The only bloody panel I really wanted to attend with a passion and I missed it. Susie Bright. (with other cool women – Halley Suitt, Melissa Gira, Logan Lewkoff — but Susie BRIGHT). Gah. TW recorded it but I haven’t listened. Maybe tomorrow while I’m suppose to be writing a report. Heh. Nah, tomorrow on my lunchbreak. I deserve a lunchbreak, right?
This is what I missed….
The far more brutal issue, in women’s blogging, isn’t whether you have the sense to refrain from advertising your teenager’s puberty, or your husband’s nose hairs— it’s the fact that gender bias will paint you whore-red. It’s gender bias that will condemn you for your impudence in speaking on female passage.
In her post, here, she mentions attending a panel (I was there live blogging it) and a man kept interrupting (you notice I did not mention this in my liveblogging – he gets enough visiblity, so I left him out! heh.)
The Q&A began… and each time a woman in the audience asked a question, one lone man sitting at a nearby table, rose to answer. He cut off the presenters, he cut off everyone. He had to be the first, and he had to have the last word.
He was blind to the eyes rolling around him. Eye-rolling all we did— no one said to him, "Dude, shut up already." He was indulged and allowed to sail off without realizing that he had alienated every last person in there. I doubt anyone from his mother on out has ever given him a clue, because our deferential postures. I feel ashamed of myself for sitting there and writhing in silence.
I think a lot of us are sort of use to this gentleman, he’s very knowledgeable about the topic and he’s very bright. I was bugged because I think he took the session if not off topic then into areas that didn’t need to be addressed at that time, in that particular session. I don’t think most of the women in the room were in need of that sort of discussion about the topic. Most were like Susie and trying to simply figure out what it was all about or how they could do it better. And I think they didn’t get that information from the panel, partly because this very well-known person jumped in over and over again, and took it where it didn’t need to go. His input didn’t answer either of those two questions, they just muddied the waters. Notice in my liveblogging, in parenthesis I mentioned we needed Badger and her post it notes – I think that would have really worked for the beginners in the group.)
I missed Susie Bright, man that just stinks. Elisa, it’s all your fault! 😉
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I can tell you right off that was Marc Canter, and after the first tagging panel I went up to him and we had a long conversation where I tried (not for the first time) to explain why he needs to shut up and listen a LOT more often in women’s space. I pointed out that he interrupts the panelists, interrupts the audience members, answers questions that audience members ask directly of the panelists, and worst of all… his taking up of the time means that he is preventing a whole different conversation that would happen between women, that would have happened otherwise. It is not okay for him to do this, no matter how good his ideas are, and I absolutely swear to stand up next time I see it and say it right away. Rather than waiting till afterwards. I invite other women and men to join me in this, because that’s what it’s going to take.
His ideas are fine and I am happy to hear them; the context was wrong and the dynamics utterly disrespectful.
Heh, I knew who it was – the women at my table kept whispering and asking and I finally just told them. I was trying to not mention his name. He gets enough publicity.
Glad to hear you talked to him about it. I didn’t have time for that sort of thing.
🙂
Here’s the link to where I took apart the communication & gender dynamics of exactly that kind of hijacking and interruption that happened at WoolfCamp, from the samem person. Actually, I successfully defused it the day after that happened and then… swore that I’d always be right on top of it. So, at the tagging panel I fell down on the job.
I think that next time I or someone else can stand up (standing up and being physically “big”, speaking in non-question, definite tone is crucial – no qualifying statements, either) and just say “Marc, you are hijacking the plane. Save it till later.” Actually, I think he will hear that.
I remember when you wrote that but I couldn’t find it. I am trying to find your tagging series on the woolfcamp blog and it’s taking me forever. You need categories over there. 😉
Wow, Liz, Denise, I had no idea. Liz, I think your idea for how to “nip it in the bud” w/o a lot of drama is a good one. But it sort of needs to be like “airport security.” It’s hard when it’s all left up to one iconoclastic heroine. It should be anticipated.
I was lost for most of the session, but I came in late. Basically I’ve come to see that I MUST start tagging b/c these extremely smart women are urging me to do so. But I’m missing the big picture of why it is supplanting google searches and the like. And it is SO laborious. Nevertheless, I’ve started in, and maybe the practice will tell me what I’m clueless about now.
I started reading this and thought – wow, they are talking about the guy in the Social Change BOF who went on and ON about his business and why he was there and even when asked to stop (because we were doing BRIEF intros) he kept talking. Like you said, you could feel the distane and the distance rise from the other women. No matter what he had to sell – beyond that point, he lost the sale.
Denise: I abjectly apologize for causing you to miss Susie’s session. Since all the speakers were fans of each other, not to mention how attendees were fans of multiple topics, in the end someone had to suffer…apparently that was you!
mea culpa
🙂
I accept your apology, Elisa. I’m feeling SLIGHTLY better, as I sit here and listen to the panel. It was a good one.
SMOOCH!
But now you have a Susie Bright comment on your blog. 🙂
(And from my point of view since you didn’t meet her it’s one less thing for me to be jealous about…)