From misogyny to truth: on conference representation

Design conferences are like a competition, and only the best of the best are allowed the privilege of sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience to teach us. Any other perspective is illogical. I will also ignore the fact that slaves were originally prohibited from competing in the Olympics.

That’s Faruk Ateş in his post from last week. In it, Ateş snarkily responds to some posts and Twitter comments about women and minority representation at conferences. His post is titled “Translation of General Misogyny to Uncomfortable Truth.” It’s a good’un.

That said, I will add my belated $.02:

• What may be equal treatment isn’t necessarily equitable treatment. In fact, equal is often decidedly inequitable. See: Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Ed.
• Why in these dichotomies are women and speakers of color posited as inferior? The phrase beginning “just because…” suggests you think it isn’t at all possible that a woman or person of color could be an excellent, but overlooked speaker. At the very least, it suggests that mediocrity is okay as long as someone white and male is engaging in it. It argues that being selected is conclusive evidence of speaker quality and not a function of who the organizers know (of).
• Why do we assume that white men aren’t chosen because their white male-ness appeals to other white men who make up a majority, but by no means the entirety of people in tech?

Translation: Faruk is spot on.