Composite: thoughts on poetics & tech

Dawn I heard a rag rip

2009-06-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Greg Hall died. He was a good friend and a great poet. It drove me crazy to see him just throw away garbage bags full of his own fantastic poetry. He could shed it as easy as he could shed another "residential hotel" style apartment or an old self. Greg understood ephemera. We're always losing things. leaving the world behind with everything we do. I keep crying to think he's not still seeing and writing and losing - losing so intensely - and leaving things behind. Now he's left for good.

Sometimes he'd send me a pile of poems instead of throwing them away. I know Robert Pesich must have some, and Walter Martin, and F.A. Nettelbeck and certainly Bea Garth has got to have a ton.

Bitter, funny, sweet, profound, never boring or pretentious, slouching around chain smoking in his cowboy boots. He could swoop into cliche or pop culture or insanity and come out of that nosedive firing anti-bullshit bullets to blow your head off. Weird staccato heartfelt delivery full of line "breaks and "quote" "marks". I will miss his strange late night drunken phone calls. The man could drunk dial you a poem or just ramble endlessly about Genet or Merle Haggard. Whatever it was would make me feel like I was flying, and could say anything, as a poet and madwoman, and it would be heard & understood. You know that feeling sometimes, with a person, when the things you might write in your most private soul broken-languagely, becoming text, just connected right in; talking to him opened that up direct to conversation. There wasn't even any leaping to it, Greg was on that rocketship to fucking mars.

Greg reading Van Gogh Ambulance at a Barbershop late night living room Non-Salon, 2004.

Greg reading Chicken Little Shark Sky maybe around 2005?

Greg reading Pirate Ship 2005

some poems from Eos

CHICKEN LITTLE SHARK SKY
One by one
the parts of a body
arrive & attach
themselves
& flight
becomes more difficult
barely escaping
collision with chimneys
I sweep
through the air
with great effort
they are sharks
the left leg
the left foot
the wrists the hands
the neck the head
"I felt a great heaviness
in the water & everything
became silent"
then I was lifted
only to be
swept down
all the while
caught in a vise
"I felt no pain"
all I saw
was the eye
it seemed flat
& dead
& then the
water
turned
red
this is
getting
old
now the doctors
with aspirins like frisbees
& tubes & wires
& admonishments
every time
I light a smoke
I felt better
when I had
no body
& all I did
was fly
blind
& ecstatic
into
the
present
without
regret
or remorse
I recommend
to the young
not to age
& to fly fast
because
the sky
is
falling

Greg's "Explanatory Notes to Poems" doodle of his attitude towards literary criticism. Funny!!!

Just about 2 poems a year...

So here, by the grace of Liz Henry, arrives an
unobtrusive collection of 23 poems by the
troublesome trouble man, that restless and sleepy
man, the elusive Greg Hall.

These poems, spanning 12 years, intruded
themselves as others faded, the stack was about a
foot high and these fugitives from the
crumpling ﬁst somehow charmed, each in their
own way, the madman, who, although having
written them, longed to ﬁnd no value in them,
or to ﬁnd them fatally marred – Anything to
allow an exit “towards oblivion”, as Genet once told
an interviewer, when asked, “Where do you think
you’re headed?”

Oblivion will take care of everyone – Though
perhaps that is better left unsaid. I’m only here
because this place, this planet, this hour, is
beautiful.

“Only in it for the poetry.”

I sincerely hope you ﬁnd something to like in
these pages.

and if you don’t, or can’t, or won’t,
at least I died
with a sword in my hand.

Greg Hall
March 20, 2002

Self portrait doodle by Greg. You can see the shark from Chicken Little Shark sky (and other poems) and "The Man With the Hoe" (from the poem by Markham) in the background.

NO CHARGE

In my chubby
checker
existence
I go around
with pliers
in one hand
and a hammer
in the other
looking
for yr mother
so I can help
you out
I will twist
her thoughts so
you can find
a woman
who is not
crazy
with no screws
loose
then you
can
celebrate
the
birthday
of
yr
balls

(This poem especially hilarious out loud. It was in Cuts from the Barbershop)

I have Flame People as many people do & treasure; the poems from Inamorata, which I printed up into a sea-like little book with foam colored inside leaves; the manuscript of Whoregasm which I was going to publish with yellow legal pad paper marked up by cigarette burns and coffee mug rings and poem scribblings; Diary of a Desert Fox, and some other packets around here somewhere. Plus some recordings some of poems and some of Robert and me and Janel and mostly Greg, just rambling. But how much is out there? I wish I could read it. But more than that I'll miss his out loud readings and his beautiful conversation and his bad ass, innocent, bad attitude.

THE MAGIC OF FOREVER

In the white morning light

everything was waiting.

Even the trees

in vibrant state of tension

seemed to be holding

a breath inside.

An implied cry

such as a crow’s

concealed itself

among the green leaves.

And though it is

late in the year

later in the year

than I have ever been

I too was waiting.

And now the Moon

faded in the sky

appearing as a Goddess.

And now the wind

orchestrating the trees.

And now the cries

the crows in the leaves.

And now the ﬂood

the remembrances of you.

And now everything is moving

and now nothing is waiting.

And because I myself am lost

nothing can be lost

because everything

is lost.

(from Inamorata, dedicated to Abby Niebaur)

That little book, so amazing, what other great books of his, one-offs, or the product of the culling out process of several years, are out there?

I'd send him poems and he'd be all like WHERE DID THAT COME FROM and I'd be like WTF MAN, out of my BRAIN what do you think? and he'd be like WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THAT and I'd be like well what about you man, what are you doing, can you just like, send that shit to people to keep for you instead of throwing it away?!

We lost touch the last few years. I've missed him. Now I really miss him. He meant so much to me. It's fucking unfair. I know how he'd be about it but it's not fucking fair.

A player piano
on slack key strings
called to tell me

"I can't rest or sleep
until I know
you've found your place."

Toothache - telephone -

"I used to have
this pain. My tongue
feels for it in the empty space."

Oldwood sounding box
sweet
on the hollowphone

"Even as we speak
people we could have loved
die in their beds."

Halt sway & slur worn-down cylinders
the turned up shirtsleeves of the player-mad ghost,
his lost gloves & blind fingers
lost generation

and

Rocinante

disconnected

like him
you clutched your wrecked folder of printouts
like a derelict with a bottle of fire in brown paper
lurched about the room shy and a bit vacant,
your lifeline -

I can follow you a little ways now into the dark.

Rambling to the bus station with my bag of books.
Goodbye arthritic knees, goodbye neurotic carousel,

my mind freed to lightspeed floating in your words
your halting voice
I hear another voice

Struck, stunned, to follow your lightning words up into the dark
your soul in the stars
flying
lost the sense
the stammering gaps,
the truth in the joke,
the little squares below waiting for my patient hand –

An artist

in

the family –

like

like

immortality.

Did you stop there underwater, waiting for a tug on the line?
The slow bubbles in the blood, clots in the brain, shocks near to death.
The anguished rope of vision
the damage done to us

Faithless Rocinante how could you leave your master here like this?

like

my father, my father's father,
I fall from you like a plane in a tailspin, forgive me –
driving too fast down the highway with poetry in my lap
damaged
elementary particle I have seen photos of your tracks in cloud chambers

like

a crazy prince,
how cruel the world is!
How cruel the world’s beauty.
Old loon,
crying, haunted cracked vessel,

I follow your lightning words up into the dark beyond the thunderclouds
that cotton wool, that thick white, up to the clear night sky and the electric stars

The Planet of Swears

2009-06-17T14:47:00.001-07:00

I'm writing some RSS feed scraper programs and while playing around with that, set up an install of Planet feed reader. It was very funny to see on the one hand, lots of people blogging or writing things like "Oh, this doesn't even need setup, just unzip it and you're basically done" -- and the Planet documentation itself saying that the config file's comments explained everything -- vs. actual step by step instructions of what to do, like burningbird's post, which I found very helpful. That's a lot of "nothing to do" to explain and it still didn't get far enough for what I'd like to figure out: how to set up one installation of Planet but also set up multiple feeds in different directories, each with their own template.

Meanwhile I'm very amused that for another project I get to write a spider with a curse word filter. I haven't had that hilarious of results since writing porn filters for Excite's web spider. My output files and screen output when swear-spider.py runs are very funny. "Asshole Detected!"

A quick search on lists of dirty words gets some very amusing Supreme Court hearing transcripts. Like so!

FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), Decided July 3, 1978. The dissenting opinions are especially great!

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used."

I'll try quoting that to my kid next time he frown at my liberal use of what he carefully calls "the f word".

Kiva lending and people with disabilities

2009-06-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Kiva has opened up to lending to entrepeneurs within the U.S. and I think this is something disability activists and independent living centers need to jump on immediately. This won't help everyone, but it could help quite a few people with disabilities to start their own businesses.

For example, look at these Pass Plan examples.

# PASS Plan Abstract: Joseph's goal is to become a full-time office clerk for the state. He has the disability label of Muscular Distrophy, Cognitive, and Vision Impairments, and uses a wheel chair. Joseph's PASS will pay for OJT training experiences, a van, insurance, registration, gas maintenance, and a driver. This PASS will be used to purchase of a van, install lift modifications, and hire a personal attendant. The yearly cost is $1884.00. This PASS is for six years and a total amount of $11,304. This PASS comes from the Chicago Regional SSA Office.

How different would that proposal look if it were a request for capital and a Kiva-style loan (OR... a donation.) I've been saying for a while that what is insurmountable to a PWD, like simply needing a ramp built and a decent wheelchair, say a $5000 cost, would be easily obtainable through profiles and requests for donations or loans. Make the problem and the solution visible, and people will help, because to someone that $5000 is like pocket change and to a much greater pool of people on the Internet, a lot of small donations could make it up in no time. This would eliminate some of the structure of "professionals" who, frankly, siphon off 2/3 of the resources allocated to empower people with disabilities. Think of the people who have comfortable lives as professional experts who administer charity but who keep the objects of their charity in crazy poverty. It's not their fault, it's a systemic fault, but there's something deeply wrong there.

How might a Kiva-like structure combine with Ticket to Work to make it easier for people with disabilities not just to find jobs but to go into business for themselves. Look at the collectives and cooperatives on Kiva and how a group of women will band together. That's the kind of organization we might need to develop. If you get benefits and depend on them for, say, your health care, your personal care attendent, your ventilator; then you can't have any resources and are trapped in an endless poverty, you can't accumulate resources, you are kept in dependency. I have some problems with "being middle class" as a goal and yet faced with things like institutional living and the loss of control of our lives I think it's not a bad goal to work towards.

Rebel Girl! Riot Grrl nostalgia show

2009-06-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is coming up tomorrow and you're all welcome to come! I'll be reading some fun, fiery rants and giving away a few zines and vintage "riot grrl outer space" buttons.

I believe there will be accordion-playing as well!

The National Queer Arts Festival & San Francisco in Exile Present:
REBEL GIRL: a riot grrl nostalgia show
Thursday, June 11th
The Garage
975 Howard, San Francisco
Show at 7:30; Doors at 7pm
Tickets: $10-20

Buy Tickets on-line!!: www.brownpapertickets.com

More details about the performance and the performers are at:

http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/QFest09/Rebel.html

All Star, All Grrrl Cast!:

Gina de Vries
Chan Dynasty
Melissa Gira Grant
Liz Henry
Nomy Lamm
Zuleikha Mahmood
Melodie Younce

Join the National Queer Arts Festival and San Francisco in Exile for a
Riot Grrrl Revival -- where you can once again dress in your leopard
print thrift store finery, scrawl SLUT across your midriff, toss that
Huggy Bear 7" on the turntable, and make a fanzine extolling the
virtues of veganism + vibrators. It's Revolution Grrrl-Style, Now! --
with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Past and present zinestars and
grrrl revolutionaries will tell wax nostalgic about the old days, and
let you know what they've been up to recently. Zines and cupcakes will
be available for purchase.

Immediate housing needed in San Francisco

2009-05-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

K. and her three kids need a small apartment in San Francisco as soon as possible. A one bedroom apartment would work. They're looking for a rental or sublet through September, when they have housing lined up.

K. was the victim of domestic violence and called shelters in SF for months and months, to be turned away and told they don't have room, to have intake workers promise to call her back and then never call, to be told over and over - NO ROOM. Call someone else. Government and non profits, passing the buck.

A San Francisco blogger, Tangobaby, has been helping K. by telling her story, gathering donations and help from blog readers, and calling all over the city along with her to try to find resources and help. It sounds to me like they now have enough donations to pay rent on a place. In fact, at this point they could pay the entire summer's rent up front. But they are having trouble lining up a place to live.

What would you do if you were in her situation?

Think about a time you have had to go apartment hunting. And the uncertainty on - how is the landlord judging you? Now do it with 3 kids, one a 2 month old baby, while you're homeless. And while you're not white. Racism plays into this difficulty, I have no doubt of it.

I would like to propose that anyone who reads this who is in SF, contact anyone you know who owns a rental property. Talk to realtors who might know of landlords. Pull whatever strings you can to help out and contact Tangobaby if you have a good lead on a place to stay. And, here's a wild idea. Might someone who might have an easier time renting, or staying with friends, or travelling - might they move out of their own apartment and sublet to K. and her kids for the summer? Or might someone with a big apartment who needs a roommate, take a roommate with 3 kids including a baby? Think about it, and seriously, ask the people you know if they can help.

Manifesto overload - May 1, Modern Times Bookstore

2009-04-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

Steven Schwartz and I are hosting a Manifesto reading for SF in X (SF in Exile) at 7pm tomorrow night, May 1, at Modern Times Bookstore. It will be ALL MANIFESTOS. Come by and join us in raucous, fiery polemics!

While you're there, buy lots of books at Modern Times, which is a great neighborhood bookstore that supports progressive politics and activism.

Declaimers:

Annalee Newitz - Cyborg Manifesto
Danny O’Brien - Futurist Manifesto
Daphne Gottlieb - a wild rant of a poem, and the SCUM Manifesto
Liz Henry - bitch mutant manifesto
Naamen Tilahun - an original manifesto
Nick Mamatas - a short story to set you on fire
Steven Schwartz - Dadaist Manifesto
Zuleikha Mahmoud - Femme Shark Manifesto

With excerpts from the following extra fantabulous other manifestos:

Dada • SCUM • Provo Bicycle • Slut • Communist • Futurist • Unabomber • Art of Noises • Infernokrusher • Dogme 95 • International Werewolf Conspiracy • Surrealist • Bitch •
Vorticist • Turku • GNU • Femme Shark • Raver • Genderfree • Bitch Mutant • Headmap • Cyborg • Cluetrain • Anarchist • Yippie Voting • Up Against the Walls Motherfuckers • Declaration of the RIghts of Man • Bauhaus • LOL_MEME Bill of Rights • Cannibalist • And some too new to make it into this list!

Doors open at 6:30, reading starts at 7. $10-20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of money.

AND! The party moves to Zeitgeist afterwards for Sarah Dopp's birthday.

I've loved manifestos for ages and ages. They don't pull any punches or pussyfoot around. No qualifying maybes, no disclaimers, no apologies, no hedging your bets. Take a position and state it with extreme fervor. Say it like you mean it! Rant and declare!

A few years ago Steven and I talked about editing a manifesto zine or an anthology, and that's still a possibility. For this reading, I'm excited that so many of the manifestos being read or excerpted are feminist ones!

Here are two of my favorites, done in beautiful flyers - the Why Cheap Art? and Cult of Done manifestos.

Hurrah!!!!

Photoessay of the 805 Veterans disabled parking problem

2009-03-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here is a visual explanation of part of the problem with disabled parking at this building.

1:48 pm Tuesday March 31st. I drove into the front parking lot. I could see the front 2 spots were full. I drove to the back. (I didn't take a photo.)

1:50 pm Tuesday March 31st. All three spots in the back are full.

As I paused to take this photo, a grey haired man in a suit and a dark SUV pulled into the reserved red zone, the spot next to the curb cut, where I was intending to park. I drove around to the front lot again to check the spaces there and to avoid having to interact with the man who was surely someone who works with the property manager.

A couple of minutes later in the front lot, the two spaces there were still full. They are both inadequately marked as disabled spots. Frequently, people without placards park in the badly marked spot on the right-hand side.

As I paused to take the picture above, the man in the suit who had been driving the SUV came out of the front doors and yelled something at me. I drove away, because I did not want to have any kind of confrontation with him.

1:55pm Tuesday. I drove to the back of the building again. The three spots were full, this time with the van gone and a different car in the space closest to the curb.

In retrospect, I think the man in the suit might have been yelling at me that there was a disabled spot open. I am led to think that he noticed me in the back lot, and knew specifically who I was.

It is a sign of the high demand for disabled parking spots at this building that by the time I drove to the back from the front, an open blue-placard spot had filled up. As I parked in the red zone in a "reserved" spot next to the man in the suit's SUV, I noted another person with a blue placard driving past me and the full spots that were marked for disabled parking. I did not get their photo however. My camera was in my pocket and I was pulling my wheelchair parts out of the front passenger seat over the steering wheel and assembling the chair on the ground next to my car.

As I came into work from the parking lot I snapped this photo to illustrate that the "van accessible" spot is not properly marked or configured. The landscaping and the concrete bollard both potentially interfere with a van lift or ramp. The space is not wide enough and not properly striped.

The elevator doors in the building opened for me and I backed up to let out an elderly lady in a chair and her companion who was pushing her chair. We smiled at each other and I wished we could stop and have a good conversation. I admired the brilliant whiteness of her hair and she looked at my sparkly wheels; I wondered what she thought of them. Frankly, I enjoy getting to see the high number of other wheelchair users who come to this building to go to the PAMF clinic. We always have a friendly smile of acknowledgement or a nice word for each other.

That entire sequence (minus the guy in the van) happens nearly every day at this building no matter what time I arrive at work. By the time I leave late in the day, most of the spots are empty.

I hope that explains things a little bit better for the "able-bodied". The good thing about this experience today is that it wasn't raining.

ADA struggle at my workplace

2009-03-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

It has been at a year now since I first started asking the office building where I work to add disabled parking spots. They continue to refuse, and as I continue reporting them to the city, they continue coming to my managers at work to complain about me. I consider that to be very wrong. It is retaliatory action for my asking for accomodations and reporting them to Code Enforcement when they did not respond.

I spoke several times over email and in person with the building manager last year. I spoke with city code enforcement. I continue having to speak about it with people at my workplace, because of the repeated harassment from the building manager. Last year I also contacted a clinic manager at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, another tenant of the building, who I believe should be actively involved in protecting its patients and who I would still like to invite to a part of the solution.

I am a blogger. That means that some of the time, I'm a citizen journalist. When I get stuck, I can always go public. That's what I'm doing. Private conversations on this issue have not gone well for me. People lie and stonewall, and I get put on the spot, I end up being the one under scrutiny. That is wrong. I am not the issue, and I am not the problem. I have been polite and helpful over the course of a year, in pointing out ways the building owners could deal with the issue, I made specific requests, sent links, explained tax breaks available that would help pay for the modifications.

The initial contact with the building managers last May resulted in this:

The building is able to offer much needed medical space to the community without opposition from the city; "currently". We are not a medical building. As you know, the building is required to have a specified number of handicapped parking space in order to meet the standard set forth by the ADA. We have the required number of spaces and no plans currently for adding more.
(from Lauren from Harvard Investment)

Then a lot of messed up things happened. Frank from Harvard Investments came to speak to me in my office. He made many claims about his boss's political friendships with city government, the good that he does for the community in being a landlord of medical office space. He said that if I kept it up, he would make sure nothing happened, he'd drag his feet and "nothing would happen for 10 years and it would just cause trouble for me in the meantime." In a whirl of alternating threats and pleas for sympathy, Frank then made increasing claims of empathy because his grandmother "was in a wheelchair" and he was too during his teenage years. He went into quite an emotional story about his life as a teenager in a wheelchair, wistfully watching the other kids play ball and have fun; the emotional pain he suffered from as a result making him uniquely able to understand "my pain". I did not believe him, and questioned the relevance of his stories and claims. My personal emotions are not the issue. The law, and what it does to help our city's community, and -- for me personally -- my solidarity with other disabled people: those are the issues.

I refused to speak with Frank after that conversation. But I described it in full in an email to my co-worker.

Here is my first letter from last year, after some phone calls that didn't seem to go anywhere. I sent it on May 15, 2008, to the Redwood City Code Enforcement head, Fereydoun Shehabi.

I am a wheelchair user, and I work in an office at 805 Veterans Blvd. in Redwood City. The building has quite a lot of traffic from people with disabilities and elderly, frail people in general, as it hosts large offices from Palo Alto Medical Foundation and other doctors. It has over 280 parking spaces that I counted, but only 3 of those spaces are marked blue as parking for disabled people.

Those spaces fill up quite often. They are not wide enough to allow me to park in the space next to another car and still get my car door open wide enough to pull my wheelchair out of the car, out of the side door, and pop the wheels onto it. The 60 inch between spots with striping, that should be there, is not there.

The building has a central lobby with two large and accessible entrances with automatic doors, one facing the east parking lot and one facing the west lot.

According to the ADA as I understand it, there should be at least 7 spots, evenly distributed around the accessible entrances, and one of those 7 spots should be van-accessible with a 90 inch wide area.

The three existing spots are on the east side of the building, the back entrance bordering on Main Street. Some of the spaces near this entrance are painted red and marked "reserved, private ". The red paint is fairly fresh and appears to be painted over blue paint, though it is somewhat difficult to tell. There is a very nice wide curb cut here.

At the front entrance on the west side of the building that faces Veterans, there is another excellent, wide, curb cut. But, all the spaces nearby are painted red (this time, obviously painted over blue) or gray, also clearly cracked and with blue paint underneath.

I have asked the property manager, Frank Ramirez, twice in writing and once in person to restripe the lot.

He refused to do so and said that the owner is friendly with the Redwood City planning commision. He claimed that it would be too expensive, and that he and the owner would fight any such restriping and delay it for "10 years". I am asking him merely to add some extra spots by the west entrance. I see that the owner is afraid that he will have to tear up landscaping, sprinkler systems, trees, etc. in order to make a wide walkway in front of the spots. I hope that is not necessary and there is some middle ground between that complexity and expense, and doing nothing at all.

At first, Frank Ramirez stated that the building was in total compliance with the ADA. Later, in person, he admitted that he knew it was not, but that they had a special exception in a permit from the city.

I doubt this is true. It looks to me like the building owners had the minimal amount of disabled parking spaces in the past. And at some point, they painted them over for "private use" or as regular spaces.

Frank Ramirez also offered me a "private parking space" if I would stop asking them to comply with the ADA and if I would drop the issue.

I did not feel that is what is best for the community.

Frank also said that the medical clinic is good for the city and community. Yes - but not if someone in a walker gets run over in the parking lot because the owners and the city did not follow the ADA.

Attached is the permit for the building from 2005. The city planner on duty emailed it to me.

Best,

Liz

In the interim, Frank Ramirez in person told me that if I pursued the issue with the city or an ADA complaint, I would force the property owners to terminate their agreement with PAMF, and the City of Redwood City wants to have the PAMF medical clinic here to serve the community, and if I pushed things, I would drive out the clinic. Did I want, Frank asked, to be the person who took away health care for the disabled and elderly people of my community that I was trying to help? This argument by Frank hardened my resolve to continue to pursue the issue.

I wrote another round of letters in I think August or September but lost them in a hard drive crash.

A couple of months ago I opened the issue again with the city to ask why they hadn't done anything and got this response:

I recall our last phone conversation regarding your complain. Following
your phone call I had our senior inspector Jerry Schnell to come to the
site and verify the location of disabled parking stalls. He reported to
me that there are several disabled stalls scattered on the site and he
noticed there were two stalls near the main entrance and one in the rear
near exit door. I also called the manager with the phone number that you
provided to me and left a long message requesting for a response but to
no avail.

So the city did not properly inspect or respond to the complaint. Jerry Schnell did not report or take action on the obvious code violations in the parking lot. Nor did he look at the rest of the building; for example, in the lobby the fountain's overhang over the walkway without any indication for a cane is a hazard for people who are visually impaired. Why didn't the city take proper action? Was I being stonewalled, as Frank Ramirez suggested, because the city has a private and friendly agreement with the building owners, basically a golf buddy arrangement? Was Jerry Schnell just unable to do his job correctly? Where is his written assement and report of his inspection? Why didn't Fereydoun Shehabi pursue the property owner's failure to respond to his voicemail?

Why doesn't my city have a clear procedure for its citizens to file such complaints and receive proper consideration and follow up?

I love my city and yet I am now in the position of possibly needing to sue them as well as the building owners, under the ADA.

Why hasn't PAMF management, or any of the doctors who work there, ever noticed and done something about the disgraceful situation that means its own clients and patients can't park safely?

I am not the problem in this equation. No one should bring me into it. No one should call my workplace, my company founders, or my manager. My workplace should not engage in a battle with their landlord or with me over this issue. The issue is not ME. And the issue does not involve them. The issue is, very clearly, that we have a law, the Americans with Disabilities Act. And we have agencies to enforce that law. The building owners are in knowing and active violation of that law. The city failed to enforce the law as they should have.

The building owner needs to fix the problem correctly, and can file for a tax break of up to $15,000 to cover the removal of barriers. There is nothing that says they have to bring everything in the building up to code in a perfect way. But they are required by law to do barrier removal that is readily achievable.

As I look over one of the two documents I have in my hands for this case other than emails, the Feb. 14, 2005 letter from the Planning Commission to Jeffery Teel from PAMF, I can see that the building owners and the city agreed that it is the building owners' responsibility to make many other modifications to the property, such as an accessible and safe path from the city sidewalk to the building entrance. In other words, if you take the bus here, or get here from CalTrain, you can't get to the building entrance without being in the large parking lot and driveways that open onto an extremely busy street. As I know well from trying to go to lunch with my co-workers who simply walk through the parking lot and over the landscaped hill, while I at far below safe eye level for drivers go the long way around through the parking lot. I tried that a couple of times. I saw how unsafe and scary it is. Now I get in my car and drive if I am going to go across the street for lunch. My point is that the building owners know they are supposed to do many things to be in ADA compliance and they have deliberately avoided doing those things to avoid expense despite their contractual agreement to do it.

Here is the report from the City Inspector from Febrary 12, 2009, when one was finally filed in response to my repeated requests for action:

Inadequate disabled access parking stalls.

I haven't seen any response or action from the sending of this letter. But I am very happy to have a copy of it, and grateful that Fereydoun Shehabi sent it to the building manager. I would like to point out that he missed a few problems though.

I am not gearing up for a civil rights battle to demand my personal right to a safe parking spot. I am asking for my community members sake too. And actually I am doing it to demand my right to ask for a reasonable accommodation without the property manager repeatedly harassing me at my workplace by complaining about me to my bosses and throwing the problem back into my lap. More than my rights under the law about parking, I want my rights under the law to protect my employment. That includes protecting me from harassment and retaliatory actions.

I will call PAMF again tomorrow to ask their management and their clinic doctors and patients to join me in an ADA complaint. I will also ask everyone at my workplace to send in the ADA form which I will print out and bring for them. I don't know if I'm going to fill out the form correctly without help from a civil rights lawyer, but I'm going to try. Acting individually, and asking nicely for people to obey a very clear law, and explaining all my reasons for doing so, has not worked. I conclude that only organized political action brought to bear will have any effect in this situation.

If you are in a similar situation, I recommend that you organize political action rather than sending letters every couple of months and trusting that something would happen. Because unfortunately, other people can be greedy and corrupt even where the law in theory protects us.

And if you are a property owner, I recommend that you listen to people who ask for reasonable and readily achievable accommodations, and negotiate in good faith to improve your property.

Why is airline travel so brutal for disabled people?

2009-03-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a little bit about my day today and then some thoughts on airports and disability. But my short answer to the question in my title is that U.S. airlines do not even try to comply with the U.S. 1986 ACAA or Air Carrier Access Act, likely because the ACAA is not enforced.

Anyway, my day. I crutched all over the place today for the first time in weeks maybe a couple of months. WHEW. I am tired and exhausted and my leg won't swing forward all the way now. It was a great day though. I worked from bed all morning, dropped Oblomovka off at work and then worked for a few hours from a really nice open air cafe and ran into Jeremy and Bryan.

Then I went to this awesome ping pong club full of gleeful amazing middle school kids having complex after-school chaos with ramen noodle cups, candy bars, wearing gym clothes and pajama pants and flirting and yelling at each other. If I taught or worked with kids again that is my favorite age - when they are still kid-like and especially squirrelly but almost grown up.

On the drive there I was feeling grumpy and gloomy, like, "ugh, the crowded, trafficky, tourist part of town, hilly, I won't be able to park". I worried that I had been stupid, I should have tried to get Oblomovka to go with me, and I thought of back up plans in case I was not able to get into the store (calling their number, asking them to bring the stuff out to me and I could just hand them the money; stopping a random stranger and giving them the money and asking them to get it for me.) The table tennis club turned out to be a tiny and beautiful shop on a flat bit of the street with a semi-legal parking spot right in front, so I crutched into it instead of getting the wheelchair out of the car. The drive back was trafficky and my leg hurt like hell. I played my obnoxious punk rock music and my Gangstagrass CD very loud and enjoyed the weather and the free feeling of driving where I pleased.

I then crutched into the EFF which was probably too much for me and then into a store and another store -- feeling extremely tough. I screamed "Fuck off!" at a car which did not stop rolling towards me as I slowly crossed the street at a crosswalk on crutches with a child hanging off my arm. If the kid had not been with me I might have beat that woman's SUV's headlights in with a crutch just to make a point. Stop your cars, people, don't just keep coming, tapping the brakes to "totally pause" is not enough. It was terrifying.

Home and then we all made party decorations. I have now become one with a beer and a vicodin.

I just got back from a trip and had some more negative airport experiences to add to all the others. Airports are some of the most stressful places for me to be in. They are unusually full of people trying to push me around, take my chair from me, I become an obstacle, a problem, a worry, certainly not a person. A person pushing a stroller poses about the same level of mechanical assistance and possible lack of grace in dealing with the security and airline boarding and yet a stroller-pusher is not pounced on like a soul-sucking inconvenience in their day or a dangerous animal in need of being taken out by a tranquilizer dart, the way that airport and airline people treat me when I'm in a wheelchair.

Tonight I read about Dave Hingsberger's experience with an airport guard telling him that he didn't exist.

He looked at me, annoyed and said, "Luggage can't be left unattended."

"I AM attending it," I said incredulous.

"You don't understand, SOME BODY needs to be in possession of the luggage," he said and I didn't get his implication, not yet, I was still too startled.

"I am in possession of this luggage, it is MINE," my voice is rising.

He looks at me with exaggerated patience, "SOME BODY (long pause) needs to be attending the luggage."

I got it then, I wasn't SOME BODY, "Are you suggesting that I can't supervise my own luggage because I'm in a wheelchair?"

"You need to settle down, sir."

"What are you going to TAZER me? You are stealing my luggage," I'm almost screaming now.

In the comments there is some support and then an influx of trolling and stupid comments. Even some of the "helpful" comments struck me as quite ignorant, for example the one that suggests that the "slightest hint of the ADA" makes people fall all over themselves to get in compliance and be helpful. I have never seen THAT to be true. Maybe in some alternate universe, asking for better access or pointing out someone's insensitivity, rudeness, wrong-headedness regarding access and disability, doesn't result in a bunch of petty officials becoming hostile. People become hostile if I don't kiss their asses for offering me help that I don't need and thus refuse and they certainly get angry and show it if I offer feedback on improving access. Show me some ADA cases that resulted in anything without actual political action. Who seriously thinks that ANYONE... especially anything to do with air transport... lifts a finger to change things because they might get sued? Wake up, folks! The idea of lawsuits does not magically fix all sociopolitical problems and it reeks of privilege and ignorance to go "Oh, well just SUE THEM"... with what energy, time, and resources? With what lawyer who's going to take that case?

While reading the comments thread I realized Laura Hershey has a blog! I only knew about her old web site of archived articles and columns! I am very excited to read back through her blog posts! It's like the most beautiful present! Y'all know how much I love airports, right? Laura wrote a poem about her own feelings about airports. I'm not alone. I also read andabusers' posts on her airport experiences. Did you know that British Airways makes disabled people sit next to the window, in case there's an emergency, so that they won't get in the way of other passengers? NICE. I'm going to be writing an interesting letter to BA. What do you think that will do? Magic lawsuit fairies will sprinkle their pixie dust and BA will re-educate all its employees? At best it will result in a form letter, at worst I earn a flag on some list for being an annoying, difficult airline passenger.

Part of my theory about airports and airlines is that they tend to see travellers like they are all possibly dangerous animals in need of control and a disabled person is likely to be not only personally inconvenient to them as they try to do their job AND because they are not invisible in some hospital or institution and are out in the world, are likely to be uppity cripples who are about to cause some trouble. So they treat us with special rudeness, they single us out as targets of their anger, as people they CAN push around and not suffer any consequences for doing so because the disabled person is ASSUMED by anyone else who comes onto a bad scene to be the obstacle and the difficulty.

I read a great quote tonight from Wheelchair Dancer:

Pain is disabling, but disability is more than than hurt, the impairment, and more even than the attempts to overcome the hurt. Dare I go so far as to say -- *disability* is the wind in your hair, the sun on your back, the fuck you, the acceptance, the culture, the art, the humour, the rebellion, the work, the pleasure, and, yes, the living in pain; this is living unbounded.

Access Sex: panel at SexTech conference

2009-03-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

The Access Sex panel on sex education, sexual health, and people with disabilities was just beautiful.

Panelists: Cory Silverberg (http://sexuality.about.com/mbiopage.htm), Bethany Stevens (Morehouse School of Medicine), Liz Henry (BlogHer), Jen Cole (GimpGirl)

Cory Silverberg opened by asking some questions about who was in the audience. Our audience was full of public health workers and health/sex educators and providers.

Then Cory asked what people want from the panel. What do they need to know?
A: How to deal with school, staff, parents. They don't think the kids are at risk. How to get education across? Special ed classes also have to educate to multiple levels at once.

We didn't get a lot of other answers, but I felt like this was a great trick of moderation, a good way to start the panel; it helped me feel connected with the people we were speaking to.

Bethany, Jen, and I each talked for about 10 minutes each. Bethany spoke on models of disability, medical vs. sociopolitical. I spoke about disability and sex. Jen then talked about GimpGirl, a successful, long-lived online community for women with disabilities. We spent the rest of the hour and a half on audience questions and discussions. It was a very lively discussion!

We mentioned the guide for health care providers for disabled women a lot, and here is the link to it: Table Manners and Beyond: The Gynecological Exam for Women with Developmental Disabilities and Other Functional Limitations. Please read it!

Bethany's lightning talk on disability politics

Bethany introduced herself. "My CV is big and throbbing. I released myself from the shackles of Power Point and recommend it to you." Going to talk about different models of disability. Also, with some personal narrative, personal examples of what I mean about different theories. Speaking on an embodied level.

There are two models I want to outline. First, the medical model of disability. I recommend you move away from that. Don't use it in your work. It posits that the problem of disability is on the individual rather than on society. Rather than addressing structural issues of oppression, architectural or social, look at as a social issue with social and political solutions. Medical model puts an onus on individual to normalize their bodies. It puts us in a constricting box of normalcy. The medical model leads us away from civil rights ideology. By pushing the idea of normalcy we create more problems than solutions.

Second, the social model - I want to create a model of the world I want to live in. Michael Oliver in Britain. The idea of impairment is separate from the idea of disability. Separating a functional issue or condition from the social ramifications of that imapirment. For example I have osteogenesis imperfecta or brittle bones. The embodiment of that is being deemed subhuman. That may seem like a dramatic statement, but it is true. We are treated inhumanely. Cory suggests we are the most under-served population for sexual health, education and rights.

Think about the social meanings of disability.

I encourage you in your work to denounce and deconstruct these concepts. It is the first step in creating this revolution of embodiment. By doing this in your work it is liberatory not just for people with disabilities but for all other people. 80% of people in the U.S. will deal with disability in their lives. We have increasing elderly populations. Create that revolution of consciousness starting with young people, teach them that embodiment exists on a spectrum. There is a mental health problem of losing ability.

1) We're often treated as children. I am constantly, people bend down in my face and use baby talk, sing song voice, the disabled people in the crowd here are nodding, it's egregious. I'm a lawyer, shut up and treat me like a human. As I'm aging and becoming more mature, I realize that's maybe not the best response. This issue is a bad one.

2) We are perceived as dependent, always needing help, we're helpless. These things intertwine. Example, when I'm sitting anywhere, recently I was sitting texting someone in front of a building and two people in a row stopped to ask if I needed help. I didn't look helpless or perplexed non-verbally or make any eye contact. But, of course on the other hand, there is something beautiful about that we sometimes need help, we are interdependent. There is beauty in helping each other.

3) Sexuality: it is very pertinent. Pivotal to my life path. Disability and sex focus. The common notion that we are asexual and undesirable. This is a pervasive assumption in all aspects of culture. It is very politically disempowering. We need to be allies with queer people and people of color. This is a tool of oppression, sexuality; stigamatizing our sexuality is a form of dehumanization. It means we are regarded as nonhumans. This legitimizes all sorts of abuse, exclusion, and exploitation. PWD have at least a 2 times higher rate of experiencing sexual abuse than the non-disabled. For example many are abused by caregivers. You might have a choice. Have a care giver? Get a bath plus sexual abuse? Or, not have care, and turn our abuser in? The stereotype of asexuality exists. Sexual silence. It's about anxiety-producing issues; disability and sexuality are both anxiety producing. Exclusion from media representation. Not including PWD in teaching materials. Public health intervention plans don't include us. Think about culture beyond race and ethnicity. Beyond the glbtq axis.

Interweaving some of my narrative. As a young person I was born this way, nowhere was disability mentioned in any classroom space at all. No matter the subject. Maybe in the Holocaust's history but not really. Certainly not in sex ed. The stereotype was that we were asexual and undesirable. I was using dialup internet so I was trying to find info on sexuality on the internet, when I was 16 or so. There is not a lot of information. Dr. Tepper, Sexual health network is inclusive, has disability info online. Practical methods. Cory has a sex shop in Canada: Come as you are, that has a disability section. How do you make sex toys accessible. Just mentioning this counters the stereotypes. Gaps have been filled a little bit. Have information about specifically disability and sex, but mention disability in everything - in basic sex ed.

Cory - There are sex toys that strap on to you and you don't have to use your hands. We train our people to say, "This is so you don't have to use your hands, if you don't want to, or for people who can't hold the sex toy." If you say that to a non disabled customer they say, "What do you mean?" and it becomes an educational moment with just those three words "or who can't".

That's a cheap revolution!

Three ideas how to include disabilities in your work. Have it represented, outreach to young people. Figure out where they are. Are they getting sex ed? What are their needs? Talk to stakeholders. We are providing you that space right now, you can ask us those questions. You can tailor your message in a way that's competent and not offensive. In public health you can't just tweak your program a tiny bit and not alienate the culture you're trying to serve. As much as I hate the word "normal", make people more comfortable with disability, make it normalized. Put in a wheelchair in your visual images.

Liz's talk on sex, disability, and sex ed
Then, I gave my bit of the talk, which is basically outlined in these notes. Some bits of my talk are missing because I improvised and told stories. ("Whiskey, Vicodin, and hold me when I cry" was the money quote...) Some bits in my outline I didn't go into in the talk.

Then, Jen Cole gave her part of the talk and described GimpGirl. She worked from a written speech which maybe she'll put up on the site and if so, I'll link to it. Here's my notes on what she said, a bit shorter than my notes on Bethany's talk.

Jen's talk on GimpGirl

- We were young queer women with disabilities and started our group online 11 years ago. We met through the "do it" program at U of Washington, and all felt isolated. We're not trained professionals. We're just women with disabilities who care about our communities. No degrees or certifications. We make our community what we want it.

GimpGirl has meetings weekly, about a hodgepodge of topics: political advocacy, support group, staff meeting. We all come up with projects and start going on them.

- We generally have a smart sassy geeky spirit in common.

- We started on Serenity MOO, kind of like a MUD. We had email lists. Moved to LJ in 2003. It is easier to maintain than mailing lists. Young women, queer women, art and culture. We branched out into Second life, Facebook, and Twitter in 2008.

- 850 people, 265 members on LJ. From all over the world. This last year, we were donated a fourth of a SIM on 2nd life. 3d embodiment. Connecting people with disabilities to 2nd life. Second Life brought a huge wave of growth to our community. It brought opportunities we didn't know we were going to go after. Started to bring in financial support. Professionals in a myriad of different fields wanted to be part of our community. Women, disability communities hooked up with us.

- Recently we tried bringing in partners of PWD to talk with us about sexuality and whatever comes up in relationships.

- Problem with Second life, it's not very accessible to a large population. Some people can't access, older computers, limited finances, blind, visual processing issues, we also have an IRC channel with a live relay that goes back and forth between 2nd life and IRC, so people with visual impairments can participate.

- Examples of what our community is about. Partners meeting. The next day the girls were like "how did it go!" and they were just super curious. We realized that they wanted to do a singles meeting about sexuality. That was cool to me as an organizer to see women do that.

- Our community isn't about sexuality specifically. For 11 years, it comes up a lot in discussion and story telling. We have a lot of Q and A within our own community.

- specific and general information.

- accessible gynecologist list. Who people think is good and bad. Are their offices accessible? What parts are accessible and what parts aren't? Are they treated like human beings? Can they get on the exam tables? This info is on our wiki at gimpgirl.com.

We then went into audience comments and discussion.

q: panel idea great. I work for a hotline program in Massachusetts, sexual health, mariatalks.com All info thru lenses of characters. Accurate information. How can we make sure community is well represented in all our characters? I was a PCA for a while, the woman I worked for had awful experience with exams, being lifted up, put on a table. ER with capabilites? How do we know where to send someone?

Bethany - first question. Going to the stakeholders. Reading books is great, you learn about the sexual politics of disability. Tom Shakespeare et al. But talking to people is good. It is your responsibility to be culturally competent in your area. Find a group. So it's not based on stereotypes and uses contemporary language. That's inclusive. For example, we've moved away from the word "handicapped", so it would be a bad idea to use that word.

(Dr. Sandra Welder. Peg Nosick from Texas. Curriculum for health providers. CROWD: Center for Research on Women with Disabilities. )

Second life and IRC questions.

Information on safer sex practices for people with disabilities?

- not a lot out there. sexy harm reduction. Put on a condom with your mouth.
- Liz: this is a good subject for brainstorming.
- There is good information about safer sex for people with cognitive disabilities.

Resources on developmentally disabled.
Cory - there's lots of stuff. This is the one area that has a ton of stuff out there.
(I agree, it was a topic easy to find material by googling!)
Terri Couwenhoven. Downs Syndrome is in the title of the book. Teaching Children with Downs Syndrome About Their Bodies, Boundaries, And Sexuality: A Guide For Parents And Professionals.)

The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability. Excellent guide! Cory started that project.

Technology. As a blogger - Is the blog medium effective for getting across a message?
Liz: Yes! Twitter and Facebook also. Blogs mean you can speak at length, and the information is persistent. And it is current. Personal voice. Story telling is effective. Age brackets - MySpace/Facebook, LJ, etc Look at the disability blog carnivals, and Ouch (BBC's disability site and group blog).

Who's talking.com google different topics.

50% of population with disabilities doesn't have access to sex ed.

Title 10 clinics in California. We invested money into that, into access, and there still is not a large number of women being served. Where do we find women who need the services? how can I help facilitate the connection? We want women with disabilities to be on our advisory boards or boards of directors (but can't find any)

A: Mailing lists. Blogs. Contact existing organizations. There are a lot. (Independent living centers too but I forgot to say that.)

A: Bethany adds (again) not to expect people with disabilities to work for you for free and be grateful for the opportunity.

Competencies - tragic stories, clinic with restroom wheelchair access, the contractor build a hallway too narrow to get to it.

People who might be on the board? The bay area is one of largest populations. So you should be able to find someone.
- berkeley disabled group. has a mailing list.
- D-WILD
- Ed Roberts Campus groups
- Etc!!

Bethany - Working at Morehouse school of medicine. General advice to read about it first before they ask the questions.

sexualhealth.com

Guy in hat. 2nd year medical student at ucsd in reproductive health. san diego. noticed that youth grow up, teen years, development and growing. It is a huge transition and growing. Doctors, children transition from seeing a pediatrician to adult medicine. Pediatricians are family focused. Adult medicine focuses on disease and a person. That change is really important, causes stress on a patient.

Bethany mentions Dr. mirian kaufman. transition care, sexuality and disability.

jen - this was what our non profit was about, transition between your family and family helping with things and transitioning to adulthood. you're thrust out there into nothing. not a lot of support for how to transition. how to move out on your own? attendant care and health care.

We talk about people's fear of giving PWD responsibility over their own health care.

Parents, caregivers, that want to protect that person with disability from becoming an adult, from experiencing their sexuality. it's a huge issue.

The guy in the hat continues talking a couple of times about transition. Introduce physician early in teenage years. He is kind of repeating himself.

Bethany: This question as it keeps going is irritating to me. We continue to be viewed by that medical lens. Sure it's important. But doctors do not dominate my life. We all deal with a transition plan. There should be services that help us because we do have to engage with the medical profession. However, that's the one field where i'm NOT excluded! They want me there! Everywhere else I need some support! Medical expertise is just one facet.

Q: Physical accessiblity. I never see anyone who is disabled. Emotionally accessible. And, how can it be a safe space?

A: think of the glbt community , queer youth, tendency that we bring youth into our center, but we need to go outside our center to where they are, we need to bring community to them.

A: something like putting up a rainbow, disabled symbol?

A: In trans health - service providers often think they have never seen a trans person. But they probably have.

A: In questionnaires at our clinic, we haven't had anyone who identifies with that population, as disabled.

aud - I have disability but can hide it. If I'm asked I don't check that box. I don't want to be seen through that lens necessarily and set off whatever will happen when I check that box.

aud: - thanks for talking about desire and sexuality as positive rather than something dangerous to be controlled. A lot of the panels this conference have been sex negative.

Other guy - curious about second life. Embodiment. How can you be embodied? Do you have to be able bodied?

A: Yes and no. The range of body types is not that varied. But people built wheelchairs and animations and other mods. If you go around in the mainstream world of 2nd life people will ask you a lot of questions about why you are in a wheelchair and why you would choose to represent yourself that way. They can be harassing or hostile.

Bethany: Everybody can fuck! It doesn't matter what your body can do. We can have sex in all sorts of fun ways. Sex machines! Assistive devices! Expand the idea of pleasure and sexuality.

Now, about being inspirational! I should inspire you to have sex. If I can do it? You can do it!

(End of Panel)

I would like to add that despite our comments during the panel that you might want to pay people with disabilities to consult rather than expecting them to jump at the opportunity to work for you for free, three people approached me and asked me to do free work after this panel. They mean well and I respect that they want to be inclusive. I was not harsh about this in person, but actually, I feel a bit harsh on the subject. Some lady making like 90K a year working in public health? If her institute can't afford to pay a consultant she can pay me or someone else with disabilities out of her own pocket to help her learn to do her job. I have a full time job and a complicated family life and I'm editing a book and, like, 6 blogs. It is a bit like, when women point out that technical conferences don't have child care and then the conference organizers ask them to do the child care. Hello, if I'm doing the child care (for free no less) I won't be participating in the technical conference will I? Pay for it, folks. Don't exploit people because to you they look like the most exploitable people around.

Thanks to Cory Silverberg and Jen Cole for inviting me onto this panel! I confess I was sort of suspicious of Cory at first but he turned out more and more awesome over email and then incredibly awesome in person, I was sorry not to get to spend more time with him (and Bethany who I now adore). Jen and her partner and I went out to dinner and had a nice time; it was great to finally meet Jen who I have known online for a couple of years. I have to say also, SexTech was not a huge conference, maybe 300 to 500 people? But at this conference, in one afternoon, I saw and spoke with at least 8 people who were wheelchair users. At SXSW which was something like 5,000 or maybe way more people, there were 4 people in wheelchairs (more than I saw last time, and it felt amazing to me, but look what Sex Tech can do - I would like to challenge SXSWi to increase its outreach and invite more PWD to its conference.)

Ada Lovelace Day

2009-03-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

I felt a little wistful as I thought over who to write about. I wished for a clear mentor or hero who I would have known about from childhood onward. Not many of us had that kind of computer science hero or even a childhood or teenage computer geek peer.

I admire the many women I know (or know of) who start organizations to give community and support to women programmers and geeks. People I admire from afar in Linuxchix: Val Anita Aurora for her excellent writing, Akkana Peck because I'm always stealing bits of her .bashrc file and I admire how she posts useful tidbits like that, Sulamita Garcia, Miriam Ruiz for being a developer also outspoken about sexism and misogyny. Desi from Devchix who not only is a leader in a great organization for women but who is such a good evangelist and teacher for Ruby on Rails (almost enough to tempt me away from Python and php). Angela Byron aka webchick who is so helpful and a great teacher for being involved with Drupal, too. All the women on linuxchix, ubuntuwomen, phpwomen, devchix, and Systers: you are my heroes!

Of developers I know, well, I don't know that many. My co-worker Kirsten aka Perlgoddess, Kaity aka ubergeekchick (uberchicgeekchick on github) who writes and podcasts so thoughtfully about development and creativity, and skud aka Kirrily Robert who is a developer, a great blogger and good friend. My co-workers at BlogHer, Julie Douglas who taught herself php and Drupal, and Skye Kilaen who works with me on blog templates and problems (can debug a legacy Moveable Type template like nobody's business!) and who runs All Access Blogging, which gives detailed step by step information on how to make various blogging platforms accessible to people with visual impairments. And my sister Laura, who as well as being a hilarious and fierce personal blogger who can express any emotion simply from inflecting the word "dude", inspired me through sharing her 10 years of professional experience as a web developer in SEO, and by having more O'Reilly books about HTML, CSS, Java, and Javascript than I do, enough to make California slide off into the sea, and tackling the ever-shifting landscape of web dev head on no matter how much it makes a person just want to scream. And last but not least my fellow conspirator and BFF, Laura Quilter, whose expertise I depend on, running the back end of feministsf.org server, blog, mailing lists, and wikis.

Of other techy women I have worked with I would like to say a few things about women who either worked or learned from me. I look up to them too. Jasmine Davila, Olivia Given, Lark Baum all worked with me at the University of Chicago Lab Schools, doing web stuff, tech support on about 400 classroom and office Macs, twiddling with the servers, installing the physical wiring in tiny basement network closets and crawling through the ceilings wearing our headlamps, Flukes, and walkie talkies. They were so awesome. We all learned it on the fly, without any big attitude that we had to have a big attitude. We were not always pretending omniscience in a field where the range of things to know changes daily. We approached what we had to do as stuff to learn. That still inspires me a lot! I include in this category my mom, Karen Henry, who began asking me questions about the Internet in about 1994 and who ended up teaching classes on email, gopher, databases, and the early Web as a business and science reference librarian at the Houston Public Library.

Obviously I love and admire social media leaders and thinkers like Tara Hunt, all the women of She's Geeky and BlogHer, but there are too many to list! All my co-workers, the bloggers on our site and in our network, all the social media experts and technophiles, I am honored to get to be part of these networks of thousands of women. And to all the relentlessly intelligent bloggers I know from blogging, feminism, and science fiction fandom like Tempest, Jen Cole and Aleja Ospina, Karen Healy (Girls Read Comics) and Robyn Fleming (Cerise and The Iris Gaming Network), Strata Chalup, SJ from I, Asshole, Sarah Dopp, and Debbie Notkin, thank you for putting your words out there.

For anyone who has ever sat down with me to hack on some code or who has made any sort of public technical blog post with code in it, I feel a deep sense of sisterhood and am very, very happy to know you. It is both sad and inspiring but every woman I have ever spoken to in person about coding, even the people I think of as light years ahead of me in knowledge and experience, has expressed feeling like they are not hackery enough to really "count". As if in every thing we do has we have to prove our perfect technical competence for the honor of all womanhood. I try to fight this feeling in myself. Let's keep fighting it and put more of our work out there even if it's not "good enough" or done. And let's keep supporting each other's work and using peer mentoring and pair programming as much as we can!

(post for Ada Lovelace Day pledge organized by Suw Charman. Thanks Suw!)

Sex:Tech talk on Sex and Disability (Access Sex)

2009-03-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

Here are my notes for a panel on Sex and Disability coming up this afternoon at Sex:Tech 2009 in San Francisco. It's a conference for health workers and sex educators. I'll post my report on the conference and the panel later this week, but here's what I'd like to cover today.

What should you know about people with disabilities (PWD) as a health worker or sex educator?
- Don't assume what people can or can't do (or feel)
- Don't assume what people need
- Avoid constantly medicalizing disabled people's bodies or experiences
- Watch your gender/sexuality stereotypes
- ASK what people want or need
- LISTEN
- OFFER resources
- CONNECT the person with other people with disabilities
- Follow up actively

Charity models of giving help to PWD often can be pitying, condescending, paternalistic. Offering the wrong kind of help.

Self determination is key!

Consider your own level of discomfort with disability. Educate yourself. Read some blogs that are by disabled people where they speak about their own experiences, unmediated. Don't just read how-to-talk-to-disabled people booklets, though they can be useful. For example, the long-running Disability Blog Carnival run by the Disability Studies Dept. at Temple University has a special issue on sex and disability.

Kids, teenagers, adults all need access to sexual information and health care. Different disabilities: mobility issues, deaf, visual impairments, intellectual/learning disabled, autism, Downs

Kids:
- developing sexuality, gender identity
- Kids with disabilities need access to the same sex ed their peers are getting
- Language to describe gender, genitals, puberty, sex
- Masturbation, appropriate privacy
- Safety and self-advocacy
- Kids with disabilities 4-10 times more likely to be sexually abused
- Put sex ed into a child's IEP (Individual Education Plan)

Teenagers:
- All of the above.
- Contraception, pregnancy, masturbation
- STD info and safer sex info
- GYN care
- Body image
- Relationships and dating
- Sexual satisfaction
- Self advocacy. Role playing workshops (anti-date rape, self defense)
- Privacy
- Independence and self determination
- Unsupervised time with peers
- Drug/drinking use likely good to discuss
- Internet access likely empowering. Privacy/net access info!
- Warn/educate about fetishists and devotees especially online
- Educate family, PCAs, carers

Adults
- All of the above!
- Independent living
- OB/GYN care. Accessible gyn care, offices, tables
- Discussion/support groups online or offline
- Sexual assists, mobility aids, sex toys, pillows, benches

How to have sex with a disabled person? Good question. Same as with anyone else but these issues may come up: difficulty communicating, limited mobility, fatigue, pain, or lack of sensation. Communication and consent are key. As with safer sex education, de-emphasize the importance of sponteneity. Verbal or non verbal subtleties of consent and desire.

Safe spaces online. They can be difficult to create and maintain. They shouldl be moderated to keep out fetishists if that is a goal, and to keep out hostile and mocking comments or posts. Registration is useful. Protect your users' anonymity carefully!

Example - my difficulties with the wheelchair Flickr group. Fetishists intrude at least once a day though they are specifically discouraged. How to discuss sex online without being commodified and made non consensually into someone else's porn?

A good quote from Laura Hershey from Crip Commentary:

The health rights, sexual rights, and reproductive rights of women with disabilities are part of two large, multifaceted movements: the disability-rights movement and the feminist movement. Both movements, at times, fail to recognize these as essential human rights issues. Both have yet to make disabled women's access to health care, disabled women's sexual self-determination, and disabled women's reproductive freedoms high priorities on their agendas.

A few useful resources:

* Special Ed Law Blogs
* disabilitytraining.com
* Sexsupport.org
* Crip Commentary by Laura Hershey
* Free downloadable booklets, very good, for kids and parents:
Growing Up, Sex and Relationships
* More than Ramps: A guide to improving health care quality and access for people with disabilities

SXSWi: Ending Racism with Social Media

2009-03-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Thank you again to Nalo Hopkinson for fixing up my very, very rough transcript! (Nalo I can't believe you just did that.) And thanks to all the panelists and participants for a great SXSWi session.

******

Can Social Media End Racism?

LaToya Peterson (Racialicious), Kety Esquivel (CrossLeft, NCLR), Phil Hu (Angry Asian Man), Jay Smooth (Ill Doctrine)

The Postville Raid. AbUSed. May 12 raid "many women were terrorized and were saying what about my children, what about my children?" their kids s were with babysitters. ICE migra raids on .

Kety Esquivel new media manager for NCLR, National Council for Latino Rights. The Sanctuary, online forum. Megan La Mala, kyle, manny, duke, others who were critical in getting this off the ground. As progressive Christian I work for social justice and a radical message. All of us from different blogs in the pro-migrant movement, united. Stop the hate: http://wecanstopthehate.org

Jay Smooth. Ill doctrine radio show.

Phil Yu. angryasianman.com

Latoya: This discussion is intermediate level, not Racism101 We don't want to talk about whether racism exists. not interested in that. It's about our experiences with social media.

We were going to ask, What was your favorite racist moment online? All of us found that actually it all blends together, there's so much of it.

Kety: Wecanstopthehate.com Hate mail. Case prosecuted, death threats , FBI. We had some problems with Sean Hannity. He made an accusation against NCLR. It was a lie. I'm not going to repeat it. We are going to all come together and do some activism and mobilize. There's cards on your chair. Everyone on panel will participate.

Jay Smooth. Each one is like a snowflake, all beautiful. And YouTube is like a blizzard. Social media is useful to show how racism exists, though it doesn't show institutional racism. Through anonymity you can show your racism better. People really know what you're thinking.

Jay: How to tell people they sound racist. video . It was posted 15 months ago, but 5 seconds ago as you see, someone felt it necessary to go on and post a comment that says "i hate spics".

*laughter from audience*

Latoya: The world online was eyeopening, to see how many people and how much they hate people of color, they feel online space is only for them, it's a white space and a US space. I thought Racialcious blogging would end that because it would be my community. But you find people like to attack community and discussions of race. Also just communities of color! links we got, sheer number of links from hate and white supremacist sites. People would leave wrong detailed emails of why black people were different from white, and footnotes to studies of how black men rape more than white men (which is false) People bring their prejudices there . people talking about African American community, can be very hateful towards Latino, Muslims, Arabs, Persians, biracial identity, transgender community within African American community, every time something new comes up there's a fresh wave of hate. We're mostly women, 7 of 8 of us experienced racialized sexism. Comments about our vaginas, our sexuality, we find them more amusing than offensive. We got one that was like, "this person is so angry at the world because SHE HAS A BIG VAGINA." Carmen was like "that's why i carry my laptop in it."

*laughter*

Phil: People tell me, "I've never *seen* such anger in an Asian before !" My attitude is, fuck comments! I don't allow them. i don't have the time to deal with that. I've received over 8 years a lot of hate mail. it blends together to the point where i posted this thing the anatomy of a hate mail. check off, racial slurs, stop bitching about racism, go back to where you came from, start speaking fucking English. Which? I mean, "motherfucker!" That's English. You write to me in English, how am I supposed to read it?

Smooth: people are likely to react to my words and the substance of what I'm saying rather than just comments about my appearance so i benefit from some gender privilege there.

Kety: we allow for comments and community posts.

Kety: New space. New media is a new world, we're building it together, we can't ignore history, but it's global and it's iterated in many ways, we can acknowledge the opportunity, we can stop in and say he what are we going to do to support engagement, expression, Go into it with our eyes open. If we don't do something different we get more of the same. Hope and possibility fight the good fight.

spread Knowledge
create refuge
mobilize to action

1) spread knowledge. talk radio without just being "controversial" for ratings. blog as information warehouse.

phil: writing for my community, for Asian American community. I'm trying to convince members of my own community that racism exists. information about issues that are affecting us. Asian Americans have reputation that we are largely apathetic about things going on. hard to get people to realize, this movie's wack, racist depiction, this guy on radio. shouldn't go unchecked. hate crimes in our community. so many people, criticism I've encountered is often from other Asians, saying don't rock the boat, why are you doing this?

Latoya: can you talk about your tagline, "That's racist!"

Phil: put a zinger on it. in italics . get the point across. it should be obvious, but it's not to a lot of people.

Smooth: base to articulate what your principles on. web video , go viral, use that medium, clever, but with substantive ideas.
(We watch the video)

Latoya: Nez, Nezua, The Unapologetic Mexican. Actually you can do to much toothbrushing which erodes the gums of racism. LOL

Creating a refuge: it's tiring to have the same conversation over and over again. It's not our responsibility to explain to every single person to their satisfaction. At Racialicious we are a heavily moderated space. we moderate every comment by hand.

Iris Network !!! Chromatic. gamers of color! Don't have to explain that racism exists there, we can just talk about what we want to talk about.

Kety: Network of bloggers, we all have day jobs. Not always monetized. We had some conference calls, the online/offline combination is good. Where do we go, what do we do, how to leverage who we all are individually to make a collective that can help us make a difference. We made a questionnaire for all the presidential candidates. behind closed doors in private they say oh we're pro immigration but that doesn't get translated out of Spanish. we need these people to go on record, say what your policies are? McCain, Obama, we reached out equally. Up to that point in time among republicans McCain had a pretty good position then he did a huge pivot. We got ignored, and ignored. These questions are something they can respond to. we finally got a call from CNN. Marisa Treviño, Latina Lista, phenomenal blogger out of texas. helped us out. Went on CNN, grass roots groups of bloggers, not even being paid, i had the honor of representing our collective on CNN and saying why it is crucial to speak to the Latino community. the candidates needed to be straight with us. I'm a political independent, I'm committed to social justice, as a Latina and as a Christian

Latoya: Mobilizing. mainstream media. bloggers fight to get attention of mainstream media. ICE raids, what's happening. Avatar the last Airbender. finally they casted an Asian actor but as the villain. sometimes we hustle it so much we hustle it backwards.

The Tsunami Song on hot 97. communities working together cross culturally changed lyrics to mock the victims of the Tsunami. amazed this would represent hip hop and it was so racist. i asked are we as a hip hop nation are we going to tolerate this, do we think this is cool? no! people got on board, going from my blog post, next morning, enough noise, hot 97 posted an apology half hearted apology that made people more angry, 100s of thousands of views, 2 weeks after that blog post i was at city hall with activist and government and bloggers figuring out some way to hold them accountable.

Phil: i would never be exposed to that from hot 97 in los Angeles, i was appalled, i did what i did which was post the address of everyone at hot 97 and all their advertisers to get the ball rolling. get people on board speaking out. Such a hard thing to do, the Internet has made that a lot easier J posted the audio clip rather than just reading the lyrics.

J: bringing global attention to a local problem. it's easy to spread when there is a piece of compelling media around it. but media provocation is not always the most useful thing. Imus is off the air, nice but he's an interchangeable cog in the wheel. we need to use compelling media to build interest around other issues, not just about something someone said in the media.

Q: which comment to axe and which to keep?

A: (It varies)

Latoya and Kety, populist caucus . people of color not represented, not invited, didn't know, not in same circles, be very assertive in your outreach

Q: danah boyd: history of racism online, cross country, racism has different roots in different countries. cross nation, cross culture racism, how you get people talking, they don't know the history and roots played out.

Latoya: very hard question, good question, complicated.

J: define your terms. it is hard, even in the US we don't agree what "racism" means. On the international level, what is race! people have a completely different idea in Brazil than in the UK. defining terms is a good first step.

Phil: I can only agree, that is complicated. Asian American, very huge, Asian and pacific, nationalities, cultures, generations, it's impossible to be all on the same page on any one issue. That's a whole other panel!

Latoya; thank you for asking that question danah I'll open up a thread on it on racialicious.com UK, Australia, India, we should open that up and cross post.

Kety: panel for next year for sxswi. critical for each of our communities. assumption, indigenous assumption everyone is white.

Q: Don , what's going on now in Austin. new media has a heavy influence. last question good, perspectives on what is racism. allowing people to come to you, you are leaders , for me racism always involves economic policy and politics. bigoted, tied to what is racism. what true racism technically was. you guys have got to start to consider, explaining. proper way to channel the images, so the real important factors in racism don't get lost and lumped together,

Latoya: the proper way to do something in terms of racism. which I'm going to say there isn't one. Racialicious focuses on media images and pop culture and people of color. why don't we talk about this why don't we talk about something else. people only talk about something quantifiable to them. racism for some people is a question of representation. blacks not in sitcoms, how come? how come black people can't front their own sitcoms? no jobs, no roles, no black actors, it's economic. i don't think there will ever be one strict definition of what racism is.

Kety: it's important we've been having this conversation, it's huge, there are several different chunks and pieces. continue conversations More representation in these conversations is important!!! In leading these conversations.

J: No one way, but important to keep in mind racism is not just in sentiment and feelings. Even in Obama's speech he talked about feelings, objective realization of centuries of institutional racism. it takes more than conversation to address that! we can all be Twitter friends with each other but that would be most useful if we follow that up with ways to act on these institutional issues.

Latoya: The color of Wealth, good book.

Q: André Brock, University of Iowa. comment. questions. retention of grad studentss of color. thread here is central. universal ethos of promoting diversity efforts, anti racism. it's often left to the individuals, with very little institutional support.. I do race online. Artifact of practice and belief. what are the practices, what can we encourage others to do? adopting beliefs and strategies, build cadre,. the idea of building cadre. Individual efforts, micro and macro aggressions. it burns people out. Cadre. Evangelists, activist, enlightened participants, avoid having that one person sitting up on the podium burning out. Mechanics to silence voices of dissent. Disemvowelling. consider other tech. Steve Gilliard, news blog. censure. He would post an egregious comment, he'd post it and let his community address it, shame the people and put them on blast, let people know those people exist.

Latoya: for colleges talk with Carmen. she does work with colleges and universities. Creating best practices! Encouraging a cadre, i really like that

Shakesville, emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. solidarity with other communities, go into gaming space. social justice in video games. What would resident evil 5 look like if it had an anti colonialist viewpoint? what if you're playing as one of the leaders from whatever nation and the forces coming to exterminate them? humanizing these characters, make it not perfect, but complex!

Kety: diverse group, I'd love to see it grow. It can't be one voice in isolation.

SXSWi: Fighting online misogyny panel

2009-03-15T14:25:00.001-07:00

Thank you!!! times a hundred to Nalo Hopkinson who just now took my rough live transcript and cleaned it up and emailed it back to me so I could post it. Thank you Nalo! You rock so hard.

***

That's Not My Name: Beating Down Misogyny Online

Panelists: Cecily Walker (Cecily.info), Ann Friedman (Feministing), Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon.net), Samhita Mukhopadhyay (Feministing)

Cecily Walker: How do you think that new media and Internet technology, new tools, feminists can use these new media tools? Boosting feminist activism?

Samhita Mukhopadhyay: All of us have a tremendous amount of expertise using online tech. women's community, grass root organizing community, new tools, support work happening on the ground. Strategic media campaigns, budding networks, social media to support our justice-minded goals. We use tools, though, that tend to represent the same stuff we're fighting; tools produced in environments highly volatile for feminist voices. 50/50 good, problematic. Opportunity, brought up new issues.

Amanda Marcotte: Promise of blogging world many years ago, we could divorce ourselves from identity and just be pure voices, as the online and offline world merged into one. But you can't communicate about your ideas without bringing your identity along. Pluses and minuses.

Ann Friedman: Divorcing identity is not a useful way to do activism. we don't actually want to live out whatever early Internet ideal enables us to not have an identity, that hampers our activist goals.

Cecily: I wasn't finding many black female queer voices online, it was important to me to blog under my own identity. given our circumstances today, how important is it to you to blog under you own identity.?

Amanda: I started blogging under my own id without really thinking of it, it didn't seem to be a big deal. in retrospect it was good and it sets a good example if you can. a lot of women who are afraid to , the more of us who can do it, the less threatening it is for others.

Samhita: when i started we were excited if we got comments on a post. then 2 years into it we started getting threats. you then realize the threats mostly don't translate to real live experiences. I also think for women online it's an important statement to make. you'll notice a lot of men have a blog under their own name. women tend to be in group blogs or under a different sort of brand name. So it's important for your future to use your real name.

Friedman: women in the political blog world as pseudonymous and I'm thinking of Digby. But it's not always a great idea to blog under your own name. It's fraught. There's a certain amount of privilege and risk you assume. Not all of us even thought about it. we didn't consider the implications. Concrete advantages, consider Digby, they didn't know she was a woman, so they didn't pigeonhole her. 'This is just a women's issue', etc. We can try to keep a voice but transcend some of those boxes.

Cecily: What are some of the key repercussions of online threats that moved into offline space? Paint us a picture of what that looks like.

Amanda: Not the John Edwards campaign. *laughter* I started off on a smaller blogspot blog. Was invited to join Pandagon by Jesse Taylor. there weren't many high traffic liberal blogs that had any women at all. I honestly think my entrance on to the a list was a profound thing for many of the male commenter, mind you right wing male commenters who felt this was a boys' club. It turned ugly really fast. Publishing my address, telling people to show up at my house and do violent sexual things to me. Calling my work and trying to get me fired. Nobody in the liberal blogosphere that i turned to had any experience whatsoever with this kind of thing and they didn't believe it at first. he'd experienced viciousness and racism from commenters but he'd never seen anything cruel and violent as was directed at me. We had free comments, we had to turn that off and turn on registration for comments. I don't know how serious the threats are but i have to assume they're pretty serious if they've found out where i worked and called my boss.

Ann - Feministing has an appointed FBI agent where we send our threats. It's that bad. Political blogging ... I'd say that, we don't control the space for (tapped?) as much as we do on Feministing. so it's a more sexist space and a less feminist space. undoubtedly in terms of the private mail we get, via Feministing, that's way worse. we can control the comments but not the private email.

Samhita: some of the worst misogyny I've experienced is on other blogs. this isn't about how we feel threatened but about how it affects the community. we've been chastised a lot for not moderating every comment and not providing a safe enough space online for our readers. it's not about protecting our own identity and feeling threatened but about how it makes our community feel. if you're someone who's experienced violent misogyny in your life there's a moment of violence and violation that happens that makes you feel unsafe. we have to be clear about creating boundaries so our community can feel safe.

Ann: there's a chilling effect when one woman, one person of color or queer person , is a target, then others are deterred from speaking in quite so open a manner. so the power structure online, that mirrors the real world...

Amanda: listening to auto admit case, on NPR, it's a case law blog targeted very randomly two law students, two women. one man posted something about one of the women who had turned him down to go on a date. another woman got looped in. it got to the point of stds, slept with everyone, posted photos of them in their daily life with lurid rape fantasies, I'm sitting behind her in class, she's at the gym right now, The defenders of the auto admit blog were going on about free speech. Can't you understand that women also have the right to free speech and if you're using yours to silence her then you're not for free speech?

Cecily – at the library. heavily gendered space, 90% female environment. if we contribute to the web sites, we have to use our full names, our names on badges, one unsafe thing about a library you are in a female controlled space, you are in a culture that is heavily invested in keeping your individual name safe, but now that's not true. i have to get people to feel more comfortable posting on the Internet, but it's not going well, people don't feel safe doing that, we get crank calls, complaints, we try to showcase all political viewpoints. spaces you might not define as feminist, we're feeling some heavy pushback from the staff. how are we going to roll this process out?

Cecily: why is it important to look at gender and how it plays out online?

*laughter*

Samhita: we want to keep this panel to what it means to be feminist online. But because of these highly volatile experiences we've had it.... we've had different experiences online, male blogers don't have that same thing. there's never been a question, when i say something a little controversial, it's not about the issues, it's about whether i should have said something in the first place, you internalize that belief you constantly have to prove yourself.
A lot of our readers have experienced sexual violence and want to share those stories but don't feel that they can. You have to make a lot of different negotiations to feel comfortable in it

Ann - women's writing, the dynamics. One thing i do for myself is go through everything i write and strip out all the i thinks and i believes. because I'm writing it duh it's what i think. writing more authoritatively. if you're going to pick me apart for this i might as well say it right out. Or, you can add 50 million caveats and end up not saying anything and not offending anyone. the Internet constantly needs to be fed. the evolution of women's writing online, if i look at things i wrote in 2004, that's largely in response to being hardened by this sort of stuff.

Amanda: i tend to say things very authoritatively and that's always been a very hard things for me and many men who have multi year grudges against me. I've got into the habit of qualifying and adding the i think in.

Ann: but that doesn't stop it. that's not going to stop you from getting slammed on some blog full of dudes who hate you already!

Amanda: when i taught writing i would circle them in girls' writing and tell them to take it out. it was always girls.

Cecily: lessons you've learned?

Samhita: Uh, that I'm a masochist

Cecily: I think you might have to unbox that one for us? lol

Samhita: yeah I'll "unpack" that. ha. The content of what I'm writing and who i am writing it, it's twofold . at least once a month i want to throw in the towel

Cecily: what keeps you from doing it?

Samhita: masochism? ha ha. It's telling me that the level of importance of what we're doing, for every piece of hate mail i get i get something else from Idaho saying they've never read something about sexism and racism and it's changed their life in some . It's not just for my own voice but it's part of a movement of online feminism that we're a movement and moving forward. Online solutions and best practices and you have to not care any more. you have to divorce yourself from caring about what people say about you, you have to go "well, you have 1/4 the readership lol" not the most humble way to think about it, but hey it helps me feel better. plus if I'm pissing off people who i wouldn't like in real life,

Ann: 6 of us who write on Feministing and we can all each other up and go "i know people say mean shit all the time but this one really got to me!" and we all know how it feels. sometimes you have to decide what is a good public fight to have, vs. "you just want to call me ugly and tell me to make you a sandwich" i know it sounds ridiculous but it is hard to tell the difference sometimes! we need help in figuring that out, when to engage and when not to. you can engage with people who just don't get it. But Feministing is on our terms. we don't like it, we can delete your comment. we can respond to just part of what you're saying and ignore the rest. or we can have a full blown back and forth, having a community to help decide and talk about how to engage has been crucial

Amanda: the purpose is to shut you up and if they don't get what they want, they stop trying to shut you up, the more I don't go away, and don't shut up, the less harassment i get. just go out there and write every day and eventually they will give up. it's not working, it's straight up behavioral science.

Cecily: these tools that help us to get our voices out there, also hurt us. social networking tools.

Samhita: Twitter is a very useful tool. Communities, we have different community that comments on our youtube videos, twitter is another micro group environment and you get to know people a different way. That's very powerful. I've had friends on my twitter feed who in the blogging worlds we have knock down "your mama" fights but on twitter I'm like "Oh you do yoga? i do yoga toooo!" lol. It's less serious, less formal, commenting on Feministing can feel very formal.

Cecily: using these tools to get people to organize around a specific activist event?

Ann: When someone is getting attacked elsewhere, get into comments and post in support. Supportive conversation in public. Positive, or smackdown.

Cecily: Basic survival tips: solutions. if you've felt threatened, what do you do?

Samhita: Do not feel bad about banning people.

Amanda: Don't feel guilty about it, some people are not there to engage. they shouldn't be there.

Ann: You determine the levels of your own engagement, that's self preservation. Free speech, free speech, my rights! whatever! go start your own blog! you do have free speech. Shockingly, no one has registered the url, getyourowneffingblog.com.

Cecily: libraries are public spaces, oh wait we can't suppress these voices. what kinds of tools, for someone in that situation where the people in charge don't understand it's a safety issue an a respect my own house issue.

Amanda: Some men are allies. make alliances with men who will back you up can be very powerful. atrios alone has been useful in getting people to shut up being nasty about me. he'll write a post saying they're morons and he's a man so people respect him and they shut up. that helps a lot. who has power in your community that you don't have? exploit it a little. exploit other people's privilege.

Ann: comments on huff po are useless, they're a free for all. when you're writing for bigger spaces it's not that meaningful or helpful, it's not my community responding to me it's just like, crazytown. just ignore it. At feministing, people who read us regularly and have been for a long time, Samhita has a word for people who are super engaged

Samhita: minions

Ann: No! not that one! *laughter* Our regular readers are quicker than we are and say no that's bull or email us and say please moderate this crazy comment. that is unbelievably helpful.

Samhita: creating a community people are bought into, invested into keeping a certain way. that is one of the best practices which has kept us afloat. it is crucial

Cecily: being a librarian i can't do anything without reading about it in some academic journal. Germany researchers, algorithm to measure level of sexism in a comment. they had men tell jokes to a computer set up to "think" like a woman. the level of harassment the computer notices, correlated with the level of harassment real women experience online. women who identify as feminists get more harassment. if a woman mentioned herself or posted a photo her level of attractiveness had nothing to do with it. automated sexism detector!

Amanda: what we need a machine to back us up now!

Amanda: registration is the most useful way to control your space. disemvoweller is useful, button for it. Also, give some of your attack dogs moderation power. delete a comment and replace it with videos of bunnies hopping around. it makes people happy to see bunnies. *everyone laughs*

Cecily: what's crazy bait?

Samhita: writing about any part of popular culture people feel invested in, fraternities, video games, if you want to get a lot of traffic then piss off the gamers, just kidding Latoya! *laughter* Race and gender, intersection. people feel very personally offended. Gentrification.

Amanda: Biggies are rape and domestic violence. if you write about rape or domestic violence in any form that's crazy bait. Abortion, gotten better than it used to be. But if anyone tells a personal experience, that gets nutbars who will make personal threats directly against the person who got the abortion if anything has a racial aspect watch out it's going to get really ugly.

Ann: if you're writing about The Presidential Race or The Economy in the abstract without a personal level, people aren't pissed off. Gentrification, when you get at where people live, it gets to them . Lipstick. what you wear. what people have personal experience with. they feel authoritative about it.

Cecily: Takeaway?

Samhita: Don't feel threatened. it's not about you. there's some crazy people out there, it's about them. keep going. young women reading, young women's voices. the potential is very great right now. don't give up.

Amanda: You're not alone, you have friends. When under attack you can feel very alone. Feels hard, you don't want to "play the victim" but reach out and ask for support. Own what's happening and ask for other people to care. they will often step up more than you would think initially.

Ann: Yeah. community. public, on blog, private space to process, that's what it all comes down to for me. And, vast quantities of self esteem. A reservoir to draw on. Especially if you're doing video blogging

Amanda: If you can learn to feed off the hate like ... like trolls...

Ann: Youtube comments about how ugly, or how attractive. they have the same tone! stepping back and realizing they're crazy!

Audience questions:

Kimberly: kimberlyblessing.com Feminist web dev : twitter is where i get problems. i speak to my community via twitter including feminist issues and that's where i get attacked and it carries over to the real world because i work with the guys who followed m on twitter. i get angry and it affects me at work. i i start to internalize all of it. when there is something that important, what would be your other tips, i don't have community, i work with almost all men. who do i go to? I don't have any support or anyone more powerful to turn to. I just shut down and then go away for a while.

Ann: there must be other feminist web developers. Reach out to them.

Kimberly: Someone pulls you aside and says, hey that post you made this morning on twitter linking to that feminist thing online, you're about to go into a big meeting with some vice president...

Amanda: what's wrong with men who need to see women fail like this? pity them.

I'm Elisa from Blogher. (*applause, cheers*) There is disdain for business women and moms and women of color, dismissed, conservative women bloggers treated badly in other space, the misogyny itself is the problem, we need to see it everywhere, we can't allow it, wherever we allow it to fester, it will continue to grow.

Q: Misogyny mommy bloggers, they have a more accepted space. women are more accepted in the blogosphere in "women's blogs" networks, food, moms, travel. when we try to venture into economy, science, web dev, that's where we are told to sit down and shut up. how can we continue to cross over?

Samhita: There is something different about "women" and "feminist" you are in a space you're not supposed to be in , a political space. to be a woman in one of those fields, you have to fight with some best practices.

Amanda: any women who feel confident to feel about politics please do so more. write about the economy and politics. other women need to see that behavior modelled. know you'll get a lot of blowback. eventually it helps.

Q: tendency to email privately? or privately and hateful? how do you draw the line?

Ann: sometimes our commenters have already talked back, engaged, other times it has a derailing effect.

Amanda: 90% of it is public, they are performing for other people

Monday night: Feministing party at Beerland on Red River & 7th- 8th!

Talking at ETech this Thursday: DIY for People with Disabilities

2009-03-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be speaking at ETech in a couple of days about technology, culture, and disability/access invention. I'm all fizzy with enthusiasm and can't wait to give the talk and see what people about afterwards!

If you're curious, Here's the talk description, and I'll put slides up on Thursday or Friday.

Wheelchairs aren’t any more complicated than bicycles, but they cost a ridiculous amount of money. They shouldn’t. Neither should other simple accessibility and mobility equipment. In the U.S., people with disabilities who need adaptive devices depend on donations, charitable agencies, insurance, and a corrupt multi-billion dollar industry that profits from limiting access to information.

With a cultural shift to a hardware DIY movement and the spread of open source hardware designs, millions of people could have global access to equipment design, so that people with disabilities, their families, and their allies can build equipment themselves, and have the information they need to maintain and repair their own stuff.

Since we can’t all do it ourselves or weld our own chairs, we also should encourage a different mindset for the industry. You can’t stand up all day at your desk, but you don’t need a doctor to prescribe you a $6000 office chair. A consumer model rather than a medical and charity model for mobility aids would treat wheelchairs simply as things that we use to help us get around, like cars, bikes, or strollers.

Small assistive devices such as reacher/grabbers, page turners and book holders, grip extenders, can be made with bits of rubber tubing, PVC pipe, and tools as simple as box cutters and duct tape. Rather than obsess over impossible levels of healthiness and longevity, we need to change people’s expectations of how they will deal with changing physical limitations. Popularizing simple designs, and a DIY attitude for mobility and accessibility gear, will encourage a culture of invention that will be especially helpful to people as they age.

This will be my first O'Reilly conference. No, wait, it won't, I went to a huge impersonal scary Perl conference in about 1998, as a somewhat lonely programmer and the founder of Orange County Perl Mongers. But that's another story. What I want to say here is, I really liked the O'Reilly conference registration site. It let me make my own profile and control it, rather than emailing a bio and info 12 months ahead of time. It lets me see all the other speakers and attendees, which is hugely important for me so that I can picture where I'm going to, how comfortable or hostile an environment it will be, whether I know *anyone* else there, how my talk will fit in with other talks, and so on; it helps to emphasize that people are the map. There are even social network features so that I am coming into the conference "friended" with a bunch of people and able to message back and forth with them. It is all very slick and very useful to me.

A conference is a social event. It makes sense to build social media around it.

State of the Union speech, and a little rant from me

2009-02-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

I watched President Obama's speech tonight on CNN with Facebook comments and Twitter streaming by both at once, and several people talking with me on IM, as is now my usual practice watching anything interesting in politics. If I had to watch the speech without the backchannels, I wouldn't be exactly bored. I'd be frustrated, like I was missing a sense I'm used to having. My reactions develop and merge with the stream of reactions online and I like it that way.

While I watched, talked, and listened, I noticed Tweet Congress, which encourages members of Congress to get on Twitter.

Now, even if we manage to keep a handle on the downward slide of the economy, I think this country needs more investment in something like the CCC and the WPA. We need better infrastructure especially in schools, health care, and housing. More investment in programs like Americorps.

I have been thinking about what will happen if more and more people become poor and homeless. Here's my tinfoil hat speaking... We have widespread poverty already. But it is cordoned off from the middle class and wealthy. As I considered what would likely happen I thought back to the Astrodome or "Reliant Center" relief camp of 20,000 in Houston after Hurricane Katrina. You may not remember, but Barbara Bush and other powerful wealthy people actually believed that the people whose communities and homes were destroyed by Katrina would want to live on cots under the bright lights of a refugee camp, and would be better off there. Better off! It was amazing and outrageous. Yes I watched this woman who was the First Lady of the U.S. for 8 years walk through the sad shell shocked crowd of black folks who had been trapped in the Superdome, and then say on the radio that they were going to have a happier better life now that they were taken care of in this camp, and they weren't going to want to leave, because they had been "underprivileged". The disconnect and lack of empathy and imagination was, and still is, so vast for people like Bush.

Some factions of government were practically salivating at the thought of having an utterly disempowered population in a fenced off area they would make into a model refugee camp. They were planning, likely with some good intentions, "Reliant Village". I saw the plans for it, with a mobile school and playground and town square and sort of a barracks set up. They planned for the long term, for years of thousands of people living there in the stadium and parking lot. And I believe that model is still in the minds of much of our government; disaster, as an opportunity for a kind of reform. But a kind of reform that any sane person would reject, because it means living in a jail wrapped up to look pretty, with electronic tracking bracelets and military guards everywhere 24/7 to guarantee that poor people are safe from themselves but most of all to sanitize the idea of poverty and unfreedom for the rest of the country who still have jobs and homes so that they won't have to face up to it. Those middle class people were all too happy and charitable to send truck loads of their donated old tshirts to the camp not having the faintest clue that no one had anywhere to put a truckload of clothes and material possessions and that that kind of charity wasn't helping a damn thing.

In short, I now trust, due to Obama being elected, this won't happen.

Under Bush, that's where we were heading, straight to crazy-ass dystopia. And it was beginning to happen post-Katrina. Surprise, most people got the heck out of the camp as soon as they could muster up a ride or a bus ticket out of town, if they knew anyone - anyone! who lived outside of the hurricane-hit areas. The ones too old, alone, or in too many difficulties to do that, got bussed off forcibly to smaller refurbished military bases and church camps in the middle of nowhere where they know no one, because of the panic over Hurricane Rita -- camps where years later some are still stuck.

So what do I think will happen? Don't know and it will depend how bad the job losses are, but I'm putting my hopes on massive public works programs and jobs for everyone. Housing is the piece of the puzzle I can't see for the life of me; public housing sucks, institutional living sucks worse, maybe an expansion of Section 8, better funding of Habitat for Humanity type of projects, or better rent control laws will help. There is no safety net, welfare and even food stamps are incredibly broken, and people need that safety net, more transparency and less cold hearted state employees who do their jobs right.

My tiny adorable flowered computer!

2009-02-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

I got an HP Mini Vivienne Tam edition to review a few days ago, and I've used it so far for blogging, surfing, email, IM-ing, and writing up my thoughts in Notepad. Here's my preliminary review based on four days of casual but heavy use.

This is a good computer for a blogger or a student who doesn't need a huge screen or massive computing power. Also it's incredibly cute.

Here's some praise!

I'm a demanding blogger. I type 100 words a minute and I like to have about 50 tabs open. This HP Mini was incredibly easy for me to slip into using. I blogged from it without noticing the slightly smaller keyboard; I could type just as fast as I usually do. The size, key placement, action, and feel of the keys are all just great. If you've tried a mini before, but had trouble getting used to the keyboard, you may be pleased with a Mini.

The screen is big and very readable! It's tiny and very light.

I like the way the case opens and shuts. The shell is hard plastic - not fabric or gelskin covered.

It has two USB ports, which seems quite nice.

I'm happy with a 60GB hard drive in such a tiny, light computer.

The wireless mouse works well.

Everything I wanted out of my Asus EeePC, but sadly never quite got, has come true in this adorable netbook!

Here's my wishlist.

I fervently wish for holes in the case where I could attach straps. Two holes near the hinge would be ideal, so that I could put a shoulder strap on this beastie. At She's Geeky conference this weekend, how many women did I just watch, walking around the room holding a computer, a paper notepad, a pen, a purse, and a latte? Around the house, it would be all that plus a book and a baby and 6 things you've picked up from the living room to move to the office. Computers need handles. But beyond the OLPC or old clamshell iMac handles that require a hand. Shoulder strap power!

Backlit keys would make me *very* happy. I'm often typing in bed or in a darkened room, in work meetings or conferences. It's lovely if I can see the keys, but keep the screen relatively dim.

Neutral thoughts

* Mostly, I use MacOS X or Linux. So this is the first time I've used Windows. While I'm not especially impressed with Windows XP, I'm also not especially annoyed. So for a week or two, I'm going to stick with XP to give it a fair shake.

* I haven't tried doing any development on this machine yet, but I think that will go quite well.

* I haven't tested battery life. So far, it hasn't been a problem, but I haven't approached it systematically.

* I haven't tried the webcam yet. It has a built in camera! I will take it through some video chat paces.

* I haven't tried installing any games or a Second Life client on it. I'll let you all know how that goes. I figure, I don't play a ton of games, but if Second Life behaves well, then I can stand by my recommendation the computer for the writer and student who's also a casual gamer.

My criticisms of the HP Mini are minor.

* The computer goes to sleep a bit too quickly when I half-close the lid. I'm often blogging or emailing or IM-ing in social or work situations, or doing actual work with private information in a cafe, and if someone comes up to talk with me, I need to half-close the computer so they can't shoulder-surf. While the Mini wakes up very quickly, I wish it didn't go to sleep until I *actually shut the lid*.

* The bumps on the f and j keys are too subtle for me to feel them easily. I could type with more confidence with better subliminal feedback about the "home" keys.

* The hinge on the case could open a little more widely. It goes past 90 degrees, but not quite far enough. I type in my lap, not on a desk. This is partly habit I'm sure, but I wonder if it's at all a gender related habit, as chairs, desks, and tables often don't match up for me, because I'm shorter than the default person (male) they're designed for? Because the computer's in my lap, and the resulting viewing angle, I sometimes need to tilt the screen further back than 100 degrees. Now, this is also true when I have my HP Mini in bed. Which I often do.

AND NOW FOR THE ADORABLENESS

This computer is cute. It's pretty. But it doesn't make me hurl with the pinkitude. Really!

It's a really nice color of deep red, with black around the screen. There's nothing ugly and clunky about this computer. It's totally elegant. I take it out of my bag, and everyone admires it, and whatever one might think about HP's targeting of women or the cut of the marketing, women everywhere I go are exclaiming with delight at how cute this computer is. It is very much OMG I WANT THAT. Then, because I'm this sort of person, I hand them the computer and invite them to type something and take it through its internet browser paces. In fact, it's been really fun to have people come up and talk to me and be so friendly, because they're curious about my computer.

For quite some time I've been asking the world for an adorable computer that is small and light, yet still a useful computer. (Oh, how I miss my 12 inch MacBook, but how I wished it were *even smaller*.) While I have issues as a feminist with everything being pink especially like, pink tools and pink computers, (see girl geek bingo), I also have mixed feelings and like things that are pretty and cute. It's better if they're pretty, cute, and punk rock, and actually work.

This is my usual style (me and my sister, with 13-inch MacBooks covered in stickers)

And here I am with the Vivienne Tam,

This gets across how tiny and handy it is. See how it likes to sit on top of my MacBook?! It's like a cute little ladybug!

The Internet is srs bzns and so am I, in black boys' guayabera, SF State tshirt, cotton handkerchief with red stitching, and matching computer,

The Vivienne Tam and its matching mouse want to wear my Fluevog boots:

If it had a hat, it would have a beret. If it were a color of nail polish, it would be "I'm Not Really a Waitress" red. Yes. I have middle class brand awareness. I cannot help it. When I wasn't playing video games, I grew up in a mall. It seeps into your blood.

Even the packaging was nice! It was like buying a computer at Sephora. Or Bloomingdale's or something. I know it's shallow, and obviously I care WAY more about the specs and usability of a computer than the box it comes in, but I noticed the box anyway. Check this out:

At the She's Geeky / Women 2.0 Dinner, I ended up passing the computer around almost as much as I got to use it myself. And when I whipped it out of my backpack to show to my friend Beth aka Techmama, she yelped and pulled out her own! We were like, "Oh no, same dress at the prom!" We managed to share the cuteness!

I can heartily recommend this computer if you're a blogger, writer, or you just want your own laptop instead of using a shared family computer. The 60 GB hard drive is big and fast enough to deal with the *ton* of photos, Flip videos, and music that I tend to accumulate as a blogger. The wireless also works very well so the machine lives up to its promise of portability.

ALSO, IT IS REALLY CUTE. Did I mention that!?

I have three matching wireless mice to give away. Red mice with lavender flowers and silver sides. Who wants them?

* Buy it from HP: HP Mini Vivienne Tam ("Buy it" link gives all the specs)
* Buy it from Amazon:HP Mini 1140NR 10.2-Inch Netbook - Vivienne Tam Edition (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 3 Cell Battery)

Programming languages and science fiction!

2009-02-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

Cat Valente, Tiptree-winning author of The Orphan's Tales, wrote up a brilliant comparison of programming languages to literary genres. She covers a lot of ground here as a cultural and critic, and she's witty as hell. If the bits I'm quoting make you laugh, go read the whole thing!

Smalltalk is mythpunk, Python is speculative fiction, Java is...

Divorce in the suburbs, cancer of the miscarriage, and how God will punish you for having sex. That's right, it's the big, predictable Literary Fiction Gorilla, coming to destroy a gated community near you. Java is the mainstream of the mainstream, it gets all the critical hand jobs, they teach it at universities, and the support base is vast...

PHP is journalism, Perl is poetry, Ruby is steampunk, ASP is given a snarky kick to the head that keeps making me laugh!

It mixes all the worst parts of the other genres/languages. Hey! Serial killers are awesome! What about a vampire serial killer? What about a vampire werewolf serial killer with a heart of gold? What about a vampire werewolf serial killer with a heart of gold who mixes row result processing, business logic, and layout code ALL ON ONE PAGE??!

Sold, to your corporate overlords. After all, if you put the strength of an entire company behind it, it'll be a success, even if it leaks memory and ends with and then I woke up.

The feel and culture (and reputation) of each programming language are well described and it takes some complicated snark to link them all to equally well described literary genres and subgenres. Geek culture is AWESOME.

I can't imagine a more perfect post for this blog to link to! Thanks, Catherynne!

She's Geeky - Tour of WordPress template code

2009-02-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

There were 20 or so people at this talk, including non-programmers and programmers wondering if they should install WordPress, and bloggers and admins already familiar with WordPress. We did a round of introductions:

* Graphic designer interested in what degree of control she could have over a WordPress blog.
* Benay, running a blog connecting seniors with caregivers.
* Collie, looking for help with a WordPress upgrade on a complicated blog. Where is community to find help or pay someone to help? (Collie and others: you might try Heather L. Sanders. Anyone else have recommendations?)
* Person who installed WP to force herself to learn more code. Curious about plugins. Which are most useful?
* Terri - uses WP at her job for blogging, thinking about running her own for personal use.
* Nadine - Installed WP for other people many times. Does a lot of troubleshooting.
* Laura - Has installed and messed with WP many times. Wants to create a template from scratch.
* Stephanie - has an HTML site. Might want a blog.
* Olya - is a blogger. sometimes has language barrier while troubleshooting.
* Estella - artist, craisin.com.
* Crystal Marie - adding a blog to her existing web site. Looking at WP and Drupal.
* Beth C - Loves WP. Would like to do more customization.
* Michelle - Is a coder
* Vee - Blogs for her company. Knows HTML.
* Min - Uses MoveableType, is curious
* Karen M. - Thinks there might be entrepenurial opportunities with WP
* StephanieBamBam - Personal blog

I've been using WordPress for several years and administer a group blog. As part of my job, I do tech support for bloggers who run into template problems and quite a few of them use WordPress, so I look at a lot of different templates and help people troubleshoot. (The other part of my job, I munge data, write back end tools and infrastructure-y scripts in Perl, Python, and PHP in an aspiring codemonkey way.)

I started out by saying that WordPress was blogging software that you can either use on wordpress.com, or can download for free and install on your own server or web host. You will need an account somewhere and need to have it clear in your mind that you've got a username and password for that server account. In that account you'll be making a folder where you install WP, and then you'll have an administrative username and password for the WP admin and blogging interface. You may need to pay attention to this in order to change file permissions and make your theme files writeable if you want to edit them from the Theme Editor web interface. This tends to confuse people who aren't used to web hosting. Also, some people use web hosts which have one-click installs or who install WP for you and then charge to upgrade or maintain it.

We looked at the files and folders in a WP installation. There was some discussion of how you move files around and edit them. (Either from the command line on your server, from the admin interface for theme files, or with FTP; you can download the WP files, and extra themes and modules, to your computer, then upload them to your web host.) It's a good idea to just look through all the folders, so you know what's there. You may want to read through the wp-config file. But most of what people deal with is in wp-content, in the themes and plugins folders.

We then looked at the WP administrative dashboard, a bit at Widgets, and then at the Appearance menu and the Theme Editor. I said that editing code in the Theme Editor window sucks. While it's great for making quick changes, I recommend you edit the files in a text editor that will color code the code and indent it nicely, like vim or Textmate. You can pass code back and forth with other people by putting it into pastebin.com, which will also color code and indent it nicely. Also, it's amazingly helpful to print out all the template code, and mark it up with pen, and see which bits you can understand; or at least understand more or less what it does.

I explained briefly that anything that looks like a command with parentheses after it, like get_header, is a function and you may need to look for it in functions.php to figure out what's happening. We looked at index.php for a little bit. It is helpful to read through it. You should be able to mark what is header, what is the content (including "The Loop" which will cycle through your posts), and what's the footer.

The WordPress codex is your friend. Here's some great starting points:

* http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
* http://codex.wordpress.org/Stepping_Into_Templates
* http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop

Take a look at your sidebar.php file, header.php, footer.php, and page.php for individual post pages.

At some point, I mentioned the site to look for and download WordPress Themes. You can specify whether you want fixed width or floating; one, two, or three columns; and other parameters such as the main color. It is often best to start with a fairly popular theme.

Keep track of customizations you make to the theme you pick, because at some point you will want to upgrade or change it. Make backups.

There was some discussion of plugins as well. All in One SEO Pack (which sounds a bit evil, but which is great since it makes your URLs a bit more human readable as well as search-engine-friendly) had good recommendations. Stats, Sitemaps, and various Flickr or photo plugins were mentioned by bloggers at the session. On the group blog I co-administer, we had written some code to pull in a list of all our plugins onto a static page called "What we use", which has come in handy many times when we want to recommend useful plugins to other people. (Whoops; when I tried to show this off, I found that our recent upgrade to 2.7 had broken this code.)

The post template plugin was mentioned for its usefulness and for being able to pick a post or a page and "template-icize" it. This sounded intriguing!

Someone else mentioned that people should be aware that new plugins might break other ones and if you run into trouble, uninstall some plugins and see if that fixes the problem.

Someone else asked if there are good books for learning WordPress theme development or php. I don't know about books, but php.net is fantastic, and the WP Codex is quite good. The Codex is also editable by its users, so if you use it a lot, make an account, log in, and fix any documentation that's wrong when you figure out a solution. I also recommended blogging your template or code problems or posting on forums, and then posting the solutions to those problems when you figure them out. This is hard to do sometimes, but the more of us who do it, the better.

When I mention IRC at this conference my general impression is that people aren't using it that actively and many people don't know what it is. People who were techy or coding at all or playing on MUDs or smoething before the web, or before about 1995 or 96, know what IRC is. People who learned their stuff or got involved with online worlds after that, it's much more hit & miss. In any case, I continue recommending people try IRC and hang out in channels on freenode that have to do with the tools or languages they're using. Here's some explanation & guidance on IRC and WordPress. Lurk for a while, pick up the culture of the channel, and you might be surprised you can actually answer other people's questions: when I do this I tend to feel better about asking questions myself.

At some other point I mentioned MAMP again. It's very handy and easy to install, if you want to run a local web server off your Mac in order to develop and test. While I was doing this hour long talk, at least two people downloaded and installed MAMP and WordPress and got it running on their laptops.

I enjoyed this session! We didn't go all that deep, but we covered a lot of ground and people seemed energized by the ideas and possibilities. If you were there, thanks for coming, and let me know how your project turns out!

She's Geeky - Install Drupal on your Mac

2009-01-31T11:20:00.000-08:00

In this session we talked about Drupal in general, and a few people, including Margaret Rosas from Santa Cruz Geeks and CrystalMarie, got it installed and running. I have to apologize for being a bit incoherent; I was tired and unprepared. It was worth the session anyway to introduce the idea that you *can* run drupal on your laptop and use your laptop for development and testing! Margaret and others saved the day by having plenty to say about Drupal, Drupal 6 modules like Original Groups, what will be new in Drupal 7, and how interesting the process has been for re-organizing the Drupal web site.

If I had do-overs, here's how I'd run this session:

- First of all, have already rewritten Installing Drupal on a local MAMP setup to improve its instructions.

- Quick description of what Drupal is. Show drupal.org site.
- Quick introductions around the room.
- Pass around a few USB drives with zipped MAMP and Drupal files, with versions 5 and 6, for people to install and copy over to their laptops.
- Pass out a printout of Installing Drupal on a local MAMP setup.
- Ask people to team up in pairs.
- Give an overview of the install process, but without doing it.
- Then everyone is free to do the install.
- People who get it installed should then go around the room and help other people get it done.
- Mention IRC, #drupal-support, drupalchix, and drupal.org documentation as good resources.

We ran into various difficulties. Some people had file permissions problems; it worked to make the entire drupal directory and all its files and directories readable and writeable, though that seems less than ideal. Also, we had some difficulty doing the first login, which I'm still going through with Laura from Indie Craft Gossip.

Thanks to everyone who participated! I didn't take down your names, but if you want to comment and link back to your blog or Twitter or your company, I'd love it. Also, if you're in the Bay Area and want to hang out messing around with Drupal, ping me and let's have a Drupalchix meetup sometime in February.

She's Geeky - Show and Tell Your Dev Env session

2009-01-30T13:58:00.001-08:00

We had a session to talk about what tools, languages, and platforms we use for software and web development.

I started off by trying to list all the tools I use for work for development. Then other people stood up one by one to add their tools to the list on the whiteboard. Lots of people had questions. Our group ranged from people who have been developers for decades to people who had been programmers, but left the field and come back again, to people who weren't sure if they were developers at all because they do web stuff.

I felt like something came together at the end when someone said that she was leaving a huge company with the budget to buy development tools and was now going to work for a startup, so she came to She's Geeky to figure out what free and open source tools were out there for her to use. I forgot to mention SCALE and OSCON, but I should have.

There was a core of people using unix/linux and (oddly?) Mac but unix-centric. There were some Windows folks but was unclear

Version control: People were interested in svn clients and in github. No one currently used CVS and almost no one had heard of mercurial.

Here is the giant, unorganized list of tools mentioned.

unix / linux
macos
terminal
quicksilver
xcode
ichat vnc screen
bash
vim
svn
git (github is nifty)
cvs
php
perl
python
drupal
sourceforge
github
durpal
mamp
firebug
command line...
textwrangler
textmate
clearcase
perforce version control
ruby
rails for web framework / merb
apache with passenger - for deploying rails apps locally
mongrel server to run web apps and it's really easy. (use with rails) ruby gem
webbrick rails thing - use to be built in rails server now it's mongrel
what is a ruby gem install?
rspec
selenium - browser based scripting
watir - testing tool - ruby
"Everything I know is ruby, I've tried to forget my Java life"
eclips intellij
bbedit / textmate
textmate has plugins
php, ruby, html/ css/javascript
Firebug. I love firebug. i am dead in the water without it.
firebug lite you can use on non firefox browsers.
We need a whole session on firefox plugins
Yslow, pixelperfect, firebug, web developer toolbar
enthusiastic recs for pixelperfect.
ADBLOCK!!
Melanie explains history of Yslow.
(Firefox accessibility checker, can't remember its name)
subversion client: beanstalk
Versions - mac svn client!
Tortoise - windows svn client beautiful interface that makes sense.
frameworks: jquery uses css format for javascript and it is awesome
Django (python)
Apptana. IDE. mixed feelings. baby aspirin flavor of eclipse. painful horribly slow but love the real time syntax checker
vmware fusion. really cool for multiple dev for mac. it can be a little slow. My mac is 2GHz processor 2GB memory but it's almost not enough any more to run the VM
Amazon ec2
Apache comes with your Mac, just turn it on in the preferences.
phpmyadmin
jslint. douglas crawford's book Javascript: the good parts (unison from room)
he wrote jslint, javascript interpreter.
Wireshark - monitor your network
adobe cs3 design packages, fun! flash dev. get student discount. adobe 4 is out!
instant rails for windows.
hivelogic.com help installing mysql on a mac.
IRC: use irc for the tool/language. Colloquy - good irc client for Mac (no one used it on Windows)
basecamp, campfire. Propane.
Scrummy - open source good for task tracking, agile
pivotal tracker - a useful communication tool. tracking stories. move through dev cycle. it's free.
Drupal firefox plugin!!! must have this! helps with debugging!
Kindle - good for tech manuals
The Public Library. good for tech manuals too.
westciv stylemaster css editor westciv.com
coda panic software Transmit ftp client. integrated web dev env called Coda which is really fascinating.
Apple trainers doing technical mac os books. they use subetha edit.
omnigraffle mindmeister
different open apis that are super useful.
cpan, darwinports, apt-get, easyinstall, etc etc

People:
* Desi Mcadam - ruby, ruby on rails, web based applications, spotus, hashracket , consultant. florida. Devchix!
* Karen Mcadams - Freelancer. Likes to work for non profits.
* Jenny Greenwood - jobs dev drupal software engineer C, C++, assembly. out of developtment for 8 or 9 years. teaching self CMSes and drupal and css and php
* Margaret rosas - quiddities , santa cruz - doing drupal. knight foundation. drupal radio. Radio Engage. local public radio station she built Santa Cruz Geeks site. met heathervescent and started doing santa cruz geek dinners.
* becca (berkeleybecca) peachpit press. what software tools we have energy around. ones we just love. she is lurking here to find out what we love. she is proud of coding her personal web site and taught herself css.
* Laura - - front end middle end web dev for 10 years. not working now, volunteering to do web sites. does bazarre bizarre. javascript, java, html css.
* nabil project manager. security. peeve of security. personal information in web sites! finds out horrible details! company is hiring, little consultancy, sf, biz process mgmt development, hiring microsoft engineer, a software developer. elegrity. elegant + integrity.
* Amie Forest - Quiddities
* Terri Train IT manager. web dev typing in html javascript by hand, dreamweaver, i like it by hand better elegant code. lotus domino. not free. good quick app development tool for doing all sorts of workflow , web forms, apps on the web. switching to a new company, come to this come to new company with fresh ideas, won't have money to buy expensive tools, looking for free ware now.
* melanie archer - front end web developer javascript css freelancer.

I was taking notes very fast and might have left out people or crucial details - please correct me in comments (or email!)

A lot of us also agreed it would be nice to put up a board to match up people who use various of these tools or platforms or languages, so that we can have an IM buddy, where it might be easier to ask questions rather than go on IRC. I do try to nerve myself to ask stuff on IRC ... and thank you to anyone on php-women and drupal-support who helped me out 8-) I found that pretty quickly I was able to be helpful to random other people in drupal-support, which made me feel easier in my mind about asking my own questions.

Thank you everybody! I got a lot of good tips from this session and also a nice sense of not being alone in trying to get a handle on the amorphous beast that is a development environment.

We agreed that we could pick any of these tools or concepts and do an entire sesson on it that is more in depth and hands on. general agreement that we need a Firefox plugins for developers session, asap.

She's Geeky - Session on gaming

2009-01-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

There are some hard core gamers here, about 10 women, a lot of them gamers for many years. STories of AFT, All Female Tournament, Female Fragfest 99, women playing for years with male online identities to avoid harassment and then coming out. Funny story from Kim F. of the moment she realized a bunch of other teenage gamers she played with were female because they were the ones who got emotional at the death of Princess Di.

Someone said the words "Barbie Mortal Combat"...

I mention the Iris Network and Cerise, an online magazine for game geek women.

A divide in the industry between games for guys which are seen as monetizable in a certain way while "casual games" that 35 year old women play are treated as exploitable b/c they're idiots like you can get a stay at home mom to give out the credit card number... it has attracted the seedy underbelly, the shady side of the industry. Annoying!

It's still hard to find exciting games for young girls that aren't sexist and condescending and stupid.

Games that aren't totally dirty sexist first person shooters (though a lot of us here like them too) Katamari...

Board games, german games, this craze not realy picked up on yet by online industry.

We all want this: A sort of imdb for gaming. It would list all games, across all platforms and genres, mmorpgs, video games, flash games, board games, rpgs. Reviews, rating system, recommendation engine. tHis should cross platforms in the rec engine too and patterns might be detectable that if you like X flash game you might love Y MMORPG.

what makes a game addictive? is it different by gender?

Spore. Everyone hates ont he DRM. some are boycotting. Everyone likes the ideas in Spore!

Small companies can now build games very quickly because the game dev tools are better. Story about Artemis Software and their quake engine/ greek mythology game attempt. the tools weren't there. Now, 3 or 4 people can get a game out in 4 months.

People customizing their wii avatars. body image and gaming discussion.

gamefaqs.com, defectiveyeti, metacritic, cerise, iris network, playrag, alltop gaming blogs, twop, scorehero (used to be good, then not enough moderation)
we want something like allrecipes.com but for games and strategy. Kongregate.

The best communities and information is built when there is strong moderation.

Rec of a game called Braid. (xbox.) it is back in the hands of the people.

Look on youtube for women gamers reviewing games.

Tomorrow: BSG, science fiction sessions!

There is more but i missed it while typing up my notes.

If you were at this session and are reading this (or weren't but have something to say) please drop in more info and links to anything awesome and cool, in comments!!!

Cleaning up urls with awk

2009-01-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

Here's my stupid awk trick of the day: using the field separator option to mess with URLs. I spent something like an hour trying to write regular expressions and then reading other people's solutions to cleaning up urls from log files and other sources.

For example, given a list of about a million urls like this:


http://bloggggggggy.com/path/to/the/post/2009/1/26/blahblahblah.html
http://www.bloggggggggy.com/morejunk.html
https://www.bloggggggggy.com
http://yetanotherblogomigod.blogspot.com/
http://yetanotherblogomigod.blogspot.com/somejunk.php?stuff&morestuff

I want to end up with a list that's just


bloggggggy.com
yetanotherblogomigod.blogspot.com

You can do this in php with some regular expressions:


preg_match("/^(http:\/\/)?([^\/]+)/i", $URLstring, $result);
$domain = $result[2];

(Though I saw a lot of other solutions that were much longer and more involved)
or, here's one method in Perl:


$url =~ s!^https?://(?:www\.)?!!i;
$url =~ s!/.*!!;
$url =~ s/[\?\#\:].*//;

But for some reason I was trying to do it in one line in awk, because that's how my brain is working these days, and I couldn't get the regular expression right.

Suddenly I realized that if I split the lines on "/", the domain name would always be the third field.

So,


awk -F"/" '{print $3}' hugelistofurls.txt > cleanlist.txt

gave me a nicer list of urls.

and


awk -F"/" '{print $1,"//",$3} hugelistofurls.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr > counted-sorted-cleanlist.txt

gave me just about what I wanted.

After I did that and finished squeaking with happiness and wishing I could show someone who would care (which unfortunately I couldn't which is why I'm blogging it now) I realized I wanted the www stuff taken out. So I backed up and did it in two steps,


awk -F"/" '{print $1,"//",$3}' hugelistofurls.txt > cleanlistofurls.txt
awk -F"www." '{print $1 $2}' cleanlistofurls.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr > reallyclean-sorted-listofurls.txt

which gave me something like this:


3 http://blogggggggy.com
2 http://yetanotherblogomigod.blogspot.com

Exactly what I wanted!

While I appreciate a nice regular expression and it can be a fun challenge to figure them out, getting the job done with awk felt a lot simpler, and I'm more likely to remember how to do it in an off-the-cuff way, next time I have a giant list of urls to wrestle with.

How would you approach this same problem, either in awk or using another tool or language? Do you think one way or another is superior, and why?

She's Geeky conference this weekend in Mountain View

2009-01-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

This Friday and Saturday I'm going to the She's Geeky conference at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Take a look at the proposed topics and at the list of women coming to the conference! It was a great conference last year - really a blast.

Thursday night there is a big She's Geeky dinner get-together at Ming's in Palo Alto, and I'll be at that too along with my sister Minnie from Thank You For Not Being Perky, who has been a web developer for about as long as it's possible to have been a web developer, and who also blogs for Indie Crafts Gossip and makes the most amazing spats ever.

I have a bunch of possible things I could speak on. I'd like to hear and talk about WordPress, php, Drupal, developing on a Mac, Ubuntu, and of course am always happy to talk about all the other things I generally end up talking about: blogging and general Web 2.0 stuff, social media, women, mom bloggers, feminism, anti-racism, disability rights and access, and science fiction and fantasy.

Mostly I'm hoping to meet other women who like programming. No genius hackers required. I am a little more low-key than that. I would not mind showing off my newfound stupid awk tricks, or how I am pretty good at coaxing information out of the del.icio.us api these days.

Likely I will spend some time teaching people stuff they want to know, sort of at random, or fixing their blog templates, because it makes me happy and I feel very popular when I treat my ability to do tech support as feminist activism...

Last year's She's Geeky conference in Mountain View was fantastic! I met so many people from the Systers mailing list and in general felt super inspired to be at a women-only geek conference!

Here's some other conferencey stuff coming up for me this spring and summer. It's a lot of events!

SuperHappyDevHouse

Not a conference, just a hangout. But really great! SuperHappyDevHouse30 is coming up Jan. 31 in Menlo Park. I always have a good time at these! I almost never know anyone there, and there's usually like 1% women, but people are very friendly and I'm convinced this could be a great place to have regular geek girl meetups. It's usually at an actual house, so I'm curious to see what the feel is like when it's at Sun.

Potlatch!
At the end of February, in Sunnyvale, I'll be at Potlatch, a small, bookish science fiction con that has Books of Honor instead of Guests of Honor. I'll be on a panel about a book by John M. Ford, Growing Up Weightless. The other book of honor is Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home. The con has only one programming track and is full of Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle sf geeks, intersecting fairly heavily with the WisCon (feminist science fiction) folks. L. Timmel Duchamp will be there, and Vonda N. McIntyre, and Ursula K. Le Guin, and a lot of other fantastic writers and readers.

ETech!
I'm speaking at ETech in early March on "DIY for PWD: Do it Yourself for People with Disabilities".

With a cultural shift to a hardware DIY movement and the spread of open source hardware designs, millions of people could have global access to equipment design, so that people with disabilities, their families, and their allies can build equipment themselves, and have the information they need to maintain and repair their own stuff.

SXSWi!

I'm speaking at SXSWi in a "core conversation" about Open source and disability access!

Sex:Tech

And then at Sex:Tech about sex information and disability online, with Jen Cole from GimpGirl!

WoolfCamp!

Just recently Grace Davis emailed to say she's thinking of holding another WoolfCamp, possibly at her house in Santa Cruz in April! I'll keep you all posted.

WisCon!
The BEST. WisCon is the world's largest feminist science fiction convention! End of May, in Madison, Wisconsin. The book I'm editing is about last year's WisCon!

BlogHer - Geek Lab!

I'm helping to organize BlogHer's Geek Lab, which will happen in July in Chicago alongside the regular conference. We're going to have two presentation areas separated or curtained off, with projectors and seating for about 30 people; one for beginning topics and the other for intermediate/advanced. Slots for talks will be 30 minutes, with 15 minute breaks. The idea is that people can present on a topic and then commit to hang out for an hour afterwards to go in depth, at the area with tables in between the presentation corners. These "office hours" can go on while other people might just be using the space as a place to hang out with their laptops or get together to share information.

Deconstructing Cheney's De-Inaugural Wheelchair

2009-01-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

When I heard that Dick Cheney had pulled a muscle and was going to be attending the inauguration in a wheelchair, I was filled with deadly fascination. How would that play out?

Would the inaugural ceremonies be even remotely accessible? Not bloody likely!

Would he self-propel, or would someone push him? Would the person pushing him be secret service, a family member, military, or a medical worker?

Would Cheney have a steel framed 70-pound hospital clunker of a wheelchair, or would it be halfway decent? My vote was for an x-frame Breezy, still cheap and easy to lay hands on, but under 40 pounds, maybe in red for its political symbolism value. Other wheelies I know were saying "No way, he'll be in a clunker." Even though I think that Cheney should (and WILL) go to jail for being a war criminal, I would have liked him to have a halfway decent wheelchair. Hell, I would personally have decorated it with the stars and stripes.

I imagined, and then later saw, Cheney being shovelled about from place to place behind the scenes, through freight elevators and dank back-hallways, maybe even a steam tunnel or two, carried ignominiously or bumped up backwards over some surprise steps no one thought about, and I felt a bit of schadenfreude there though I'm not proud of it. But I wondered, would anyone in power notice, a little bit more than they did before, what inaccessibility means, how excluding and alienating and humiliating it can be? Would anyone process, or whatever they were doing, with Cheney in his wheelchair, rather than leaving him to be tunnelled and elevatored and ramped while they triumphally process up and down majestic red carpeted staircases?

If you were enjoying their own moment of schadenfreude at the powerful man brought low, did you think about why wheelchair use was being brought low, was disempowering? Because it shouldn't be.

Yes, I kind of giggled at the Dr. Evil jokes, but I also thought about them. Did you? Did you think on why they are a stereotype - how our stories have to give its villains a scar or "deformity" or a wheelchair (and a cat), using disability as a metaphor for being evil? I'm not saying don't make the joke. I'm right in there posting the LOLcats of Blofeld-Cheney. But think next time you use the stereotype of the Evil Cripple.

I also certainly saw friends and strangers wishing permanent disability onto Cheney like it was a horrible fate, one that he deserved. I understand that is mostly just some anger talking. But this too exposes a bit of thinking in our society that people with illnesses or disabilities deserved them as a sort of punishment for wrongs or sins committed. I would like to invite people to think on that idea for a while. And think on this: why you think it might be such an awful fate for Cheney to use a wheelchair? Why is that? Do you think I have an awful fate? Do you pity me, to the extent that you would damn Cheney?

It was amazing to me, while I watched the inauguration, to see people I know from disability activism online, also Twittering and Facebook-chatting their reactions to Cheney's de-inaugural wheelchair. Were you watching? Did you feel that strange agitation and excitement and curiosity?

What I felt was this:

How bitter, but how very expected, that the top levels of our own government, the most powerful men around, can't pull it together to obtain a halfway decent wheelchair and decent access, for one of their own. That exposes the deep, deep ignorance in our country about access for people with disabilities, and how far we have yet to go.

(Have to add: I thought the Daily Show's coverage of Cheney's wheelchair was **hilarious**!! It starts at 2:32 in this video clip. He totally could have pushed it further!)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inauguration

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video