Loomio
Tue 22 Mar 2016 5:01PM

Gender, Sexuality, and other taboos

AS Angelika Strohmayer Public Seen by 291

I'd like to organise a workshop around taboos in HCI research. I've found that it can be difficult to talk to people about topics that really shouldn't be difficult to talk about (such as sex, sexuality, gender, or even drugs and alcohol). While some of these issues are picked up by the HCI community, they are often picked up in ways that are only about behaviour change and / or follow a very normative thought process.

It would be interesting to have a workshop to collectively figure out what these 'taboo' topics are and what the similarities between all of them are; how we can learn from each other about publishing and talking about these topics.

VT

Vanessa Thomas Sat 26 Mar 2016 1:26PM

Totally random: I just started reading a book called 'Watching the English' by Kate Fox, and she addresses taboos vs 'unspoken/social rules restricting behaviour' in the first chapter of the book. :) She might be worth contacting?
http://www.sirc.org/about/kate_fox.html

AS

Angelika Strohmayer Thu 31 Mar 2016 10:05AM

I've also just looked up Kate Fox, and it could definitely be worth contacting her! :)

KG

Kate Green Fri 1 Apr 2016 11:54AM

I'd be up for taking part: the population taking part in my research is trans people, and some of my discussions will deal with medical interventions for gender dysphoria, so I'd be interested to hear about the norms/awkwardness in the field of HCI in discussing these matters!

AS

Angelika Strohmayer Sat 2 Apr 2016 9:33AM

I had a great chat with Manu and Ding about this yesterday, and am starting to write up some notes as to what we were talking about...
If you want to get involved in the proposal writing, feel free to have a read and edit on this google doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1piSg39TfkOmSRpvJr061JKzYCrbwJcGgM_aOUw0aMJI/edit?usp=sharing
Just add anything else that you can think of! :)

V

Vidya Mon 4 Apr 2016 3:05PM

Just supporting Angelika's comment that It will be good if students could take the lead in delivering the workshop as that is what we will be gearing to do in the future. This summer school provides an ideal ground to develop your skills and make mistakes whilst organising and leading this workshop. A code of conduct is brilliant idea and by delivering the workshops ourselves we are preparing to be those future sensitive facilitators/speakers in the topic. So I would definitely encourage the students themselves to deliver this workshop.