Being visible
3/11/07 15:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Total miles: 174
In Iwate-machi. One of their specialties is blueberries; their home page sells blueberry wine, among other products. The art museum also has some interesting sights. The scenery is also nice.
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Somebody blared their horn at me today; I was going along the right side of a road that didn't happen to have a bike lane, unless you count a stripe of white along the crumbling edge of the pavement. And it got me thinking about Dorothea Salo's recent post about names. She was annoyed at the "last name, first initial" convention in a lot of academic papers; and she was reminded that women may use that convention in order not to be penalized for being women (Much as several science fiction writers have done.)
And that's not dissimilar to cycling along Tryon road. I feel like, should I use another route? (Not that there's another route I can use; Raleigh's urban design is a bit unfortunate in that most of the smaller roads are in subdivisions and don't go anywhere.) Should I stick to the greenway in the park? It's not as if I like annoying people. And I value staying alive more than cycling advocacy. But... the more people think like that, the fewer cyclists there'll be out on the roads, and the more cycling will be stigmatized.
I guess that's why Critical Mass is called Critical Mass. But I feel like sometimes they're annoying just for the sake of being annoying, which doesn't exactly help their cause (I think).
In Iwate-machi. One of their specialties is blueberries; their home page sells blueberry wine, among other products. The art museum also has some interesting sights. The scenery is also nice.
--
Somebody blared their horn at me today; I was going along the right side of a road that didn't happen to have a bike lane, unless you count a stripe of white along the crumbling edge of the pavement. And it got me thinking about Dorothea Salo's recent post about names. She was annoyed at the "last name, first initial" convention in a lot of academic papers; and she was reminded that women may use that convention in order not to be penalized for being women (Much as several science fiction writers have done.)
It’s a “go along to get along” strategy, though, and any such strategy has an unfortunate externality: it divides and defeats the universe of female scientists, because it lets the men go blithely on ignoring and undervaluing those they can quickly identify as female by their names.
When I replied to my colleague that using full names may destabilize the implicit sexism of the current system, she answered, in toto, “Some women just want to do science, not be martyrs.”
And that's not dissimilar to cycling along Tryon road. I feel like, should I use another route? (Not that there's another route I can use; Raleigh's urban design is a bit unfortunate in that most of the smaller roads are in subdivisions and don't go anywhere.) Should I stick to the greenway in the park? It's not as if I like annoying people. And I value staying alive more than cycling advocacy. But... the more people think like that, the fewer cyclists there'll be out on the roads, and the more cycling will be stigmatized.
I guess that's why Critical Mass is called Critical Mass. But I feel like sometimes they're annoying just for the sake of being annoying, which doesn't exactly help their cause (I think).
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