Celebrating Discrimination In Podcasting Funding
How do you do a podcast? Sign up for one of any number of free services, talk into your computer when the podcast starts and stop talking when it ends. There's no checking your race, no keeping people of a certain sex out. Just sign up and start talking.
But there's this:
And best of all, check out who's eligible:
Who's eligible: Anyone who self-identifies as a woman of color...
Here's a little test: If it's discriminatory to advertise it for white dudes, it's discriminatory to advertise it for whichever special interest group you're advertising it for.
P.S. I self-identify as a woman who's the color of fresh Wite-Out.
And here's a counterpoint to the bloggertunity for "women of color," "Minorities Don't Always Want Your Help Being Heard."
To try and fill a quota based on aspects of identity is to appeal to ideological zealots and encourage bad ideas. Publish people's writing based on its content and clarity and style. To pick people based on some immutable characteristic is to discriminate against people with different immutable characteristics. This kind of discriminatory practice is toxic and antithetical to a civil and rational society no matter how good your intentions are. It is also demeaning to people like me, who can prove our worthiness for a job based on our skills and hard work, not our gender identity, race or sexuality.I want to live in a world where the color of my skin or my gender identity or sexuality is not a consideration when deciding whether to accept my submission or offer me a job. That's a morally repugnant ideology, no better than the discriminatory views that intersectionalists and feminists rightly oppose. I want to be known as someone who makes a strong argument and knows how to report in a balanced and unbiased way. I want to know that any writing opportunities and job offers have been based on a recognition of this. When you make my voice heard because you want to fulfil a quota of trans individuals, then you're treating me as if I'm not the most qualified and you just want to appease those who support an ideological agenda that I utterly reject.
My name is Autumn Berend, and yes, I am a transgender woman, but that doesn't determine my worth. I'm a writer, journalist, political science major, a classical liberal, free thinker and devout believer in intellectualism and individuality of the person. I should be evaluated based on what I have to say and how I say it. Consider me because of that. Consider me because I am a thinking human with a good brain. I deserve the same opportunity to prove myself as everyone else.
That's a morally repugnant ideology, no better than the discriminatory views that intersectionalists and feminists rightly oppose.
There's an old saying that even a blind sow can find an occasional acorn. Yes, the modern feminists and intersectionalists oppose that ideology, but not because it's morally repugnant but rather because it is a view held by people we don't like.
Much of the current crop of grievance mongers are animated by tribalism and getevenism. I predict that Ms. Berend will be savaged by these people with the most vile slurs available to them. Keep this point of view up, and you'll find yourself exiled.
Good luck with that.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 31, 2018 5:35 AM
I love Berend's piece. I'm right there with her. Choose me because I have something valuable to say, not because I bring a vagina along with me while saying it.
Amy Alkon at March 31, 2018 7:00 AM
Podcasters have to be trained? Any yutz with a computer can make a podcast and upload it. In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a podcast on how to make a podcast.
If you want to limit your podcast funding to mustachioed Himalayan women, I don't think anyone else is going to be cut out of the podcasting world by that.
Yes, but it helps to know to search in oak forests.
Conan the Grammarian at March 31, 2018 7:11 AM
Who's eligible: Anyone who self-identifies as a woman of color...
Like Elizabeth Warren? And Rachel Dolezal?
Ken R at March 31, 2018 10:38 AM
To pick people based on some immutable characteristic is to discriminate against people with different immutable characteristics.
Immutable characteristics are the only characteristics some people have.
Ken R at March 31, 2018 10:46 AM
My name is Autumn Berend, and yes, I am a transgender woman, but that doesn't determine my worth.
A thing I like about a lot of the transgender people I've worked with - coworkers and patients - is that most of them aren't all into being "trans". They just want to be the other gender. A transgender boy on my unit (girl body, boy gender identity) doesn't want to be a "transgender boy". He just wants to be a boy. I can't bring myself to fault him for that.
Ken R at March 31, 2018 11:02 AM
It's only discrimination if a white person can make use of it.
Jay at March 31, 2018 3:10 PM
Crid at March 31, 2018 5:13 PM
And I'll never understand how this almost vanishingly tiny subset of the population commands such an enormous sector of smug righteousness in the popular mind. How many transgender people do you know? (And if you can't tell the difference, then WGAF?)
Each of us has fifty people in our lives who've been bitterly scratched (or grievously wounded) by alcoholism. And many more injured by poverty and cowardice and racism and laziness and illiteracy and on and on....
When someone has a lot energy about transgenderism, I think of them as silly. As morally unserious and ethically avoidant.
Because proportion.
Crid at March 31, 2018 5:20 PM
Thomas P.M. Barnett talked about this a few years ago... We got serious problems, and are squandering our public space on the tiniest imaginable definitions of life... Is Terry Schiavo alive or not? Is an unborn too human to kill? I think this fits on that continuum. Is a man in a skirt a woman?
If I have to have the correct opinion regarding your sexuality before I meet you, you're wasting your energy.
I probably won't like you either way. Nuthin' personal.
Crid at March 31, 2018 5:25 PM
> and yes, I am a transgender
> woman, but
Don't be glib, kiddo
Crid at March 31, 2018 5:29 PM
Ken R. Immutable characteristics are the only characteristics some people have.
Hogwash. A person can have long hair, then decide to cut it short. Their characteristically long hair has been made short.
A characteristic that all of us on this blog have is that we are alive. One day, that will change.
Patrick at March 31, 2018 7:42 PM
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