Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

[prophetic]

There's plenty of info on Ada Lovelace at the link below, but the short version is as follows:

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron (the poet whom many of us have heard of) and she contributed work to a project called the Analytical Engine, a theoretical machine whose design anticipated modern computers.  Her notes on calculations and other

Comments

[tempore]

I think it's going to take awhile before we as women can change our attitudes to reflect that we are just as powerful and smart and capable as men. We know it and believe it on a theoretical level, but we still, deep down, buy into the same attitudes that men do. Cultural conditioning, I suppose, it takes time to change attitudes completely.

Me and achtung_meggie were talking just yesterday about things like men stepping back and holding doors, or ushering a woman into the elevator first, and that sort of thing-- things that are largely unconscious these days, not necessarily about gender as much as about instilled attitudes of courtesy. Yet they still work on a certain, unconscious level of making the woman the "weaker" sex, something to coddle and defer to.

I think it would be interesting to go in drag a few days, just to see how differently people treat men in every day society. Do a flip of Gerard. Only, I don't think one could cover up the curves of my body that well.

[prophetic]

I hear you about going in drag and seeing the world from a different perspective; it would be awesome to do. I fantasize about that stuff--being a different person and seeing how the world would feel differently, but for me I know that so much of how I experience the world is from what I carry in my head that I know just changing my clothes wouldn't change how I felt.

Or maybe it would. Maybe enough would be different that I'd actually be able to notice it. That's what makes the idea of an experiment so appealing.

So yeah, the cultural conditioning runs pretty deep, at least for me I can tell it does.

[tempore]

Well, and a lot of that is stuff passed on to us by our parents and grandparents. They made great strides, but there are still things-- like the argument my grandfather and I got on my sister's wedding cruise. We were doing the lifeboat drill, and it's still women and children first. Well, fuck that. If there are, by law, enough lifeboats for everyone, then we all get an equal chance to get on if you ask me. And I said "I'm not leaving without my grandpa." And he said, "You get in the boat so I know you're safe. I won't get on until you do." To the point where we were both like, "eh. We're good swimmers

[prophetic]

To think of you shrugging with your grandpa and being like "Eh, we're both good swimmers," and you going to bat for your niece, well, that just warms my heart. It's awesome. We make great strides.

[flourish]

My mother has a PhD in Nuclear Engineering. You might think that I'd have already learned that women are as good in these "masculine" fields as men are, but somehow I haven't. That's why reminders like Ada Lovelace Day mean so much to me.

YES THIS. My mom is an exercise physiologist from back when women weren't allowed to be test subjects (lest their uterii fall out) and you'd think I'd get it, but... no.

Also, <3!

[prophetic]

<3!

I'm so encouraged to hear that you have this weird thing too, and how even having this amazing mom didn't magically fix things and erase the sexism of the rest of the world. I mean, I know it's not a good piece of psychological baggage to have (she said from experience) and I wish neither of us had it, but still.

I actually had someone--to whom I was honestly trying to explain the struggles I've had around sexism and role models and sense of self worth--say to me, "Knowing your mother, I'm really surprised you have these struggles." The person I was talking to was an idiot anyway, but what she said still did not count as empathy or as helpful.

Anyway, yay for your mom and nontraditional fields, and yay for you and Javascript!