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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.
I stopped reading after "I'm not complaining"
Exactly, on the internet nobody knows you're a dog (or a girl!). If there is some sort of glass ceiling on FOSS projects, then I don't see how it is supposed to work. Maybe the sexism is that girls don't want to work with creepy nerds and "creepy nerd" is pretty much the stereotype for FOSS developers?
I read the internet for the articles.
And I suspect a vast majority of FOSS people are dudes with a heartbeat and would react like the same overblown charges of racism that get directed towards non-progressives with heartbeats.
I think the male-female dynamic has much to argue over. In many areas there are cultural differences that keep women down and other areas where the natural differences of our mad ape ancestors merely express themselves in reality.
Many charges of sexism are valid, but some are so ridiculous they deserve the ire they generate.
No one is denying that there are idiots out there. Just browse at -1 here. You'll see every kind of comment for every kind of 'ism that you're looking for.
But let's look are real EXAMPLES of real COMMENTS. Okay?
And since we're talking about FOSS, we can look at the kernel mailing list. Hmmmmm, not a lot of sexist comments there. Particularly when taken as a percentage of total comments.
So if only 1.5% of developers are women ... but fewer than 0.1% of comments on development mailing lists are sexist ... what is the real "problem" that exists?
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.
I think the reaction is an expression of denial more than anything else.
OK, how are we supposed to disagree without being "in denial"?
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
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.
As much as the F/L/OSS community likes to pretend that it is distinct from the "real world" communities, it isn't. But whereas the "real world" is mostly comprised of idiots who lack the mental capacity to understand anything new, let alone seek it, F/L/OSS developers often represent some of the most curious, information-seeking individuals and some of the highest-calibre intellects out there.
So if we have trouble excusing such behaviour for the "normals", we must be far, far harder on ourselves for those same flaws.
There is a flip-side, though, that the original poster may have neglected to consider. F/L/OSS developers ARE amongst the brightest and the best, but they also have extraordinarily high levels of autistic behaviours, anti-social disorders, emotional instability and alienation.
(The first two are collectively known as "Geek Syndrome". The latter two are the inevitable consequence of Geek Syndrome in a society that tolerates no differences, no matter what it says.)
It is not just likely, but a near-certainty that people with that kind of internal and external pressure WILL fragment into groups that conceal differences by being essentially uniform.
I'm not sure if it can be called sexism when such behaviour is, at least in part, a mask to conceal what's going on. The mask can be sexist without the person underneath being.
However, true misogyny does exist, independent of the mask. THAT particular aspect of sexism should be rooted out and burned, as it is warped, buggy thinking. Bugs SHOULD be erased, and a buggy brain SHOULD be patched.
The problem is how to tell the mask from the person underneath. These are distinct issues. The mask doesn't need fixing, rather the person needs an extended API to handle errors, and the Real World needs replacing with Real World 2.0 to debug the flawed mental processes that produce the garbage in the first place.
Once either the person has better exception-handling or error trapping, and/or there's less noise generating errors, the mask can be erased. It's a filter that exists to hide bad wet-coding and so the sooner we get rid of the bad code, the sooner we can get rid of the filter.
My guess would be that if the mask died, a good 75% of the perceived sexism in F/L/OSS would die with it, without a single F/L/OSS coder needing to change their view of gender.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
THAWTELESS, West London, Monday — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release later this month of Ubuntu Linux 9.10, "Karmic Koala," to men.
Project founder Mark Shuttleworth explained that "this stuff is difficult to explain to girls" and thought they'd have gotten the hint when he called 8.04 "Hairy Hardon." "Worrying about sexism in open source just detracts from the battle for Linux. So we've put the tits back into the default desktop. And arses."
Crime-fighting geek Shuttleworth, who dresses as a billiionaire playboy by night, swore that plenty of women liked him lots and that he obviously wasn't unable to get laid or anything, having gotten seriously rich in the dot-com era, not to mention having gone into space. "Chicks dig that stuff. Trust me, I've met lots of girls. More than five!"
Canonical Community Manager Jono Bacon echoed this sentiment on his blog. "We just don't understand how come women are 15% of all computer programmers but only 1% of open source programmers. It must be a bit complicated for them. That's why I've written this spontaneous blog post, completely unrelated to anything my boss may or may not have said, on all the fantastically talented women in free software, even if none of them seem to work much on Ubuntu any more. Also, I'm absolutely confident that saying I'm in a computer geek heavy metal band will get me lots of chicks too, even if their pretty little heads can't understand Linux."
A special women's edition of Ubuntu 9.10 will be released on a bright pink CD. "It doubles as a makeup mirror!" said Shuttleworth.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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"?
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.)
“It’s a free market world,” said Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy. “It’s about competence and getting the job done. Working sixteen hours a day on a project you really love is par for the course. That we’re all eighteen to twenty-five is from the accelerated Internet-based learning of the new generation, not exploitation of young workers who don’t know any better.”
Over a third of women in IT had complained of sexism up to sexual harassment at work. “It’s women who just don’t have social skills,” said Nerdboy. “They object to the guys freely choosing to all go down the strip club after work. They’re just not team players.”
Open source projects have worse figures than industry, with male to female ratios approaching fifty-to-one. Many women cite gross sexism on mailing lists and IRC. “In my experience, women just don’t have a working sense of humour and can’t take a joke. My girlfriend thought it was funny! Even leaving helpful comments on their blogs didn’t work. ‘Political correctness’ is no exaggeration. Anyway, I met my girlfriend online!”
“...,” said his girlfriend, RealDoll Ada.
“And it’s not like you can get the applicants,” added Nerdboy. “We can hardly get any girls to apply for a job here. They’re obviously naturally not good enough geeks. It must be evolutionary. We need more pink computers.”
“This is of course a terrible, terrible state of affairs,” said a spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry. “In the meantime, we need lots more IT workers shipped in from overseas.” He was later heard muttering something about “divide and conquer” and sniggering.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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'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
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
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