« Self-Promotion | Main | I'm Sorry »
December 09, 2005
N + 1 ; let N = Sexism
My dear friend Alex T.A.'d a course last year for the Science, Technology, and Society department (which, much to our amusement, one of his students, in a note accompanying a tardy paper mistakenly referred to as the "TITS dept."). His course was about, naturally, ethics and technology, and Alex, being the clever little whip he is, decided to take a 'class trip' to one of the engineering buildings on campus. This particular building has a sort of an empty moat-like trench all aroung it and a bridge that crosses over it to the entrance. Just before you can step on the bridge, you see this sign:
Alex, as long as I've known him, has made jokes about this sign, which just seems so poorly thought-out it has to be on purpose or in Japan, and it's not in Japan. It's a warning about shoes (I'll get to in a minute) but in front of an engineering building, where precious few ladies feel at home to start with, people, and it did occur to you boys, right, when you were designing the buidling and, admit it, you were a little high when you chose that image, cause you thought it looked really funny to tack up a NO WOMEN sign outside an engineering building? I mean, right?
The No Women Bridge, as Alex calls it, is made of metal grating, kind of like the subway grating on city sidewalks, which, as any lady knows, is horrible for walking on. Now there are no whooshing train gusts of wind under the engineering bridge to puff up a skirt, but that does not take care of the problem of heels snagging in the grating leading to inconveniences (scuffs), embaressments (funny stumbles, snapped heels), or injury (falls, twisted ankles). Alex uses it to show his class an example of technology that is inherently discriminatory (not having taken his class, I'm pretty sure I'm fudging up the concepts, but maybe if we're lucky, he'll jump in the comments and explain) as opposed to technology that isn't inherently discriminatory but is used in discriminatory ways. Like, whether or not the architects were thinking "let's keep women out with a weird moat thing and a funny looking bridge!" they built a bridge that makes it hard for the heel-wearing population to get in, the heel-wearing population being largely female, and so the defualt setting for the technology, as for its designers, turns out to strongly favor male and trip women and then point at them and ridicule while chortling loudly.
Which is why, when I was sent this article on N + 1 and learned that the invitations to a N + 1 party were charmingly inscribed with the following missive:
Heel-wearers: please keep in mind the roof has a silver coating that might be punctured by pointy heels. Also we are told that pointy heels are uncomfortable.
I almost lost my lunch. You know, no one ever said boys' club couldn't be clever or funny or amusing or smart. But it's still boys' club and it still sucks.
I know this isn't breaking news or anything: we all knew 19 of 20 of the articles in the premier issue were written by men, that they have an all-male frat-boy fight club weird homoerotic vibe going on, but this-- this heel thing-- this is the last straw. We all have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, and I draw it with my pointy-ass heel.
Posted by hissycat at December 9, 2005 04:38 PM
Comments
Just look at their pink, bloated chauvinist faces in the N + 1 picture. I'd like to *throw* them off the no women bridge, where I indeed scuffed many a stilleto heel on the way to an MS&E class that made me feel terribly uncomfortable.
Posted by: Tai at December 9, 2005 06:03 PM
speaking of n+1, i noticed that they cite lingua franca as an inspiration.
i vaguely remember seeing it at the bookstore as a child but never actually reading it so i looked it up.
have you heard about this scandal related to lingua franca?
Posted by: mlle M at December 9, 2005 07:12 PM
Posted by: mlle M at December 9, 2005 08:30 PM
Alex, at one point, had his mind set on wallpapering his dorm room in all the printed glory of the Sokal affair.
Posted by: hissycat at December 16, 2005 07:12 PM
To come off with a whole skin... Morgan
Posted by: Morgan at November 22, 2006 02:03 AM
To cut one's throat with a feather... Gervase
Posted by: Gervase at November 22, 2006 02:20 AM
The work shows the workman... Blanche
Posted by: Blanche at November 24, 2006 02:54 PM