Things like this annoy me a great deal.

Let me start by saying that I believe everyone deserves fair treatment, that I acknowledge that sexism/racism/etc are still a huge problem and are sticky issues we need to address. That said, I detest how most such movements handle things–namely by complaining loudly and at length about it, and accusing people of being actively, deliberately sexist. (The speaker in question acknowledged that this was not the case–but seriously, don’t cause a scene about it. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.)

The blog to which I just linked, though–oh, the whinging sense of entitlement going on there. The self-righteous “you didn’t have any women on any panels and this is because of Sexism” tone. There is nothing about this sort of thing I approve of.

If you’re going to advocate civil rights, which you should, could you be kind enough not to act all petulant about it? Patience and understanding go a long way towards making people approve of your cause rather than doing what I’m doing right now, which is casually dismissing you as a waste of my time. When you take up a cause you become its ambassador. There are lots of people working towards feminism etc. who are perfectly decent individuals and are doing a lot of good things–but it’s much easier to remember someone who is whiny and demanding about it. That sticks with you.

As an aside: in the little microcosm of internet culture I live in here in Boston, the male-female ratio is kind of ridiculous. Sure, there are girls, and many of them are just as geeky as the rest of us, but there’s just not as many of them. Sometimes instead of insisting that it is Simply Wrong, perhaps it’s worth pausing to consider why, exactly, this might be the case in the first place. If nothing else, maybe once you’ve done this you will stop acting as if it’s the worst crime against humanity ever committed.