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ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source
ectoman writes: Opensource.com is running an interview with Jennifer Davidson of ChickTech, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create communities of support for women and girls pursuing (or interested in pursuing) careers in tech. "In the United States, many girls are brought up to believe that 'girls can't do math' and that science and other 'geeky' topics are for boys," Davidson said. "We break down that idea." Portland, OR-based ChickTech is quickly expanding throughout the United States—to cities like Corvallis and San Francisco—thanks to the "ChickTech: High School" initiative, which gathers hundreds of young women for two-day workshops featuring open source technologies. "We fill a university engineering department with 100 high school girls—more girls than many engineering departments have ever seen," Davidson said. "The participants can look around the building and see that girls from all backgrounds are just as excited about tech as they are."
The issue is that male focused groups are criticized for it while female groups are lauded. Sure, the society for male nurses might be mostly male, but try building a society specifically for male engineers. What happens? The SJWs come out in droves clamoring for the death of the 'patriarchy.' Meanwhile the last 50 years of new laws and social reforms lobbied for by feminists force organizations to select for women because of their sex and not their accomplishments.
Criticism of feminism's hypocrisy is often taken as misogyny when it is not, which is what a lot of feminist critics deal with on slashdot and the mainstream media. These arguments are just ad hominem attacks (eg calling them misogynists) and other fallacies (like taking it as 'proof' of patriarchy) because feminists don't have sound justifications for granting women privilege in society under the guise of fighting for everyone's equal opportunity. This cannot be true as long as feminists only concern themselves with the needs and whims of one sex. Many of them have no qualms about 'redefining' masculinity as well, which is ironic considering how they don't want men dictating what a woman should be in any sense.
You're right, though, people should be able to concern themselves with their own interests and ally as they see fit, but it is wrong to have the state dictate which cross sections are permitted to do this, labeling some as 'oppressors' and others as 'oppressed,' by default. This 'chicktech' initiative is no more or less discriminatory than my male engineering society example above. If one should be allowed then so should the other.