Friday, November 26, 2010

IT sexism

I hate being patronised. And I hate sexist remarks.
Today the IT guy taught the English department how to use the language computer room, within the frame of using ICT in our classes.
He started saying “ If you want to put a new program you need a password, so you need to tell me”. So I put my hand up and said “ the audacity “ : Then he says in a stern way “ And why did you not tell me before?” and my principal, who was there, goes “ What do you want the audacity for”
Talk about being open minded to include ICT in class. This is the first technique of computer people, trying to persuade you you do not really need whatever it is you wanted help with. The second one is installing another program that does exactly the same but it is much better than the one you had.
Then I asked him how the students could get to a file in the teacher's computer, and he said it was really difficult because you have to create a shared folder. Then I said “ So you just have to create a folder in the network” But he could not make it work, so eventually he said to me “ I would tell you that winx does not work well in closed environments, but you won't have a clue of what that is “, and I said “ Well, winx does not work well either in open or in close environments because windows does never work”.
Really, I wanted to say, “well, I don't know much about computers, but I know language, and I know what closed is, what environment is and, by the way, it would be winxP, and you pronounce it like win ex pi, because winx is a bunch of cartoon fairies”.
I hate sexist patronising IT people. Had I been a man, he would not have said this. He just thought I did not have a clue about computers just because I was a woman. I could have fucking smacked him on the back of his head.
But he did not know two things: first I am a woman, but independent and without a boyfriend, which means I have to fix my own computer. I have had a couple of IT person lovers, but they have never touched my computer. Well, I lie. One of them once fixed my roommate´s, and even looked at my PC problems another time. I guess I do not tend to ask things from my lovers. IT friends have helped me more often. But some lovers do not want to be friends, no matter how much you try, and I do not like asking for favours to not friendly people. Second, my internet never works, no matter where I go, which country I am in, what connection I use...my internet always has to be fixed and refixed and re checked before it starts working.
So there, that's why I know a bit about computers, even when I did not really need it to understand such an easy thing.
But I have something very clear, in the same way Odin created some trials for the man that would marry the walkiria Brunilda, like going through fire and being a good fighter, next IT person I meet is going to have to fucking reinstall my operative system before we even start to know each other. You see, last IT person decided that he had to take apart my desk computer to fix it, and, of course, never put it back together.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

International day against gender violence

One week ago I went to a school trip to El Escorial with my students, who are generally well behaved.

However, they are teenagers. And such as they are, they decided to insult each other..how did they do it so we did not realise? Via bluetooth. Bt they did not connect to each other and then do it, no. They wrote offensive comment for the other as their names for the bluetooth system, which made it quite difficult to find out who was to blame.

One o them called “ big tits” to a girl, who had already being said to “ eat dicks”. So I banned electronic devices and gave a speech about it in class. Anyway, I decided to tell the dean so he put some pressure on not using cell phones, and I talked about it to a couple of coworkers, all of them great professionals.

The dean said that it was better to make an intervention from the advisory class, and then asked “ iff she was really one”. And my female coworkers said that “ deep down she likes it “ and, “ she kind of brings it upon herself?And the dean?”

And wrath gets over me. How is it possible? Two WOMEN?! What do you mean she brings it up

The student can be whatever she wants to be and whatever she wants to do, she might like to be the centre of attention, but that does not mean that anybody has the right to talk about her or comment on her or her actions. Besides, she is just a regular teenager

Sexism is so down rooted that it flows out as soon as you look into human relationships

And no, I am not a crazy radical feminist that sees things where they are not and who is obsessed. It happens that very often, there is an appearance of justice and equality that does not correspond to reality. There are people that this it is enough to say we are the same and do some political correct thing. But there is so much more to be done. We need to change the way we are treated and we treat each other.We need to get rid of this kind of language and erase this ideas from our subconscious, and to confront this kind of comments.

Sometimes, I look at the world, and I just want to sit down and cry.

THE REALMS OF CHAOS