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January 23, 2004
Body At Work
Victoria's Secret has a line of clothes called Body At Work. You may not look exactly like this woman, but you look more like her than you look like a MAN at work. We have bodies and we are capable of making new bodies and we see the world differently from men. Being a woman in technology is a very interesting thing to be.
I've been thinking about the claim that we are too academic over here, and noodling around the notion of what that means. Some of us are academics here at Misbehaving.Net. Some of us, like me, are definately not academics.
I think all of us here at Misbehaving want the conversation that goes on this blog be open to women who run the range from academics, to not-at-all academics, working people, not working people, moms, not moms, young, not young, developers, non-developers, people who invent new technologies, people who sell technology, people who use technology. If we've erred towards being too academic, that was never our intention.
Being "academic" is often code for being dry and boring, sometimes code for being exclusive and coming off as know-it-alls, or simply being too intellectual. If these are your claims, feel free to tell us so. Maybe you think we've got too much brain, not enough body at work here.
I happen to think it's impossible for women to be too academic. Women live in the world. Even if they have 3 PhD's and are a much esteemed professor at the most academic of institutions, they are people with bodies that bear children, bleed, look like the picture here. Much of our book knowledge is mixed with our body knowledge and our gut intuition.
I'm proud of my academic colleagues here and I learn from them every day. They don't intimidate me or silence me. They just gather knowledge in ways that are different from me. I celebrate the difference. They are not "righter" than me. I'm not "wronger" than they, because I'm not an academic. I love the academic knowledge they bring and all the good common sense as well.
Women need to be in every aspect of technology. We need to inform choices -- related to the design of technology, the use of technology, the laws related to technology -- and I am thinking of the technologies we currently live with. We are right on the edge of an explosion of knowledge related to BIOtechnology and no voices will be more important than women's voices and women's experience and women's bodies in that conversation. If women academics can be better heard by men in this arena, then bravo for all our women academics. We need to support them and be damned glad they are in the academy.
Posted by Halley Suitt at 01:48 PM in Academia | Permalink
Comments
While I am not an academic, I have academic tendencies. I have taken graduate-level classes in science and technology studies and have learned some of the lingo/jargon of academia. In fact, I wish I could spend more time in "academia," but graduate schools haven't really caught on to educating people who don't really want to be full-time academics at the end of it all, who work full-time (and don't intend to stop doing that) and who are there because they are seeking a connectedness of knowledge, not an information silo.
So, I have a somewhat informed viewpoint of academia vs. the "real world." I think academics are so caught up in creating knowledge (I know, even that term is problemmatic) that they forget how to communicate effectively with people outside the sphere. The language, the self-conscious reflection, the circular/spiral arguments, the need to reference the chain of contributors, and so on, makes it incredibly difficult for people outside the practice to gain entry. It can make you feel endlessly stupid. And that is very frustrating.
When smart people feel stupid it can lead to snippiness. It is a self-defense mechanism. Hell, I do it myself.
As a professional communicator I am extremely conscious of the importance of making what you write (or say) understandable to a broad audience. Having spent the last 13 years or so translating engineering-speak into English, I have some skill at doing this. It is my contention that academics, scientists, doctors -- anyone in any profession, needs to spend more time developing communications skills.
At the risk of being repetitive, I'll say it again. People hate to feel stupid. I think that is one thing that is at the core of the strong anti-intellectualism I have run up against ("Stop being so smart") all of my life. For goodness sake, we tell Americans point blank over and over again how stupid they are through endless polls - "they don't know the earth revolves around the sun!"; political hand wringing - "American students score lower than all developed countries in the world!", etc. etc.
This is running on, so I will cut it short. I am very interested in how the use of language - written, spoken, symbolic, etc. can cut short communications. This blog is a wonderful case study in the making for this topic. I will keep coming back, and hope that everyone can take a pointer from this and work on breaking down the language barriers that are happening here.
Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at Jan 24, 2004 4:33:31 AM
Elizabeth, can you give us some specific examples? I'm an academic, and I care a lot about communicating clearly and with many people - that, after all, is one of the main reasons I blog - so it annoys me a bit to see blanket statements about how complicatedly all academics write.... Perhaps I set up language barriers without being aware of it, though. If so, I'd really like to know about it.
So please: give us an example or two! If we're a case study for cut off communications, tell us where!
Posted by: Jill at Jan 24, 2004 8:38:22 AM
'When smart people feel stupid it can lead to snippiness. It is a self-defense mechanism. Hell, I do it myself.'
Well, that's one thing I was trying to get at in the post that's referenced earlier. All I know for sure is that it puts me off commenting at all. Some people are clearly less reticent.
What I didn't communicate very well was that I didn't see it as a function of language so much as what I perceived to be a slightly exclusive attitude. Using the post about meeting up at the Etech conference as an example, it's the whole decision that struck me as odd. I read (past tense) that statement as suggesting that danah and Liz felt it was *more* appropriate to go have a conference than to have that discussion on the Web.
As webloggers we can all mouth off about the same topic, read what others say, sort the wheat from the chaff, and connect our own dots. The fact that there are so many sources is tremendously exciting: it's closer to a level playing field than any other form of mass communication, and I think a lot of webloggers value this a great deal.
Suggesting that there ought to be a meeting with relatively few people -- who will then set the agenda for the rest of the conversation -- seems extremely exclusive by comparison. And it doesn't matter how you phrase it.
Posted by: Raena Armitage at Jan 24, 2004 11:06:14 AM
While, I would be happy to analyze the Misbehaving posts to point out jargon or academic-speak, I simply cannot today as I don't have the time. I will try to later. Please understand, however, I wasn't simply talking about this site, but also about many remembered experiences I have had in my life.
In the meantime, however, I did want to comment on these requests for justifications of what people post that I see here. Now, I am not saying that this is overall a bad thing!
However, at the risk of being shot down for making yet another generalization, I think that this tendency could be viewed as "academic." I think generalizations are the bane of all serious students. The point of study is to get the roots of things or to understand how people interact, etc. etc. etc. This means getting behind the generalizations. It means citing myriad examples, and quoting sources. Totally valuable stuff!
But, I think blogs are an INFORMAL communications space. It is a place for conversations, sharing ideas, and yes, sharing undeveloped theories, sort-of hypothesis, anecdotal experiences and generalizations. When I post, I am doing it quickly, often in reaction to what I have read. I don't have time to list examples, cite sources, do in-depth analysis etc. I share thoughts, generalizations, ideas -- and maybe provoke a discussion. I am not claiming anything I say as a fact. I am just stating my thoughts and opinions.
I try very hard to comment and post in a positive and/or constructive manner. I try not to be too judgmental or illogical. I don't always succeed. When I posted above, I was talking about my thoughts and experiences: "I think academics are.." I didn't state it as a fact, but rather as an opinion, just as this post is an opinion.
So, while rigor of thought and explanation is critical in a research paper or at a conference, I wonder if we can be cut a little slack in the more informal environment of a blog. Otherwise, it becomes very intimidating to post anything, therefore shutting down communication and collaboration.
Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at Jan 24, 2004 12:06:15 PM
Raena, if danah and I sent a message that we thought a conference was a "better" place to discuss the research than the web, we did a lousy job of commmunicating. I'm sorry that's the impression we gave.
She and I had (and still have) every intention of making this an open conversation. But we also wanted to take advantage of the fact that we'd both be in one location simultaneously, along with other people we know are interested in the topic. It felt to us like being more inclusive to say publicly that we were going to meet in person, and where--the alternative was just to meet privately, which would be more typical of most academic research projects.
Elizabeth, I love this line: "When smart people feel stupid it can lead to snippiness." Yes, I think that's exactly what happened. danah and I were careless in the way we presented our initial ideas, and the barrage of (in many ways justified) criticism caused me to get snippy. Which I deeply regret, since all it did was make things worse all around. sigh
Posted by: Liz Lawley at Jan 24, 2004 4:23:06 PM
Well Liz, I don't agree with your comment that your "snippiness" has made things worse all around. I think this whole discussion, about academics, the purpose of weblogs, the attitude of the posters and commenters, discussions on other blogs and so on has sparked a new life into this blogsite.
This whole discussion has been debated in my circle "off-line", we have seen more posts and more comments here in the last few days than for a long time, and I think that is good.
Thus I think this whole discussion has made things better. People who have been intimidated by the discussion have come out of the woodwork and said so, and their opinion has been well received as far as I can see. We have seen lots of insightful comments from exactly the kind of people I hoped I would find when I started to frequent this website.
Regarding the academics v.s. non-academics - I had never considered this aspect of the discussion, but I can clearly see it now that it has been pointed out. I'm a programmer myself, running my own little company so I like the stories from the trenches a lot, but since I have also been serving as "the voice of the industry" on several research grant boards, I have never been intimidated by the voice of academics and enjoy that aspect as well. I like the mixture; I think academics need feedback from the practitioners, as the practitioners need the insight from the academics. So when somebody raises their hands or voice and says "'scuse me, but I don't know what f*** you are talking about", people should take notice and try to clarify themselves. Everybody will be better off - even if a bit of snippiness surfaces along the way.
After all, if you are not passionate about what you do, why bother?
Posted by: helga at Jan 25, 2004 12:22:09 PM
