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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."
Trying to figure out what you mean with that last sentence.. If I just translate it to another setting:
" So, if only 1.% of the developers are negroid ... but fewer than 0.1% of comments on development mailing lists are racist ... what is the real "problem" that exists? "
Imagine that rather than having a naked chick every so many slides (as happened in a talk @ GoCaRuCo), you would have a picture of a negroid in chains animation pulling in the next slide of the presentation. Add a whip to the scene and it would make even a mostly white audience severely uncomfortable.
I think we're just far more sensitive to racism than to sexism, which makes it a bit harder to pick up acts of sexism.
Overweight, socially awkward men with poor hygiene resent women. They really resent women who are smarter than them or are better at the things around which they derive self-esteem.
The problem isn't that you aren't tolerant of women. The problem is that you're tolerant of the sad sacks who drive them away. FOSS needs a pecking order and it needs to keep the cretins at the bottom, where they belong. You're living Revenge of the Nerds but you're letting Booger call the shots.
Okay, let's take you're example of .01%. So, one out of every 1000 posts contains sexiest language. That's a problem in of itself. It doesn't solve the problem to say that other things are worse. Obviously 4Chan will have more sexist and racist comments than the Debian mailing list. Open source development is based on a community model of development. If you want it to succeed, you need to understand that when one part of the group gets attacked because of some intrinsic attribute about them, you're going to have problems. Do you want Linux distributions to be better? That means you need every single talented person who's willing to contribute to contribute. And I guarantee you there are a lot more women developers who would be willing to contribute than there are men who will quite over being "censored" when someone asks them not to make an ass of themselves.
Sleep is for the weak!
Parent should be modded up. Parent parent is either saying that it's okay to make death threats against men or that women are too frail and stupid to protect/get necessary legal help themselves. And since we're talking about FOSS where most people are geographically anonymous, it's even less relevant to bring up a psychotic killer who chose gender lines as how to pick victims.
Consider guys in IT generally take the piss out of each other, I'm not sure why women feel they should be treated any differently. in fact, isn't that the point of equality that you're treated the same?
If you prefer an environment where people aren't as humorous but instead talk about how well each other is dressed and other safe bland crap then perhaps you should look for IT jobs in places where individuality has already been neutered, like government offices, old well established companies or your kitchen.
Who the hell keeps modding you up for posting the same non-point over and over?
I'll tell you about the Linux Kernel Mailing List which has thousands of non-sexist comments. Thousands.... Or is it that you do not understand what 0.1% means?
Let's say that your father has THOUSANDS of perfectly normal and loving interactions with you, twenty a day for over twenty years. Surely that's enough that you won't notice the one time he snuck in your room at night and raped you, right?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
...to be hysterically offended about, here's a bit more.
Answer me honestly, girls. Was there a single one of you, who was upset by Shuttleworth's or RMS' comments, who was actually straight?
Nobody ever says it, but I've seen the truth on a fairly first hand basis. Feminism genuinely isn't the domain of heterosexuals, largely speaking.
Accusations of chauvanism can also very legitimately go both ways.
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 love how this gets modded troll. Nice one.
+1 Rational