge Porn Corporations. Who would want porn films of people that are so hard to relate to when you can watch yourself? I know, the Bolshevik is realistic enough to know that's a pipe dream. But it's a nice dream.

What bugs me though is how these private photos and videos are distributed. Often, it's without the consent of the female subject. Her privacy is violated and more often than not, there's a fair bit amount of shame  and blame thrown her way. It's like she's being punished for having great sex.

I reckon there should be a way to avoid all that hassle without giving up all that fun. It would be wonderful if the world doesn't have any malicious lovers or pervy computer technicians. Good luck waiting for that to happen.

And since I'm a nerd, I think the solution has to do with how to use tech securely in your DIY porn:

• After taking a photo or video on your mobile phone, move the file somewhere else (like a portable hard drive or your computer) and delete it from your phone.
• If you're using your computer to store your sexy photos and pics, remember to encrypt your directories. Use something like TrueCrypt.
• When deleting your photos and videos from your computer, make sure it's properly deleted and no traces of it remains. Erase it.
• Keep one copy of your photos and videos. Multiple copies are harder to monitor.
  
• Store your photos in an offline device that only you have access to. Burn them on a CD or DVD and keep it in a place where you store your weed and other illegal substances.

Naive? Perhaps. But that's better than hoping for a world free of malice and perverts.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Tags: activist stuff, feminist rambling, geekery, life in manila, pop culture, takebackthetech, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines
background noise: bjork - army of me

Oh, I can go on and on. Then go on a bit further. Then talk about the problem with huge corporations...

But case in point: A website called Change for Equality, which aims to promote equal rights for women in Iran has been filtered by the government three times in less than two weeks. What this means is that the website (despite numerous domain name changes) has been blocked by the Iranian government -- which further means that ideas about women's equality in Iran are not reaching Iranian people.

For those of you who ever felt like taking a huge bat to their systems administrator for not allowing you to check on your Friendster  account, you know exactly what this is all about. And I hope you can relate with the frustration that government filtering of web content has wrought upon this campaign. So if you have a blog (or two), spend a few minutes cutting and pasting the text below in your respective spaces:

“Change for Equality,” the site of the One Million Signatures Campaign, has been filtered for the third time in less than two weeks. Despite having transferred the contents of our site to yet another domain www.we4change.com, a number of activists involved in the Campaign have decided to support our efforts further, through the establishment of weblogs, aptly titled “Change for Equality” where new articles placed on our site will also be featured.

Along these lines and based on its commitment to the continued dissemination of information about the Campaign, the Media Committee of the Campaign, is requesting all webloggers to assist us. Specifically we are asking that webloggers around the world establish blogs titled “Change for Equality” and post news about the Campaign as well as articles which appear on our site

Through this effort, we can assist in the free flow of information about the Campaign and in so doing we can also collectively object to the practice of filtering in Iran.

Not only is our contact and connection with our readers interrupted each time the site is filtered, but we are forced to expend an enormous amount of energy in reestablishing new sites. The purchase of new domains cost us 10,000 Tomans (roughly $12) each time. As a result, the continued filtering of our sites also puts a financial burden on the Campaign, which relies solely on the voluntary contributions of Campaign members and supporters to cover expenses. As such, any other suggestions for the elimination of the negative impact of filtering are most welcome.

In our initial effort to address the problem of continued filtering of our site, 6 weblogs have been established and launched. These weblogs along with our site will be updated simultaneously. Individuals interested in receiving information on new posts to our site and addresses for unfiltered websites and weblogs disseminating Campaign information should add the following Yahoo ID to their messengers: we4change@yahoo.com.

To share with us the address of new weblogs dedicated to sharing information about the Campaign, you can contact the Media Committee of the Campaign at onlinewechange@gmail.com.

New articles on the Campaign can currently be viewed on the site of the Campaign as well as on the following blogs:

http://we-change1.blogfa.com/

http://wechange1.blogspot.com/

http://wechange.blogfa.com/

http://we4change.blogspot.com/

http://we4change.blogfa.com

http://we-change5.blogfa.com/

Tags: activist stuff, feminist rambling, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines
state of mind: blank
background noise: kitty cats fighting over a plastic bag

Being the Resident Gender Token in most situations has made me reticent to initiate gender-related discussions in mostly-tech gatherings. I don't what to be that chick that everyone rolls their eyes at while thinking "there she goes, harping about gender issues again". Not that I don't think there are glaring gender issues in information and communication technologies and its communities and practices. It's simply that when you become the predictable gender person in any gathering, you lose your effectivity in getting your message across -- and that doesn't do much for the cause.

Or at least I think that's the case.

In any case, I was absolutely excited when I saw the Gaya, Gaya, and Jaya Trio was organising a "Culture, Gender and IT" session this afternoon. Natasha P and I had already done a Gender Evaluation Methodology for ICT Projects session a few afternoons back, and I really, really didn't want to be the Resident Gender Person in this camp. So seeing The Trio's session on the board made my day.

Or so I thought.

What really made my day today was the actual session. The Trio had prepared a presentation on what they believe were the connections between culture, gender and ICT, contextualised in the Indian experienced and focused on the serious lack of female FOSS developers.

The presentation was pretty controversial. It grounded current gender issues -- and their ripple effects on the FOSS developer community -- in the socialisation of women and men in Indian culture that begins with the Ramayana (of the pure and virtuos Sita who had to prove her virtue and value by going through tests and how Indian girls are expected to be just like her when they grow up). This is all reiterated in current portrayals of women in Bollywood movies and local soap operas -- where the protagonist females are always nice and sweet and obedient victims of situations who eventually find happily ever after because they're so nice and good and virtues, and where strong female characters are always portrayed as villains and / or end up dead.

The presentation then moves on (but not after many, many interruptions from the session participants who were asked to share the gender contexts in their countries) to explorations on whether that the male and female differences in aptitude in the hard sciences were genetic or social.

The main question, I suppose was: Is the reason why there are not enough female FOSS developers because women are simply not genetically predisposed to the hard sciences?

Jaya presented a study conducted by Elizabeth Spelke on female and male aptitude in the hard sciences. Apparently, according to the study of 13 year old Math Whiz potentials, the variance between boys' abilities was higher than that of girls. Which means that while there are more boys in the Super Duper Math Genius category, there were also more boys in the You Better Invest in a Nifty Calculator Because You Suck at Math category. Girls, on the other hand, because the differences between their aptitude were less striking, tended to be in the Average Zone.

So while there are girls who are good at Math, more boys are better and worse than them. Kind of balances everything out.

So it's not about genetics.

The presentation circled back to social and cultural barriers for women, specifically within the FOSS developer crowd. One of the ideas presented was that Perception plays a huge role in the opportunities given to women. Studies were cited of how both men and women change what they think about a person based on the person's gender. How parents think boy babies develop faster than girl babies (even though studies have shown that girl babies actually learn to walk and talk much earlier than their boy counterparts). How when it comes to a man and woman of the same skill level applying for the same job, men are almost always preferred to women.

So it is about gender-based and -biased social perception and culture.

The same biased perceptions that have kept women in "their proper places" seem to operate in the FOSS developer world. Right?

Here's what I think:
While basic gender concepts and assumptions are super and still hold true in most cases, I do think that there is a need to consistently and continuously check those assumptions. Because women's issues and situations are grounded on race, class, context and culture.

While disempowerment and discrimination still exist for women, there are women who do have power over other people and there are women who discriminate against other women. Some women have been just as bad or clueless to other women's needs as The Big Bad Male Dude.

While most geeks are clueless about gender issues, there are geeks who do understand gender issues and take them seriously (some of them are in this camp. whoopee!).

And lastly (I swear I will get off this soapbox in a few sentences), in attempting to get more female FOSS developers, please, please, please take the Self-Determining, Empowered Woman Who Can Open Her Own Doors and Make Up Her Own Mind approach. The space and opportunity to have more female FOSS developers should not be that seat in the bus that gentlemen give to women. It shouldn't be something that men give to women out of the goodness of their hearts. It is something that women should decide they want and therefore claim.

So efforts to increase the number of female FOSS developers should be about convincing women and girls on just how important and beneficial it is for them to get into FOSS. Because trust me, if a woman is sold on the idea that something / anything is absolutely beneficial to her (and what's important to her), she'll open her own doors to get to that thing.

Tags: asiasource2, women and tech
coordinates: sukabumi, indonesia
state of mind: satisfied
background noise: quang and friend talking

Well here you go, a woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. Yay. But what to do when her mind goes against what you believe in?

Over at flinkdesign, a blogger called Mir (a technonerd feminist) has a huge entry against the Take Back the Tech campaign, ranting against how the campaign places women once again in a "victim", us-against-them position. This time in relation to tech.

To be honest, a lot of what she says makes sense to me. I myself cringe at the almost knee-jerk strategy of using the victimisation of women to justify calls for women's empowerment. I've always believed that the call for women's empowerment didn't need any justification. Ditto, gender equality. Whenever someone asks me "why focus on gender?", I almost always respond with "why not.".

I also get her point about how women who have never owned Technology can take back the tech. Like how are we supposed to take back something that wasn't even ours to begin with. She's not the first person who has raised that.

But in the same vein, we should recognise that there are cases of "victimisation" of women in relation to technology. How there are very few women on decision-making tables in relation to ICT. How there are gender differences in how men and women have access to technology. How gender-based stereotypes persist in how men and women are represented on the Internet. How techie women are rare and are therefore the exceptions and not the rule.

But I suppose what Mir is really reacting against is the relationship between violence against women and ICTs. That's her main beef with the campaign. She's saying that there is no relation,  that "Take Back the Tech is missing the point by focusing on the gendered/bodified ramifications of techno-society (porn , stalking and rape to name just a few). Violence now is so subtle, so inscribed in the way we think about ourselves and the lives we live, that I would doubt we even consider it violence."

Then she ends with this: "I certainly don't think of myself as committing a violent act every time I return my damaged Ipod and get a shiny new one thanks to my watertight Applecare agreement."

Huh?

How did the point come from how gendered/bodified ramifications of techno-society and conclude with how having a damaged Ipod fixed is not a violent act? Such Straw Man tactics are not nice.

I also don't get how someone who rants against the assumptions the campaign is making about women (as weak, powerless victims of the big bad techie-male) bases her rant on her own assumptions of the women behind the campaign and what the campaign is all about.

I am so tempted to respond point by point to that blog. But what's the point? The lovely thing about being a Pro Heckler is that you can take pithy potshots and critical comments -- and never have to worry about rebuttals. I highly doubt that Mir will be up for a real discussion on what she's said. Heh. How's that for an assumption?

Tags: activist stuff, feminist rambling, takebackthetech, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines

While tv surfing lastnight, Cirio and I came upon the Tyra Banks Show on channel 52. Now my brother, he likes Tyra Banks -- not for the obvious reasons (the female of the species do nothing for him), but because I think he likes that she's proving that there's life after being a super model (not that my brother is a super model but his inner Super Model probably relates to Tyra Banks). In any case, I'm glad that he did stop at that show because the topic was "A Day in the Life of a Porn Star" -- so apt for the Take Back the Tech campaign!

First off, kudos to Tyra Banks for covering such a "taboo" topic. And extra kudos to her for trying to keep an open mind about it. The show presented different women in different stages in relation to the porn industry. The first two guests were women on the top of the porn industry -- the lead actresses in two of the major porn production companies. Then the third guest was a woman who wanted to go into hardcore porn. The last one was a woman who wanted to get out of making porn movies.

But what really captured my attention was this ex-porn actress-turned-doctor who heads the Adult Industry Medical Health Foundation, which provides health care services to porn stars and sex workers. She seemed to be quite pragmatic about being a former pornstar. She even told the woman who wanted out of the industry that it will be challenge to try to lead a "normal" life of a model or a mainstream actress because her films and images would continue to be re-produced and distributed, and that the reality is that she will always be stamped as an ex-porn actress. So the solution seemed to be to claim being a porn actress (even an ex one). To not give in to the social stigmatisation of being a porn industry worker.

Another thing that Tyra Banks pointed out was the double standard between male and female porn actors. Male pornstars could be older, while there was a high turn-over rate for female porn actors. It seemed that the porn-consuming public expects their women to be young. But that's true of the movie industry in general, isn't it.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Tags: feminist rambling, pop culture, takebackthetech, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines
state of mind: busy

I don't drive. I could if I wanted to but I choose not to for different reasons -- ranging from having an immature allergic reaction to the idea of owning anything grown-up like a car or a house, to knowing that owning a car in Manila is an exercise in patience because of really horrid traffic jams and a lack of parking spaces, to admitting that I already contribute enough to global air pollution by smoking a pack a day so there's no need to contribute anymore through gas emissions, to knowing that my ADHD-addled brain might actually endanger someone's (even my own) life if I suddenly lose my driving train of thought in the middle of the road, to not being able to save enough money to buy a car because my major investment in this lifetime is a spiffy collection of shoes ...

So I take public transportation. I take the MRT when I can and I take cabs when I can't be bothered by crowded trains. I take a lot of cab rides. I take long cab rides from my city to other cities in Metro Manila. I take cab rides in the middle of the day, at night, and very late in the night.

In the absence of any clear procedures to ensure women's safety while taking cabs in this country, women do need to be creative about how to keep themselves and their friends safe.

I've encountered different types of cab drivers. Most of them are quiet and polite. But on off days, I get into a cab with a driver who wants to "get to know" me better. In the event of such cab drivers, I have a prepared Standard Operational Procedure. First, I never give them my real name. I come up with more generic names like Mary or Ning. And I always tell them I'm not based in Manila so when they ask for my number, I can tell them I don't have a number. Then I SMS a friend and tell him or her that the cab driver is "too friendly". Then I call up that friend (when Big Boy was still in Manila, he was my emergency number) and then I pretend that I'm talking to my boyfriend / husband, and that he's expecting to meet me soon. I make sure that the cab driver hears my end of the conversation. Then I ask the cab driver to drop me off at a very public place near where I'm supposed to go -- hotels are great for this (it is pretty easy to get another cab from a hotel and it supports the story that I'm not based in Manila). There have been some instances where I've felt so uncomfortable with a cab driver that I have asked him to drop me off at the first heavily populated place I spot.

The key here is to remain polite and unfazed. Never, ever piss off the person who has control of the wheel. And never ever let them smell your fear. Even though I would love nothing better than to rant against some cab driver who starts dropping hints that maybe I would be interested in stopping by some sleazy motel room with him, I understand that pissing him off would probably push him into becoming more aggressive -- or, heaven forbid, violent.

One of the other things that I do with most of my female friends is ask them to SMS me as soon as they get home -- so I'll know they made it home in one piece. If they don't SMS me within an hour after we say our goodbyes, I call them up. Call me paranoid, but I'd rather be insane than to have unsafe friends!

I suppose it's great that cellphones have penetrated the Philippine market in such a huge way. All of my friends have cellphones so it's easier to get hold of someone -- whether to check on their safety or to assure mine.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Tags: feminist rambling, life in manila, takebackthetech, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines
state of mind: crazy
background noise: scissor sisters

It's frustrating chasing Feminists -- to do tech-related things. Frustrating because I know the reason why they're not responding is not a lack of interest or knack for tech-related matters. The reason is that Feminists already have too much on their plates.

I've spent the past week and a half trying to get women to participate in this open source camp. The organisers are aiming to have at least 30% of the participants be women -- in response to the reality that there are not enough women participating in open source initiatives. A reality that women who are in open source are hoping to change. So here's an opportunity for women to attend an open source camp. The organisers want women. But there have been few applications from women. So I've been chasing up just about every woman in Asia Pacific who might be interested and asking them to please, please, please, please with cherry on top, apply for the camp!

On top of that, the past few months have been about encouraging women to participate in the Take Back the Tech campaign. That's been a lot more successful -- perhaps because the campaign is closer to women's realities? Because violence against women (sadly) is a common theme for a lot of women and so the campaign resonates. It makes sense for Feminists to participate in it. So now we've got bloggers and women submitting postcards and linking campaign icons on their site. But at the same time, a lot of the Feminist communities we've approached for collaboration have remained unresponsive.

This has been a chronic reality of my work-life: getting frustrated about getting women to take technology more seriously. It's like chasing after a moving train. Or trying to schedule an appointment with the busiest people on earth.

And I understand. 100%. There are older issues out there. There are enough issues that Feminists and women are dealing with. And the issues are not going to be resolved in one life time, for sure. I understand why many Feminists are not taking technology seriously. I'm sure that once issues like violence against women, illiteracy, unfair gender division of labour, women's human rights, equal political representation, women's health are addressed, technology will be next on the agenda. I understand. I get it.

Which makes my frustration a lot more ...frustrating. Because I get the sinking feeling that it will never be fully on the Feminist table. And I sometimes feel like a brat about wanting tech issues on women's agenda, given that the women's agenda is already full to the brim with other issues.

I also fear that if we don't take hold of technology right now, there will come a time when it will be too late for women to be fully involved in the decision-making, agenda-setting and design aspects of it. That another five years of having only a handful of women and women's groups taking part in the political aspects of technology will mean that by the time other Feminists and women catch on on just how political technology is, it will be too late. Technology would have progressed in a way that it's a huge part of everyone's lives -- and women will be relegated to the role of users and consumers. That's already happening. I'm just hopeful that right now, it's not too late to change it.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

Tags: activist stuff, feminist rambling, takebackthetech, women and tech
coordinates: manila, philippines
background noise: Lucia and Alfonso wrestling somewhere near my feet