[sanitised to remove the name of the website - you know who you are ;-)]

A few days ago (at the time of writing), a news site that I sometimes contribute to linked to an article about gender issues affecting women’s entry into IT. The article was quite provocative and I think that I’m being fair when I describe the tone of the article as “feministic”. Anyone who knows me well can probably guess what happened next… I decided to make “gender issues in IT” the topic of my fourth article for that site.

Unfortunately, this article was rejected. And through the experience, I think that I’ve learned a few things. I’ve taken the criticism on board, and the truth is that the article could have been better executed. The subject matter is important to me and the article - in both conception and execution - isn’t representative of my best efforts. However…

I would consider it to be in poor manners to reproduce private correspondence on a public website such as this but the editor told me that he considered the tone of the article “shrill” and aggressive. He explained that he did not agree with my ideas. He then went into a bit of detail about his own beliefs on the subject and quite frankly, I was left feeling that he wanted me to re-align the ideas to match his own before he would publish the article.

This is the point that I am most annoyed about.

As part of my response I pointed out that it was the job of an editor to edit rather than to tell the writer what to write. I made it clear that I was willing to discuss compromise in terms of editing (such as removing part 1 - 2,000 words or so - of the article).

The incident left a particularly bitter taste in my mouth as the same site had, earlier that week, linked to such a feministic article on the same subject. The comments section of that article posting revealed that other users of the site were, both interested in the subject matter, and like me, opposed to some of the ideas.

It’s a shame if this means that that sites’ policy is now to only publish articles about the gender politics of tech issues if they are written from a feministic point of view.

But then, I have started to wonder how other people would have perceived my article. When I muse about the way that any loony, fringe feminist is ‘allowed’ to express her view, while on the other hand, a man might be impeded in his attempts to express equivalent views with the same vigor, I wonder if I have stumbled onto a useful principle.

After examining the situation, I feel that, yet again, this is an example of feminism and political correctness combining to rob women of power. I think that when a man says something, it somehow carries with it a greater importance. For example, in the film, About A Boy, one of the characters is wearing a “Lorna Bobbit For Surgeon General” T-shirt. Can you imagine the outcry if, in a comedy film, a man expressed an equivalent sentiment of vengeful, sexual violence against a woman? (btw, another film in which every women is a virtuous victim and every man is an idiot or a villain.)

A culture, in which feminist views are over-represented, and as a result, is now almost hysterically over-sensitive about “women’s rights” and “women’s welfare” has become paternal.

What this comes down to is accountability. I often say that a person with no accountability is a person of no account. In a society in which a man would be free to face up to a women and say, “How dare you be so sexist!”, in response to one of her comments, the importance of what women say would be increased.

“You can’t start a fire without a spark” and women by being able to criticize while being free of any criticism, are being robbed of their elemental power.

I understand why the article was rejected but I do not agree with the decision.

I strongly disapprove of their apparent policy of only allowing one side of the arguments surrounding gender and IT to be represented on the website. Feminism isn’t something that was delivered down from God, it is something that people made. Consequently, it’s flawed rather than divine and other people have developed counter views. I consider the content of my article to be extremely mild compared to many feminist articles on the same subject.

I wonder if the article that was originally linked to was conceived under similarly rigid parameters of: “don’t write anything that might offend men or be perceived as criticism of male orientated institutions.”? I doubt it.

I suppose the thing that really annoys me most about the article being rejected is that it mirrors some of the issues discussed in the article! Women have written articles about the difficulties that women face in an environment such as a technical-forum and yet, in this case, it seems that the woman’s view has been represented while a man’s counter view has been repressed. This is in contradiction to the sentiment expressed in the article that I was responding to and one of my points has been proven correct!

So, what is the lesson that I have learned?

I’ve realized that saying “it’s ok when women do it!” is a reversal of a weak argument of a loony-feminist. I have to better than the thing that I am criticizing. It’s laziness to fall back on rhetoric and easy polemic. If an idea is well conceived, perhaps one need not hit people about the head with it.

Continuing the self-criticism for a moment: I should have narrowly defined precisely what I meant by the term ‘feminism’. There is an ambiguity to the term, and for example, some schools of feminism such as “sex positive feminism” or “equity feminism” would be fairly compatible with my own views. Having said that, however, I would maintain that it is valid to criticize the value of any *.ism that explores gender issues from a the perspective of a single sex.

So, in summary, I can’t really be too angry about an experience which has probably considerably improved the book. I may try again one day to create a more skillfully written article on this subject so that it can be published on a mainstream site.

I still wish the article had been published in front of a wide audience. The users could have made up their own minds and ripped the article apart if they disagreed with it. I consider myself to have been a victim of sexism.

As I don’t want the article to be wasted and I want the ideas to be heard, I have made it the first article content on this new site. Please feel free to comment on it, privately or via the site. I’d love to know what you think.

The only alteration I have made to the article is to split it in half to make two articles. It is available via the side menu as:

“Attacking feminism: why should a geek care?” (the old part 2 and 3)

and

“Defining equality.” (the old part 1)