Dear Diversity Taskforce, thank you so much for your work. RIPE 77 was my first RIPE meeting and I really enjoyed it. It feels nice to come into a community and see that the diversity work is already being done, so I don't have to be the one to do the heavy lifting. (A bit of personal context: I do diversity-related work in other communities, e.g., at the Chaos Communcation Congress.) Thank you in particular for the amazing presentation at the plenary on Friday. That said, I would like to provide some friendly and hopefully constructive criticsm in the following, rather long, e-mail. This is NOT a call-out of any individual person, but rather something I'm asking you as a group to consider. Feel free to pass it on to people not on your mailing list, but then without my name, please. 1.) Please do not issue a general invitation for people to talk to women about their experience at RIPE. I was at RIPE to talk about technology, about my work, not about feminism. Being asked about feminism in a work context generates a lot of stress for me (details on that below, if you are interested). I would rather have people talk to me about my work. I assume this is true for many other women as well. If you want to encourage people to learn more about women's experiences in tech, how about "Consider reading up on this, here's some links, and here are some people who volunteered to answer questions"? If you must invite people to talk to women they know about their personal experience, please at least include a very prominent reminder that not every woman may be comfortable to talk about her experiences for many very valid reasons. Some details about my own reasons, just to illustrate: I personally did not have any experience of harassment or discrimination at RIPE that I recall. I'm sure this is the case for a number of other women as well. Hearing "talk to a woman about her experience here", for me, implies that you expect that everyone has experienced discrimination AND is comfortable to talk about it. It also feels a little bit infantilizing to me, like, "You poor women have it so bad here". This is simply not true. I know that there's still lots of problems, so I could talk about other women's experiences, or about feminism in general. However, I have been "the angry feminist" in a work context before. Even with coworkers that I really like, if I disagree with them on some feminist topic, it can create a lot of stress and a feeling of alienation on both sides. In addition, I fear that having a public stance on feminism could damage my future career. I don't feel like it's on me to "get over this", but for the culture to change. Your work is an important part of that change, and I appreciate it. 2.) Please do not misuse the term "intersectionality". (Relevant context for the following section: I'm white. Please consider reading the writings by black feminists on this topic.) If I recall correctly, in the plenary the term was used to mean "we do things for women and then other minorities / everyone benefits from it". This is not what intersectionality means. In fact, it's literally the opposite. The term "intersectionality" was created by Black feminists to mean that black women are discriminated in different ways than white women. They experience racism AND sexism, so their experience of racism is different from the racism black men experience, and their experience of sexism is different from the sexism that white women experience. This means that if you just "do things for women" without looking at other forms of discrimination, you end up doing things that mostly support white women, and leave other women behind. Similar points apply to trans women (who also experience transmisogyny), disabled women (who also experience ableism), and so on. I think that the remark at the mic by the woman from the middle-east, whose name I sadly don't recall, was exactly spot on. Different discriminations exist, they are sometimes combined, and working against them does not have to be mutually exclusive. Do not assume that all women need or want the same. Do not assume that there is a universal female experience or perspective. There is not. The "universal" female perspective is usually the white, cis, non-disabled female perspective. (Such as my own, technically and ironically, as I have all those privileges.) It's not a bad thing to have privilege, but one should be aware of it, one should question it, and one should actively give space to others who do not have this privilege. In that sense, I try my best to be a cis ally to trans* people, a white ally to non-white people, and a non-disabled ally to disabled people. In summary, it's fine you focus on women, but please be aware that there's different kinds of women. It's fine if you pick your battles. It's fine that you cannot do everything at once. I'm simply asking you to read up on the term "intersectionality" and to not misuse it. 3.) Please try to avoid gender binarism. I heard gender-binarist language (e.g., "both men and women" used to mean everyone) a lot this week. I don't know if there's any openly non-binary people in the community, but given that your registration form includes a non-binary option, perhaps there's a way to find out if anybody was brave enough to out themself on that form. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they exist. You don't necessarily have to educate everyone about this stuff, at least not for me. To me, just being conscious of your language, like saying "Dear gentlepeople" instead of "Dear ladies and gentlemen", makes a big difference. Also, consider having T-shirts in "fitted" and "unisex" cut instead of "woman's" and "man's" cut. Having some gender-neutral bathrooms in addition to gendered bathrooms might also help to make the space more inclusive to non-binary people, and maybe also to binary trans* people. Finally, a but of positive feedback again: I think the discussion on (male) allies is a really good and important one, I was really pleased to see it. I've met lots of male allies at RIPE, even those who aren't active advocates and don't call themselves feminist (yet?), but who encourage me in my work and mentor me. If some of these men become more feminist, that's really awesome, and thank you for working on that. Hope to see you at a RIPE meeting next year! Best, Theresa -- Theresa Enghardt Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin / Research Assistant Phone: +49 30 314 78628 Office: MAR 4.032 FG / Group "Internet Network Architectures" (INET) Technische Universität Berlin Sekr. MAR 4-4, Marchstraße 23, 10587 Berlin