Re: [LAU] [Fwd: Re: Fuck your sexism]

From: James Harkins <jamshark70@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Mon Feb 11 2013 - 16:07:36 EET

On Feb 11, 2013 11:16 AM, "Louis" <louis.gorenfeld@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> It's entirely possible that we'll see attitudes change in upcoming
generations as more people are addicted to computers and catch the bug to
want to create software.

Unfortunately, the trend in the industry is toward mobile devices without
built-in developer toolkits. Maybe that will change eventually, but for
now, you need a computer to write for iOS or Android, and computers will,
sooner or later, become specialist tools. This makes it less likely that
people will discover the fun of tinkering with software, rather than more.
Apple seems to be steering in this direction, by locking iOS and charging
for the developer tools. A concrete impact in SuperCollider-land is that
now, only a small handful of developers are building and testing in OSX. At
present, SuperCollider is better supported in Linux than on the Mac in some
ways. But Apple seems not to feel it's a problem that it's becoming harder
to do creative things with the platform. A captive audience of content
consumers serves business interests better. (Android is not significantly
better, though at least the tool set is free afaik.)

> Btw, there's a similar gender discrepancy in electronic music (as far as
I've noticed), and that requires no math... There's more going on here than
sexism, afaik.

You might not need to work directly with complex math formulas, but audio
engineering is highly technical. If someone feels discouraged to pursue
technical skills (because of social bias, say), then audio engineering
won't be a friendly place as soon as we start talking about filters'
frequency responses etc.

My gut feeling is that it's probably too simple to say that the gender
disproportion comes entirely from sexism (nurture) or innate differences
(nature). There could still end up being a larger number of men in
technical fields, even of we could remove all trace of gender bias from
parenting and education. If so, I'm at pains to think how human action
could change that.

But, if a woman might have become a top studio recordist and producer, or
techno producer, or whatever, and she ends up NOT being that because she
got the wrong messages from early childhood (and then further unwelcoming
messages from music-tech communities), that's a cryin' shame. We all win if
we find ways to eliminate social biases that can cause that to happen.

hjh

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Received on Mon Feb 11 16:15:06 2013

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