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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."
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.
My work here is dung.
Yeah I guess you may have encountered some jokes, but it's your code that matters, not your plumbing. If you're offended by jokes, joke back or say it's inappropriate - in the informal community of FOSS, that's about all you can do.
If you truly think you're a victim, create an androgynous pseudonym. The tone of OP's article suggests a hyper sensitivity to me.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
....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.
That's assuming you can pin down a consistent definition of feminism.
How can someone speak out against generalizations made towards an entire group of people (women), while at the same time condemning an entire group of people (FOSS)?
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.
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.
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
> 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 please.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
If a woman programmed and became a geek because she really wanted to do it, and allowed neither the unpopularity of her choice nor anything that some online asshats have to say to dissuade her, then she'd be just like a man. If men needed a culture of approval and acceptance and someone to remind them whenever possible that they are wanted and welcome, and then and only then could they program if they wanted to, then they'd be just like women. This arrangement necessarily leads to the appearance of men doing whatever they want while women are excluded. I believe it's the women who need to change, to get a bit more backbone, and to realize that anyone who's ever done great things has caught a lot of flak for it. If they could do that in a graceful way instead of a bitchy way that only proves they are better at hassling someone than the sexists, very little would ever stop them. Otherwise they are just as strong and, when they do have that determination, just as able as men. I don't see this as a sexual difference, more like a mental image that is quite malleable.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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.
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/ 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"?
As opposed to the rest of the world where people get where they are by hard work and ingenuity.
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.
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"?
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?
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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).
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.
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. 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.
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!), 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...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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. 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?
Is that people just being petty or is it that meeting the first 80% of a goal is much easier than the last 20%?
Your brain is not a computer.
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.
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.
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.
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. :(
Because they're geeks. If they were socially-adjusted, attractive men, it wouldn't be sexist at all. Its only sexist if you don't want the guy to flirt with you. Also, they shouldn't have to actually tell the man they're not interested. They should just know. Most of these creeps have the audacity of not reading your mind.
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.
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".
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 escalate.
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.
Sleep is for the weak!
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?
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.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
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.
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!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Yes, it's a perfect example of what the OP was talking about.
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.
open source modern art: laser taggi
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.
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.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
caritj.org
They handle every subject : http://www.xkcd.com/642/
Even their subject is accurate.
And I am aiming for 'sad but true' mod points.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You sir, are full of it.
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
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.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
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.
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.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
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.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
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.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
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.
Are you adequate?
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?
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think you have a lot to learn about feminism, it seems like you have bought in to the whole FUD against feminists. We all hate zealots they are everywhere, e.g. you can't counter "hey lets not make sexist jokes" with "but they say we are rapist" it's not in the same ballpark. Kom igen läs på.
When a woman does it, it is bitching. When a man does it, it is being assertive.
Anarchists never rule
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.
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.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
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.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
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.)
caritj.org
If I understand this correctly, the only thing you could possibly believe is what you've witnessed yourself. In other words, you believe that your own personal anecdotes are data.
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.
Are you adequate?
Maybe have a look at this: FDA Food Defect Levels Handbook. For instance, strawberries are allowed to be up to 45% moldy. Wheat flour is A-OK as long as it averages less than 75 insect fragments per 50 grams. Cocoa beans can contain 10mg of mammal feces per pound. The point is, perfection is not possible. The existence of some sexist comments among billions of internet postings doesn't justify condemning the entire community. I'll fully support you in condemning individuals for their own behaviors. However, I think most of us have realized that arguing with internet trolls is futile. So if some jackass statement in a forum isn't followed up with righteous indignation, don't assume everyone else agrees with them.
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.
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.