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but it has something to do with "gamers are dead." Nope, guess gamers aren't dead. We're still right here where we've always been.

If so-called "gamers" actually read those articles instead of getting all butthurt and crying SJW, they'd have read what I read in those articles which was:

"Gamers as an exclusionary term is dead. Gamers aren't just 15-25 year old men playing shooters, and those young men and the industry as a whole needs to admit that."

You goddamned SJWs kept fucking insisting that a man (trans woman here--I know what I'm talking about, tranny please) in a mini-skirt two fucking sizes too small for HIM whose body language is and manner or speaking are utterly masculine has some fucking right to claim he's a woman. Is that fucking crossdresser you're trying to make me believe is a woman even on HRT?

You should know better than to doubt some OTHER transpersons internal identity based just on appearance. Would you have liked that if/when it happened to you? And tranny please, I'm also trans so I DO know what I'm talking about.

So, call me sexist, but I am no longer willing to teach introductory programming, Boolean algebra, and relational data to the cisfemale hunnies.

Why yes, you are sexist. And transpeople more than anyone should know better. What if MAC or Sephora had refused me service? What if Makeupalley insisted on my birth certificate before allowing me to register?

In the few programming classes I ever took, there were always women.

There is nothing I can fucking do to get a cisfemale hunny interested in learning this shit enough that she's willing to do shit like run through a Linux from Scratch just for the hell of it and the experience.

I think the Linuxchix would like to have a word with you.

http://www.linuxchix.org/

But perhaps if would be easier to get women involved in "learning this shit" if you didn't refer to them and objectify them as "cisfemale hunnies"

OK, how are we supposed to disagree without being "in denial"?

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 if you're willing to look.

What reports of sexism have there been?

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, 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.

Why not Skype, I use that on my mac to talk with my friend in Hawaii who uses Linux on here laptop

Liar!!! We all know chicks don't run Linux!

(Note: Lest you think I really am a jerk, I assure you the above is a joke only. I actually learnt kernel hacking from these ladies:
http://www.linuxchix.org/content/courses/kernel_hacking/
I don't agree with their politics as I find it too separatist, but this was one fantastic tutorial and I have no problem crediting a female for work well done)

Chick isn't inherently derogatory on the part of the speaker. i use it to mean 'a female who is neither a girl, nor an old lady'. My girlfriend uses it the same way. Think of it as the English equivalent to Mademoiselle. On it's own it is as derogatory as dude.

That's how I use it, and I think that's how most of the other women involved in LinuxChix, DevChix, and WikiChix use it.

http://lobsterhunter.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=167496

also fails to load... a few more of these and I'll start to wonder whether Amazon is nailing pages that might be negative about Kindle..

http://www.google.com/search?q=why+kindle+will+fail+mirror&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

So, I went to:

http://www.linuxchix.org/live?page=5

and nothing. Then, i just searched it, and STILL nothing...

is Amazon paying off or forcing people to end their anti-Kindle pages?

Is anyone else having problems finding negative Kindle blogs or articles or comments?

I appreciate that you say that you haven't used an RPM based distro for several years. I think you'd find if you tried one now that the tools (such as YUM and PUP and SMART) simplify package managament greatly. When you add to this that the quality and quantity of RPM packaging (now 5000 packages for Fedora) is going up there really isn't much of a case to make for debs and distros based on them being superior. Add to this that there are examples of "Deb-hell" if you look for them.

The reason that debs used to be superior was because of the Debian community working together to package Free software according to agreed high standards. It's a pity that more people don't explicitly acknowledge that Ubuntu is just a slightly tweaked distro sitting on top of all this work done by the Debian community.

Looks like a linux developer will be coming out with a gimp manual soon. I think she based it on a gimp course she taught online .

http://www.linuxchix.org/

right.

Yes, you were being sarcastic - but this is SlashDot. You need either to add the <sarcasm> tags or be as subtle as a haddock across the chops.

Hmm, amazing what a fairly innocent search will turn up.

Well, sadly it appears that carla's partner passed away recently and people closer to their home than the pope don't approve either.

Like these ones?

Lemme get this straight. Don't tell sexist jokes. Don't call people bitches. Show some respect. Don't make sexual advances. Don't treat women stereotypically. Yet the website for women interested in Linux is called LinuxChix ???!!!

So I shouldn't make sexual avances or call people bitches, but calling them chicks is OK?!?!?! WTF!?!?!? I smell a double-standard here.

Of course there are no girls on slashdot...this is a premiere numero uno machismo all guy Linux rules type site...the girls have setup their own at: Linux Chix ...however, I think they also have a similiar "world domination" type mentality =)

• Women in Linux HOWTO
• Association for Women in Computing
• LinuxChix

Well, this article that I found here that discusses the limitations of Klez on WINE and how Sircam was able to run on WINE. All in all, it appears to be a limited threat.

Yes they do! Take a look at http://www.linuxchix.org/ for one spot where they gather.

But I wouldn't guarantee any show up. If I were a single geek girl (I'm married) I know I'd find it intimidating. Think of the ratio of guys/girls and how many people are going to be hitting on you if you are the least bit attractive. The last thing most girls want is a horde of geeks drooling all over them, even if they are like minded.

Oh come on now. I've been playing with Linux since before RedHat 4.2 was released.

And I'm definitely female - I checked before I posted this just to be sure.

And haven't you heard of linuxchix.org?

A few years ago I found a console image viewer !! This could be it:zgv

I've found that the female programmers I know are some of the most interesting, intelligent, well-spoken, and polite people I've ever met. And they give good interviews.

Know it.

Love it.

I hope you don't meen touchy-feely things like the crud Purple Moon puts out, trying to get girls to use computers by reinforcing sexual stereotypes and making them more relationshippy. There was an AP or Reuters story (can't find it now, sorry) a few weeks ago about a study that found women use the internet now as much as men, but for girly things like women.com--the same hoo-ha in women's magazines at the grocery store.
Dumbing things down to "appeal to women" may get my mom looking at martha stewart online but it's not going to attract women to programming, diddling with hardware or playing with unix.

If you mean there's a chicken-and-egg problem of support for women in IT you're right; people don't generally want to get involved in something no one they know does. That's why groups like Linux Chix and unix sluts are helpful, because they let women know they are not alone in their choice to go into techie things.

Firstly Deb, I have nothing but respect for your technical ability and your work with the OSWG. What I want to know is, how does a savvy professional and self-titled feminist like yourself justify your work on LinuxChix? Let me explain...

When I first discovered the LinuxChix site I was very excited... here was an opportunity to meet some of the other ladies in the industry, compare stories, and talk tech. I was sorely disappointed though... after a few weeks of monitoring the lists, I saw little technical discussion that wasn't already covered by mainstream FAQs and discussion groups, a lot of talk about boyfriends, and a fair amount of male-bashing radical talk about the need for things like women-only seminars and distributions.

Now I'm a woman in the industry, and I strongly feel that the day I can't hold my own with the big boys I should turn in my engineering ring. What's the deal? Do women need these special services because we can't handle the REAL distributions and seminars? I think not, and if a man said that (and I don't know any who would - in my experience most are EAGER to let the ladies play too) you'd smack him so hard his head would spin!

Now I believe I understand (and support) your original intent in founding the group, but on reflection I am wondering if perhaps in creating a ladies-only (or at least ladies-primarily) environment you have done the ladies a disservice. Why encourage women to cut out the majority of the knowledge base by submitting questions to LinuxChix instead of either finding their own answers online or querying the more mainstream lists?

Does LinuxChix as it exists today meets its original goals or your original vision in founding it? If so, how can you prevent it from becoming a crutch for those ladies unwilling (or unable) to deal with the real world? I hope you don't feel this is a slam... as I said, I respect you both personally and professionally, but this question has been bugging me for some time, and I had to get it off my chest. I look forward to your response.

For those interested in a little more bacground on the interviewee, here's her page on linuxchix (the link on oswg.org is wrong)

http://www.linuxchix.org/docs/chix/deb. html

Ale

But you *need* to leave your keyboard every few days or so and what would be more wonderful than being able to spend those few off-line sleeping hours dreaming of you and that smart chick riding around on your bike...

You've got your own smell alright - what you need now is simultaneous inhalation of both the chick-smell and some bike grease. Now to the multi-tasking part, and do not crash out until ready:

#1) First, do a thorough Kevin Kline-style masculine armpit-sniffing to establish your own existence the old low-tech way.

#2) Head over to some classic motorcycle site to smell the CO2 and leaked motor oil. If you've ever been riding in India you'll be also rewarded with the smell of sheer fear that comes with that territory.

#3) Now, for the hard-to-find smart chick smell (close your eyes and soon enough such rare bird will be sitting right behind you) open another screen from this link for that elusive pink elephant scent and you're on your way to a gonzo-geek heaven.

If, for some reason, you'll end up with the smell of a Dodo bird in an oil slick you've simply got to work harder on your mental associations.

• Linux Chix
• Unix Sluts
• Girl Geek
• The Systers Home Page
• For gamers, GameGal.com
• and the slightly more gamer-oriented GameGirlz.com
• and the ever so punk GrrlGamer
• Of course, there's The Society of Women Engineers

This is just with five minute's looking.

Try the following:

http://www.ai.mit.edu/peopl e/ellens/Gender/pap/pap.html
http://tap.mills.edu/
http://slinky.scrye.com/~lej/women/
http://netizen.com.au/~skud/articles/c hick2/
http://www.linuxchix.org
... and no doubt many more.

I'm sick of this same thing coming up on slashdot every few weeks, too. Bookmark those sites, guys, and stop making the same old assumptions over and over.

There aren't that many, but there are a few. Where I work, I know of at least two women who work on my floor (of about 60 people) who have IT-related degrees. At least two more are engineers. I find most of the women in my organization are project managers (which is no easy profession, really) but since my organization is very technical in nature, most are at least competent in understanding technical details, even if they aren't IT people or engineers themselves.

In my industry, though, there are LOT of women who are engineers. I'd say the ratio is not quite 50/50, but maybe 60/40. (I hold the same respect for engineers that I do IT people. Both fields are HIGHLY technical in nature and many engineers are competent hackers).

Oh yeah, and for female Linux hackers, check out LinuxChix I'm sure its a good start anyways.

Personally, I'd like to meet a few female hackers. Especially if they're hot... :) Drop me an e-mail :)

See, realize this. Most of you linux hackers were doing this since your early days of high school -- at the very worst since you hit college. In the adolescent social setup, there is often a congregation of people around a theme.. those who get into linux or computers are largely male "geeks". And the most known thing about male "geeks" is that Women Are From Mars.

No, it's not a "women can't do it" problem at this point, it's an "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE!!!" phenomenon. Girls who do try to play with computers when they're younger have to constantly navigate this.. as a result they're either scared off or they simply don't get the same exchange of information because they're scaring the geeks.

So, take this girl who was actually interested in computers and throw her into college now. Suddenly she's behind all these guys who've been geeking for years with each other, meanwhile she's been forced to learn it on her own, and she feels the disadvantage strongly. Only now it's worse.. suddenly she's "one of the few geekgirls out there" and thusly desirable by all geeks. And she's STILL not getting the information exchange like everyone else.

A lot of women navigate this by hitting online with male monikers and personas to try and circumvent that attitude (btw, someone recently went to the newsgroups posting roughly the same thing under both male and female names, the male got more respect, the female got hit on), or they just quietly duck back into the mold of "learning it for themselves" as they've always done.

It's a bad situation, really. What *I* would like to see as a strong female geek (who is also trying to avoid hiding either myself or my femininity) is more women helping women, and more women helping the young girls. I don't advocate complete separation.. but having support systems and role models for those starting out is vital. I also don't think that trying to change the geek mindset of "OH MY GAWD THERE IS A GIRL HERE" is going to work, that's just too much a part of being a geek.

As for "why aren't there women in open source support sites out there?" .. uh, very recently there was an article posted here about linuxchix.org.

I, personally, would love to start a branch for women in FreeBSD .. an even rarer phenomenon in my experience. :)

UNIX Systems and Network Administrator and FreeBSD chick,

LinuxChix would be a good first stop for finding female hackers. *I* was pretty happy to find others of my kind there. :) -> Terri