[p2p-research] Fwd: Gender bias and P2P Movement

[Michel Bauwens]

Marc has put up an interesting contribution that may revive our debate on
gender,

It's the 8th reply at
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/2003008:Topic:2563

Thanks for adding your five cents,

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 3:26 AM
Subject: Gender bias and P2P Movement
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


Dear Michel,

I believe that purely intellectual movements (ones driven by intellectuals)
never manage to lead the whole world.

The P2P movement in general and your work on P2P foundation, even since I
first talked to you in 2006, has contributed to tangible  progress in
people's awareness.

But I'm afraid that it's locked into an intellectual discussion where
people, including myself as an example, try to fix the problem before they
address the shared feelings surrounding the problem.

And it's my belief that for a movement to lead the world it has to have not
only gender balance but an explicit balance between thinking and feeling our
way around the issues.

I've tried to state my case as follows:

"For example, if I felt angry about my iPod malfunctioning I may take a
hammer and flatten the thing or I may send it in for repair. It all depends
on how I feel about the problem. Thus, if I feel angry about the problem of
'unconscious money' (how money is defined and used today) then I may bring a
nuke to a sword fight. Thus, if I feel angry about the problem of
'unconscious money' (how money is defined and used today) then I may bring a
nuke to a sword fight. On the other hand, if I get to talk about and reflect
on my feelings around the problem (of 'unconscious money') then I am more
likely to apply the right solution to it.

So that's what I'm trying to do here, i.e. talk about and reflect on my
feelings around the problem rather than jump to the solution, even though I
have already went ahead and proposed a solution that may or may not be the
right solution."

However, unless there is gender balance I feel that most male participants
are inclined, like me, to go up in their head and try to find a solution
before they actually talk about and reflect on their feelings around the
problem.

The problem is most male participants, including myself, are
intellectuals/thinkers and are unlikely to explore and talk about how their
feelings around the given problem and more likely to jump right into
discussing the solution.

So I think your call for Gender Balance makes complete sense.

I've invited one female participant who also happens to have a higher degree
in psychology but I believe that women in general have an intuitive
understanding of the need to address the feelings we have around a problem
before trying to fix it.

...

Let's see what happens... I'm hoping that the women in the crowd would get
engaged in this debate about the need to address/reflect on feelings around
a problem before attempting to fix it, especially since that's what all
women I know do.

That's where I am right now... addressing the problem behind the problem.







-- 
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.

Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p

Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU

KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20081101/b41b9d12/attachment.html