I was going to answer you in my journal, but here you are in your own journal, where more of your people will see the response.
I don't have much to say about point 1.
About point 2, I never asked (my) David why he didn't do those things, so now I will never know. My sister-in-law did get a direct answer to a question about him from beyond the grave this week, but I don't expect that to happen on this topic. I can totally see your reasoning and how it's different from mine; I think I'm drawing my conclusion from a certain (polite, subtle) smugness that always came up when these issues came up. But (for one example), it's entirely possible that he started where you are and then found that he enjoyed that level of being different. Most likely, if I could ask, the answer would be orthogonal to any of our suppositions.
About the diversity talk, I'm glad you linked to it. I'm writing a post about David for <a href="geekfeminism.org>Geek Feminism</a>, so I've been to some extent studying it. I would agree, and I suspect my brother would also, that <I>some of</i> the similarities of groups are superficial, but there's a huge difference between one-on-one comparisons (two people of the same class/age/gender comparing themselves) and group-to-one comparisons. So if I am the only woman in a roomful of men, then the similarities often cease to become superficial and become controlling (or maybe they stay superficial and <I>still</i> become controlling). Similarly, if I am the only white kid on a playground completely full of African-American children. Etc., etc. Whether we are more alike than we are different, or more different than we are alike depends in significant part on where the person doing the measurement is standing.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-04-30 02:49 am (UTC)I don't have much to say about point 1.
About point 2, I never asked (my) David why he didn't do those things, so now I will never know. My sister-in-law did get a direct answer to a question about him from beyond the grave this week, but I don't expect that to happen on this topic. I can totally see your reasoning and how it's different from mine; I think I'm drawing my conclusion from a certain (polite, subtle) smugness that always came up when these issues came up. But (for one example), it's entirely possible that he started where you are and then found that he enjoyed that level of being different. Most likely, if I could ask, the answer would be orthogonal to any of our suppositions.
About the diversity talk, I'm glad you linked to it. I'm writing a post about David for <a href="geekfeminism.org>Geek Feminism</a>, so I've been to some extent studying it. I would agree, and I suspect my brother would also, that <I>some of</i> the similarities of groups are superficial, but there's a huge difference between one-on-one comparisons (two people of the same class/age/gender comparing themselves) and group-to-one comparisons. So if I am the only woman in a roomful of men, then the similarities often cease to become superficial and become controlling (or maybe they stay superficial and <I>still</i> become controlling). Similarly, if I am the only white kid on a playground completely full of African-American children. Etc., etc. Whether we are more alike than we are different, or more different than we are alike depends in significant part on where the person doing the measurement is standing.