Looking to the past
It’s an oft-voiced suggestion that rather than looking at the bad things that happen in our communities, we should focus on the good things. There’s a number of highly successful geek women already – should we not be concentrating on encouraging more of them, rather than scaring people away with tales of thoughtlessness, discrimination and outright abuse?

Let’s draw an analogy. One day, a $20 charge appears on your credit card. You didn’t make it. You report it to your credit card company, who assure you that they take fraud seriously and then do nothing. A few days later, another $20 charge. Your credit card company tells you that such events are rare, unrepresentative of the general credit card experience and continue to do nothing. A week afterwards, another charge. This time your credit card company describes how they’re planning on implementing a brand new anti-fraud system, but that this is unrelated to any events that may currently be occuring and will give no details as to when it’s going to be rolled out. And proceed to ignore any further reports you make about fraudulant transactions.

Would you stay with this company? Or would you take your business somewhere else?

The problem with the “Let’s look to the future rather than spending too much time getting stuck in the present” argument is that it assures people that things will get better without providing a roadmap for getting there. It does nothing to validate their concerns or make them feel wanted within a community. It assumes either that people will stick with a community that doesn’t respond to their complaints, or that it’s possible to construct a community that’s welcome to an assortment of genders, ethnicities and lifestyles without any of those people being represented in the first place.

Ignoring people’s concerns is an excellent way to drive them away from your community. Doing so because of a potential future that’s probably conditional on you having those people in your community is short sighted and self defeating. Ignoring the present doesn’t benefit the future. It benefits the status quo.

(Originally posted here)