#just say you’re not prioritizing inclusivity and accessibility. just say you don’t care about disabled people. be real about it ffs

[noballoonsinspace]

Can’t stand when people go “its just not in the budget” when they’re the ones that wrote the damn budget in the first place. Just say it wasn’t a priority to you. Just say that. Take responsibility.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Maybe you can help me understand this intersectional thing. To me it seems like feminists pretending not to be giant bigots. In terms of men, it means "helping" black men because they're black, not because they're men with men's problems. That way they're inclusive but in an exclusionary way, smoke and mirrors to hide throwing men as a whole under the bus, equality-wise. Which is as fucked up as helping HIV+ children because they were "innocent" while the gay men deserved it. Did I get it right?

Hey! Thanks for the message :) 

I agree with you and yeah you’re spot on in your summary of intersectionality. It has become all the rage on social media and on campus, it’s now being taught as the holy grail of feminist theory and the standard third-wave feminism is now being dismissed as the oppressive “white feminism”. Feminists then see the word white and shriek so they quickly hop on the intersectional bandwagon and leave behind any feminist who dares to defend “white feminism”. 

The problem with this blind following that we are so used to seeing from feminists is that they’re not thinking for themselves, they don’t care about the truth or facts, they are so desperate to please and defend the “oppressed” that they’ll believe anything that comes from a minority - if a black woman tells them to jump off a cliff, they’ll believe it’s racist not to. 

Why do you think they continue to talk about the wage gap, rape culture, male privilege, western women’s oppression, the idea that young blacks are being hunted by racist white people, that Islam is the religion of peace? Because minorities said it’s true so who gives a shit about reality or the facts, right? 

Back to the point. Intersectional theory was first developed in the 70s and 80s by a group of black scholars and activists. They accused the feminist movement of neglecting black women and of misunderstanding oppression - which is still the narrative today. White women, for example, are penalized for their gender but privileged by their race. Black men suffer from their race, but garner privilege from their gender. Black women are in double-jeopardy, they are disadvantaged by both race and gender and they demand for this to be the focal point of mainstream feminism.

Patricia Hill Collins is one of the chief architects of intersectionality theory. The textbook she co-authored describes the United States as a “matrix of oppression.” Beneath a veneer of freedom and opportunity, there lies a rigid system of privilege and domination. Most fair-minded Americans don’t see this theory as their reality, but Collins and her co-author alert students to the fact that this is only because it has been hidden from them. “Dominant forms of knowledge have been constructed largely from the experiences of the most powerful.” The text promises to introduce students to deeper “subordinated truths” by avoiding what it calls “Western” and “masculine” ways of thinking which could obscure these truths. 

According to the theory, those who are most oppressed have access to deeper, more authentic knowledge about life and society. In short: members of privileged groups (especially white straight males) should not only check their privilege, but listen to those they have “oppressed” - because those groups possess a superior understanding of the world and they should be granted the loudest voice in the room.

Initially, the primary focus of intersectional feminism was on black women. But of course with the left’s oppression olympics, the number of victims quickly multiplied and now many Women’s Studies textbooks list up to 15 marginalized identities who are being oppressed today by straight white men and yes, according to this theory, now straight white women are oppressors too. 

The non-politicized version of intersectionality, who understands and researches complex social identities - I have no concern with them. But what concerns me is how intersectional feminism is taught and practiced on the college campus. I have many objections but I will limit myself to three.

Problem one: If intersectionality theory were merely a reminder to be sensitive to different kinds of social advantages and disadvantages, that would be fine. But it is much more than that. It is an all-encompassing theory of human reality constructed to be immune to criticism. If you question it, that only proves you don’t understand it or are just part of the problem. It seeks to correct only, never to be challenged.

Within this theory, men and white people are still seen are evil sinners who need to step down and let these brilliant, insightful minds of the minorities rule. If they dare to question the theory they will be told to check their privilege and it’s their job to provide reparations for their unearned advantages and learn from those they have oppressed. 

Problem two: According to this theory, victimization confers wisdom, moral authority and prestige. So in places where intersectionalists gather on campus and on social media - there is now a mad and wild scramble for victim status. An example of this theory was at the annual meeting of the National Women’s Studies Association in Austin, Texas. 

The conference organizers had taken the words of intersectional feminism and participants were told to assemble in small groups based on their “healing needs”: Asian women, black women, old women, Jewish lesbians, disabled women, overweight women. But none of these groups proved stable. The overweight group polarized into gay and straight factions. Members of the black lesbian group could not get along and those who had white partners were called out for their privilege and had to form a separate group. And new identities emerged: A group of “Women with Allergies” formed a caucus and issued a set of demands about not wearing dry-cleaned clothing or hairspray.

This was a conference of fucking scholars, the very people who are today teaching you. It proved that intersectionality only creates new reasons for anger and it devours groups who they claim to be fighting for. Another example of this shit is evident at the Women’s March on Washington and Black Lives Matter rallies. White women are forced to the back of the group as their voices are the least important and white women and white people need to shut up, stay in their lane and not say a word unless they’re spoken to. The sad part is, these white feminists actually submit, obey and apologize for being white oppressors.

Problem three: Intersectionality tells us that white males are in charge of the “capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy” and enjoy the most “unearned privilege” and on many campuses, that has given marginalized victims permission to treat them like shit. Ironically, members of the insider victim class now routinely do to others what they accuse the privileged class of doing to them: they stereotype, demonize, shame, and silence anyone who doesn’t sympathize and prioritize minorities under every circumstance. 

But as often happens with morally inflamed groups, they soon turn on one another. In 2014, the Nation magazine ran a story about a conference at Barnard College for feminist bloggers. The feminist bloggers and participants were immediately denounced as “a cabal of white opportunists,” even though it included several non-white women. The very act of holding the conference was considered discriminatory, in their eyes it gave privilege to women who lived in New York City and excluded indigenous women, old women, disabled women and women who are not online. These are the lengths that intersectionality have gone to.

These new young feminists are in the grips of a conspiracy theory and have succumbed to the cult of intersectionality. It’s like a giant mixture of the worst ideas from feminism and the worst ideas from BLM and what we have ended up with is a weird left-wing, racially-charged dictation. Yes, of course there are human rights catastrophes that bear directly on race and gender but intersectional theory as we know it today isn’t uniting people around urgent humanitarian crises or honest injustices, it is doing nothing but dividing people. It is leading large numbers of talented, idealistic students at the highly privileged intersections of American colleges to enact psychodramas, shut themselves away from reality and believe in an unequal sense of equality because someone who isn’t white told them to. 

But just as traditional feminism have been turned against and destroyed, it’s only a matter of time before a new bunch of victims hijack and destroy intersectional feminism too. I’ll go get the popcorn. 

[suzanneshannon]

What the web still is

Being a pessimist is an easy thing to fall back on, and I’m trying to be better about it. As we close the year out, I thought it would be a good exercise to take stock of the state of the web and count our blessings.

Versatile

We don't use the internet to do just one thing. With more than two decades of globally interconnected computers, the web allows us to use it for all manner of activity.

This includes platforms, processes, and products that existed before the web came into being, and also previously unimagined concepts and behaviors. Thanks to the web, we can all order takeout the same way we can all watch two women repair a space station in realtime.

Decentralized

There is still no one single arbiter you need to petition to sign off on the validity of your idea, or one accepted path for going about to make it happen. Any website can link out to, or be linked to, without having to pay a tax or file pre-approval paperwork.

While we have seen a consolidation of the services needed to run more sophisticated web apps, you can still put your ideas out for the entire world to see with nothing more than a static HTML page. This fact was, and still is, historically unprecedented.

Resilient

The internet has been called the most hostile environment to develop for. Someone who works on the web has to consider multiple browsers, the operating systems they are installed on, and all the popular release versions of both. They also need to consider screen size and quality, variable network conditions, different form factors and input modes, third party scripts, etc. This is to say nothing about serving an unknown amount of unknown users, each with their own thoughts, feelings, goals, abilities, motivations, proficiencies, and device modifications.

If you do it right, you can build a website or a web app so that it can survive a lot of damage before it is rendered completely inoperable. Frankly, the fact that the web works at all is nothing short of miraculous.

The failsafes, guardrails, redundancies, and other considerations built into the platform from the packet level on up allow this to happen. Honoring them honors the thought, care, and planning that went into the web's foundational principles.

Responsive

Most websites now make use of media queries to ensure their content reads and works well across a staggeringly large amount of devices. This efficient technology choice is fault-tolerant, has a low barrier of entry, and neatly side-steps the myriad problems you get with approaches such as device-sniffing and/or conditionally serving massive piles of JavaScript.

Responsive Design was, and still is revolutionary. It was the right answer, at the right place and time. It elegantly handled the compounding problem of viewport fragmentation as the web transformed from something new and novel into something that is woven into our everyday lives.

Adaptable

In addition to being responsive, the web works across a huge range of form factors, device capabilities, and specialized browsing modes. The post you are currently reading can show up on a laptop, a phone, a Kindle, a TV, a gas station pump, a video game console, a refrigerator, a car, a billboard, an oscilloscope—heck, even a space shuttle (if you’re reading this from space, please, please, please let me know).

It will work with a reading mode that helps a person focus, dark and high contrast modes that will help a person see, and any number of specialized browser extensions that help people get what they need. I have a friend who inverts her entire display to help prevent triggering migraines, and the web just rolls with it. How great is that?

Web content can be read, translated, spoken aloud, copied, clipped, piped into your terminal, forked, remixed, scraped by a robot, output as Braille, and even played as music. You can increase the size of its text, change its font and color, and block parts you don't want to deal with—all in the service of making it easier for you to consume. That is revolutionary when compared to the media that came before it.

Furthermore, thanks to things like Progressive Web Apps and Web Platform Features, the web now blends seamlessly into desktops and home screens. These features allow web content to behave like traditional apps and are treated as first-class citizens by the operating systems that support them. You don’t even necessarily need to be online for them to work!

Accessible

The current landscape of accessibility compliance is a depressing state of affairs. WebAIM’s Million report, and subsequent update, highlights this with a sobering level of detail.

Out of the top one million websites sampled, ~98% of home pages had programmatically detectable Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors. This represents a complete, categorical failure of our industry on every conceivable level, from developers and designers, to framework maintainers, all the way up to those who help steer the future of the platform.

And yet.

In that last stubborn two percent lives a promise of the web. Web accessibility—the ability for someone to use a website or web app regardless of their ability or circumstance—grants autonomy. It represents a rare space where a disabled individual may operate free from the immense amount of bias, misunderstanding, and outright hate that is pervasive throughout much of society. This autonomy represents not only freedom for social activities but also employment opportunities for a population that is routinely discriminated against.

There is a ton of work to do, and we do not have the luxury of defeatism. I’m actually optimistic about digital accessibility’s future. Things like Inclusive Design have shifted the conversation away from remediation into a more holistic, proactive approach to product design.

Accessibility, long viewed as an unglamorous topic, has started to appear as a mainstream, top-level theme in conference and workshop circuits, as well as popular industry blogs. Sophisticated automated accessibility checkers can help prevent you from shipping inaccessible code. Design systems are helping to normalize the practice at scale. And most importantly, accessibility practitioners are speaking openly about ableism.

Inexpensive

While the average size of a website continues to rise, the fact remains that you can achieve an incredible amount of functionality with a small amount of code. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.

It has never been more affordable to use the web. In the United States, you can buy an internet-ready smartphone for ~$40. Emerging markets are adopting feature phones such as the JioPhone (~$15 USD) at an incredible rate. This means that access to the world’s information is available to more people—people who traditionally may have never been able to have such a privilege.

Think about it: owning a desktop computer represented having enough steady income to be able to support permanent housing, as well as consistent power and phone service. This created an implicit barrier to entry during the web’s infancy.

The weakening of this barrier opens up unimaginable amounts of opportunity, and is an excellent reminder that the web really is for everyone. With that in mind, it remains vital to keep our payload sizes down. What might be a reflexive CMD + R for you might be an entire week’s worth of data for someone else.

Diverse

There are more browsers available than I have fingers and toes to count on. This is a good thing. Like any other category of software, each browser is an app that does the same general thing in the same general way, but with specific design decisions made to prioritize different needs and goals.

My favorite browser, Firefox, puts a lot of its attention towards maintaining the privacy and security of its users. Brave is similar in that regard. Both Edge and Safari are bundled with their respective operating systems, and have interfaces geared towards helping the widest range of users browse web content. Browsers like Opera and Vivaldi are geared towards tinkerers, people who like a highly customized browsing experience. Samsung Internet is an alternative browser for Android devices that can integrate with their proprietary hardware. KaiOS and UC browsers provide access to millions of feature phones, helping them to have smartphone-esque functionality. Chrome helps you receive more personalized ads efficiently debug JavaScript.

Browser engine diversity is important as well, although the ecosystem has been getting disturbingly small as of late. The healthy competition multiple engines generates translates directly to the experience becoming better for the most important people in the room: Those who rely on the web to live their everyday lives.

Speaking of people, let’s discuss the web’s quality of diversity and how it applies to them: Our industry, like many others, has historically been plagued by ills such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism. However, the fact remains that the ability to solve problems in the digital space represents a rare form of leverage that allows minoritized groups to have upward economic mobility.

If you can't be motivated by human decency, it’s no secret that more diverse teams perform better. We’ve made good strides in the past few years towards better representation, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Listen to, and signal boost the triumphs, frustrations, and fears of the underrepresented in our industry. Internalize their observations and challenge your preconceived notions and biases. Advocate for their right to be in this space. Educate yourself on our industry’s history. Support things like codes of conduct, which do the hard work of modeling and codifying expectations for behavior. All of this helps to push against a toxic status quo and makes the industry better for everyone.

Standardized

The web is built by consensus, enabling a radical kind of functionality. This interoperability—the ability for different computer systems to be able to exchange information—is built from a set of standards we have all collectively agreed on.

Chances are good that a web document written two decades ago will still work with the latest version of any major browser. Any web document written by someone else—even someone on the opposite side of the globe—will also work. It will also continue to work on browsers and devices that have yet to be invented. I challenge you to name another file format that supports this level of functionality that has an equivalent lifespan.

This futureproofing by way of standardization also allows for a solid foundation of support for whatever comes next. Remember the principle of versatile: It is important to remember that these standards are also not prescriptive. We’re free to take these building blocks use arrange them in a near-infinite number of ways.

Open

Furthermore, this consensus is transparent. While the process may seem slow sometimes, it is worth highlighting the fact that the process is highly transparent. Anyone who is invested may follow, and contribute to web standards, warts and all.

It’s this openness that helps to prevent things like hidden agendas, privatization, lock-in, and disproportionate influence from consolidating power. Open-source software and protocols and, most importantly, large-scale cooperation also sustain the web platform’s long-term growth and health. Think of web technologies that didn’t make it: Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX, etc. All closed, for-profit, brittle, and private.

It also helps to disincentive more abstract threats, things like adversarial interoperability and failure to disclose vulnerabilities. These kinds of hazards are a good thing to remember any time you find yourself frustrated with the platform.

Make no mistake: I feel a lot of what makes the web great is actively being dismantled, either inadvertently or deliberately. But as I mentioned earlier, cynicism is easy. My wish for next year? That all the qualities mentioned here are still present. My New Year’s resolution? To help ensure it.

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