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FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire and Denial
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."
All of the high-tech companies that I've worked for have many more men than women. Most of the applications for positions are from men.
In over 20 years in the industry, I only remember observing one sexist incident.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
There was an example on a ruby conference earlier this year: http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/
“If he had left it at a few introductory jokes, I would be writing a very different post. Instead the porn references continued with images of scantily-clad women gratuitously splashed across technical diagrams and intro slides. As he got into code snippets, he inserted interstitial images every few slides.
Now, isn't that by itself enough to get you thinking?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
That's the result of a 5 minute google search.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
You've linked (1) to a link (2) referencing a presentation (3) by ONE GUY at a rather small meeting (200 people).
So that ONE instance is repeated over and over (and linked to) as "evidence" of "sexism" instead of being seen as what it really is:
ONE instance out of thousands of non-sexist presentations.
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"?
If you live in a northeastern state maybe. Go anywhere where religiousness is decently above the average and you will see girls unable to work anywhere out of a dress and men with long hair beaten up. The worst one is discrimination against gays.
I know a guy that is gender confused, bi-sexual with long hair fairly gender neutral and lives in a religious community. Growing up he got beaten regularly by a wide variety of the city, including people stoning him. He had his jaw broken a few times, been shoved down flights of stairs (this is half by adults too not kids) and even stabbed.
Just because you happen to live in a nice part of the country don't think it is the same everywhere. Violent crimes over these things ramps up a lot as soon as you travel into the bible belt. I think defending 'equalists' (I much prefer equalists over feminists) is very important.
Why is feminism on dev teams even an issue? Most of this stuff is done via electronic exchanges where gender, race, or even weight or height issues can only become an issue if someone DECIDES to make it an issue. I've been doing this nonsense two decades now and I have never even considered the gender or race of the person I was communicating with unless that person had already chosen to make known their agenda.
Feminism has a history of being anti-male, and that agenda has had GREAT detrimental influence upon this culture. From child porn laws (go back 15 years and see just how many of the warnings about those laws perverting our culture have come to pass in spades) to the way our boys (and increasingly our girls) are drugged most of the way through school simply because of their otherwise normal juvenile hormonal and brain functions, the feminist agenda has proven itself a menace to whatever society it touches.