First of all, I would like to thank you. I can tell that you believe your response to be helpful feedback, so I would like to thank you for not attempting to thinly veil an attempt to silence me, but to actually start a discussion.
In response, however, I have to disagree based on one premise: Every socially-created space is safe for someone. What ‘safe spaces’ do is define those spaces based on who is safe within them. This isn’t a new phenomenon, when my husband goes out for a ‘boys’ night’ I don’t insist on tagging along. Historically there have been women’s societies and gentlemen’s clubs and all sorts of other divisions of space by gender and other identities, hell you could argue that roman bathhouses were one such ‘safe space’.
I was approached by a student group to teach a workshop for what they saw was a skill gap specific to women in their program. Given that they know their program and its makeup better than I do, I’m not going to question their research on it. Given the signups and attendance I would agree that there was a gap there, and as I told the organizers after: I don’t believe it was the “Learn to Code” part that brought them in, I believe it was the idea that this was a space being made for women to start the process of learning a new skill in an area they might be uncomfortable exploring. I’m not asking for an all-female work environment. I’m not asking for only women to be the coders of the future. I’m talking about one specific event and one specific time which was specifically labelled for women. I also take issue with it being called “Women Learn to Code” because I think it does exclude gender non-conforming and non-binary people from the title.
And if a group of men wanted to get together and code as men, I wouldn’t take issue with that. I would take issue with that being the only path to learning code for everyone, which is the experience for many people.
Now, what I didn’t talk about was that part of the conversation I had with the men where I told them I wished there was a better way to label these types of events. “Under-represented Persons in Tech and Anyone Who’s Not Going to Bother Them Learn to Code in an Environment that is Not Going to Pretend that Everything is Peachy Keen and Will Sometimes Mention the Systemic and Socio-Cultural Issues that Often Hold Those Persons Back so They Don’t Think They’re Crazy.” doesn’t have the same roll-off-the-tongue quality to it. I mentioned that I was open to more feedback about how to name these events and these spaces in a way that was less upsetting, and the men promised to think on it and get back to the organizers for their future events. Whether or not they take that feedback is up to them.
This is not so much a disagreement, but is more of a reaction: in response to your comment about fear making me ‘easy pickings’ and learning to manage my fear, etc. I’m not sure where the assumption that I’m unaware of this phenomenon comes from? Or where the assumption that I am unable to manage my fear comes from? I made no mention of being overcome by heart palpitations or fainting on the spot. I had no problem delivering my material or continuing to teach. I did what I always do: assessed the situation and proceeded the way I saw most fit. I have been living and surviving in this reality for a very long time. If we ever meet in person I would be surprised if you could identify my fear.
