Feminist Hacker Barbie(computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com) |
Feminist Hacker Barbie(computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com) |
could you please call it "computer-engineer-barbie" like the URL suggests?
I realise the irony of me pointing this out.
Feminist has a very clear, important meaning.
Don't let anyone corrupt it.
--> https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FeministHackerBarbie&src=typ...
Lewis' law?
A feminist hacker is a woman who is not content to be paid a lesser amount to a man for the same work, and will not accept being passed over for work opportunities she is fully capable of.
But my point is that by design Barbie as a character is shallow, anti-intellectual, materialistic, snobbish, etc. I guess my assumption is that most parents who buy their kids the toy actually want that as a role model for their kids, and that this is inherently at odds with a toy that encourages kids to go into STEM or whatever.
Nevertheless I let my daughter consume the Barbieverse in moderation and wear her Princess dress to school every now and then. I just try to make sure she sees the world through other lenses as well.
First, the "character" you infer from Barbie isn't fixed in stone, or some universal truth. It's a kid's toy, it isn't going anywhere, and the way we react to it imprints on children. So don't dismiss efforts to change its connotations.
Second, be very careful when you dismiss "Barbie as a character", because it is awfully, scarily easy to end up dismissing attributes of women instead of just what you don't like about the character. Just for instance, it's easy to single out elements of "materialism" that stick out to you because you don't care about (I don't know, say) clothes, without giving equal time to shit guys are (as a demo) materialistic about, like (I don't know, say) cars, or FPS games.
Finally: my guess is that virtually none of the parents who allow their kids to have Barbie dolls are thinking exactly what you think they're thinking. I think you've forgotten about the fundamental attribution error.
I think you're overthinking it. Kids will play the way the want, and get what they want. Just trying to make them eat mushroom is hard enough; you're unlikely to influence your kid's opinion on computer science by buying or not buying Barbie dolls.
That said, the book in question is definitely cringe-worthy.
And the OP is being incredibly condescending to a project that is specifically trying to help deal with that exact condescension. Who is he to ask they rename their project? And specifically to make him feel better about the fact that it promotes feminism. He deserves derision.
There's probably no less effective way to persuade people than by pointing out that people who disagree with you "deserve derision". It's a uniquely bad rhetorical strategy. It makes you look like you care less about the underlying issue than you do about status.
He's free to not like feminism. I don't care. But as ck2 did, I highlighted how absurd it is that someone came in here with the implicit comment that if the project just made a simple change he wouldn't have a problem with it. That's absurd. If you have a problem with the word feminist you have a problem with feminism, which the project is promoting.
And doubly absurd that your issue is with me and not a community that flagkilled the story within an hour and upvoted a comment asking that the dirty f-word not be used.
When your comments stop being about persuading and start being about attempts to shame people, that's a cue that maybe it's time to let the thread die. Anyone who truly deserves derision probably doesn't care about your attempts at shaming, and meanwhile incivility makes the whole thread look bad.