A little while back, for reasons I mean to explore in public eventually, I decided not to write romance novels – either under a female pseudonym or under my own name.

This piece goes into the interesting phenomenon of men using female names to sell crime thrillers, and why that might have some issues.

What do we want?

No more Nazis.

When do we want it?

Honestly like 70 years ago I mean it was a whole thing.

Reminds me of Tolkien’s burn about the Bagginses: you could know what their opinion would be on any subject, without going to the trouble of asking them.

Originally shared by Kimberly Chapman

This thread is a pure proof for Lewis’ Law.

https://storify.com/Pharniel/you-are-boring-no-one-s-bothered-to-tell-you

if the Google Manifesto was correct, then you would expect to see that Google was full of mediocre female employees, who had been hired by a process biased in their favour despite being inadequate to the task. Whatever the author of the manifesto thinks, Google does not believe this to be the case and as far as I can tell from industry blogs, it isn’t – female employees in tech are generally very good. This would, of course, be consistent with the hypothesis that the current selection process is biased against them.

[…]

If, on the other hand, one had a situation where the writers of windy conservative manifestoes about not getting fair treatment were in fact mediocre whiners who inflated their CVs, then that would be evidence that there wasn’t a bias in the recruitment and retention system, and that in fact there was probably an inefficiency caused by the extent to which mediocrities were able to bump along because their face fitted in a homogeneous techbro culture. The concentration on star engineers, senior executives and Sheryl Sandberg C-Suite geniuses is entirely wrong; the progress of gender equality in the workplace ought to be measured by the extent to which women can get into the ranks of time-serving dead-wood middle management roles.

True equality will be reached when mediocrities of all kinds exist at every level. The fact that minority hires are consistently excellent is an indicator that we aren’t there yet.

http://crookedtimber.org/2017/08/11/from-a-logical-point-of-view/

Via Yonatan Zunger.

Originally shared by Robert Hansen

An example of a successful informal incubator:

As an appellate court judge, Dad had X clerk slots to fill. And, of course, every student at every Tier-1 law school applied. Federal appellate clerkships are prestigious and can result in large bonuses to initial salary once a clerk matriculates. Dad often said that if all he wanted were Harvard Law grads with 4.0s, LSATs of 172 or above, and a Polish last name, he could do it just from the applications in his inbox.

He didn’t, of course. Instead at the beginning of each law school year he’d call up professors at Tier-2 law schools, at historically black colleges, and he’d ask them: “Do you have any third-years who are once-in-a-career students who haven’t had the one break they need and are running out of time to get it?” Sometimes — usually — they’d say no. No harm, no foul: talk to you next year.

But sometimes — rarely — they’d say yes. At which point Dad would write this student a personal note telling them their professor recommended them highly, and encouraging them to spend this next year doing something that really knocked it out of the park, something to tell him about in their application for a federal clerkship.

And the thing is, if you specifically ask for “students who just haven’t had the one break they need,” that is a wholly race, sexuality, gender, and creed-blind criteria which will nevertheless disproportionately benefit minority candidates. It’s a meritocratic program that at no point involves the word ‘diversity’ — and yet, it resulted in a remarkably diverse workplace filled with whipsmart lawyers from a broad variety of experiences, all of whom were fanatically loyal to Dad for being the guy who took a chance on them.

Pretty good program, I think.

Basically this. I’m not even an engineer, and I know this.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

A Googler wrote an (internal, since leaked) manifesto about gender and engineering a few days ago. If you haven’t read it, I will say that you are not missing much. But if you’ve heard about this and are wondering what my response was, I just posted it publicly.

The intro of this also hints at some bigger news which I’ll get into later. 🙂

My Gryphon Clerks series explores some social issues directly, others indirectly, and still others by showing them simply not being issues.

For example: the earlier books just showed men and women being equal in society. No discussion, really; that was just how it was.

Then I got into the politics of gnomes, and decided that they would have a very clear division of labour between male and female gnomes, and (with them being newly freed from service to the dwarves, and interacting more with humans) that this tradition would come into question. Mister Bucket for Assembly explored that. And, of course, ethnic prejudice against gnomes and the ways in which ethnic prejudice plays out, whether the Other is short and pale with pointy ears or… distinguishable in some other way.

My current WIP takes it further: young gnomes are being cast out of their families and having to live on the streets because they refuse to conform to the gendered division of labour. That doesn’t really happen in our society, but parallel things do.

And also in the current WIP, two gnome women are attracted to one another, and that is Not OK in their society, and they have to figure out how to work with that.

So I read this piece by Kay Solo on different approaches to representation with interest.

Originally shared by Kay Solo

tl;dr, there’s more than one way to confront a societal issue in writing, and it’d be nice to see more that doesn’t do so by using real-world prejudices. And at least for me, who often uses books as an escape from real life, I don’t want that stuff following me into what I read. At least not so frequently that I’m still wanting for media without it.

If you want a change, make a change.

Originally shared by Self-Rescuing Princess Society

“‘Frustration is fuel that can lead to the development of an innovative and useful idea,’ she said, noting that only after she conducted some research did she realize just how few books had black girls or girls of color as their lead character, and how she might not be the only person frustrated by the lack of representation in children’s books.”

I’ve fallen down on the job of celebrating this amazing young woman and her quest to improve the representation of black girls in children’s books. Here’s a reminder of exactly how fantastic and brilliant she is!

Because, for some people, anyone in space who isn’t a white man doesn’t belong there.

Originally shared by Steven Saus