FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire and Denial 1255
Last Friday Bryce Byfield gave us a little insight into the fallout surrounding his article on sexism in the FOSS world. Unfortunately it seems that FOSS junkies did little better than the rest of the world with respect to sexism, displaying similar levels of denial, abuse, and ignorance. "But the real flood of emotion comes from the anti-feminists and the average men who would like to deny the importance of feminist issues in FOSS. Raise the subject of sexism, and you are met with illogic that I can only compare to that of the tobacco companies trying to deny the link between their products and cancer. Because I took a feminist stance in public, I have been abused in every way possible — being called irrelevant, a saboteur, coward, homosexual, and even a betrayer of the community. I know that many women in the community have been attacked much more savagely than I have, so I'm not complaining. Nor am I a stranger to readers who disagree with me, but the depth of reaction has taken me back more than once. I think the reaction is an expression of denial more than anything else."
No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Raise the subject of sexism ...
What reports of sexism have there been? Are you raising the subject of sexism just based on the fact that only 1.5% of FOSS developers are women? It takes a very special kind of person to do FOSS development -- because it's often outside of work. Which means you have to love what you do at work and then come home and do it some more. Even I get sick of coding. It's an uncommon desire and requires a special kind of insanity. So much of the stuff I write outside of work is just absolutely useless in the end. Is it possible this trait is far less common in women than men?
... recognition?
Present evidence of sexist attitudes and attacks and I will gladly support you. Hell, I support you right now, nothing would make me happier than more women in FOSS. I just am not sure how you promote that sort of goal -- usually it's a monetary or favorable employment reward for having ovaries but the only reward is
Because I took a feminist stance in public, I have been abused in every way possible — being called irrelevant, a saboteur, coward, homosexual, and even a betrayer of the community.
People on the internet called you names? It happens. Who are these people? Probably random pigs the internet has no shortage of. Don't let it get to you, hold your summit and figure out a way to designate Female FOSS Developer of the Month on your website.
To reiterate, I'm not denying that there is an disturbingly low percentage of women in FOSS development. I'm just questioning what's causing that. It's probably a number of factors including Hollywood not showing women as the computer hacker in many of their movies (except maybe Hackers). It's predominantly the stereotypical male. Women have to overcome that and women have to realize that getting together and working on a project with your friends by just coding can be fun. But I think society tells them early on that's not what women do. If there's any sexism, I've seen no proof it's internal to FOSS.
Don't be so damn sensitive (Score:3, Insightful)
If you truly think you're a victim, create an androgynous pseudonym. The tone of OP's article suggests a hyper sensitivity to me.
How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:5, Insightful)
....when the sex of the contributor is more often than not completely unknown?
I see a contribution from a "Terry", I have no idea if that is a male or female, and really why would I care? Either the code is god, o rit isn't. Why would sex ever have any bearing at all?
Frankly I really don't even get how a claim of sexism could exist in the FOSS world. It just doesn't translate from meat-space, because frankly, more often than not you have no idea the sex of the person in the first place. And really, that is how it should be.
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:5, Insightful)
anti-feminist != sexist (Score:1, Insightful)
That's assuming you can pin down a consistent definition of feminism.
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
People on the internet called you names? It happens. Who are these people?
Have you ever seen a good OpenBSD flamewar?
Theo de Raadt has an absolute, uncompromising stand on open source, and refuses to deal with crappy, binary-only drivers. He often calls out people & products he thinks are crap. Gender never comes in to the discussion.
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase: keep that political bullshit out of here. Code. Or don't.
TLDR (Score:5, Insightful)
If you would like to see individuals judged on their own merits then stop trying to link behaviors with groups of people. It makes your argument look flawed.
What Are the Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I have known several women who write open source software, and (admittedly from the outside) I didn't see them treated any differently on mailing lists and in meetings than men. Yes, there's an imbalance, yes, there may be institutional sexism... but what's the source?
Bruce argues that proprietary software has a higher proportion of women. The thing is, proprietary software has a bigger payback for the actual developer... and it's a payback that is valuable for everyone: MONEY. It's a relatively well paid trade that women are at no great disadvantage in. Most people working on proprietary software ... men or women ... don't program in their spare time, either. It's a job, not a hobby.
For most developers, open source software is a hobby. A valuable one, yes, but I would suspect that "fewer than 1.5%" of open source developers actually have that in their primary job description. What are the proportions of women involved in other technical hobbies? It's my impression that the answer is "pretty low", and a bit of googling tends to support that. So... what's the reason why women aren't involved in things like model railroading ("I haven't met too many women modelers" -- mary Miller, MMR)? I suspect that's where you need to look to dig up the answer to this question.
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also a big difference between "no better than the rest of the world" and "correlation between FOSS and sexism". The first I can certainly believe--there's no reason to believe that the FOSS community is any less sexist than the rest of the world. You're going to find a lot of sexist individuals just because that's the status quo in society today.
But there's no reason to harp on FOSS developers in particular unless there's evidence that the FOSS community is more sexist than the rest of the world (which I, at least, haven't seen). If that evidence isn't there, then keep on fighting the good fight against sexist pigs in general, wherever you find them.
Asking someone out is sexist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Making sexist remarks, ok, I can understand how that might be seen as being sexist. But how is asking a woman out considered sexist behaviour? Face it, if I were to join a group that's 98.5% women and demonstrate that I share an interest with all of them then I strongly suspect I'd get asked out too. Would I complain that their behaviour was sexist? No. Obviously not.
No. I'd be making lurve. All those ladies! Oh yeah baby!
Wait. I think I might be being sexist. Err.. Oh dear.
What a pile of cack (Score:2, Insightful)
> They seem unaware that institutions and customs can be sexist simply by what they value or how they operate, that even something like a discourse developed by men talking to men can institutionalize sexism. Nor do they understand that, by simply accepting such institutions or ways of acting, they become supporters of sexism.
Maybe they understand what you are trying to say perfectly well, but think its a pile of steaming of crap. A bunch of the arguments boil down to saying people could only be disagreeing with because they are too ignorant or stupid to know better.
> Similarly, I assumed that, in the FOSS community, if you were a free software supporter, you were concerned about social justice and would therefore be against sexism as well.
Social justice... ffs.. maybe there is a correlation between caring about free software issues and issues that matter, such as.. I don't know, actual social justice, meaning issues of people being murdered, enslaved, raped or denied education, healthcare, opportunity, whatever. Maybe your interpretation of people not falling over themselves to appease your particular interpretation of how they ought to behave does not entirely correlate with not caring about social justice.
In summary, fuck off and take your smug, self righteous, time-wasting bullshit elsewhere [elsewhere.org] please.
Re:Don't be so damn sensitive (Score:3, Insightful)
> create an androgynous pseudonym
And if people harass them offline, should they just cross-dress as men, or should women go get sex-reassignment surgery?
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:4, Insightful)
....when the sex of the contributor is more often than not completely unknown?
Sexism does not have to be directed at a particular person. For example RMS makes silly jokes about female emacs virgins:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/EMACS_virgins_joke [wikia.com]
which are quite annoying if you happen to be female and don't care to have your sexuality linked to whether you use a text editor in the minds of the men sitting around you in the audience. Or, as another example, this story is tagged 'sendthemtothekitchen'. This sort of juvenile joke contributes to an atmosphere in which women do not feel welcome.
I suspect there's more going on than sexism, given the huge gender imbalance in people even starting to study IT, but the sexism rife in the IT industry certainly doesn't help.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Note to Author: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because any attempt to do anything positive that somehow relates to women is merely a desperate attempt to get laid. *rolleyes* From my experience, you're merely betraying your own attitude - that when you take a stance that somehow benefits women, it is to merely to get laid.
Re:Here's two (Score:1, Insightful)
BitchX is an IRC client and the word "Bitch" in the name refers to "Bitching" as in nagging, which is related to conversating which reflects back to IRC. It has nothing to do with women [...]
You are aware that "bitching" is a sexist term referring to woman nagging their husbands I assume.
Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:4, Insightful)
It took you 5 minutes to come up with only 4 examples. And you were specifically LOOKING for such examples.
Here's the Linux Kernel Mailing List. http://lkml.org/ [lkml.org] That's a few thousand comments without any sexism at all. It's all about the statistics.
Your post was a perfect example of the problems with this "discussion".
You aren't concerned with the statistics. And with the Internet, it is very easy for a single example of a sexist comment (whether it was intended to be sexist or not) to be shared between the people LOOKING for sexist comments.
Again, if 1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you're trying to "solve"?
Re:What Are the Reasons? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll second the call for examples. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, sexism exists, but it's not like feminists are saints either. Notice the shrinking portion of degrees earned by men in recent years, or how mysteriously benefits don't count as a part of the pay package when it's inconvenient to casting women as victims of oppression? Or how about the rather extreme form of censorship visited on people that point out that women are just as likely to be abusers as men.
It's a tad hard to take people decrying sexism directed at women seriously when so often those accusations are used as a tool to further women's position at the expense of men's regardless of how the positions in a particular area were arrived at.
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's sexist to take the actual ratio of men and women (you know, FACTS) into account when trying to use one of the two as an example of "less plausible"?
This is often the trap that accusers of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. run into when making their accusations. People are not going to ignore the reality around them and change their language to just assume that all people are equally represented when they are not, and to expect them to additionally do it in the midst of a discussion about that very imbalance is just moronic.
Talking like balance already exists does not achieve balance.
Read what you just wrote. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are ASSUMING that the claims of sexism are factual.
Yet when the STATISTICS are presented to you, you claim that it is "ire and denial".
Again, when 1.5% of the developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you are trying to "solve"?
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, as another example, this story is tagged 'sendthemtothekitchen'. This sort of juvenile joke contributes to an atmosphere in which women do not feel welcome.
Welcome to the Internet, where no stereotype is not mocked.
Re:I'll second the call for examples. (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to answer your question, with a question.
If only 1.5% of your cake consisted of strawberries .... but fewer than 0.1% of your cake consisted of feces, what is the real problem with your cake?
Re:anti-feminist != sexist (Score:3, Insightful)
Girls that go out there and "just take care of business" find feminism as annoying as any guy might.
Quite often, you get the level of respect you earn. This can be true of old men that
you would expect to be the biggest chauvinists due to how old they are and the sorts
of ideas that were prevalent when they grew up. Even such anti-bellum sorts of
gentlemen respect the talent independent of the external trappings.
That said. Foot-in-mount disease must be fought wherever it is found.
Mod parent up... (Score:3, Insightful)
I get really sick of subversive PC behavior... Life isn't fair, and nobody should have to be coddled in an open community. I have yet to see any woman, or man be treated differently in this industry in terms of skill. If anything women seem to be given more slack, without any merit.
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, apparently, it is a "girl" who is complaining about sexism. It is quite natural in that context to use female references ("she" vs. "he", "girl" vs. "boy", etc.) It would be stupid, when talking to a female, to say something like "nobody knows you're a boy", because she isn't.
It is, however, part of the culture of victimhood, to pick out one word in a paragraph and claim that it is sexism because it has a specific gender meaning.
I'd take this is a reasonably harmless example of sexism, but quite clear proof that sexism exists, and sexist persons are not even aware of it.
I'd take this as the insufferable attitude of superiority that "victims" have, being the only people on the planet smart enough to be able to detect that they are being victimized. "I'm a victim of XXX, and if you were smarter you'd see how I was being victimized..." "Come see the violence inherent in the system".
Yes, sexism still exists, but it is damaging to the cause of those who fight true sexism for all this pretend victimhood to be waved around all the time. All it does is turn away the people who you want on your side. Jumping down the throat of someone who used the word "girl" and claiming he's an ignorant sexist just makes YOU look like a loon, and by association, all the other people who have serious and reasonable sexism complaints.
There is a difference between "sexism" (an act) and a correlation that only X % of Y are women. There is also a difference between sexism the act and a moron who thinks it's funny to put porn in a powerpoint presentation, even when 98% of his audience is going to be male. (Here's a free clue: not all men find porn to be funny or appropriate, so stop pretending that the only people offended by the alleged ruby presentation problem mentioned above were the women.)
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's exactly the dismissive attitude that allows the problem to continue. Ire and denial.
Or perhaps it's your attitude that perpetuates the problem.
Making a mountain out of a molehill does nothing useful. There are plenty of people out there who support women, but don't like the attitude of the women who have zero tolerance. Instead, they cast a negative light on what should be a positive and progressive movement.
If you really want to help women out, focus on encouraging them to like science and engineering rather than crying foul every time some moron on the internet says something stupid (hopefully that comment is not quoted for irony).
Re:Read what you just wrote. (Score:1, Insightful)
Statistics aren't everything. Statistically, 100% of people are going to die. Does that mean that we shouldn't work on ways to extend life and to promote good health? Isn't it all futile anyway?
The 1.5% says to me that institutional sexism is involved. It's far more subtle than overt individual sexist acts, meaning that it's hard for most people to see, especially if they have no direct dealings with one of the few women involved in FOSS. I for one would love to hear from the women who browse Slashdot about their experiences, but I'm more likely to get a response of "There ARE no women on slashdot, tee hee!" which only proves my point.
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do women have to feel welcome? I'm a white dude and I feel unwelcome everywhere I go. Is that just me?
let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Because women don't volunteer their time for FOSS development, men are sexist? Sorry, I just don't follow that logic.
Being called a "homosexual" is "abuse"? Great going, Bruce: show off your feminist stance by insulting another minority group.
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, screw the stuff I've already modded. This is getting ridiculous. You keep spouting this out:
Again, if 1.5% of the FOSS developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you're trying to "solve"?
I'd like you to prove that "only 0.1% of the comments" (which comments?) are sexist. Sexism is a lot more of an issue than you apparently think, and if you're going to continue in this thread stating that "only 0.1% of the comments" are sexist, then you need to prove that number. You will see sexist comments any time you have identifiable women working around programmers, that's just the way it is.
If you want to throw around baseless numbers, you need to explain where you pulled those out from. Exactly what methodology did you use to determine that 0.1% of "the comments" are sexist in nature?
Statistics IS evidence -- "flamebait" (Score:2, Insightful)
For decades, it has been accepted, that statistics is evidence. Recognizing, that there can be legitimate differences in inclinations towards certain activities among genders is a big no-no [democratic...ground.com]. The only exception is made for negative inclinations — such as increased aggressiveness — among males, or positive — such as attention to detail — among females, err, scratch that — "female" has a "male" in it — the proper term is womyns [wikipedia.org].
That the same testosterone (or whatever it really is), that makes males more aggressive on average may also make them more determined scientists or more involved FOSS-developers, is not mentioned... Or, perhaps, one needs to have been nerdy and suffer from bullying — something girls rarely have to go through — in school to look for a recreational outlet online.
Whatever the real reasons for disparity, claiming "sexism" in FOSS — the activity, that's done almost exclusively via Internet, where nobody knows your real gender (nor race, for that matter, nor even species [unc.edu]!), is beyond stupid, of course. But by pointing this out, a person — myself included after I typed the previous sentence — automatically becomes a "sexist in denial". I guess, I need therapy now...
Lastly, the 1.5% is not bad — among FreeBSD-project, for example, there were 0 (zero!) females, last time I checked. The situation only "improved" a little bit, when one guy (from San Francisco, of all places), announced his gender- (and name-) change...
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:5, Insightful)
No.. if the general postings in online discussions are 2% sexist, but the postings in FOSS discussions are 0.1% that being the case, I'd say this is pretty clearly a non-issue being blown out of water. You don't get rid of racism by "making whitey pay" and you don't get rid of sexism by inflaming the issue at hand. The only way to battle ignorance is with intelligent discussion, and ignoring subversive ignorance. This entire thread of discussion can have no hope of anything other than polarizing the issue at hand.
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:1, Insightful)
Wait, I'm confused. Racism is when one person disparages an entire group of people based on nothing more than their race. So, how does sexism translate to mentioning a fondness for women, pornography or anything like that?
If someone says, "ya know, broads are pretty thick so we might need to dumb this down for them" then that's sexist. But, simply saying, "I like chicks and I think talking about sex is a good metaphor" is not sexist.
Don't use terms you don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't use terms you don't understand. I said 0.1% and I have not changed that.
Now, to contradict your 54 examples (provided on a page that seems dedicated to finding such examples), I'll tell you about the Linux Kernel Mailing List which has thousands of non-sexist comments. Thousands. And that is a SINGLE mailing list.
Or is it that you do not understand what 0.1% means?
Re:Words stuffed into our mouths (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that people just being petty or is it that meeting the first 80% of a goal is much easier than the last 20%?
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:1, Insightful)
If females cannot come to terms with the prevalence of porn and its importance to the male demographic, then they are bringing their own sexism to the table. I get that they are going to have their own individual value judgments to make about it, but expecting others to pretend that it doesn't exist, or expecting all males to be embarrassed about it and never bring it up in public, is neither realistic, nor fair, nor tolerant.
I get that people were unhappy with this presentation. I would have been one of them. That doesn't make it sexist or bad. People just aren't always happy with how others choose to behave, and they don't have to be.
Mod parent up! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all about the STATISTICS!
And claiming that a handful of sexist comments proves anything when there are truckloads of non-sexist comments only shows that certain people WANT there to be an issue.
Re:How can sexism even be an issue in FOSS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sexism is an attitude, it doesn't have to be directed at specific individuals. If DHH says "Speaking of presentations. I'd much rather we banished kung-fu kittens and went with beautiful women for the filler stock art. Works in ads!" that's sexism, even though he's not directing a denigrating comment to a specific woman.
Also: some people in FOSS actually leave the parents' basement and meet face-to-face. Shocking, I know.
A dude-centered environment (Score:1, Insightful)
A lot of people presume that the term "sexism" refers solely to the intentional denigration and/or repression of women, and using that definition it is easy to see why people fail to identify the sexist elements of FOSS culture and react so vehemently to accusations that it exists and is widespread. It is unlikely that anyone in the FOSS world wants there to be fewer women involved.
What is indisputably the case is that the culture is male-oriented. Whether this is due to explicitly exclusionary practices or more benign gender-oriented predisposition is irrelevant. When 98.5% of the members of a population are male, the atmosphere is inevitably male-centric and therefore, like a locker room, inhospitable to varying degrees to female participants. RMS's speech and the "Perform like a pr0n star" presentation are clear evidence of this. Mean-spirited? Probably not. Inappropriate and potentially offensive in light of current workplace behavioral norms? Definitely. It is difficult (and counterproductive) to argue that these are isolated incidents which do not reflect at least some aspects of the FOSS culture as a whole. These are FOSS leaders that made these presentations - they have to reflect to some degree the mores of the majority of FOSS participants. Therefore while FOSS may not be sexist in the sense defined at the top of this post, it is certainly sexist with regards to its insensitivity to the POV of women involved in the movement. And how could it not be? It is overwhelmingly male.
Rather than attacking the author of the article, who's actual arguments are admittedly weak (asking girls out on dates is totally natural), perhaps the community should solicit the opinions of female FOSS developers and establish a dialogue to find out a) why there are so few women and b) what the FOSS community can do to make the movement more hospitable and enticing to women.
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. You're really committed to being right about this. I'm going to try and explain it anyway, even though I'm fairly certain this isn't going to go anywhere with you. Maybe someone else will read this and Get It, because I'm almost certain that you won't.
First, that 5 minutes included formatting the HTML for the reply and proof-reading. Not time-consuming, but in the context of 300 seconds, not exactly trivial either.
Second: Because only 1.5% of FOSS developers are women, it has created a fraternal atmosphere where jokes such as Stallman's are an acceptable part of the FOSS society. This becomes self-perpetuating, because sexist jokes and attitudes become more acceptable in a homogenous culture. Meanwhile, apologists are free to say "Women are totally welcome, if they can hang with us," thus relieving themselves of the responsibility of creating an environment that is more welcoming toward outsiders. It's the woman's problem that she is offended and unable to be "one of the boys," and not the responsibility of those who are acting offensively.
When the brave and the pioneering outsiders do come into the culture and attempt to change it so that it is more welcoming and they can be more comfortable, they are met with overwhelming resistance. Some of it, such as the Ruby pr0n presentation or the continued adulation of booth bunnies, is brazen. Other opposition, such as your own, is more subtle. You are insisting that there is nothing wrong with the current way things are done, that there is no reason to change, that there is no evidence of institutional sexism in the FOSS world, and that accusations of such are outlandish. Meanwhile, the number of women involved in the movement remains the same paltry 1.5%, because the established culture that excludes women remains static. Nothing is done accommodate those who would otherwise join the movement, were the movement itself not structured so as to be exclusionary.
Third: There is an issue of magnification that disappears when you go hiding behind the statistics. For every woman who is willing to stick it out in the face of something like Shuttleworth's comments, there are uncounted numbers who hear the message loud and clear: They are not welcome as FOSS developers. It doesn't matter if only 0.1% of the traffic on the kernel list is sexist, because it only takes a few to chase away many. If a small number of men project a clear message that women are not welcome, and they are not shouted down by ten times as many other men, then the message is deafening: Those few are our mouthpieces, and we are content to let them speak for us. In this instance, lack of public disavowal is seen as tacit agreement.
It's hard admitting that you're part of something that hurts people, especially if it's something you love. I understand. The initial reaction of denial that I had was much the same, but all the denial in the world doesn't make it any less true. The FOSS movement is changing its attitudes toward sexism much more slowly than the field of computer science and IT in general, but we can't stay put forever. It's my feeling that we're entering a period of growth, and growing is painful. But the potential reward is great. Right now, the best and brightest minds of half our population are smart enough to tell us to fuck ourselves, because they won't put up with our shitty, sexist attitude. If we get smart in return and create a culture where they are welcome, I guarantee the results will be more than worth it.
"homosexual" as a form of abuse? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just the idea that there are some people that use the word homosexual as a form of abuse...
And the fact that the author refers to being called homosexual as a form of abuse without inserting a caveat that he himself did not found it abusive...
Yes, there is sexism. And homophobia, that is for sure. :(
Re:How is asking a woman out for a date sexist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll second the call for examples. (Score:2, Insightful)
Good point. Either would probably make me uncomfortable. And I'm male :).
I tried to transpose the sexism to racism, as I thought that people would find it easier to pick up racism than sexism.
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful, this conversation is a TRAAAAP.
Apparently you either agree that there's rampant sexism in the FOSS community or you're "displaying similar levels of denial, abuse, and ignorance".
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I don't think anyone said that. Though, you know, it would be nice if people realized that it is generally a bad thing for people to be able to make death threats against women without being called on it. Because these things [wikipedia.org]escalate [wikipedia.org].
Here's the thing. We all want open source to succeed and grow bigger. That mean getting more developers and more users. But, if someone with a name like Cindy or Susan tries to contribute to a program and they're met with responses that treat them differently because of their gender, FOSS is going to run into problems.
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, if 1.5% of FOSS developers are women, but only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you're trying to "solve"?
You've provided a nice illustration of the problem. If it turns out that, say, 10% of FOSS developers are black, do you think that would make nigger references OK as long as we kept them under 1%? If 5% of FOSS developers are gay, do you think that allows up to 0.5% faggot references?
Anyone have some stats on the percentage of FOSS developers that are Jewish, Arab, or Mexican so I can figure out what percentage of my comments are allowed to mention kikes, camel fucking, and wetbacks without it being a problem?
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is exactly why I can't take any of this seriously.
Someone claims there's an issue. Anyone who says otherwise (or points out that it's all anecdotes and no statistics) must either be 1) in denial or 2) a sexist pig
Offhand, I can think of at least four or five other possibilities.
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the last part I can kind of understand.
OSS projects are for coding. I don't really care if you're a man, woman, or cat that somehow managed to learn to use a keyboard. People are valued in OSS projects for their coding contributions. I'm not really surprised that people with an agenda not relating to getting things done don't get a pleasant welcome.
Note that I don't have any issues with anybody at all participanting. Whether a man, woman, or alien, computer, or brain in a vat, come and code.
But I don't think something like this should really exist in something like Debian. There shouldn't be a "Debian Women", "Debian LGBT", "Debian Minusvalids" or "Debian Furries" project not because it's somehow wrong for such people to participate (I belong to one of the listed categories), but because such things should be completely irrelevant and everybody should be only judged by the value of the code, art, etc they contribute.
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:3, Insightful)
Generalizing IT workers as sweaty, bloated, smelly, sexist, uncouth, unethical, rejects is rather insulting to those of us which take our profession seriously.
I'm sure there are some of the sorts like you describe out there, but they of a dying breed. In the last several businesses I've worked for I have reported to women in the capacity of VP, Director, or direct manager. Not just because they needed to fill a slot, but because they had the experience and skill-set to fill the role.
I can promise you that had the culture had any of the lame stereotypes associated with it that you noted, it would have been sorted out in short order. Not just because of a crumbling greasy IT worker coalition, or whatever you are trying to get at, but because it is a ridiculous situation that doesn't actually happen outside of whatever low rent organization you had the unfortunate misery to work for.
SEXISM! (Re:Refreshment of memory) (Score:4, Insightful)
It is an awful thing for people to be able to make death threats against anyone without being called on it.
I hereby denounce you as a sexist!
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:4, Insightful)
"If men needed a culture of approval and acceptance and someone to remind them whenever possible that they are wanted and welcome"
Isn't that why we have moderation on Slashdot? So that the culture can reward those who conform to it.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this a troll (along with all the mods) or is the Slashdot community really that blind? What the fuck do you call Slashdot if not a massive male circle-jerk bonding party? In fact, the whole moderation system seems like this overindulgent 'female' system the AC is railing against.
Re:Asking someone out is sexist? (Score:1, Insightful)
Just say, "Sorry, you're not my type," or "Sorry, I'm just not interested in you in that way." Women have such trouble being honest when turning guys down. They'll say pretty much anything except the actual reason. "Sorry, I'm still not over my last relationship." If he sees you walking arm in arm with some hunk the next day, of course he's going to be pissed, because you obviously lied to him. If you just told him the truth, he'd leave you alone and still respect you. And he would get over you faster.
And if I was working with a bunch of gay guys that kept hitting on me, I'd make it clear early on that I don't swing that way. If they kept haranguing me after I made that clear, then I'd file a complaint.
You're trying to make us understand but there's really no equivalent for men. Most men would be more than happy to have more sexual attention from the gender(s) that interest them. Women tend to only want sexual attention from men they find attractive.
Re:Words stuffed into our mouths (Score:5, Insightful)
That is absurd. I'm a white male, but I can say I definitely see enough racism or sexism around me to argue it is still something that needs discussion.
The idea that you need to intentionally discriminate to be racist or sexist makes no sense, actually. Modern discrimination usually comes from stereotyping rather than some sort of hatred.
How long have you been a Misogynist? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the answer is, "I'm not." But the problem is the person getting the question has to prove a negative and is simultaneously labeled.
The baseline premise is "Sexism exists in FOSS" and then comes the denials and the denials are variously flamed.
Are there very bad actors in FOSS? Yes. But it's not unique to FOSS or any other social group. Do they need to be admonished and probably 'banished' in some way? Yes. Because the behavior is entirely inappropriate regardless of gender.
If you want to approach issues like this as 'generally innapropriate behavior' I'm on board. If you want to correct someone by telling them, "Don't write X because to my group it means bad thing Y' I'm on board. I'm NOT on board when an article starts with a premise that cannot be altered.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it seem so damn simple, like confidence is the key to everything. That actually works really great when you're working with guys on the more enlightened side of the scale, the respectful team workers everyone wants to work with. The assholes are the problem, 'cause as much as they don't listen to anyone, they'll ignore girls even more so. All the grace and confidence in the world doesn't work all the time, neither does being bitchy. Look, I think handing out special favors to girls based on gender is idiotic and I hate it as much as any guy does. What would be awesome is if guys in tech could treat the girls as they do any guy, but I haven't seen nearly enough of that.
Men already have a culture of approval, as they're never the only guy in the room in science and tech. (The average upper level electrical-engineer course in my school has 3-5 girls for 30 guys.) Guys rarely go into female only fields like nursing or pre-school teaching for the same reasons girls don't do tech, so guys being tougher to social pressures is total bs. Even when guys do take female dominant classes like psychology, they often give macho excuses like they're doing it for the hot chicks.
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:2, Insightful)
In the example you are giving, I believe it is not sexism. It is either a huge troll (of terrible taste) or some guy who is actually needing psychiatric help. Badly so.
Sexism is more insidious. And harder to detect for sure because what is considered acceptable (even expected/polite) flirting in some cultures is seen as assault in others. This is a side effect of men and women relationship having different connotations as men-men or women-women. For obvious reasons.
I suppose a reasonable code of conduct is about clearly separating "work" -- in the case of OSS the technical contributions and the value thereof, and "play" -- the interactions you may have with other humans for the sake of friendship/seduction. And that goes both ways: you should not get easily offended (after all the internet is full of hormone-filled education-deficient adolescents, and being sensitive is a recipe for unhappiness), but you should strive for not -- ever -- putting in a single posting/mail/RL discussion both "work" and "play".
Marks of technical appreciation are of course OK.
And yes, try to be culturally sensitive. This means that you should expect people to get offended by innocent/friendly remarks. Apologise and don't do it again, this is not an attack on you and your culture (most of the time ;) ). Again, this goes both ways: pointing out you found such and such remark disturbing is fine, and helps communication, but let go -- if not a jerk, the offending party will apologise and not do it again.
In the end, I guess what I try to say is "don't be a jerk", tolerate other people's mistakes, and learn from yours. It's a global world and communicating across cultures is hard.
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:2, Insightful)
I will probably be down-modded because this is emotionally charged stuff we're talking about here. What I am about to state is going to probably be unpopular with some of the crowd here on this forum.
We don't know the rationale of the comment about the Reiser story. Someone could be goaded into that sort of thing as described in the comment. I can't say I wholly agree with MikeeUSA's commentary about Nina Reiser- nor can I comment either way on his assessment of the story. I know from personal experience that the world isn't being told the whole truth on this subject- and people that're less strong than I was have snapped at the treatment they received there.
I'll point to the previous comment I just made in this post with regards to the other comment you bring up. If you need to use a label of "Feminism" then you should reconsider your thinking- the bulk of that which labels itself "feminist" are very much guilty of abuse that is honestly unacceptable going back the other way. If you want to see sexism, all one has to do is look back at the Feminist crowd to see sterling, stalwart examples thereof. While MikeeUSA's comments may be over the top- there is some basis thereof for a counter response back the other way.
Now before anyone tries to label me a misogynist or a sexist pig (Of which, I am neither...), I will offer some good examples of what I am talking to:
There's tons more examples, but that sort of stuff, folks, is what Feminism appears to be all about from their public presence and proclamations and past actions in public- after all, these ARE their luminaries talking with those examples I've given. No rational discourse is typically possible at that point- no sanity present within any of this stuff. It's all about feelings and don't confuse them with the facts, they know what they feel and what they feel is the Truth of the matter. If you don't believe me, all you need do is run afoul of someone in that crowd and you'll be on the receiving end of all of it, male or female- and there will be no shifting them from their "thoughts" on the matter.
Anyone that has ran afoul of this sort of crowd will attest that it's damned easy to arrive at a line of thought like MikeeUSA has expressed. Odds are, he's been on the receiving end of it and has had enough- but doesn't know how to express it in any other way than the way he has. Sure, it's not constructive, but then neither has any of the bulk of the Feminist crowd either- and whenever "sexist" comes up, I always go looking for the cause. And, I've always found that the aphorism of "where there's smoke there is fire" really applies to any of these cases- the smoke or squeaky wheel's guilty of the same sort of thought process that the examples of Feminism have arrived at and publicly stated. ...and we've been pavlov trained to react to it whenever it gets broached in the manner everyone keeps doing, even now, whether or not there's actually any basis whatsoever in the accusations being flung.
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:4, Insightful)
Careful, this conversation is a TRAAAAP.
Apparently you either agree that there's rampant sexism in the FOSS community or you're "displaying similar levels of denial, abuse, and ignorance".
I don't think so. But I would agree that many comments here on Slashdot do have the feel of having either taken bait of trolls or of being genuinely intolerant issues women may face in FOSS.
This discussion reminds me of Slashdot debates about the value of Web accessibility. Many developers expressed the view that the disabled population was so small that they didn't matter. Others railed in frustration against the injustice of having significant information facilities unavailable to people born blind or otherwise disabled or to those who became disabled through war or disease.
There are people who post well thought out, informed comments on Slashdot, but those are not generally the most exciting comments, and they are not the only ones to get modded +5 Insightful.
And THAT is the REAL problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, good luck with that.
Here's a newsflash for you: there are idiots in the world. Just browse at -1 right here, right now.
What we have here is the classic "mountain out of a molehill" phenomena.
THAT is the real problem. And THAT is why so few examples of sexism can be presented but so many examples of non-sexist comments abound.
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not going to argue with the idea that only 0.1% of comments in the FOSS movement are sexist, because you're probably right: the vast majority of interaction and discussion in the FOSS is not sexist. What I think you're overlooking, however, is that there isn't a threshold for sexism. Sexism is an issue of perception, not of percentages. For example, simply because we have female politicians doesn't mean that politics isn't also a sexist field.
The problem trying to be solved is the feeling of exclusion by some women from the FOSS movement. For example, I'm having difficulty finding apologies for the examples of sexism people are linking to. That's not an issue of numbers, but an issue of perception. It tells me, a woman, that people in the FOSS will make mistakes. But everyone makes mistakes - that's not a deal-breaker. But it also tells me that members of the FOSS movement will be reluctant to apologize for their mistakes, and that can become a deal-breaker.
And, for what it's worth, I don't think those standards are unreasonable. I don't shun or reject friends, family, coworkers, whomever, simply because they carelessly said something hurtful or offensive. But if they A) don't acknowledge what they said is problematic and B) refuse to apologize, I eventually will decide to remove myself from situations where I have to interact with them. That's what the issue seems to be here. Not merely that FOSS has issues with sexist jokes - western culture has an issue with sexist jokes - but that a movement which, to me, has connected itself with ideals of rights and equality isn't able or willing to apologize about them.
-Trillian
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:1, Insightful)
>>>Are you raising the subject of sexism just based on the fact that only 1.5% of FOSS developers are women?
It's worse than that. Did you know there's only 0.0000001% of men that carry human fetuses? Talk about sexism writ large. The job of carrying human fetuses should be equal, but women have had a near-total lock on this job since time immemorial. It's shameful.
But seriously -
Sometimes I think people see sexism where none exist. I certainly have no prejudice against women working in engineering, and would welcome the sight of something other than hairy men, but that's just not the case. Besides this isn't the only field with gender inequity. Visit a college sometime and look inside their "health and human development" classes - all women. But nobody complains about sexism in HHD - they just accept the fact few men are interested in that field. The same is true in engineering.
That's life not sexism, just the same way men can't give birth which is also not sexism.
Now think of lots of cakes. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're buying into his flawed analogy.
This isn't about one big cake that everyone has to share.
This is about thousands of cakes.
Who cares if some idiot mixes other stuff in his cake? You do NOT have to eat his cake. You have your own cake.
And that is where this discussion has problems. People keep posting about some guy who put feces in HIS cake (but not YOUR cake) and now we all have to agree that there is feces in the cakes.
Now, look at your cake. Is there any feces in it? No? Neither is there in mine. So let's look at what percentage of cakes really have feces before decrying the problem with feces being in OUR cakes.
And when we do that, you realize that there isn't a problem with feces in cakes. There is a problem with a few people and decisions that they make.
And you'll want to avoid dessert with them.
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is the most valid point of the whole debate. I remember hating it in school when they would have a bit push to protect X minority/ perpetual victim group because the problem was never the person who need protection and the people who picked on them simply moved on to someone else.
At some point people need to realize that the problem is the bullies and we tolerate far too much in the FOSS world. I understand that technical environments can be brutal but attacking anything other than the code quality, format or it's license should be considered off limits.
Imagine how much easier life would be for everyone if we started taking action against people who feel the need to abuse others.
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Conversations about race and gender inequality are highly politicized, and many people are very sensitive-- I'd say overly sensitive-- to these issues. Heck, many people have a right to be sensitive. Gender and race discrimination was openly accepted and practiced for a long time.
But there are two problems with the continued antagonism on with these issues:
Getting back to Lawrence Summers-- if you're not familiar with the story, he was essentially pushed out of the Harvard presidency for openly speculating about the causes of the small number of women in science. His mistake was speaking to a gathering of academics as if they were, in fact, scientists. Reading this article [boston.com] makes it clear that he was saying: here are some possible causes; we need further research to establish a link. He mentions an anecdote with his daughter-- they gave her trucks, but she ended up playing with the trucks as if they were dolls, calling them "daddy truck" and "baby truck". Any scientist worth their salt would be intrigued by this behavior. Of course, this incident cannot be generalized, but it should make you ask "why?". Is it really unreasonable to think that men and women, who served in certain specific capacities for millennia of human history, might actually be better suited toward those roles? The answer may be 'no', but science must be allowed to ask the question. Nancy Hopkins, who walked out on Summers' talk, later said that ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up" had she not left. That sounds like hyperbole to me. The appropriate response as a career scientist would have been to counter Summers with evidence and scientific argument.
With regard to the 54 incidents you mention, this is a classic case of finding problems when you're looking for them [wikipedia.org]. As other people have pointed out, the number of incidents that can be called "sexist" in FOSS mailing lists appears to be vanishingly small. 54 incidents out of how many millions of conversation threads? Come on. The rational thing to do is to give us hard data, and then make your case. The link above is a laundry list of grievances; not science. But if you can make the case scientifically, showing us good evidence, we'll listen. That's the rational approach.
Re:Read what you just wrote. (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, when 1.5% of the developers are women, and only 0.1% of the comments are sexist, what is the REAL problem that you are trying to "solve"?
Because obviously a few comments couldn't possibly be indicative of an overall cultural attitude, and of course one or two comments couldn't be enough to drive women away in droves.
Get a grip on yourself.
This reminds me of an instance on the Debian mailing list a couple months back -- not this one [itwire.com], hmm... can't find it right now -- where a woman on the list dared to speak up against some sexist comments that were going on, and got flamed out of existence (certainly out of the Debian community) while the list "regulars" went on to make sex jokes for the next several days.
And we wonder why there aren't more women in Linux.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this almost entirely misses the point. Feminists say that the structure of society and individuals' prejudices make it more difficult for women to succeed in (e.g.) the workplace than men. Your response to that seems to be "Get used to it. You'll get a lot farther by growing a backbone than by bitching." This is only true in the short term, if its true at all. Tomorrow's women will be better off if we, today, address the prejudices than if today's women merely "grow a backbone.
It's also pretty shocking that you think it's mere "bitching" for women to point out and attempt to address the systematic disadvantages that they face in the workplace. Does this mean that women should only "bitch" and not try to work despite their disadvantages? Of course not. But we as a society would never get anywhere if oppressed/disadvantaged groups were expected to just deal with it without protesting the inequality. Would you have said the same thing, "Quit bitching and grow a backbone" to slaves? Where would our society be today if we all thought like you?
This is all to say nothing of your implicit premise that both men and women catch equal amounts of flak for taking up programming, which is, I think, obviously false.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Words stuffed into our mouths (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't really know how sexist you are (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest threats to equality are the biases that you are unaware that you have.
I'm aware of social boundaries that I do not respect, so I find myself having to consciously avoid doing things like mixing professors with students or jocks with nerds at parties. If I had my druthers, I'd invite everyone, but different social circles do different things, and I don't want to make people uncomfortable. A lot of the time, it comes down to the fact that certain topics of discussion are not compatible with the people who don't have pertinant experiences. Men typically don't want to hear about menstruation, while the topic might come up at a party of all women. Conversely, women don't tend to want to hear about men's jock itch, but it's a common enough occurence among male athletes that the discussion might arise. A lot of nerds don't know much about sports, and a lot of jocks don't know the fine details of compiling Linux kernels, so putting them together might result in people stuggling for things to talk about that interest them all.
All of these things stem from stereotypes. Stereotypes are sometimes completely false, like the depiction of the Irish in the US in the 19th century. But generally, there's some grain of truth, if only resulting from some people's narrow and biased experiences. It's a fact, though, that humans like to create convenient categories and generalize. People have a natural tendency to think "all blacks are..." and "all women are...", because they have observed these things in what they perceive to be a majority of encounters.
I like to think of myself as being above these petty prejudices, but there's a danger in thinking this, because I can miss subtle biases. I grew up in a family that is clearly male-dominated. My father and I both have graduate degrees, while my mother and sister do not. When I was single, I had expressed a desire to find a partner who was my intellectual equal, but my family discouraged me, telling me that I would have a very hard time finding what I was after. Despite their bias, I ended up marrying a woman that I often think of as my intellectual superior. Still, there are a lot of subtle effects that stem from an implicit assumption that men are generally more intelligent than women, things that MUST have affected me in ways that I'm not aware of.
I remember a Star Trek episode where Janice Lester had wanted to become a starship captain (but they were not allowed) switched bodies with Kirk. In the end, Kirk makes some comment about how she could have had as full a life as any woman. Of course, our culture has matured significantly in the last 40 years. But in some ways, many people haven't really been taught that women are equal to men; they've only been trained to parrot a politically correct thing to say. They tell themselves that in the hypothetical a woman can be as capable as a man, but they don't believe it to be very LIKELY. And of course, since no one wants to admit to others or even themselves that they feel this way, what really happens is that they judgement is affected subconsciously in a way that they can't defeat.
Women end up being judged "statistically" (you've never met a woman who was strong in IT, so this one you're interviewing is unlikely to be good). And they're scrutinized more harshly (since you're more ready to accept that a man is smart, you're going to work harder to make damn sure that this woman is as smart, and what really happens is that you make the interview more difficult).
I have biases. Many of those biases are unfair. But the only way I can defeat them is to admit them. Not to others, because it's not PC to ever express bias openly, but to myself so I can explore them and recognize how my thoughts might be unfair if I were to act upon them.
So for instance, when interviewing, to avoid bias, I ask everyone the same questions. But I developed those questions partly by exploring my biases. For isntance, while I may assume that men and women have equal intelligence, I don't
Re:Words stuffed into our mouths (Score:3, Insightful)
the near-complete elimination of sexism and racism (which has been accomplished)
Let me guess, you're a white male American, aged 15-35?
You have no idea how pervasive sexism and racism still are. You don't consciously experience them, but they are there.
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know if GP has his heels dug in or not, but the core point he makes is valid. Grabbing links from a cherry picked collection of events deemed to be sexist is a form of data searching. When you come back with 5 links, it sounds very much as though you are saying "look, 5 out of 5 of these examples are sexist", and you are certainly ignoring tens of millions of publicly archived mailing list, forum, and irc comments.
I hear your impassioned plea that if there is a problem, we should have the courage to fix it. I actually don't see GP explicitly disagreeing. He is posing no alternate explanation as to the low figure of female representation in our community. What he is asking is "if female participation is at 1.5%, and anti-female speech is at 0.1%, then what action do you expect us to take?" also, implicitly: "If you disagree with my figure of 0.1%, then show me a fairly picked sample where more than one out of a thousand communications are sexist in nature." Free communication does mean that trolls will be able to open their mouths as well. The best we can do is decry them or mod them down, try to keep them banned from our lists, but erasing them from existence is beyond our power. You can't sway them and you can't "make up" for them. The only thing anyone can do (within my knowledge of present policy and technology) is to try and ignore them and starve them.
I think someone above made reference to Stallman being sexist, too. Yep, I would certainly believe that. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to excise him from the community short of putting GNU out of business, and I've been wanting to do that long before the topic of sexism ever came across my desk. Still, allegations of Henry Ford being anti-semite (damn me if I can't find a reliable citation for that just now) will have an equally difficult time changing the name of the company he founded today.
So, let us recouch GP's question in an actionable form. Can we have any/some of the following:
* Examples of > 0.1% by posting volume sexism from a fair sample pool?
* Examples of the community favoring sexist behavior anywhere, as opposed to communal opposition to nut-job comments
* What community members can do (or what policies can change at the community admin level) to alleviate sexism. (We cannot clearly see what to do in response to allegations like this if we cannot comprehend in what way we are being sexist)
Re:No Denial Here But What Are the Reasons? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uum, have you ever talked about this subject with a woman in computers or engineering? If you had, you wouldn't be asking this question. I really think this attitude is part of the problem. The first thing I did when someone mentioned sexism in FOSS was to look into it. Why *are* there so few women in CS departments, and fewer yet in FOSS projects? If you do, you can easily find lots of answers. Start by browsing this bibliography [linuxchix.org], maybe ask some women in IT or engineering you know.
The biggest problem, AFAICT, is that it's so easy for people of any majority group (white / black / men / women) to unintentionally act in ways towards a minority group that make it really tough for them. It's tough to be a man in social work, it's tough to be a white guy in an all-black school, it's tough to be a skinny geek in a room full of beefy jocks, it's tough to be a woman in FOSS development. That means that any majority group needs to make an extra effort to counteract that. That's why we're talking to you about FOSS, instead of about men in social work. You're in a position to do something about this problem.
The fact that group discrimination happens elsewhere is irrelevant. The fact is that it's hard for women in FOSS, which means that there aren't very many, which means that FOSS loses out big-time. If nothing else, a large demographic highly talented and capable people who could be contributing to FOSS are not because of irrelevant reasons. Furthermore, I believe that men and women are different in more than just their bodies, and that the difference is valuable. FOSS loses a lot more by having almost no women than they would by having almost no blue-eyed individuals.
So instead of being reactive and saying, "Prove that it's really sexism", why don't you actively look for ways in which you or people around you may be unintentionally contributing to the problem? As others have said, it's only a tiny minority that are overtly sexist; the majority only do things unintentionally. But the effect is still there, and it's real.
Oh brother. (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is one of the least female-friendly places on the Internet, so this conversation is basically hopeless no matter what. But let me share with you some anti-feminist clichés (courtesy of jezebel.com) so we can at least get them out of the way now.
This post will no doubt get modded down to -1 practically instantaneously. But I don't care, because this is my industry too, and until you all get it, I won't be silent.
Re:Don't use terms you don't understand. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, but your father is an individual actor, not a group. Always condemn the individual actors for their personal behavior when that behavior is deserving of condemnation. But, to bootstrap those instances, in aggregate to indicate a problem with the group as a whole (as opposed to a simple indication that, in this dimension, the group is a random subset of society as a whole), you would need to show that the prevalence of the problem among the group exceeds the prevalence in society as a whole. Per message rates, if collected systematically from different communities, could be a suitable proxy for comparing prevalence, but it breaks down if your sample size is minuscule (in your example, 1). Fortunately for us, society as a whole and the FOSS community don't have minuscule sample sizes.
Re:let me get this straight (Score:2, Insightful)
Being called a "homosexual" is "abuse"? Great going, Bruce: show off your feminist stance by insulting another minority group.
When it's meant as an insult, yes, it's abusive to gay people. Same as people saying "that's so gay" about everything.
Re:Don't use terms you don't understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
because 54 posts is statistically insignificant in the face of foss mailing-lists
2 keynotes speeches are statistically insignificant in the face of thousands
I've not even seen a rejection of code on the basis women can't code, and that is saying something where code can be rejected pretty arbitrarily.
For anything to be taken seriously you need to show a statistical significant amount of sexism relative to the large amount of people being jerks.
Re:Mod parent up... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course you haven't seen it. That's the point. Just because you personally haven't seen it--or, probably more accurately, didn't notice it--doesn't mean it's not there. But you think that just because you haven't seen something, it doesn't exist. That's the problem.
I disagree with this, so mod me down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your generalization utterly fails to take into account the fact that there are plenty of whiny douchebag men out there who want nothing but recognition and approval. You also fail to take into account the fact that there are many women out there who are quite capable of standing on their own in the face of adversity. Take medicine, for example. Medical residents are probably one of the most mentally abused groups of people out there. They are frequently disapproved of (and called incompetent, among other things) by their superiors, and somehow a lot of women still make it through and become doctors. In that case, though, the abuse is doled out pretty much equally between the sexes.
I don't find the mere mention of pornography to be sexist -- however, if female developers can't work with a group without being constantly hit on, asked on dates, flirted with, or otherwise weirded out, you can't really expect them to stick around. They're liable to go somewhere where they're treated with equal respect, and I can't blame them.
Re:Actually, you're a good example of that. (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell.
What sort persecution complex do you have to have to spend your life compiling lists of anonymous people offending you on the internet?
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Incidents [wikia.com]
It should be pointed out that your 54 examles of how the FOSS community is packed full of misogyny includes many shining examples of the FOSS community being sexist, just from a quick look....
Go daddies advertising campaign(nothing to do with FOSS)
A video game about a Fat Princess(nothing to do with FOSS)
Various companies employing "booth babes" because that's apparently evil(nothing to do with FOSS)
some tripe about a comic strip at defcon which had an airhead female character.(nothing to do with FOSS)
people getting sent copies of Maxim instead of some gaming mag(nothing to do with FOSS)
Some summit which apparently didn't get many women turning up (at least it is actually related to FOSS)
A shocking one about some guy in quebec killing a lot of women.(nothing to do with FOSS though)
Feminists getting pissed because dell tried to market to the large female demographic that likes pink.(nothing to do with FOSS)
Someone pissed that people didn't want to make a usenet group comp.women....because there's a comp.men group...(nothing to do with FOSS)
are we seeing a bit of a theme yet?
There are some genuine "incidents" in there but they're swamped by bullshit.
I'm not even through a third of them and most seem to have little or nothing to do with FOSS or they amount someone getting offended because some pathetic young/old men drew penises on his presentations or had his desktop background set to some random scantily clad female which of course means he hates women and thinks women can't do anything(honestly that seems to be the logic).
One troll gets his own "incident" even though he appears to be nobody of any import or anything to do with FOSS.
If this kind of trivial crap is what's keeping women out of FOSS then all I can say is "Toughen up".
You'll see more misanthropy,misogyny,misandry, every flavor of "ism" etc etc in pretty much any community.
There is plenty of sexism in the world, there is plenty of discrimination in the world but a social group based around "show us the code" where people can choose everything about how they present themselves isn't exactly the best place to look if you really want to get your days worth of righteous indignation.
Odd, or typical, that you fail to get it completel (Score:5, Insightful)
You defend MikeeUSA's feelings by saying he has come to his extremist views from years of being exposed to extreme views.
So, how come that you cannot come to the same conclusion in reverse? That those women you quote (often out of context) have come to their view from the decades, centuries even millenia of extremist views women have endured?
Extremism grows best when opposed by extremist.
All men are rapist. It was once the law that a woman had to obey her husband without question. Submit to him regardless of her own wishes. How do you define rape else then forcing sex against someones will?
The marriage comment. Since we now regonize the right of a person to refuse sex even within marriage and that a woman is no longer the property of the husband, traditional marriage has indeed been abolished. It has been replaced by an entirely different version with competly different laws, just using the same name. The old was destroyed to make place for a new better more equal version.
To kill an infant. We do this all the time, the west owns it wealth and health to the fact that women no longer drop a new kid every year. It allows for very long, expensive education and a high concentration of best food and medical care, rather then waste it on a dozen kids, most who will die because they do not get the resources they need. Why do you think Africa does so poorly? Everytime they do a bit better, they get an explosion of new people who they can't feed or educate. Birth control IS the answer. Her proposal should be seen as a way to shake things up, overkill to get people thinking about just what it means for a family that has no control over the number of children.
to decontaminate the planet. Again, an extreem suggestion but the counter result of the extreem in which baby girls in china are killed because they are not valued.
We, western white males, all to easily forget just how extreem hatred can get. Watch a holocaust documentary and remember, this ain't all that long ago. Women only got the vote recently, only had the right to own property recently.
While a lot has changed, this has changed because people werewilling to talk extremist. Once, a woman who talked about the right to vote, could go to jail for this terrible crime.
You defend MikeeUSA for his extremist views, but deny the same excuse for the other side.
That is all to common sadly, but to give you a clear example of how one-sided this is. You would send a woman who kicked her rapist to jail for kicking him in the balls afterwards.
Re:Or maybe you're wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you could start by actually taking a hard look and seeing if what's being said is true, instead of being knee-jerk defensive.
I haven't seen any posts here saying, "I know several women in FOSS, and I asked them if sexism was a problem, and they said 'No, I don't know what they're talking about.'" What I see mostly is people making a bunch of arguments without actually asking, "Could this be true? Might there be something in this?" And actually listening to people (in this case, especially women) before arguing. The difference between "I've listened to what you said, and thought about it, but I disagree" and denial is pretty obvious.
There's plenty to read about [linuxchix.org] if you're willing to look.
Re:Or maybe you're wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
That's part of the trap. It's like testing to see if you're a witch. Tie you up and drop you in the river, if you float you're a witch! She's just trying to start up a witch hunt, but unfortunately this crowd is a little smarter than the Inquisitor.
Re:Mod parent up... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, I'm an engineer, I'm skeptical about what I've seen first hand, and outright disbelieve in all other claims.
Re:Mod parent up... (Score:4, Insightful)
To quote from his original article "women's participation in FOSS development is over seventeen times lower than it is in proprietary software development." If that doesn't point to some systematic problem I don't know what does. The point of declaring the existence of the problem is to figure out where it lies. Could be nerds asking female devs out on dates all the time, could be harassment. Regardless, SOMETHING is preventing female devs from moving into the FOSS community. You might say its because the industry itself has an overinflated amount of female devs due to so called coddling. I doubt that, and suspect its due to group norms and institutional sexism.
Re:Don't use terms you don't understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not participate in a whole lot of FOSS mailing lists, not near as much as I'd like (I lurk on more than I participate in), and it's specifically the Debian lists where I've seen issues. (Most of my perl lists are sadly inactive, actually...) As a participant myself, I certainly wouldn't claim to be condemning you -- this is not about individual action, but about the overall culture of different communities or institutions (so, institutionalized sexism, rather than so-and-so being a prick). That in turn is more about what behavior is accepted by community norms than about individual actions.
So that out of the way, I think at that point you have to step back and consider the really striking sex-based differential in participation. That is a fact that we would like to be able to explain. Even if the explanation is sex-based disinterest in FOSS among women, I think it would still merit exploring to see if that interest tracks with the extent to which the community is welcoming to female participants (not in a warm-fuzzy-emotional-validation way, but in a "you won't get hit on or see people like you treated like a sex vending machine" way). I also definitely think you would need to look at community norms to explain the 20-times-greater participation of women in the corporate-coding space than the FOSS-coding space (since that difference can't be explained based on differential interest in the subject matter or basic skills).
So the question to me would then become, are instances of sexism or woman-negative-interactions happening more frequently in the FOSS community than in other communities where women are more prevalent? Not the community at large, but than communities where women are more represented. After all, if society at large is hostile to women, then meeting just that standard wouldn't be enough to encourage female participation within the FOSS community in their spare time; they'd go somewhere they feel *more* welcome than society at large.
At this point we've hit a snag, being unable to separate cause from effect. Naturally groups with larger female representation will be more welcoming to women, through familiarity if nothing else; but that's precisely the issue with institutionalized sexism--guys who never talk to women have no idea what to say and (understandably!) look at the women like they have antlers, which creeps the women out, who then leave, reducing everybody's learning experiences and diversity and all that. The cause is the effect, at a level of existence as well as analysis.
None of which is to say that welcomingness-to-women is necessarily the right variable to isolate, or that our inability to think of another one would mean that it was the right variable. But when we have high-profile instances of women indicating it as one reason for them not to participate equally in the community, it's at least worthy of consideration. And to break down the institutional biases, we'd need to be *more* attentive to ways in which the culture might repel women, and be *more* welcoming to women than society-at-large is, in order to attract them to a society where they're underrepresented.
That's a lot of theory and not much in the way of statistics, but hey, I'm at work! Does it at least make clear where folks who think like me might be coming from?
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:4, Insightful)
You are absolutely right - there is a profound problem of sexism in FOSS. And the entire community implicitly supports this sexism by not having a psych screening for every potential member before they are allowed to join the community. This injustice must be righted forthwith!
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, there are sexists. They exist in all walks of life. Having found a handful of them in any given community is not evidence of a pronounced problem in that community. If it was a significant or majority behavior, you would have a point. But it isn't, and you don't.
I will admit that such behavior should not be overlooked. The INDIVIDUALS responsible should be taken to task, preferably by the community, and if warranted, even ostracized. But to blame the community for actions that it does not condone by one of its members (or even a vanishingly small percentage of its members) is absurd.
And while you are thinking about a presentation featuring scantily clad females, watch some TV and notice that SEX SELLS. If you are presenting to a room (mostly) full of men, you have three sure fire ways to maintain their attention - booze, sports, and women. Booze is expensive, considering the audience, sports perhaps isn't all that surefire, so that leaves women. Okay, perhaps a better way would have been to have an engaging presentation with interesting content, but not all geeks are professional presenters. An admonition and a slap on the wrist is an appropriate response to such insensitive behavior (for a first offense), but assigning this to sexism (rather than red-blooded maleness and a small dose of ignorance) is disingenuous at best.
He's not responsible for the low percentage of women in FOSS (or any computer science field), he's just using that fact to his advantage by tailoring his presentation to his audience. Poorly, I admit, but you don't go to Black Hat and get offended when the inevitable Microsoft bashing begins. Or any entertainment or infotech convention and not expect to see booth babes. Is it right? Perhaps not, but so long as the audience is male by a vast majority, this isn't likely to change. Men like to see sexy young women. You give your audience what they want and they come back next year, or buy your product, whatever. The logical outcome isn't very hard to predict.
Am I defending him? Absolutely not, but I can see how the mistake was made. But showing pictures of women to an audience he likely assumed would be 100% men does not earn a death sentence. None of us would ever make it to adulthood if we were held to such draconian "every injustice deserves the death sentence" justice. Even sexual harassment laws are more forgiving. The offended party should inform the offender that what they are doing is offensive as the offender may not even realize it. Then, if the behavior continues, they can be reported to a higher authority for remediation. This whole sexism in FOSS business is people immediately shouting every small infraction to the world. Do you want to know why we aren't taking it seriously? Read the fable of the boy who cried wolf. That's what's happening here. The offended need to grow a thicker skin, try to resolve the issue privately with the offender, and then, as a last resort, go to the community (which, ironically, is the same community they are besmirching unfairly, which makes me think this isn't about fairness, but about some political agenda). As evidenced here (on Slashdot - not the friendliest or most sympathetic community by any stretch), you will find sympathy for your cause, which shows that the problem is not endemic to the community as a whole, which is the whole argument I've been making from the start.
Trade you. (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, if men were equally expected to keep all their men's locker room bullshit out of it, and just "code or don't," then that would be a fair deal. As it stands, women are expected to keep their "political bullshit" out of there while the men don't face any consequences for treating them like shit.
I'm not following that. (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, so good.
No. I cannot agree with that. Perceptions can be wrong. Perceptions are OFTEN wrong.
And if 90% of the politicians were female, would it still be a "sexist field"?
It seems that you have the two items backwards. A field where the "vast majority" is not sexist is not the same as a "sexist field" where there are a few females.
Follow that with ...
Who is "them" in this case?
I post on /. and I have been called all kinds of names for my opinions. So? That's life on the Internet. You can avoid it or you can recognize that there will always be idiots in the world.
If 9,999 people on a FOSS project are not sexist ... but 1 person is ... how does that 1 person contaminate the other 9,999?
Re:I disagree with this, so mod me down. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your generalization utterly fails to take into account the fact that there are plenty of whiny douchebag men out there who want nothing but recognition and approval. You also fail to take into account the fact that there are many women out there who are quite capable of standing on their own in the face of adversity.
And your statement more or less proves his point. When women stop being whiny, they're just as, if not more capable than men. And likewise, men who spend all day whining about how unfair life is will get nowhere.
Re:Don't use terms you don't understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who the hell keeps modding you up for posting the same non-point over and over?
I would if I had mod points. The guy has a point. Almost all guys, no sexism (none that I've ever seen) -- where else in society do you see that? Building workers, constructers, plumbers, farmers? What?
Re:Oh brother. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is quite amusing to read an entire page of comments by men who think that their gender doesn't limit their perspective on this issue. That demonstrates the very root of the problem: maleness is still the default, the essential; a woman's perspective is considered especially different from a man's but the reverse is never true. With very few exceptions, all of the comments on this article reveal an attitude that the male perspective is complete and true while the female perspective is a special subset.
Typical, attack a stereotype with an equally generalized and unsupportable assertion. Because someone does that to your particular group it entitles you to to the same? I read through all the articles modded 3 and higher prior to running across yours, there where plenty of comments representing both sides of the issue.
Unfortunately it seems to me that your statements belie just as much pig headed opinionism and hyperbole as any male chauvensists drivel.
Slashdot is one of the least female-friendly places on the Internet, so this conversation is basically hopeless no matter what. But let me share with you some anti-feminist clichés (courtesy of jezebel.com) so we can at least get them out of the way now.
Great, let's rail about how anti-feminine Slashdot is and then quote examples of that from a site that has nothing to do with Slashdot or wasn't particularly related to the article that spawned this particular thread. Tell you what, why don't you go down through this thread one more time without having your 'agenda blinders' on and show me how many chauvanist quotes there really are? And if/when you do find them why don't you show me where Slashdot actually squelched opinions relating to the matter?
Feminists can't take a joke. The problem is not that feminists can't take a joke. (We can.) The problem is that you can't take feminists seriously.
Generalize much?
Some girls like [X], so it must be okay. Men often disagree on things. Women do too. One woman's disagreement does not invalidate the opinions of every other woman.
No one here ever made such a contention. Nor was this contention made in the original article. Axe to grind?
Criticizing misogyny is a waste of time. This might actually be true here.
Based on your previous statements regarding your lack of a fair shake on slashdot, I take it you mean that is is a waste of time to make your argument to this particular forum? Brilliant! Because it only makes sense to proselytize to people that already agree with you! Ever hear of preaching to the choir loft?
Feminists have no lives. The implication here seems to be that feminists had to have suffered some great personal disappointment. Sorry, no; I just have to endure cat calls from sleazy strangers on my walk to work, get interrupted in meetings (and then get pigeonholed as a bitch for standing up for myself), and frequently have to put up with people who are blind to their own privilege. I really, really wish that my having a life would make this all stop.
Again no one has made this an issue in this forum aside from yourself. You are arguing points that have nothing to do with the thread.
Moving along, nothing of substance to this argument, it's as generalized and hyperbolic as any chauvinist/racist statement I have ever heard made....
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
You've provided a nice illustration of the problem. If it turns out that, say, 10% of FOSS developers are black, do you think that would make nigger references OK as long as we kept them under 1%? If 5% of FOSS developers are gay, do you think that allows up to 0.5% faggot references?
For years one of the first few posts on every Slashdot story was a GNAA (Gay Nigger Aliiance of America) troll. They were constant. Do you think Slashdot is racist and anti-gay? Do you think those posts were representative of the Slashdot community?
People on the internet will say thing you find offensive. Trolls will say things because you find them offensive. All online communities have trolls, as well as people who don't understand their comments may offend, and people who know but don't care. The answer? Get over yourself. If you only want to participate in communities where everyone is nice to you, the internet is not for you.
Re:I'm not following that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for replying. I'll try to clarify where I'm coming from. I said...
And you replied...
Well, yes and no. Perceptions can be, and often are, wrong. I agree with you there. But I don't agree that there is a percentage threshold for sexism, or that there's a litmus test to determine when a group is (whatever)ist. I guess what I'm saying is that offense is in the eye of the beholder. As I said in another comment, the fact that most (all?) of the examples of FOSS sexism weren't intended to be sexist and offensive doesn't make them not sexist and offensive. It certainly changes how the people saying them should be viewed, but it doesn't simply excuse their actions.
You're right, I was vague. Let me try to rephrase what I meant.
I'm coming from the perspective that if a certain group makes me feel consistently uncomfortable or offended as a woman (and not simply like they're all jerks to everyone), that group is going to be perceived by me to be sexist.
The way I'm describing it, you're right: a few bad apples can definitely spoil my subjective perception of the whole bunch. But, if that perspective is wrong, I'd hope that the group would reject the views of the ones who actually were sexist, rather than saying, "Nope, no sexism here, don't know what you're talking about." That's what seems to be happening in this discussion, which is why I (perhaps prematurely) was indicating that the FOSS movement felt, to me, to be generally sexist as a whole. Not that every individual was sexist, or even the majority, but that the vibe I'm getting isn't willing to acknowledge sexism.
I said...
And you replied...
"Them" is the individuals and, in a group situation, the group as a whole. That's what the issue ultimately seems to be in this discussion. That people from the FOSS movement were making sexist remarks and didn't apologize, and then the FOSS movement - defined subjectively as people who seem to care about FOSS stuff enough to comment on this issue - also don't seem to acknowledge the sexism that was/is occurring.
Except these weren't simply comments on the Internet, they were leaders on the FOSS community making public statements. And, as I said in another comment, simply because people are jerks doesn't mean that we shouldn't call them out on their bullshit when it happens.
When the other 9,999 don't acknowledge or reject the sexism of the 1.
-Trillian
seriöst (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:4, Insightful)
When a woman does it, it is bitching. When a man does it, it is being assertive.
Re:Sexism is so pervasive we don't see it (Score:3, Insightful)
the larger issue is that as a man you have no *inherent* frame of reference by which to decide whether they are right or wrong or how serious or trivial it is.
This is exactly the issue - namely that the criterion you're using is that if some woman somewhere dislikes something a man says, and calls "sexism", that makes the man sexist and there is no way for him to rebut the claim. I call bullshit. Adopting that line of thinking creates a race to the bottom in which any easily-offended person gets to define anything that bothers them as socially unacceptable speech. It's nonsense and an insult to those who care about REAL sexism.
My point is that you, as a man, are probably not an able judge of what is sexist and what is not. (Maybe YOU are, but this isn't personal. I'm talking about men generally.)
Any individual is allowed to be offended by anything. When you deny that they should be offended, you are basically dissing their point of view. That's not constructive. They may have very good reasons for being offended. If those reasons are compounded by a history of oppression, you look as if you are trying to deny more than just your individual offense, and that's just ugly.
For speech to be socially unacceptable it has to offend more than just a small group of easily-offended people, so I think you can put that fear to rest.
We do need to have some sense and understanding of each other. But let's admit that for generations (if not forever) men have been forcing their understanding on women, without allowing much in the other direction. So I think we can afford to chill out a little, step back and say "Huh. You think that was sexist? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be, and I'll put it differently next time." That's all.
It's not labeling. Just because someone says that what you said or did is sexist doesn't mean that you ARE sexist. It just means that it can be perceived that way. You can't argue with that, and you shouldn't try.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a male nursing student, a good deal of that is due to the encouragement of a culture of acceptance, with posters recruiting nurses showing males and that sort of shit. Despite all that, its an uphill battle and I often do get shit on for my choice to pursue nursing.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
But men don't really bother to take notice of these things. When we want to do something, we do it. We don't ask for social acceptance. We don't look to our peers and wonder what they'd think of us, whether it's cool or hip or not.
Yes, you do. Everyone does, years of psychological and sociological study show this. It is a prime reason why we're even able to form society. There are outliers of course, and people don't always follow groupthink. But you are seriously deluded if you think that you don't have a deep seated need for some type of social acceptance.
Re:I disagree with this, so mod me down. (Score:4, Insightful)
My statement doesn't prove his point at all. I was stating that there are plenty of demanding fields where women do just fine, which don't have the ridiculous gender gap that the FOSS community does. While I would agree with you that whiny people tend not to get very far, I would disagree with the assertion that this is a predominantly female trait. Things wouldn't magically improve if women in FOSS "just stopped whining," because that's not the problem. The *problem* is that they don't receive the same treatment.
Furthermore, if you treat women the same as you treat men, then you're not part of the problem; in this case, I would suggest that you become part of the solution by standing up to this sort of crap when you see it, rather than denying that it happens.
Re:Well if that's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, here is something we can agree on: a minority of men are responsible for most of the genuinely offensive conduct of men, and there is a minority of women who demand more deference to their sensibilities than they are owed. We can probably both agree that those groups people need to alter their behavior/expectations. Fair?
The tricky part is dealing with the situations in the middle where both the men and women are behaving like reasonable men and reasonable women. But, nonetheless, the women are offended by the men.
We have a choice here: we can tell the men to behave themselves, or we can tell the women to suck it up. I'm honestly floored by the fact that there is any question of which way to go in this case.
You seem to think that the question is resolved by pointing out that nobody is forcing the women to participate. And there's something to this. And if we were talking about something like a private club then I think you would absolutely be right. But there are real external social reasons for a woman to get involved with a FOSS project (like employment obligations, wanting to hone her skills, giving back to a project); it's not just that women want to get involved. So the question as I see it is this: is it fair to make women choose between being offended and furthering their career/improving their skills/ etc. when the ONLY cost of avoiding the dilemma is to ask men to behave like gentlemen.
(Btw, I'm a man. Not sure if that was clear.)
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like I said. 0.1% of the comments. (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's leave the word "apologize" out of this for a bit. In fact, let's leave the whole "blame" thing out of it for a bit. It simply is, as a general rule, good for you to understand why other people were offended by somebody's action, and to demonstrate that you understand. (And I mean genuinely demonstrate that you genuinely do understand; a lot of this shit, in practice, is not genuine in sympathy or genuine in understanding.)
A lot of third-party "apologies" come down to this. They're really a recognition, by A's part, that A understands that B offended C, and why C considers the act as an offense. They're not necessarily an admission of responsibility; they're just recognition of somebody's perspective on an incident. Demonstrating that you understand why somebody took offense to something is a pretty good way of deescalating a situation when somebody genuinely takes offense, and if you have some authority over the situation (like, being a conference organizer or mailing list admin), it helps people keep faith on your authority (though you may need to do more than just that in many situations).
No, nobody expects that. But oftentimes, somebody who your are associated with does something to offend somebody else that you are also associated with, and in many of those situations, it is appropriate and good to demonstrate that you understand the nature of the offense. There is no clear line that separates the cases where you really must do so and the cases that you absolutely don't have to, but showing yourself as being too concerned over that tends to mark you as a selfish asshole who's more interested in assigning blame than in getting along with people.
Re:Oh brother. (Score:2, Insightful)
And no way do I read this place raw. But it doesn't seem to help.
Re:Mod parent up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't laugh - it's the truth! Schools have NEVER been a place of learning. They're nothing more than over-paid babysitters and have been for decades. I learned more on my own in the library and bookstores than I EVER got in school. These days, I don't even have to go to a library or bookstore as I can find even better material online. I only WISH we had had the net when I was in school.
Re:Oh brother. (Score:4, Insightful)
Watch whenever an article comes up that has any connection, however tenuous, with a woman, and immediately there will be comments--modded all the way up!--about sex.
Are you saying that comments about sex are intrinsically offensive to women?
Seriously though, as others pointed out, this topic is a troll, since no meaningful statistics were offered to show that FOSS community is hostile, insensitive, or unwelcoming to women. Are you saying that every message board or discussion forum where a troll gets through is sexist? Do you believe that women will suddenly start joining FOSS in droves if we reduce the number of sex jokes in kernel development from something like 0.1% to 0.01%? Would it help if we introduced 0.1% of posts that are offensive to men somehow?
Consider this for a moment: if women were just as willing to code as men, would we not have small FOSS projects led by women? FOSS is not a private club. You are a part of the community the moment you license your code under GPL or any other free license. Where are these two-or-three people projects done by women who were ostracized from the community of misogynistic jerks TFA painted? Where are Feminists forks? One pissed off woman coder would be more than able to fork or at least re-brand even a major project if she was offended by the sexism.
This shows, IMHO, that there is no significant sexism in FOSS development. Whatever little there is, it cannot be the major factor responsible for the near-exclusion of women. Other factors must be in play here, and we should figure out what they are and how we can improve the situation. Rather than solving this very real problem, TFA hand-picked a few trolls and declared the whole community to be anti-woman. By this logic, the mere presence of GNAA posts make Slashdot a racist forum and IT a racist field all around the world.
And to claim that Slashdot is neutral? Are you fucking kidding me? This place is thick with racism and sexism.
It is also thick with feminism and other great values. I, personally, think that all ethics discussed here are mainly discussed by trolls, and very little of what you guys and gals say about sexism has to do with technology or just plain common sense. In that respect, it is a very neutral forum indeed. You know I am right: you see opposite viewpoints modded up to the wazoo right next to each other all the time.
Funny you should mention that: FDA Guidelines (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Refreshment of memory (Score:1, Insightful)
OSS projects produce code, but that code is produced by human beings with egos and feelings and shit. If you forget that, you won't be a very effective team and will lose talent who might have made great contributions to your project.
Re:I'll second the call for examples. (Score:1, Insightful)
And that's exactly the problem - it's NOT 0.1% of your cake being faeces. It's one cake in 1000 having a trace of shit, and 999 being completely good. *Very* different things - by characterising the issue as the first rather than the second, you're saying all FOSS is tainted, instead of there just being a couple of bad apples.
Re:Read what you just wrote. (Score:3, Insightful)
So "boys will be boys" means there isn't sexism in OSS, and attitudes that might discourage women from participating?
I think you just proved my point.
Re:Read what you just wrote. (Score:3, Insightful)
Telling racy jokes in a casual environment is not discrimination, or sexism, or any kind of *ism at all, it is simply vulgar.
Telling racy jokes in a casual environment is exactly the kind of behavior that discourages female participation in FOSS. Most women feel uncomfortable with jokes like Stallman's (which was pretty mild really), ESPECIALLY in male-dominated environments, and the stuff on this list was considerably less mild than that. I can totally appreciate how it would drive women away.
And the fact that you're standing around saying, "No, it's okay, I'm just joking" -- as (I'm assuming) a man, defining what a woman has a right to be offended by -- is a further demonstration of institutionalized sexism.
I'm sure that guys telling crude jokes would welcome women. I doubt that the women would feel welcome, or be likely to come participate.
Re:Mod parent up... (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters isn't whether you can come up with a quantitative measure for whether there is sexism. What matters is whether women have a hard time in an environment due to their own observations.
Forget placing blame. That's only really important if you're trying to punish someone.
Rather, look for a solution. I have found that it is not really that difficult to listen to complaints and problems and to try to be sensitive to perceived issues without compromising my honour.
You can think of this as risk management. There might be sexism that you can't see. If there isn't and you don't act, then no problem. If there isn't and you do act, again, the actions required are pretty insignificant and will probably make you a better person anyway, but certainly nobody loses much. If there is and you do act, everyone wins big! If there is and you don't act, then the consequences are truly too horrible to comprehend (like: you'll have to date women who just don't appreciate love poems written in perl. Or, if you're feeling empathic today, a lot of women made miserable by feeling unwelcome when they seek a community of fellow geeks). So, given observation noise, what's the most sensible course of action?