"I'm not going to tell the story the way it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it." -Finnegan Bell in Great Expectations
Dear Internet,
I had the great pleasure, thanks to Steve Thomas the producer of Circulating Ideas, to interview some fine folk at Code4Lib ’14 on library, technology, and gender issues. You can listen to the podcast below OR you can check it out on the Circulating Ideas blog!
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014
Dear Internet,
2014 was a banner year with my dog dying, my marriage busting up, finding new love, getting sued for defamation, getting back on the bipolar drugs, and losing my job. But the big question is, what did you favor on my site in 2014. Below is a breakdown of the top posts written and viewed in 2014.
Thanks for a wonderful year, dear readers.
xoxo,
Lisa
During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
You can follow me on Pinterest on what I’m reading, watching, and listening.
Weekly watching: The Leftovers, True Blood, Rectify, Halt and Catch Fire, A Place To Call Home, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, Elementary
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010
[ed: You can read the article online, page 26, though it is it flipbook style. A direct link will be forthcoming next week.]
Dear Internet,
While I’ve known this was coming for months, and I’ve had an advanced copy for a few weeks now, today the official copy was slide into my mailbox. As it is now out in the wild, I wanted to address some things that are bothering me since the final edit a few months ago.
Most importantly: the article is horribly flawed.
After the panel at Midwinter, when it became clear other voices were not allowed to participate in the conversation including people of color, those who do not prescribe to binary definitions of gender, and other marginalised groups, I panicked. I panicked because I did not want to present myself as the privileged, white lady feminist role of speaking for all when I was only speaking for myself. I panicked because it is important to me that others get to be a part of the discussion to, not just me.
I contacted my editor straight away and pitched an idea of less on women being marginalized and more on other types of oppression within the library technology world.
The editors felt, and I vehemently disagreed, that the focus should remain only on women in technology since that was my experience. While that is my experience, it is not the only experience that exists of the oppression and marginalization that happens to those who do not fit the white, male, able construct. I wanted to bring awareness.
That idea was rejected.
I was talked back into writing on a singular point of view with the idea more of this line of thinking could potentially come forward, hopefully by others coming to the discussion too. I agreed. I did not fight harder to be more inclusive and that embarrasses me.
I decided if I couldn’t write the article I wanted to write, I would at least be more inclusive with my language.
That language was changed and or edited out.
It’s interesting to be excited and proud creating a THING and so horribly defeatist that I didn’t do enough for that THING.
In order to work at dismantling the system, we need to make sure we are being inclusive. I was not inclusive in my piece and for that I’m deeply apologetic. My privilege was definitely showing because I could have fought harder, not written it but wrote about it somewhere else, and more. That shames me. With the upcoming book, and pieces, I will do better.
Speaking of books, as some of you already know, Sarah Houghton and I are co-editing a book on this very topic, and one of the things we’ve been doing has been inviting people (and they have been accepting — yay!) from all over the human spectrum to make sure we can get as many diverse voices into the conversation as possible. It is going to be amazing and I cannot wait until we get it published.
Update: After this was published, I was notified by an anonymous person, who has done some live blogging for American Libraries magazine, that they approached the magazine to invite panelists from the Midwinter libtechgender session to write in depth about the topics that were being discussed as the live blogging was only covering the topic at a blush. AmLib invited the blogger to extend invites to the panelists to write in as “letters to the editors” with the addendum that I, yes Lisa Rabey, would be covering these very topics in my piece and they felt I was qualified enough to write on topics I have no business writing about. Wrap this up to my panic phone call to my editor around the same time and what transpired from that conversation, it seems pretty clear to me AmLib has no intention on actually working to promote the conversation forward or by making sure that others are invited to the conversation in the first place.
Dear Internet,
I want to take Chingy’s Holidae In and gender reverse the roles, something along the lines of Law Revue Girls’ Defined Lines. As I can neither rap and laughably have moves that no way indicate my decade of dance lessons as a child, someone else should get on that toot suite.
TheHusband asked me how I was doing with the social media sabbatical, I found myself answering honestly — I kind of have not missed it. Oh sure, there have been times when I want to just brain dump and Twitter is a natural fit for that activity or there are times when I find this really awesome link and I can’t really share it excent on my weekly roundup, which doesn’t quite have the same satisfaction.
Before I took the sabbatical, I was often finding myself posting a link or a quote from somewhere and spending more than say 2 or 3 tweets giving my opinion on the matter. Which is, frankly, kind of useless giving the context of how Twitter works. Someone coming in on the middle of me bestowing random commentary would be confused. I was churning how to handle this since I recognize this is not Twitter’s intent and that I often get cross when others do the same trick. I came up with linking, asides of things I want to share but do not want to get buried in the weekly round-up.
I’ve started Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart and it is beyond exquisite. I injected half the book in one sitting last night and had stop because I was getting woozy on a Lispector overdose. She adroitly does things to language and words, even in translation from Portuguese to English that is just breathtaking. I am having trouble reconciling that it was published in 1943 as it reads so contemporary. Reading Lispector is breathing flames under the muse for me and I’m reconsidering how to write fiction.
I’m terrible at fiction. I always feel so damned constricted when trying to form the rules of the game, my writing comes out halting and unsure. I’ve got brilliant ideas for stories, I see the stories in my head as they are played out but getting them onto paper? No. The ease of my language sounds immature and protracted. Sure, you could argue if I practice more it would mature and grow and there is some truth into that. But I think because I’ve been reading tightly bound prose for so long, I’m near drunk on Lispector’s stream of consciousness and realising that yes, this is how you do it. This is how you give birth to a story and how it will end.
Feral. Unstructured and messy, like life.
xoxo,
Lisa
Dear Internet,
In the weeks since ALA midwinter, and the #LibTechGender panel, conversations have shifted all over the place. Much, I believe for the good. I have been attempting to be mindful and listen, read and listen more. Becky Yoose’s post, Gatekeeping the table full of cookies, and recent conversations with others have prompted me to put out there what I have been thinking for discussion.
(This is being fueled by vegan White Russians, so be forewarned.)
I am not an expert on anything other than my own life. But what I am is brassy personality who is a bull in a china shop who asks the right questions, sometimes the hard questions, at the right time. I am not the only one talking about this and I am not presenting myself as being the authority on the topic. But I think because I’ve been writing about my own experiences for nearly two years on sexism/gender inequality in library land and I was vocal on the panel at IL AND after as well as I keep tweeting to keep the conversations going, I’ve been approached because I’m accessible. I’ve turned down / requested others to be at the table other than me but many decline, due to some variation of my second point, so then I’m being touted as the voice. I also get no matter how much I make clear my intentions, there are people who are going to wildly disagree with whatever I’m doing. There is room for critique but I do not take kindly to willful misreading of situations to suit someone’s agenda. This whole situation becomes circular at times and trying to navigate this is tricky and hard in any attempt to be mindful, so if anyone has suggestions on how to better navigate this AND make the conversation go forward, please pass those along.
I may be wholly naive on this, but I think as long as it is made clear what people’s intentions are and what the outcomes may be, presenting/discussing 101 and working on pointing people in the right direction to get training, additional information, etc can’t necessarily be a bad thing. It has to be done mindfully and with skill, but getting folks moving in the right direction is how they will move and think for themselves and carry their own conversations forward.
I am thankful for a lot of people listening and talking to me on these discussions, primarily Coral, Cecily, Emily, and Kristin. I’ll keep reading, listening, and reading and listening some more.
1. I’m Bipolar 1/2, with ADHD married with general anxiety disorder. At times when I am unstable, my behaviors are considerably more abrasive and alienating. Reconciling that sometimes it is the disease and sometimes it is me is hard work. I have had people say, later, that telling them to tell me when I am acting out in a way that is not acceptable is too confrontational. I can’t fix / clarify / apologize if I don’t know what I said/did that was intrusive. I am okay with doing the heavy lifting, but often I need to ask for help. There is, to me, no shame in asking for help.
Dear Internet,
Here is your curated monthly round up of stuff on library/technology/gender, covering many -isms and spaces. Citations are pulled from writer’s about pages. If you have an alternate preference, please let me know! As always, check out the #LibTechGender project for even more.
Dear Internet,
Apparently this was the wrong time to take a break from social media as it is currently all enflamed about ALA’s Code of Conduct — yes, this again. It will always be “this again” because as long as I have a vagina, someone, somewhere out there will be in disagreement of what I can and cannot do.
Below are as many of the articles I could find that have been published in the last week, which I’m going to put in chronological order. But to set the mood, I’m kicking things off with a piece by Sarah Houghton from 2011 about her experiences with professional sexual harassment, and adding in my own piece when I got harassed in 2013, and a piece from Dorothea Salo written 2007 about a woman being harassed at a DSpace conference. It’s stories like ours that explain the background reasoning as to why CoC’s need to exist. As Salo succinctly puts it in her blog,
No woman should have to “escape” people in a professional setting. EVER.
You’d think this would be enough, but obviously it isn’t or else we wouldn’t continue on having these “conversations.”
I’m also including a link to the working document to the CoC so that you can see how the process started and formed and a link to the finalized piece that is now on ALA’s website. I’m also including the Storify that ALA is tracking of all the commentary, which will be ongoing. Additionally, I’m adding in Will Manley’s piece, which was dismantled from his site several days later and lost through Googlecache, that I was able to capture via Pocket and made viewable to the world via Evernote and well, what started the whole pitchforking in the first place.
This entire list will be ported over to the LibTechGender project. Make sure to bookmark that page.
Lastly, as to be expected, there is trolling on some of the pieces and social media has been in a tizzy about calling those people out in public spaces for being effs. It is one thing to have a discourse with someone on a particular topic, even if you violently disagree, but it’s a whole ‘nother space to start pitchforking for blood and harassment — that’s bullying. Don’t be an asshole to assholes.
Edit: 1/18/14 to add new posts.
Edit: 1/27/14 to add new posts.
Hey there.
If you came over here from Andromeda Yelton’s piece on LibraryJournal or her blog or from Julie Jurgen’s piece: Welcome! Glad to have you here!
If you’re interested in more of my writing on library / technology / gender intersectionality, this tag has all of my pieces. I also keep a digital clearing house of all of my work and the works of others, as well as suggestions, conferences, panels, etc over at LibTechGender Project. You can also track the tag on Twitter. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions.
