“Why am I the only woman on the program today?” asked content strategy thought leader Kristina Halvorson back in 2009 as she stood onstage at the Future of Web Apps conference.

She recently posted to LinkedIn about her memories of that event:

Just thinking about the very first talk I gave at a national conference in 2009, when I realized I was the only woman on a long list of speakers and decided we should discuss it amongst the 1,000+ of us.

It was a popular tech event. No one had any idea who I was. I was fearless, and I had nothing to lose.

To their credit, moments before I took the stage, the conference organizers agreed to join me in conversation after my talk. It went well. They took responsibility for not paying attention and committed to doing better in the future, which they did.

The response on Twitter was about 20% of the audience agreeing with me and 80% telling me I sucked, because “conference organizers should just pick the best speakers, no matter what gender they are” and I was “self-righteous/ungrateful/unfair” for calling them out.

These voices included the very few women at the conference, who — instead of feeling seen and supported — felt exposed and forced into a conversation they didn’t ask to have.

I learned two lessons that day:

1. It is important to speak up when you see inequity, because you can help make change happen.
2. It is equally if not important to consider timing and context when you do, because you risk centering yourself in the process — which has a significantly negative impact on the very people you want to support.

Weirdly, I did not get invited back to this conference. 💀

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kristinahalvorson_just-thinking-about-the-very-first-talk-i-activity-7161009538920325120-3hwT/

The post struck a chord with me, probably because I am currently in the middle of planning a small conference. The point she raised about the lack of balance among the speakers stirred something in me, because it’s a concern I have had myself when trying to assemble a group of speakers.

However, I think I have a radically different perspective than Halvorson as to how to achieve “balance” on a speaker lineup. To be honest, I’m not convinced that it’s a goal that’s even attainable.

Let me explain.

Laziness at Best, Prejudice at Worst

Being charitable, I would interpret a question such as, “Why am I the only woman on the program today?” as an exhortation to the scores of talented women in tech to believe in themselves—to pitch that talk, to write that blog post, to speak up at that meeting, to stand up alongside Halvorson on that stage where they rightfully belong. In other words, to have the same confidence that some men have (well-founded or otherwise) to raise their hand, put themselves out there, and leave their mark on the industry.

But there’s more to it than that. As a reply to her own thread, Halvorson directs her readers to what she describes as a “very thoughtful” blog post written by Chris Messina, another attendee of that fateful 2009 talk. Titled “Future of White Boys’ Clubs Redux #fowaspeak,” the post includes this quote:

The question is no longer “where are all the women?” — it’s why the hell aren’t white men making sure that women are up on stage telling their story and sharing the insights that they uniquely can provide!

Source: https://factoryjoe.com/2009/02/27/future-of-white-boys-clubs-redux-fowaspeak/

Now, Messina does go on in his blog to acknowledge that the (white male) organizer of the conference in question reached out to women, that organizers cannot force anyone to apply to speak, and that the industry itself is not as gender-balanced as he would prefer its conferences to be. But the point stands: “That there are fewer women in the industry means first that conference organizers need work harder to find them and second that audiences need to become vigilant about their absences on conference schedules,” writes Messina.

According to Messina, the burden is on conference organizers to craft a balanced lineup between men and women, and to the extent that they have not, the audience ought to take the organizers to task. If only the organizers had started planning earlier, or reached out to more people, or petitioned sponsors harder for marketing funds, etc., then balance would have been achieved.

A lack of balance on a speaker lineup is thus interpreted as at best a sign of laziness and at worst an expression of prejudice against one or more identity groups.

I believe that this is a misguided attitude.

Not because I think conference organizers shouldn’t strive to create a varied (or dare I say, “diverse”) program. As a matter of fact, I think that one’s sex, race, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. certainly can be a factor that lends itself to an interesting perspective that deserves to be shared onstage.

My assertion is that any kind of “balanced lineup” along the lines of identity is impossible. No, I don’t mean “difficult.” I mean, like, literally impossible.

Let me explain with an example from the recent past.

Fair and Balanced

In early June 2020, Seattle was ready for a change. What happened to George Floyd was unacceptable. No longer would there be any more racism or police brutality in the city, if progressive Seattleites had anything to say about it.

Protestors took to the streets and established an autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Police were strictly forbidden from entering. Governance was anarchic in nature, as there was no official leadership.

However, the Zone was not without conflict, which prompted one user on the subreddit r/CapHillAutonomousZone to propose a solution. There was to be a council populated by individuals of varying identities, painstakingly balanced to ensure maximum equity. The author elaborated:

People have been asking us how the Zone is set up to deal with an internal conflict if we generally don’t welcome police presence and our leadership is decentralized and socialist. It’s a very real question we think we need to explore.

We’re all here figuring things out as we go, and we fully believe our beautiful community has the spirit to put our collective minds together and invent a peaceful solution that doesn’t involve any power hierarchies.

Introducing: Conflict Resolution Advisory Council

We will form a unique system called the Conflict Resolution Advisory Council.

1. We hold a community democratic vote to appoint three people to the Council. To eliminate prejudice, we elect one Black man, one Black woman, and one white woman. Each person should undergo at least one 45 minute sensitivity and political training session which we can help organize.
2. Whenever there is an internal conflict in the Zone, it will be put to the Council. Both people will have an opportunity to present their side of the story to the Council to review.
3. The Council members will decide on a fair resolution and provide it as advice. Initially the Council will be advisory only. In the future the system could evolve to become more mature with binding resolutions, impositions, retribution, enforcement, and imprisonment.

Users in the replies quickly pointed out a blind spot to the OP, who amended their post in response:

Edit 1: After receiving feedback about inclusiveness we shall include in the council one Black man, one Black woman, one trans Black person, one non-binary Black person, and one white woman (5 4 people).

However, more replies came in, pointing out the racial inequity. The OP amended their post once more:

Edit 2: On more feedback we will add to the Council 1 Asian non-male, 1 Native American non-male, and 1 Latinx non-male, and then 4 additional Black men and women to balance it out. In total there are 3 + 4 + 4 = 11 members.

This edit incurred the ire of one group who felt unrepresented and maligned, prompting the OP to amend the post again:

Edit 3: We’ve received some feedback about including disabledpersons (mental and physical) and homelesspersons on the Council. 20% or 40% of the Council should be persons with lived experience of disability. At least 10% should be experiencing involuntary homelessness.

Nonetheless, this third edit did little to quiet the outrage among the replies. In an effort to appease the aggrieved, the OP took to editing the post a fourth time:

Edit 4: We realize LGBTQIA communities are being under-represented in the Council so far and are working on proposals to rectify this. The final composition of the balanced Council will likely include 10-50% people who identify as LGBTQIA.

The subreddit was not happy with this edit, either, pointing out that there simply weren’t enough seats on the council to accommodate everyone who deserved representation. Thus came edit number five:

Edit 5: We have agreed to add 3 more seats, two of which are to give a voice to the disadvantaged LGBTQIA community, and one to give children equal representation and fairness. The new seats include one for a LGBTQI-identifying Black disabledperson, one for a LGBTQI-identifying Black homelessperson, and one for a non-white or mixed race child between the ages of 8 and 15.

This edit, unfortunately, fell short of expectations, prompting the OP to make another edit:

Edit 6: There have been further concerns raised over the efficacy of the Council to deal with disputes between children, as children are currently not adequately represented. In light of the feedback, we will add child safety training programs to the onboarding session and add one additional seat for another non-white or mixed race child between the ages of 8 and 15 (preferably disabled).

It was at this point that the Asian community spoke up and expressed their dismay at the ethnic makeup of the council. The OP did their best to address their concerns with a seventh edit:

Edit 7: We’ve heard your concerns about the Asian non-male seat representing all Asian subgroups as if they are a monolithic identity. That wasn’t our intention. We will replace the Asian non-male seat with 12 mini-seats for each of the following Asian non-male identities: Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Mongolian, Okinawan, Singaporean, and wildcard (any Asian identity, except Korean-American). The mini-seats will collectively hold the voting power of one seat.

As carefully crafted as this council was, however, further blind spots were brought to light in the replies. This led to an eighth edit:

Edit 8: We’ve been told that our Council under-represents those with a criminal record or incarceration experience, as white culture allows people to suffer a particular disadvantage because of past convictions. The Council will mandate that more than 25% of its members must have a violent criminal history with previous or current incarceration experience.

However, after to this latest addition to the council, new concerns were brought to light. The OP took them into consideration and returned to their post for a ninth edit:

Edit 9: Some women have expressed to us that they wouldn’t feel comfortable presenting a case involving a sexual offence to a Council that is partly made up of criminals with a history of committing sexual offences. We are placing a cap of 50% on the proportion of Council members who have performed one or more premeditated sexual assaults or rapes in the preceding twelve months. Homelesspersons and disabledpersons are exempt from this cap.

If any further edits were made, they have been lost to time. By the time the Redditor deleted their post, many of the repliers had become convinced that the poster was an elaborate troll, and yet some continued to chime in with further suggestions like “Include Native Americans. NOW. This Land Is THEIRS.”

The point that I hope I have made is that purity spiraling is inevitable when one chooses to play the game of identity politics. It is a philosophy that views the world through a fixed mindset. Everything becomes a zero-sum struggle. For one person to gain something, someone else had to lose something.

Life turns into a cosmic game of musical chairs: The man on the program must have taken that spot from a woman. The woman on the program must have taken that spot from a non-binary person. The non-binary person must have taken that spot from an indigenous person. The indigenous person must have taken that spot from a member of a different indigenous tribe. And so on.

Even the best-intentioned, most progressive-minded conference organizer will fall short of creating a “balanced” program when there is a necessarily limited number of speaker slots to fill and an unlimited number of conceivable identities vying for representation.

The simple reason that “balance” is unattainable is that no one can agree on what constitutes “balanced.” Balanced along which traits? Someone is not going to be represented along some identity trait.

What Does It Mean to Be Diverse?

Occasionally, progressives devise complicated, multi-variate equations to calculate who deserves the spotlight. You can almost hear the wheels turning in their heads: “Well, if this person is both gay and a woman, that should count as two things, right…?” Personally, this is where I cringe.

This approach is not uncommon, however. Its purest, most dystopian expression is probably Activision-Blizzard’s “Diversity Space Tool,” which drew backlash in 2022 when people learned that the video game developer was determining the worthiness of characters by assigning precise numerical values along at least 10 different identity attributes, including “gender identity,” “body type,” and “cognitive ability.”

Lest you thought this tool was to be limited to designing fictional video game characters, think again:

While the Diversity Space Tool was designed for use in game character conception, Chomatas also sees it as having broader applications across all entertainment and media platforms. “The traits and measures are applicable to wider entertainment verticals including TV, film, and literature. The only change required if used in these verticals would be the baseline traits, which would need to be calibrated to be relevant to the genre and universe each character exists in.”

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220512185745/https://www.activisionblizzard.com/newsroom/2022/05/king-diversity-space-tool

It’s kind of fun to imagine all of the hilariously absurd scenarios that an uncritical adoption of such a tool might lead to:

Sorry, you can’t be onscreen for this TV show. You only scored a 2.471 on “Body Type” and the director wants her actresses to score at least 4.8….

Sorry, man, I get that you really want to be an actor, but these days being bisexual only gets you a 2.345, and that’s just not diverse enough. But tell you what… have you ever found any additional genders to be attractive? Because then I think I can add a few tenths of a point…

What do you mean you think being a pro golfer means you should get top marks on “Physical Ability?” Golf doesn’t look that hard to me…

Why in the world did you write a novel about an Asian character? Don’t you know they only score 2.119 on “Race”? Tell you what, if you change them to something more “marginalized,” I bet we can get this published….

Human beings, as it turns out, are too complex to be reduced to numbers or identity markers. It robs us of our individualism.

It robs us, frankly, of our humanity.

I Contain Multitudes

There is a great meme that designers will sometimes include in talks about the follies of attaching identity markers to personas. It shows two people side-by-side whose perspectives would be considered all but redundant by many of those who organize tech conferences today:

Would it be correct to assume that both of the above men would offer the same opinions on the same subjects? If you believe the answer is no, I would encourage you to think of some additional bullet points that you could append to the lists beside each man’s portrait; it’s an exercise in broadening one’s perspective, in recognizing that true diversity is not limited to, say, the color of our skin or what we have between our legs.

Come One, Come All

I’ll let you in on a secret: not very long ago, our conference planning committee discussed the speaker lineup that we had. It was not a “balanced” lineup, however you choose to interpret that.

Some may be tempted to cynically assume it was imbalanced because my co-organizers and I deliberately excluded people whose identities we felt did not deserve a voice. But the simple reality was that it was imbalanced because those were the people who signed up to speak. We shared the Call for Speakers in our networks. We sent it to individuals via direct messages. We even extended the deadline.

We got who we got.

Some may argue that if only we organizers started planning earlier, or spread the Call for Speakers wider, or begged sponsors harder so that we could afford better marketing, or….

We got who we got.

And that’s okay.

We are volunteers, putting on a free community event that is open to anyone and everyone. We have full-time jobs and families and lives on top of this.

If we decided that we shouldn’t—or couldn’t—put on a conference unless we could guarantee that not a single attendee would declare our lineup imbalanced along whatever arbitrary, unknowable dimension of identity is most meaningful to them in that moment, then community events such as ours would never happen.

Perhaps you’re rolling your eyes, tempted to write me off as being deliberately obtuse about the unique importance of race and sex in shaping human lives. To that I would reply that it is important not to assume that everyone is fixated on the same identity markers that you are. Your “elephant in the room” might be the lack of women. Another person’s might be the lack of wheelchair users. Still another’s might be the lack of Shudras.

Here’s what I can do as a conference organizer—I can publish the names of my speakers and the titles and descriptions of their talks. If someone looks at the lineup and decides that they aren’t interested, I promise I will not force them to attend.

On the other hand, if someone decides to attend the conference with foreknowledge of the speakers and their topics and then complains that they just… don’t quite like the skin colors they see onstage, or that… gee, ya know, it’s a real shame that there are so many sets of that genitalia in the room… I’ll happily show them the exit and let them know they’re free to leave whenever they wish.

I will not apologize to them and tell them “I’ll try better next time.”

I will refuse to appease their inability to tolerate the presence of human beings whose bodies don’t match their demands.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

There’s another reason why I disagree so adamantly with the sentiment that, as Messina says, the reason why women are so scarce at tech conferences is because “white men” aren’t “making sure that women are up on stage telling their story.”

Personally, I have always found that sentiment to be patronizing. A commenter named Xavez on Messina’s blog echoes my feelings:

The more you try to invite people of so-called “minority groups”, the more you are stigmatising them as a “minority group”. It’s as if you’re doing a female speaker a favour just because she’s female, which, in the end has little or nothing to do with her knowledge of a certain subject and her ability to speak in front of an audience. This way, you are reinstating yourself as superior to the other person, because you have the power to invite that poor gay/Asian/female/Protestant. Just invite who you think is fit for the job. No strings attached.

Another commenter named Rachel Lehman chimes in:

I don’t want men to work harder to get women on stage, I want women to work harder to get themselves on stage.

As a woman who is in this industry and attends (and sometimes speaks at) conferences, I’ve never felt any gender discrimination targeted at me, but I’ve certainly been frustrated by the lack of women who get involved. I believe if a woman is qualified, capable and motivated to speak at a conference, it’s no harder for her to get there than a man. I would be insulted if I was asked to speak at a conference to balance out the M-F ratio.

Simply put: I am no one’s savior.

I do not believe that the reason a poor minority of this or that sort hasn’t made it onstage is because I haven’t personally thrown open the gates of privilege and graciously plucked them out of obscurity with my white, male hand.

What a bizarre, condescending way of viewing the world! And yet I see it everywhere. Progressives will declare themselves to be hopelessly enmeshed in “white privilege” or “male privilege,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that in doing so they have inadvertently revealed that they view themselves as superior (even if undeservedly so) to anyone who isn’t white or male. “Ironic” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

You Are Your Own Gatekeeper

I understand why the “I just want to get the most qualified speakers, regardless of identity” argument from conference organizers rubs so many the wrong way.

To see a speaker lineup of disproportionately white, able-bodied, cis-hetero males begs the question: Are there no qualified speakers who are women, black, gay, disabled, and so on?

I know for a fact that there are tech workers from all of those identities who are not only talented at their work but also talented at giving talks. So if there are qualified speakers of those identities, why aren’t they on stage?

There is no one answer. There’s an endless amount of reasons why the identities onstage might be balanced this way or that way. That’s just how things shook out.

But to some, the inequality of outcome is evidence of something malicious happening behind the scenes.

Bari Weiss, journalist and former writer for both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, brilliantly articulated this line of thinking in an outstanding speech to the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention last November. Weiss, who is Jewish, wrote:

For Jews, there are obvious and glaring dangers in a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity. If underrepresentation is the inevitable outcome of systemic bias, then overrepresentation—and Jews are 2 percent of the American population—suggests not talent or hard work, but unearned privilege. This conspiratorial conclusion is not that far removed from the hateful portrait of a small group of Jews divvying up the ill-gotten spoils of an exploited world.

But it is not only Jews who suffer from the suggestion that merit and excellence are dirty words. It is every single one of us. It is strivers of every race, ethnicity, and class. That is why Asian American success, for example, is suspicious. The percentages are off. The scores are too high. The starting point, as poor immigrants, is too low. From whom did you steal all that success?

Source: https://www.thefp.com/p/you-are-the-last-line-of-defense

It is conspiracy thinking to assume that the reason this or that identity isn’t represented onstage is because the gatekeepers—be they men, whites, Jews, cis-heteros, etc.—chose not to put them there.

Even the image Messina created for his blog, which depicts face after face of conference speakers, each branded with the word “White,” is hauntingly reminiscent of antisemitic memes that I used to encounter online years ago, back when the alt-right was at its peak. I recall seeing images with portrait after portrait of, say, media executives or government appointees, each branded with a Star of David. Such visual rhetoric is meant to overwhelm the viewer with a sense that a community is monolithic, and that if they were not born into that monolith, they will forever struggle to be included despite their best efforts.

That’s nonsense. You do not need to wait for permission from whichever boogeymen you believe are holding you back.

Be the change you want to see. I promise that you have what it takes, whoever you are.

When I saw that my city did not have the tech conference that I wish it did, I built a team and created it myself. There is nothing special about me. If I can do it, so can you. Do not listen to anyone who tries to make you doubt that.

But I don’t think you even have to go so far as to create your own conferences. Reach out to the organizers of established conferences, meetups, and other events and ask if they would let you speak or volunteer in some way. As a conference organizer myself, I would be thrilled to receive messages from people—of any identity—wanting to help. We are starving for help.

I think you will be surprised at how warmly you are welcomed into the community.