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Tackling Open Source's Gender Issues
angry tapir writes "Women's participation in open source development is at a far lower level than women's participation in proprietary software development. One of the groups that aims to change this is the Ada Initiative: A non-profit organization formed last year. I recently caught up with its two founders, Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora and comp sci PhD student Mary Gardiner, to discuss the project."
Good luck trying to find a woman that doesn't care about money.
And if you do, please tell her that I'm looking for a new wife to help me support my first two.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The reasons for the lack of female participation in open source are a touchy subject, and I probably risk offending some folks, but the fact is that the movement is largely made up of male computer nerds with few social skills and little female contact. My guess is that women fare better in proprietary software development because it implies a level of professionalism, since if you can't interact well socially with co-workers, you usually don't work there anymore.
Richard Stallman made some infamous remarks at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit about "EMAC virgins", explicitly defining them as women who needed to be "relieved" of their EMACS virginity as a "holy duty." RMS defended it as a parody of religion, missing the point that the complaints were about the sexism and not the religious satire (RMS also believes in legalizing pedophilia and possession of child pornography--probably not the most palatable spokesperson to get behind in the first place).
If you're a man who rarely hangs out with women, it's easy to forget what it's like for the other side, especially if they're in a field in which they're practically outsiders. Women didn't take too kindly to being singled out like that at a tech conference. The bigger problem is the backlash from male techies that always flares up when this issue is discussed, which was amplified in the case of RMS because his core supporters tend to be so rabid.
I'm subscribed to the Cocoa-dev mailing list, and one of the regular members there began submitting messages under her real name, revealing that she had previously been posting under a male name because they found that they got more direct responses and less obnoxious comments. And this is Apple platform development, where you might assume the more liberal elements of that particular demographic would lend itself to increased tolerance.
I really can't imagine what it must be like to be a female developer and hope some of them voice their opinions here.
Women have a hard time being obnoxious, arrogant, self-centered fuckheads. They are willing to make compromises in the interest of forward progress. They also are not as good as men at doling out sexual innuendo and juvenile potty humor. In short, they are completely unsuited to the task.
Nerds alienate females badly enough. Nerds who don't shower at least once a month are worse.
I mean come on that's been a problem for years right?
Why does it seem like this comes up every few months?
No thanks. The open-source movement has a hard enough time without having the effort split on the gender line.
We get paid for what we do !! Sukaz !!
They just don't post stupid questions to message boards because they RTFM.
When I use a piece of software the gender of its developers is the last thing I care about.
....like a woman with geek creds. [Looking at you, Jeri Ellsworth.]
I somehow doubt that the open-source movement is the only place you feel excluded from.
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working in software, I know many developers both male and female. I have a few personal female acquaintances that were (past-tense) previously active in the open source community, but left.
They were aggressively harassed by a very vocal online minority. This vocal minority would trash the ladies name on a large swath of online forums while using different names and accounts. Two received multiple anonymous threats of violence. This went on for years, and the ladies in question finally left the open source community.
This went above and beyond 'normal' flaming in online forums. This involved many forums, each cross referencing each other to lend validity to their (entirely fabricated) claims. And it went on for years, including insinuation that the female developer would come to harm at conferences.
It's very unlikely this happens in every case, but it takes more than a single nutjob attacking someone, or even many nutjobs attacking, to make someone leave the community. It takes good people like you and me to ignore the nutjobs, to not step in and say, "That's enough."
Ok so you were going for the oh so funny 'all women are gold diggers' stereotype.
I'm not sure where you go to meet women, but you're definitely doing it wrong. My first girlfriend, although highly motivated by money, wanted to make her own. That is to say she was career oriented. My fiance is an academic/bibliophile type, and is one of the least materialistic people I know. It's a very attractive quality.
Can we lay off the stereotypes? And if your post reflects your actual life experience then I feel sorry for you.
From my experience in the tech world, I would say there are far less women who live and breathe computers even among those who work with them. While finding females in the IT industry is far less rare than it used to be, one thing I do notice is a larger portion of them tend to prefer specializing in one area, rather than an overall knowledge of subjects, and even fewer that I find that actually continue to enjoy spending time on computers outside of work. That is not to discredit or claim any of them are less smart than their male counterparts, in many ways many of them are far smarter in their respective specialization, but very few women that I have worked with tend to be the types that will sit on a computer at work all day long, and then go home and work on their personal computer related personal projects.
It should come as no surprise that the participation of women in open-source projects is low. It's hard enough trying to keep up with men in paid engineering jobs without dividing the effort by contributing to open source as well.
But I don't care what dangly bits are in your pants. I will probably never see you in person, you are just an ally, possibly a friend, in development.
I mean, the fundamental problem is that there are thousands of (general case) engineering major men who never interact with women because there IS a cultural divide on the front of women in engineering. Until the early years problem of women being indoctrinated into thinking the only way to live life is through socialization and pop culture knowledge dictates how good of a person you are, the fundamental problem won't be fixed. The open source community is full of people in the general sense that love developing software for everyone to use. That isn't a sex deterministic thing, and attraction to open source development shouldn't be sex derived.
The basic answer is that you won't change the thousands of men who think it is ok to sexually harass anyone with two X chromosomes on the internet. They just need to take the same stance on it that everyone else does on everything else - ignore them and they go away. If there are active developers on a project that would harass someone for having a 50% chance at birth roll one way instead of another, I wouldn't want to associate with them either.
But like I said, the problem is cultural. We might have laws saying women are equal in the workplace, but modern families raise kids on two distinct tracks depending on their chromosome composition, and it breeds this behavior. That needs to be fixed rather than trying to do damage control after the fact.
I must confess, after well over a decade in the industry, plus school before that ... the number of female programmers I've known is quite small.
I've known one or two women with PhDs who were more like the architects, not sure how much they coded any more. I've worked with a couple of women who were consultants ... very technical, again, very smart ... but I'm only talking about 1-2 people over 15 years. In university I remember a maximum of about 5 women who were pursuing CS as a major, and I'm pretty sure at least half of them transferred out.
But full on 'code monkey' kinda geeks with all that entails? I'm not sure I've actually ever known any. Does anybody have any accurate statistics as to what percentage of programmers are women?
In my experience, it has always been well below 10% .. not saying that's how it "should" be, just that in my experience you're already talking about a smaller percentage of all coders ... and then the number of people I've known actively involved in Open Source projects goes down by another huge jump.
Even the women I have known who work in tech have always manifested as a different 'kind' of geek ... more like the guy I knew who played university football but had a Master's in comp sci; smart, capable, but away from the office didn't have any of the 'geek' traits of the stereotype. Not as obsessed with the minutia of things or Star Trek, and generally with better developed social skills. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Try offering your women something other than money. Maybe culture, personality, ... . You'll attract a different, better type of woman.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Saying something is a stereotype is not the same as saying it's never true. People often forget that.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Tits or GTFO.. Tend's to drive women out.
You know a stereotype is based - usually - on the behavior of the majority of a group. In other words, the fact that you have two counter examples doesn't prove any more your point than the OP did his. Not mentioning that one of your examples actually gives credibility to his point.
Note that I'm not taking a side here - yet. Just pointing out you made a very poor job at debunking the OP.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
A project carrying an "open source" or "free software" license is not necessarily an "open source" project. Plenty of "Cathedral" projects with paid developers with an open source license that may (or may not) get downstream patches kicked up. Those projects are going to look like any other corporate development group. These are really the core projects.
The "open source projects" of people hacking code make up the bulk of developers in open source, and is the hobbyist developers. People that have a lot of time to devote to a hobby are either single, or older empty nesters. Men can hang out in the single realm and start a family @ 40, women cannot. This limits women from engaging in serious time commitments like open source projects.
The pool of women available to do this is pretty small.
That's without dealing with the fact that women tend to have tighter deviations from the norm in various areas, which means that any group that is selected from extreme outliers is going to be disproportionately male. This is true whether you are selecting politicians that reach Federal office, people that are extremely interested in programming to pursue as a hobby, moving to America as a day laboring immigrant, or criminally oriented men to form a gang. The outliers are predominately (but not exclusively) male.
In local politics, where the time commitment is NOT as extreme and the skill set needed to be elected is NOT that extreme, we have a pretty good mix of men and women on city counsels, school boards, mayoral seats, etc. Not 50-50, but a pretty good representation. We have plenty of female mayors, but we've NEVER had a female governor. Outliers in general are predominately male.
The fact that brain function related to intelligence is not identical in men and women is well established, despite similarities in generalized intelligence measurements and political correctness. It's more nature than nurture; don't blame society. This has been debated by the experts, and the nature side won: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html (also note Pinker's references), as much as an inconvenience this is to some people. I expect to be modded down for this, as it's always easiest to shoot the messenger... cheers anyway, folks.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
...is ruthlessly meritocratic. Sorry girls, but HERE of all places, you won't be treated like a special snowflake just because of what you have between your legs. Put up genuinely good code and people won't care who wrote it, but the thing is, most of you just can't, and yet also can't just shut up whining and trying to get an easier way etc under the guise of "equality" like in so many other aspects in life.
So Mary thinks we should feel sorry for her, and listen to her perspective.
I guess you have all read her take on what is like to grow up as a male nerd?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KmgokynecaIJ:geekfeminism.org/2011/09/04/geeks-as-bullied-and-bullies/+geeks+as+buillies&cd=6&hl=sv&ct=clnk&client=safari
Sorry Mary, you don't get to complain and demand we respect your view when you want to dictate everyone elses views.
Interesting choice of a hill to die on.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
An intelligent woman is like a guinea pig. Neither guinea nor a pig. (NSFW)
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
I think this misses what the parent's point actually was. He wasn't saying that all women are gold diggers and want your money, he said that women generally are motivated to work for money as opposed to working for free (love of the project) on an open source project. Your first girlfriend being motivated by money and wanting to work for her own would actually play right into that. Still a stereotype, but not quite the one you may think it is.
1. A lot of the creepy sexist behaviour in the open source community is more a result of the lack or women rather than the cause.
2. There seems to be a subset of communities, new atheism, rationality groups, loud political activism, that seem to have a mixture of exclusivity and deliberately being an outsider. For whatever reason (culture or biology) these tend to be massively male dominated. The Open Source movement feels like it belongs in this group.
3. Combining 2 with programmings pre-existing male dominance and you get a very skewed gender distribution.
I have no idea how to fix things, but that's my perspective on some of the causes of the issue.
I stole this Sig
stop to think of that?
Also, last I checked, OS projects don't have any AA incentives, like their corporate corporate world counterparts.
I know this will get moderated for flaming, but I am so sick of all these patently false, politically correct positions.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Honestly? Stay technical - everything else is politics and we know where this ends....
Perhaps it's that women aren't dumb enough to give away the fruits of their labor?
Society has to get over the preoccupation of having a 50/50 gender split on everything.
As a married father of a girl and two boys it is very clear that every child at a very early age (6 months) starts displaying very different interests and abilities. My two boys both took to boy things instantly but one loved swords (guns, sports etc) and the other took to mechanical stuff (cars, thomas the train etc.)
A rule is just a general principle, but, as a rule girls move into IT for reasons other than the love of coding. Claim that they are too smart to work for free, that they figured out that IT staff are abused, that nerds scare them away or whatever you want... but the truth is they just have other interests, get over it.
...that says more about *you* than the female sex.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Not speaking up signals to these fuckheads that their behavior is acceptable. It's not.
HAND.
The conceit that all stereotypes have a grain of truth at their core is one that is mostly championed by the people who are both unaffected by stereotypes and also enjoy being prejudiced against others. Not to mention it's incorrect.
that will surely bring them in, plus we'll have more money to buy shavers, clean clothes, nice shoes, fancy cars.
I somehow doubt that the open-source movement is the only place you feel excluded from.
I somehow doubt that the open-source movement is the only place from which you feel excluded.
If you're going to feed the troll, at least do it grammatically.
Good luck trying to find a woman that doesn't care about money.
Hah! That's easy! Just find a woman with a rich husband.
[ducks]
That's quite a stereotype you've got there...
Normally I don't post but this has to stop. I don't see men trying to push equality in fields that have no men. I pick up a video game mag. What do I see? Oh shit we don't have enough women in the industry we must get MORE! If more women go into these fields good for them! Another thing is women who post on the internet outside of normal womanly things (common) such as facebook or lookbook. They will get lots of attention because that one girl is interested in a mostly male activity. So males will jump all over that. OMG SHE LIKES WHAT I LIKE. So you better expect some kind of attention if you are using a female name that points you out as a female. Then you are just looking for attention.
Saying something is a stereotype is not the same as saying it's never true. People often forget that.
People tend to conveniently "forget" anything that gives them an excuse to be offended.
For a certain kind of person who has little or no power elsewhere, being "offended" is extremely gratifying. It gives them an excuse to demand that someone else change their behavior. Your post practically served it to this type on a silver platter. It usually takes less temptation than you gave for their control motive to manifest.
Personally I thought your post was humorous but then I'm not looking to tell other people how they should live, what they should think, what they should say, how they should feel, etc. If I really had a problem with something you said, I would ignore you and move on to someone I prefer. Life is not politically correct, the world is not fair, and other people have this habit of not often doing what you wish they would do. I made my peace with that a long time ago.
If I want to provide a contrast, I do it by setting a better example. Otherwise I live and let live. So for me it's easy to see the bullshit behind "I'm offended" and its variants. The only time "I'm offended" is valid is when someone is forcing you to listen, and in that case, the problem is that they are forcing you to listen.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Is there a gender check in GIT? Is there a gender check in subversion? If I submit code under nothing more than a pseudonym then I have contributed to open source and taken part without a care in the world as to what my gender is. If I then get on freenode to talk to the developers; there's still no gender test. There's no gender test on reading the 'learn programing language X in 30 days'.
So there's absolutely nothing stopping women from joining open source; so why then is there 'issues' and 'problems' doesnt sound like a problem to me. Simple fact is that women arent in open source because the $ is better elsewhere. Engineering and drafting scholarships worth $25,000 for women; large corporations with 'hiring quotas' that give women any wage they ask for regardless of skill in the fields they are considered lacking. Sexism in other fields draw technical women away from open source and getting open source into the same sexist $ offering to draw women is just absurd.
this attitude that because the women are not well suited to the work, the men should apply themselves or excel at it either because it makes the women look bad. Yes, let's make sure everything is the same right down the middle! And we can all look forward to going back to living in caves, except from now on all we'll have to eat will be dirt. Though I'm sure some ~~miraculous~~ woman is about to invent a perpetual motion machine any day now...
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Step 1: Stop announcing such personal details to people who don't care
Step 2: Watch in amazement as the 'exclusion' drops away!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
There are plenty of men like that too, you might discover. The word you're looking for is "careerism." It's what you get when someone with few true intellectual loves in life discovers they have a talent for a given occupation (especially in the sciences or other white-collar work) at a later age, such as while they're entering college. When you discount careerists on both sides of the fence, you'll find the bared truth that cultural momentum from old stereotypes about gender roles is still responsible. We don't teach it formally any more, but it's still in the media and how older people expect younger people to act, and that's still creating substantial drag. Give it time, keep pushing, and you'll see the balance get asymptotically closer to egalitarian, permitting flex room for the unknowable portion of both men and women who are drawn towards other interests for all other imaginable reasons.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I don't really think there will be much of a change in the percentage of female involvement in open source coding no matter what we do (unless Mattel introduces Open Source Coding Barbie).
But barring that how about:
* Starting an all woman coding project.
* At conferences, instead of having evening happy hours with 100-to-1 guy girl ratios, split them up to hit the local bars to hit on women who are actually interested in being hit on and better looking that the ones that are of only interest because they are the only ones there. This will help take the focus off of the women beyond their coding competency.
* Level up the socially awkward geeks who are bugging these women because they are pretty much the only female contact in their life. Direct them to resources on how to lose weight, get in shape, dress better and improve their social skills & social life.
Any other solution I hear out there consists of yelling at men and calling them neckbeards instead of actually trying to find solutions. Of course this approach isn't well received and ultimately results in idiotic yelling matches between people who want nothing more than to insult each other based on gender issues. And yes, this is why most people ignore this shit. The people involved are more focused on degrading other people than building them up.
The stereotypes are for the most part accurate because of stereotype threat, that being how women and men are raised in the United States. A majority of women in the USA have a problem with entitlement and yes, thinking that all they have to do is be pretty to make a living. Men made it that way. Here little girl, interested in chess, have GIRL'S CHESS! Now comes with makeup. Etc, etc. I'm glad to hear from your anecdotal evidence that you found someone, like a lot of other women, who are a part of the other portion of the statistics, but nonetheless, being politically correct over facing the facts is just silly.
If you want to know why women aren't going into the open-source movement, looking at the men will give you all the answers you need. Seriously: this is something we cannot afford to kid ourselves about anymore.
There are plenty of decent, upstanding men in the movement. But there are also a disproportionate amount of people who, sad to say, fit the stereotypes that give us all a bad name. Call them basement-dwellers, neckbeards, louts, or whatever else you wish. And some of these people, as others have noted, are highly-respected figures in the movement: a fact that doesn't reflect so well on the rest of us. The fact is that these are people who push others away, and (as a group) women seem to find them especially creepy.
One of the most common cultural memes in existence is that women should beware of creepy men, for definitions of "creepy" that vary by culture and individual experience. Given what creepy men can do, it's tough to blame women for that. But it's so deeply ingrained that for many, avoiding creepy men becomes a powerful (if not always conscious) factor in decisions both major and minor. Every time you see someone who might have had promise in this industry turn away saying that she wasn't "nerdy enough" for it or that she "couldn't deal with the geeks," you're seeing someone for whom avoiding creepy men played a role in that decision. Every time you see someone online yelling "TITS OR GTFO" or "Make me a sammich," her decision is vindicated.
None of our attempts to do something about the gender imbalance is ever going to work until this is addressed: if this is worth doing, then there's no way around fixing the broken people who have become the face of the movement. But how does one even do that? I don't have an answer for that question. Any step toward doing this means rejecting some people out of hand, and the accepting nature of this movement has always been among its greatest strengths: no matter what we decide to reject means throwing a lot of metaphorical babies out with the bathwater. On the other hand, the current situation isn't really all that much different: the roles are reversed, as they reject us, but rejection still occurs, and by and large, the movement is still the driving force even if it isn't the one doing the actual rejecting. And so bathwater still gets thrown out, and so it goes that there are still babies in it.
What to do? We're not even really at the point of deciding that. We're still in the process of recognizing where the problem is. But that step has to come, one way or another.
While I don't think I "enjoy being prejudiced against others", I don't see what's wrong with "unaffected by stereotypes". I would see this as a good thing.
Well, that could be true. It comes down to an effort - reward thing or a risk - reward thing. Some people find it enjoyable to code for the satisfaction of contributing to something. Others are motivated by getting some "props" for doing a good job. Some won't do it unless they are paid for it. Now, it could be that there are people in many of the open source projects that are openly derisive (either to women or to everyone). In a business setting these people shut up because they would be fired if they were openly derisive. But in an open source project they can let their true "not politically correct" asshat selves. Perhaps women tend - as a group - to be averse to that or tend to get more of it from the asshats out there. Either way it is always effort - reward. If the reward is getting called names, getting "hit on" all the time, etc. - the effort isn't worth it.
Everything is a gender or race issue. Why is this so important? No one is forcing women out of open source. Pretty much anyone can participate that WANTS to be there.
First, most participation comes without any idea of what the other person even looks like so the notion of gender or race probably is irrelevant. Am I man or a woman or an orange gorilla who escaped from his cage? You don't know.
Second, most of these heavily male communities are not lacking for females because they're intentionally driving them away. To the contrary, most of them want women if only to feel less like they're in an isolated research station on the moon. Psychologically men just prefer that. It doesn't even need a sexual component.
I guess I wonder if people are going to be playing the race and gender card 100 years from now? Does this thing expire ever? What effort needs to be made and then we can say "enough."... ever? Because if it's never enough then just out of simply pique I suggest we reverse that situation and start demanding male participation in female activities ESPECIALLY if men don't want to participate. See, some group is complaining because women have INTENTIONALLY chosen to not participate in certain activities. And this is somehow a male problem. Well, what about all the female groups that men don't have any interest in at all? Demand equal representation. Now you might only be able to get one man for every ten women that want to join such groups. But if you enforce equality it means that nine women have to be rejected for every one that is accepted into such groups and all men are accepted indifferent to any other qualification.
Sound like fun? Well, the men aren't enjoying this nonsense either. Just stop it. If you're actively being driven away because of your vagina then cite some evidence and we'll deal with it. But if all you've got is correlative gender statistics then please don't waste our time.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Stallman at Gran Canaria DID NOT TARGET his emacs virgins joke to women! His comments were gender neutral and applied to men as well as women. He has made the same dumb joke for 30 years in public speeches, only now there was willful intent to twist his words - by who? By the owner of the 'opensourcetogo' blog one David "Lefty" Schlesinhger a notorious sexist himself who has published pornographic (never before public in any way and acquired by shady means) of men and women who disagree with him, at their extreme protest to which he replies "Sue me!" David "Lefty" Schlesinger aka 'stonemirror' is the last person in the world who should be quoted in defense of feminism - he is a documented harasser of women (ask Kathy Sutphen about how he stalked her so severely she suffered severe physical and psychological medical problems), a pornographer and the Blackest of Trolls!
With all of the comments talking about socially awkward men in programming, I can't help but share two experiences. The first is from my senior year at university, a female classmate started venting to me about some social situations she had recently had. A year earlier we had been on a few dates, but I didn't find us to be a great pair before anything serious really happened, and as a result we were still friends. For some reason she didn't want to come out and say how most of the other CS majors lacked social skills (probably a dead beaten horse at that point), and while she was looking for the right words she was twirling her hair with one finger I suggested the phrase she was looking for was "people with longer hair." She agreed and summed up her frustration with "Many of the other CS majors need learn how to talk to people with longer hair". A few years earlier in my Introduction to Programming I witnessed, at the end of the class, two extra nerdy/unnatractive guys talking to one of the female TA's. I heard one of the say that since she was a girl she shouldn't be in CS. I really wanted to hit guy, but sadly my physique does not lend itself to those types of activities.
You know a stereotype is based - usually - on the behavior of the majority of a group.
No, it's not.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
'Bonch' is quoting the blog 'opensourcetogo' which is run by David "Lefty" Schlesinger aka 'stonemirror', a known and hideous troll, sexist and stalker who puts up whole web domains with sex photos he has purchased of his enemies (male and female) in a most shady manner. This pornographer and sexist is certainly NO ONE you should be quoting as a supporter of feminism! He puts never before public photos of men and women nude and having sex on his own websites, against their will and at their extreme protest, to which he says "sue me!"
Maybe try another.
I reject your implication that women are part of your experience; normal or otherwise. Bathing in projected images is not experience.
You know a stereotype is based - usually - on the behavior of the majority of a group.
No, it's not.
Ok That settles it Tatsu said so.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
A behavior stereotype is usually based on the behavior of some of the members of a group. The bad thing is that, being a stereotype, it is blindly applied to all members of the group. It has nonetheless a grain of truth.
See? For it to be issued from a grain of truth doesn't make it good. It's still bad.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Right, it came out all wrong. Apologies.
*go proof-read next post*
Write boring code, not shiny code!
happy horsepoop is this article?
Ellen Spertus has a page on gender and computing that includes a link to the ADA Initiative as well as other research she's done and collected on similar topics.
How is that a stereotype? Generalization != Stereotype
Well, I'm not going to say "turnabout is fair play", but before you heap too much criticism on socially inept nerds, consider that one reason they are that way is that women universally reject them. Tell a woman you're a computer programmer, and her eyes glaze over. Tell her you like playing computer games, and she leaves. Tell her you like her, and she'll say "ugh". And now other women want to come to communities dominated by these kinds of men, who have been despised by women since the day they were old enough to be, and then wonder why they are not made as welcome as they'd like to be? Who is really the problem here, the nerds, or the culture that inculcates contempt for them?
I've never had that problem (and I know many quote-n-quote geeks would say the same.) Seriously, the generalizations presented herein are such an overused cliche. It's all about communication skills with members of the opposite sex, presentation, etc. If you have experienced these problems, that's on you, not them.
There are plenty of men like that too, you might discover
Exactly. I'm fairly sure that motivation to work for money applies equally to both genders.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
As a woman and professional developer, my reason for not participating in OSS is lack of time / energy to devote to it. I have other priorities for the hours I'm not at work, such as going to the gym, cleaning, cooking / baking, spending time on family and romantic relationships, reading, etc. I assume these priorities have been shaped by my upbringing and culture, and in my experience they differ from average American male priorities. I feel less pressure to achieve a prestigious career or a high level of competence in a hobby, but more pressure to keep a clean attractive home, to spend time on my appearance, to help organize / cook for family events, and to accommodate / support my SO's career goals. Personally I don't resent the time spent on housework, it is my choice to change the sheets and vacuum regularly rather than nagging my SO or tolerating a messy home, but I do believe these choices are the result of my upbringing as a "girl" and the cultural pressure to be "feminine" and a "homemaker" even, or maybe especially, while pursuing a career in a male-dominated field.
I never understood why people refuse to believe something could ever be the case because its labeled as a stereotype, lets take the goldigger example. Women have a biological imperative to find a mate capable of supporting her offspring, we see this behavior in just about every species out there, so why do we think the human female would be ANY different in this regard? Its like a study i read not too long ago (it was in a mag, sorry as i have NO clue which one) that had the results of a study that showed women's taste in men changed based on whether or not they were on birth control or had the ability to have children. those that couldn't have children or were on birth control favored softer, gentler "teddy bear" or pretty boy types, those that were fertile and not on birth control favored the rougher, more masculine "bad boy" types. The conclusion is pretty obvious, as far as evolution goes the stronger more dominant male is more likely top of the food chain and therefor better able to provide for her offspring. the fact that this doesn't hold true in modern society doesn't magically undo 20,000 years of evolution.
And I'll probably get hate for pointing this out but if nationally its the same as locally its true, you see more blacks in sports because they are practicing voluntary eugenics and breeding for athletic ability. I was the tutor for most of the HS football team and their parents made no bones about it, they chose their mates based on athletic ability. One was quite proud that after 2 years of searching he was able to woo a top track and field star, their kids were constantly at the top of every athletic roster and three out of their four children got full scholarships based on their skills on the field (the fourth went MMA) and they were quite proud of that and bragged quite often. love frankly had nothing to do with their initial selection, it was all based on athletic skill.
As for TFA most women simply don't care for geekier jobs, does that make them stupid? Nooo, it simply means that it doesn't appeal to them. They will kick a guy's ass when it comes to verbal languages or anything where being able to read body language comes into play such as negotiator, I've also found women make better cops and are able to more often diffuse a situation without needing violence. this whole "women and men are equal so there numbers should be equal" is a fallacy that assumes a female is simply a male with different genitalia and nothing could be further from the truth, just as a man might be able to lift more but a woman will be more agile so too is there jobs where it will appeal to a woman's natural abilities and some that will appeal to a man's. That doesn't mean that the women are being run off or are incapable of doing the job, simply that they don't want it. I don't see anything sexist in simply acknowledging we are different.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I still have yet to see a rational explanation of why we should expect to see uniform involvement of people with characteristic X across all activities Y.
Because, when it comes to gender, intelligence is uniform. Also, it is not so much about uniform involvement but respect. I mean, groping of women participants at conference? Conferences allowing sexual innuendo that would get you fired anywhere (Golden Gate Ruby Conference 2009)?
The reality is that when it comes to science/engineering fields, lack of professionalism is rampant among software practitioners. I've personally known of very embarrassing cases in Academia (in particular STEM fields) where female students and lecturers have been exposed to harassing behavior that, again, would get you fired on the spot at any company (tenure == lifelong impunity). But in software, it is worse, specially in conferences and FOSS projects, both of which are free from federal and state regulations against hostile work environments.
We are a vulgar, condescending bunch when it comes to the women (talented or otherwise) that work among us. There is no debate about that, and we should not need a reasonable explanation of why this is wrong.
In order to get an interest in an issue, you have to identify what the problem is. And non-conformance to an arbitrary number, such as any specific gender ratio isn't a problem. It has to have some negative effect.
I don't care if you are male or female, I care about the job you do, the software you write, the art you create, whatever it is you do. And I refuse to get gender issues pushed on me with no explanation as to why they are problematic. Maybe women just don't care about this kind of stuff, just like girls care a lot more about riding and horses than boys do?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
An intelligent, educated woman is very unlikely to remain single for long. I suspect the root cause of the disparity between open source and proprietary participation of women on projects is due to the simple fact that once they go home from work, they have real lives to live, while many of "the guys" in the industry are techno-freaks with little or no social life and plenty of spare time to devote to OSS or Free projects.
Like myself. 47 and counting. *sigh*
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I'm much more interested in an Open Culture than I am in Open Source software -- and I *love* Open Source software.
I have seen (and been involved in) disputes over womens involvement in programming, Open Source culture, etc.,. I have to say: It gets really personal, really fast.
I don't think this is about "Woman good, man bad." I don't think this is even about "Woman good, some men bad."
We are not a culture that thinks much about love and romance -- we tend to retreat into talking about software.
But I think we really need to talk about love and romance.
Stereotypes are social heuristics. The human brain can't treat every person it meets individually; It's cognitively less expensive to group people together and treat them in a particular way. You're interaction with the coffee barista at your local starbucks is based on stereotypes, and they're interaction with you is equally based on the stereotype of you being a customer. Only when you have sufficient repeat contact with a person can you begin to start differentiating them from the stereotype(s) you lumped them into. Most of the time, these sterotypes work for us, i.e. they facilitate social interaction with strangers. Some of the time though, just like in AI, you use a shitty heuristic. The problem is not dealing with people using sterotypes, it's being too rigid in your application of stereotypes and hampering social interaction.
The word you're looking for is "careerism."
Actually, it's avarice. Wanting a professional life doesn't have to involve making money you know.
He wasn't saying that all women are gold diggers and want your money, he said that women generally are motivated to work for money as opposed to working for free (love of the project) on an open source project.
FWIW there are a lot of men in this boat too, but don't confuse a desire for material wealth with a desire to be doing something useful with one's life.
Well, the reaction to Obama's election showed that, while less prevalent and open than in the 1950's and 1960's, hidden racism against blacks is still pretty strong in the USA. So, in that context, is there any surprise that blacks would try to give their offspring a chance in a field (sports) which is a strong meritocracy and where they are less affected by racist undercurrents? Reduce the racist obstacles and I suspect they will eventually start to select for skills that don't wear out your body as quickly. However, it might take a generation or two to undo the effects of centuries.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
If women want to participate and are good contributors then more power to them. If they aren't interested, who cares? Equal opportunity is what matters, not equal outcome. For whatever reason (genetic, cultural, etc.), women aren't as interested and that is fine. If a woman is interested and capable but is blocked by something outside of her control, then you have me interested.
I think that by "unaffected by stereotypes" he means "not unfairly labelled with a stereotype that doesn't apply you". Had you been unjustly judged based on a stereotype, you may have been more sensitive to the fact that, even if stereotypes do apply to a large segment of some populations, the reminder is often unfairly grouped in and judged with that sterotype. For example: DWB. If you were affected by a stereotype, you might be more sensitive to the idea that, while that stereotype may provide a useful caution, many or most individuals in that population do not fit that stereotype. You need to judge the individual. Stereotypes are often reduced to guilt by association, even if the association is as tenuous as skin colour.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I'm a female programmer by trade. I do write code in my spare time. At work, I've never felt any gender bias but maybe that's because I'm only one of 4 devs.
I play video games with my friends from halo to starcraft. I don't tend to play with strangers and was recently reminded of why. My husband was playing starbattle reently and told his teammates that he needed to stop because I'd asked him to do something. He got a myrad of comments from how he should spank mefor interupting to how he should tell me it was my job to cook dinner. It was a small subset of the people he was playing with, but had I been a player in that game and that was said about someone else's wife, I would have been very uncomfortable. As it was I was just plain pissed.
the moral of the story is it only takes a few bad apples to sour the bunch.
I never understood why people refuse to believe something could ever be the case because its labeled as a stereotype, lets take the goldigger example. Women have a biological imperative to find a mate capable of supporting her offspring, we see this behavior in just about every species out there, so why do we think the human female would be ANY different in this regard?
I remember once an AC answered a post like yours. It was an AC or else I'd give a proper attribution.
The response was "you're using reason to counter an emotional argument. Sadly, this will not work, because those who will be swayed by emotional arguments are not mature enough to be reasoned with in an adult manner."
I don't see anything sexist in simply acknowledging we are different.
Academic careers have been ruined simply for suggesting that the female brain is "wired" differently from the male brain. I wish I were making this up. No amount of incontrovertible physical evidence will stop this kind of hyper-emotional over-reaction. What you're dealing with is like a religion and anyone who does not adhere to it is a heretic. I know many would like to believe we abandoned this type of approach after the Dark Ages but the reality is that it simply changed form.
Narrow-minded types always tend to believe things like "equality implies same-ness", causing them to feel threatened by any valid claim of differences (which incidentally is why weak-minded people worship conformity). As far as they're concerned, any difference you point out is the same as saying one is inferior to the other. That's the doctrine of this religion.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I enjoy reading Slasdot, but I'm all but done trying to submit articles here, because they rarely get aggregated.
The most meaningful one I tried to post, was a survey on Aspergers/ASD, which could might have helped people.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Its like a study i read not too long ago (it was in a mag, sorry as i have NO clue which one) that had the results of a study that showed women's taste in men changed based on whether or not they were on birth control or had the ability to have children. those that couldn't have children or were on birth control favored softer, gentler "teddy bear" or pretty boy types, those that were fertile and not on birth control favored the rougher, more masculine "bad boy" types.
You left out the worst (but true) conclusions from this study: a given woman will frequently change her taste in men depending on where she is in her monthly cycle. So she'll marry a "teddy bear" guy who makes a good living and can provide well for her children, but then when she's ovulating, she'll cheat on him with one of the "bad boy" men and get pregnant, and pass off the kid as his.
This is extremely common, and some studies have found that something like 15% of people do not have the biological father they thought they had.
Very similar behavior is seen in many animals. So basically, women aren't any better than animals.
Wrong, a stereotype is just a generalization with bad connotations. It can also be a completely false generalization, but any generalization can be false if it's based on faulty observations.
While I think it's wrong that ALL stereotypes have a grain of truth at their core, I think it's true that most of them do. These things come from somewhere.
For humor, let's look at the stereotype about black people and liking watermelon. For those who don't know, there's a stereotype that black people love watermelon, much more so than other people. The truth, however, isn't quite the same; in reality, most people like watermelon, regardless of skin color (honestly, WTF doesn't like watermelon?). But where did this crazy thing come from? Simple: back in the slave days, black people were frequently put to work farming watermelons (it wasn't all tobacco and cotton), and of course being out in the hot fields all day, a watermelon makes a nice, sweet, and hydrating snack, so they obviously took a few for themselves. Even better, these watermelons came over from Africa with them; they were unknown in Europe before slavery, so it may have been a familiar crop to some of them. So, there's your grain of truth; obviously, the stereotype is pretty silly, but there is a grain of truth there.
I'd say that most people generally want money in exchange for their work; if someone isn't going to pay them for it, they'll waste their time doing something else like watching sports, going shopping, hanging out with friends, etc. This is true for both men and women. It would be ridiculous to think that a majority of men have any interest in writing open-source software; it's a tiny, tiny minority. But it's a much bigger minority, evidently, than the percentage of women who have any such interest. We can debate the reasons for this all day; I'd say much of it has to do with there being more grown men who have a lot of free time on their hands, typically due to being single and having no children, having never gotten involved in a relationship (frequently because they aren't very socially talented). Cue the stereotype of the 40-year-old virgin living in his parents' basement. This phenomenon is almost non-existent in females. Females don't have to be socially talented to find a boyfriend, the men come to them even if they don't open their mouths. Then, even if the boyfriend is short-lived, it's not uncommon for females to fall pregnant. When the man disappears, guess who has to spend all her spare time raising the kid? Even in two-parent households, it's a frequent complaint that the women have to do all the housework, even if they also have a job, while the husband does his job, then comes home and veges on the couch while his wife makes dinner. For whatever reason, adult men typically have more free time than adult women, so a small percentage of these men spend their time pursuing a hobby of working on OSS projects (other men drink beer and watch sports, while the more productive ones build things out of wood in their garage, or play in a band, etc.).
Of course, lots of OSS is written by professionals these days. But here again, the dynamics are very different. Many of these professionals were probably computer hobbyists when they were younger, in college or high school, and were less socially-inclined so they spent their vast amounts of free time becoming "computer nerds"; getting involved in OSS and then getting a CS degree and making a career out of it were natural progressions. Not many young girls get involved in computers as a hobby, especially back in the 80s or 90s; they're generally more interested in spending time with friends.
I wonder how many of the "asshats" who are openly derisive towards women online in these OSS discussions are from non-western cultures where gender roles are more rigid?
There, I said it.
In fact, ANY barriers of entry into FOSS development - devskills aside - are *very* low when it comes to 'types of people', be they male, female, handycapped, black, asian, white, stutterers, deaf, blind or whatnot.
The truth is, you can work for years on end without people even knowing that you're a woman, 95% spastic, tied to a wheelchair with no means what so ever to articulate yourselves without a keyboard. A friend of mine worked on a non-trivial FOSS project for a few years, and only after quite some time came to find out that one of the devs had a serious stutter. ... Of course, stuttering doesn't show in E-Mails and IRC.
The very same thing goes for being a woman. For all I know, entire subsystems of the Linux kernel could be developed by women and we wouldn't even know ... or really care for that matter. After all, in the end, it's the results that matter.
No, I call bullshit on this whole 'barriers of entry' non-sense. Any women who is interested in FOSS dev'ing is two clicks away from joining a projects mailing list, and if she makes no big deal of her gender until her first 100 commits as a core-team member there isn't even a chance that gender could cause an issue. And even if that should come up, I doubt that in any serious project it would be much of a big deal.
I suspect stronger evolutionary or society forces at work here. Diving into the minute details of the millionth PHP CMS project or yet another PL for the Java VM is a thing for the sexually frustrated / unchallenged male looking for yet another avantgarde frontier where he can prove himself and grow the self-esteem to eventually, if he is lucky, be able to interact in more generic social situations - i.e. those with sexual subtexts involved - at eye-level with more 'dumb' but handsome men, in places where also the ladies are at.
Doing what most of us do requires a sort of hunter/ADHD/ausbergers type of brain and those are know to be found more in men than with women. ... But that's just one theory from the top of my head. Maybe in 20 years from now we'll have women dev'ing just like they are playing video-games today. ... Or reading comics/mangas. Also something unthinkable 20 years ago. ... No, the new and avantgarde always has been interesting for excess men who weren't in some womens hands already. Jazz came from black males and not white women, despite black males being way more at a disadvantage 150 years ago, *especially* in terms of basic human rights, spare time and musical education. Goes to show that evolution does still have a little say in things, doesn't it?
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I see the manginas have mod points today.
Fair enough, too. Insecurity abounds, although some of that does sound like insensitive (and inappropriate) humour. As a male, I always feel awkward when I hear rubbish like that, too. My partner, for example, will tell me that mowing the grass or assembling the lawn mower is a man's job because men are basically better equipped to do it.
For my current project, I'm stripping down, rust killing, and repainting an old steel dining suite. When I told her that it would go a lot quicker if she helped, she said that she can't do it. (She has a medical condition called Maple Syrup Urine Disease, because of which local medical authorities refuse to give her a tetanus injection.) I told her that she could undercoat the metalwork while I stripped and rust killed them.
"Oh no, I can't do that. I don't know how to. You're a guy, you just know how to do it."
Even pointing out that I'm making it up as I go along doesn't help. She will watch to see what I'm doing, but won't watch to learn how to do it, because women just can't do that job.
If there's one thing that winds me up more than men saying women can't do something as well because they're female (or women saying men can't do something because they're male), it's someone saying they can't do it because they're the wrong gender. That's fine if all you're talking about is pissing over a fence while standing straight up, but for anything else?
Women's tastes in men are even more precise. They will change due to what point in their menstrual cycle they are.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Not to mention that open sores is for faggots.
The more chicks the more better ('specially if they're hot!). :)
Take these little gems as evidence of a real, vicious problem in geek culture:
"It’s by far the worst coding-related experience I ever went through. That made me retire from Open Source." http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-offends-the-pantyshot-package-controversy/509
“I was trying not to, but it needed to be said.” http://skepchick.org/2011/12/reddit-makes-me-hate-atheists/
"c'mon. you're not a girl if u don't show us pics." http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_17/109-OMG-Girlz-Dont-Exist-on-teh-Intarweb-1
The women obviously prefer to get paid! Right on! :)
Seriously, I don't care. Open software is great, and anyone who wants to write it can go ahead and write it. Do you honestly expect me to worry about whether or not the person who wrote my software has a penis or a vagina? It's not going to make the code better.
Besides, having both genders involved will lead to more interaction between open source programmers and members of the opposite sex, which would be disastrous. Before you know it they'll be having sex with each other and producing children, and the more time they spend copulating and raising their children, the less time they will have to code. I would hate to see such great talent go to waste.
...is how few men there are in quilting clubs!
I once dated a woman who ran a quilt shop and every time I visited the store I would hear comments about how strange it was for me to be there.
I understand the reference to the Countess of Lovelace, but given Ada is best known (in this country, anyhow) as being something of a dead language I'm not sure I'd have gone with that name.
... OK, I'll bite at the troll -- and I have not stopped beating my wife.
First, just how many women do you expect? Looking a closed-source companies is a bad comparison since all the large ones are under a form of voluntary "Affirmative Action". Defensively against lawsuits, they try to hire according to the source population (college grad) gender numbers. I know, I've done it.
Second, why do you think "open source" is all warm'n'fuzzy, kinder, gentler? I know, I've done that too -- both run a project and tried to get kernel patches accepted. F/OS is _ruthlessly_ competitive and heavily slanted towards negative feedback when you are lucky enough to get any. For good reason, the kernel maintainers are busy and justifiably concerned about code overgrowth. You have to like beating your head against the wall. And then hit just the right problem with just the right code at just the right time to get in. Get lucky a few times, and you get more attention. But its a dogged uphill battle. Perhaps not one many women [egalitairian, risk averse] are motivated to engage. But how or why should it be otherwise? Please tell. IS F/OS short of development? Would the instability of greater development be an improvment?
Finally, the only time gender is a legitimate inquiry, sexual orientation is equally important. Is there any evidence the F/OS is homophobic, racist or discriminates on other axes? Then why assume it discriminates just because there are few women?
Sadly I know what you say is true, look at how they have practically blacklisted those scientists that published a study that showed Asians were smarter than whites and whites smarter than blacks. Now if one were to look at that with logic instead of emotion one would probably conclude it had to do with environment and available food sources. the Asians had rougher living conditions in the mountains of Asia than the northern plains of Europe, the whites had a rougher winter climate in the plains of Europe than the warm fertile lands of Africa, therefor the need for brains simply wasn't as needed for survival because the food wasn't as scarce. Simple, logical, but not allowed because it isn't "PC" to say anything other than all races are exactly the same except for skin tone, or that males and females are the exact same except for different genitalia.
Its sad that science despite our supposedly "enlightened" societies still can't tackle truly tough questions about the human animal without having to follow political correctness and dogma. Look at the hate and stink caused by anyone that says the climate could be affected by anything other than AGW, they are called names and accused of being "plants" of some nefarious group when the simple fact is we live on an incredibly complex planet that has had some seriously huge changes long before man could affect squat, see the medieval warming period or the little ice age for just two examples. Does that mean we shouldn't strive to be cleaner? of course not if for no other reason than smog is bad on the lungs, but that doesn't mean one should send the entire society back to the dark ages to 'save the planet" (while making several of those screaming about AGW instant billionaires) either. It means we should do what ALL good science should do, we should study, discuss, ask questions and search for answers.
its just a shame that heresy has been replaced with political correctness as there is still quite a bit we need to learn about the human animal to better understand ourselves but when there are questions you simply aren't allowed to ask then our progress is stifled.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not a female, but I've lost interest in contributing to open-source projects for reasons that I suspect also drive away many women.
I've submitted patches to projects before. Some have been accepted; others not. The rejected patches were of decent quality, clean, and solid. I've looked for a pattern to the rejected patches, and the common factor seems to be that they were pounced upon at random by a Self-Appointed Someone because the patch failed to address his Pet Issue, even if the changes were a clear improvement otherwise. Rather than taking time to collaboratively improve my patch or offer alternatives I am told that my work is idiotic.
I even met one of these Self-Appointed Someones once, and while pleasant enough in person, they turn the ass-hat knob to 11 online. It's not just my perception either -- my coworkers have to deal with him and his last name has become shorthand for "gratuitous buttholery". I've witnessed developers intentionally avoid dealing with him by waiting to submit patches until they know he's going on vacation or travelling, or through alternate routes into the source base that bypass him entirely (thankfully he's not the project leader).
This type of behavior seems to be widely tolerated by the open source community. Since nobody, particularly project leaders, has the gumption to call people to task for their project-related behavior, it drives away people who aren't geared toward confrontation. The only counter-examples I've witnessed are when behavior went clearly beyond the pale, and even then you see some people defending the outrageous behavior. In a private enterprise these behaviors would be nipped in the bud -- I've witnessed two outstanding developers lose their jobs for ongoing patterns of antisocial behavior. The employer incentive to reduce/remove these antisocial behaviors results in a non-threatening environment, and good but non-confrontational developers can get their job done effectively.
This is the downside of open source project communities operating as technocracies: In order to attract as much technical talent as possible, odious behavior is tolerated. Unfortunately the flip side of tolerating antisocial behaviors to tap this talent is that you lose the talent of people who don't want to deal with it. I believe it would be worthwhile for open source project leaders to keep an eye out for community members who demonstrate antisocial behavior and correct them, first gently in private, but publicly and more forcefully if the pattern persists. Project leaders should remember that silently tolerating obnoxious behavior becomes a de-facto endorsement of that behavior in the eyes of more casual contributors.
When it becomes taboo to be a jerk in open source communities I believe you will see more contributions from women and those like me who've opted to avoid the drama.
There are not a lot of women out there trying to go out with the vast majority of males, who because of their behavior and personalities are usually not sexy to women. However since the societal norm is for men to ask women out, and men are very horny, even average and below average looking women can get dates (just not usually with a man as attractive as in their daydreams). Women just have less 'alone at home' free time, especially because they are so social by nature. They probably historically needed a complex system of social alliances, whereas men could usually fend for themselves. Some of this has changed, as a woman in the USA is now perfectly capable of supporting herself, but it was not always the case. As far as I know there have never been roving bands of women looking to rape men.
"Wanting a professional life doesn't have to involve making money you know."
Yes it does.
Given current society, your professional life will in most probability take you more than half you awaken time which means you *need* to make money out of it or else you won't be able to afford so much devoted time.
It was not always the case: see how many scientists, adventurers or sportmen from the eighteen/nineteen century didn't need to worry to earn a life, so they were able to pursue their non-money producing goals. Even now, some people can do it for a while, while living at their parents basement (it might be your case), or even their whole life for a minimal elite of rich heirs.
"I'd say that most people generally want money in exchange for their work"
I don't think so. Most people generally want respect, being able to survive and have some commodities. It happens that money usually is quite a worthy currency and measure for them.
Most of the open source development I do is driven by the obstinate belief that it shouldn't be *that* hard to make software work correctly. Such hard-headedness is, in my opinion, a very male trait.
Though, the more females in CS, the better, so by all means :)
You were probably thinking of Cracked.
DATABASE WOW WOW
If there's one thing that winds me up more than men saying women can't do something as well because they're female (or women saying men can't do something because they're male), it's someone saying they can't do it because they're the wrong gender. That's fine if all you're talking about is pissing over a fence while standing straight up, but for anything else?
Indeed... I get annoyed at men who think that laundry shouldn't be their job either. Gender splits in general are bogus.
I actually dated a guy for awhile, and he did the laundry, and I did the handy-work jobs, like assembling his A/C unit, and setting up TVs the cable, etc. Why? In his words, because I'm smarter than him. v_v
Whatever, at least we weren't dividing jobs based on gender. ;)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
..and those gender roles are defined by our biology, which has a multibillion year history (if you go back to the beginnings of bi-gender species). some would argue that our current attempts at suppressing these traits is making both genders miserable, both in work/play and in relationships (any kind really, not just sex).
are you sure about the media? these days I can flip on the tv and within 5 minutes see some commercial or sitcom stereotyping the shit out of a male during the requisite two minutes hate (err excuse me I mean 'girl power moment'), usually done by a female (or a group of females). in other cases, any time there's a traditional positive male role to play (a leader, a gunslinger, a martial artist, a cop) the show goes way out of its way to make sure that role is played by a woman, or that the men in these roles are under the submissive control of a woman who then proceeds to ridicule them for drama and/or comedic value at every opportunity. ..of course negative male stereotypes are amplified at the same time, depicting men as serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, or other generic undesirables, even when real-life statistics suggests a different picture. other examples include commercials with little boys playing with girls toys and fathers treated like children and/or idiots by their wives in front of their children. the only time women are depicted negatively in this way is when there's a male pulling the strings somewhere that can be blamed. it's like the directors are playing leaf-frog-feminism on their way to doormat 'heaven'. this crap started in the 80s, then got into high gear in the early 90s.. in the last 10 years its' gone into an overdriven double think fantasy no one's allowed to question.
I see lots of 'flex' given to women in business settings, but men are still expected to do the dog-work like they always were, except now it's not ok for them to expect some default-respect for this that goes along with this default expectation. on top of that, they are 'encouraged' to 'help' women out by passing off the credit whenever it's politically advantageous, usually by other men (talk about stockholm syndrome)! this is in part due to old chivalrist attitudes that have been coopted by feminism to give women the upper hand (a "victory for women").
if you want an egalitarian society, you need judgment (something else politically correct types can't handle) of relevant attributes to win out over emotional wrangling. activists need to quit making it about gender, race, or other irrelevancies (unless of course such attributes ARE relevant, which is yet another taboo subject atm). as long as they trot those attributes out, front and center, they're helping them stay in peoples's minds, reenforcing their use as the primary differentiators, rational or not..
I find it funny/sad/sickingly familiar that the most ardent feminists are often the ones that have no problem pushing society to treat men exactly the same way they demand they not be treated, while claiming they're all about 'equality' and 'fairness'. Besides outright misandry, this can take the form of suggesting they are 'pro-male' as long as they get to redefine masculinity as they choose (this redefinition attempt plays out in the media every day). this style of manipulation is an age-old game that less capable men have played throughout history to get their way in leadership and power, as the truly capable need not stoop to this. preaching the high road while taking the underpass is nothing new for such people, male or female, but the ubiquity of this hypocritical attitude in feminist women nowadays does make me wonder if men do have a one up on women in at least one statistical area: integrity.
I'm not going to argue against your main point that emotion sometimes gets in the way of science (it's absolutely right), but it's worth pointing out that your characterization of the science examining the difference between races is way off point.
Much of the research promoting the idea that there is a significant difference between different races' intelligence is dismissed not because it's "non-PC", but because it's utter drivel funded by paleo-conservative organizations that were heavily inspired by Nazi eugenics scientists. Seriously. [wikipedia.org]
If you want to read about some of the absurd crap that some of these guys pose as science, check out some of the many rebuttals to The Bell Curve.
And there's plenty of research, some of it also very bad, suggesting that all races have essentially equal intelligence.
We just can't say if there is a difference is intelligence between different races. Too many factors blur the picture. Hell, we can't even arrive at a reasonable definition of "intelligence".
The theory you propose explaining the possible difference in European / African intelligence seems like many evolutionary psychology theories -- a load of nonsense that kinda-sorta seems logical at face value. It's, frankly, laughable.
..or that women are consumers and men are the differentiators/providers?
I won't lie, it's a problem. From my position, not as much of a problem as you're making it out to be, but still a problem. Just cross your fingers and remind yourself that the so-called "sex war" will eventually swing the other way once the excusatory cries of "Misogyny!" have worn itself out in such situations, and hopefully the whole shebang will diminish toward peace.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
403 Hotlinking is forbidden. got the actual link?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Oops...link fail. Seriously == The Pioneer Fund
I was in a criminology class that got a visit from a female correctional officer (was a classmate's mother)
I asked her how she felt working in a male prison, she said it avoided machismo "something to prove" conflicts like sometimes happens versus a male guard.
I agree with the general concept that males and females have different characteristics that make them better suited to different things. The law enforcement mention was an interesting example of how that can show up even within the same occupation.
However, one must be careful to not blow it out of proportion and be accepting of the cases that differ from the norm.
I have heard the thing about birth control changing womens' taste in men. Some males may adjust their behavior to what women are looking for (makes sense, right). I wonder if it's healthy to have all those girlie men around
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Then we should fund a study and put the issue to rest, don't you think? Seems simple and logical enough to me, but as you would see if you actually tried it you would be labeled a monster for even THINKING of checking such a thing out, because "it's racist" to say anything other than everyone is exactly the same, no matter what race, sex, or environment they came from. Why everyone can be rocket scientists with the right education!
Do i think they are right or wrong? Honestly I have no idea, but I think ANY question shouldn't be considered taboo to ask and that was what i was pointing out. look at how many are now pushing young girls take careers in math, what if they simply don't want it? What if they would prefer language? Well that doesn't matter because girls are just boys with penises turned inside out, which BTW once upon a time medicine taught as truth. I simply think anything that helps us to learn more about the human condition should be available for serious study, and that "PC" belongs in politic and not in science. Don't you agree?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It was a shemale.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
On many -dev lists and forums, the gender of someone in a discussion or submitting a patch isn't obvious. I often don't know know and care about a another contributor's genitalia or complexion. So on those projects, at least, participation isn't influenced by other people opinion of someone's gender, race, etc. It's entirely self-selection.
> sounds like a nice way of saying "girls like dolls, boys like guns."
> There is no particular biological basis for
So hormones have no effect on our thinking, moods, and preferences? Of course they do. When someone takes steroids, testerone, they become more openly aggressive and otherwise more stereotypically masculine. Add testosterone in thr form of steroids, boys like guns more and tend to tear heads off dolls. Hormones matter. It's not unreasonable to think female hormones may well make people more sociable, meaning makes are more likely to nebsolitary computer nerds.
This is extremely common, and some studies have found that something like 15% of people do not have the biological father they thought they had.
Very similar behavior is seen in many animals. So basically, women aren't any better than animals.
The figure I saw was around a third, not 15%.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I have been flamed down as newbie on Linux forum and I am male. "read the man page". Great. Except the man page is unclear on what exactly I need to do, or my Wifi card is not properly functioning or my TV card not etc... The community is *extremely* hostile to newbie in general, I don#t think it is only to female.
Furthermore , I work in a software development firm and there is in my department 2 male programmer (some guy and me) and 5 female. Fortran (main frame)+java programming. None of them is interested into programming as a hobby or for open source. They come in, they do their job they go out, it is over. And I know other female programmer from other department and male programmer. NONE, absolutely NONE of the female are interested into programming itself outside of the job. When I described them open source and community they just shrugged and told me they prefer to do other activity after work.
I have the sneaky feeling that indeed , there is less female, not because the community is hostile, but because they simply aren't interrested. That is not to say that the community is not sexist. it probably is, most male are sexist in nature, or rather see sex in everything, thinking of sex every 2 minutes. There is probably some female turned off by the community. But I think the MAIN reason female don't participate is that simply they are NOT interested.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Do you really think that girls get most of their ideas from Barbie? Does that mean that most boys are either soldiers (G. I. Joe) or shape changing robots (Transformers?)
It's still cultural really.
Just because we're biologically to always try to be the Alpha or at least try to exert our dominance in an attempt to find our station... and often to resort to back handed methods to rise in the chain, culture trains us not to run around with clubs in our hands and pound each other over their heads.
Women aren't programmed to try to exert dominance, therefore, they don't let hormones get in the way of making wiser decisions which is to have the dominant role without exerting it competitively. Even this response to your response is at least on some level an example of me, a relatively mellow kind of guy who actually doesn't like sports purely because the concept of competition requires that for one opponent to win, it must be at the expense of another opponent, I still am exerting my personal superiority in a bait to have a deeper competition and to prove my dominance by forcing you to either adopt my opinion (right or wrong) or submit. Women would probably either read your comment and move on or just take a moment to slap you around with a dead fish and move on.
I am very willing (especially after raising both a son and a daughter) to suggest that much of our upbringing is about exerting environment over instinct. I have watched many boys who were quite aggressive in their first few years mold into much more relaxed and polite people in the next 5 years. This comes from people teaching them "right from wrong". I have also watched the children of highly aggressive parent become more aggressive since their parents consider it natural to train their children to attempt to club people over the heads to show how important they are (oddly thinking of a cop/soccer coach's kid in this instance specifically).
The real initial point I had intended to make is that sexism itself is not a biological thing. It's cultural because boys are biologically and instinctively competitive against everyone and misinterpret lack of competition from others as weakness on their behalf. Therefore the fact that most females are less likely to see value in the competition and therefore choose to ignore the invitation to compete by their male counterparts, it does not mean they submit and are weaker, it's just that less intelligent people misinterpret it as such. Though, the same could be said for example about my own son who is non-competitive, though strong enough to snap most of his peers due to his viking blood and build. He's more like the big dog sitting quietly inside the house as opposed to the little one with something to prove who barks 24 hours a day. Though because he is so quiet, the little dogs keep trying to bite his ears to prove how much tougher they are than him. And if the big dog just lays there and ignores the little dogs jibe, the little dog eventually walks away with an air of accomplishment for showing his strength.
This type of behavior isn't strictly sexist, it's an issue that sexist people tend to bark loudly about all the people they feel dominant over... justified or not. The fact that there are far more women that aren't willing to rise to the bait then there are men, they'll single women out as being less than them. Funny thing is how many of those guys eventually end up married to a women who beats them senseless with a rolling pin.
Oh please. On a mailing list, or forum, or website no one knows you're a dog... er, a woman. I mean, if women wanted they would participate, there is NO problem for them. Create an account and submit yor code, period. Because of non-profit nature of many open source project and hence lack of government intervention the percentage of women is perfectly natural contrary to proprietary software firms which are subject to stupid feminist laws and quotas. I'm Russian and during my whole carrier I met ZERO female developers (there were testers and managers, though) and not because of some discrimintation but because of lack of applicants. Yes, I never saw a woman rejected because none applied. So there is just NO gender problem. On the other hand forcing businessmen to hire some underrepresented "minority", be it blacks, disabled people, or women just fills the enterprize with freeloaders who just suck your money and whom you can't get rid of.
Dont like a community around a opensource project? Roll your own opensource project.
How can this be a big deal?
I would do the same thing, I would not hang around people I do not like. Besides rolling your own is so much more fun (atleast for me).
There aren't many Tibetan open source developers, either. Why not try to cater to that market while we're at it?
Do you have a reference for a serious study of this ?
To "support" your argument, my mother-in-law was a university professor in biology. She was for a while giving genetics tutorials where students would determine their blood group and comparing it to their parents. Sure enough she had to stop doing this because several students found out that way that their blood group was not compatible with being an actual offspring of their parents, which led to some trouble. However I do not have any statistics regarding how many students were involved.
the fact that this doesn't hold true in modern society doesn't magically undo 20,000 years of evolution.
It might be a few more years than that.
No sig today...
The problem is that that "grain of truth" is often universal, and applies to people outside the groups. Many Jews are greedy and influential in the media? Well guess what, the same applies to people of all faiths.
You will frequently find that the stereotypes that "have a grain of truth" are often similar to stereotypes other people are exposed to. What you hear people in the US say about Mexicans, you frequently hear in Europe as well, except that over here it is not Mexicans that are the target.
I agree on a lot of things of what you said but...
20.000 YEARS of evolution???
Man, you need to add a lot of zeros to that since the man is man, and some more zeros if you consider our ancestors species heritage(the basic survival mating part of the brain is shared with older species).
So basically, women aren't any better than animals.
You know why? Because they are animals. As are men.
If you're a jackass who can only find this kind of women, frankly, you deserve it.
That's ok, it's not as if people here have any level of scepticism towards claims that align with their opinions anyway.
Stereotypes are usually based on the beliefs of the majority of the group that forms the stereotype. If they happen to be accurate for more than a minority of the target group (if any at all), that's a happy coincidence.
Except that the numbers are more limited and there's a higher proportion of men by inclination.
Say, for example, 10% of men are creeps.
Now, IRL, 50% of people are women. That means that the ratio of creep:not creep that women see IRL is 9:1.
In geek-heavy arenas like FOSS fora, there may be 90% men. That means that each woman sees a creep:non creep ratio of 1:9. The exact opposite.
The men aren't any creepier, the women more scarce. Therefore the creeps "gang up" (because of the lack of opportunity) and appear more common.
Saying something is a stereotype is not the same as saying it's never true. People often forget that.
Yes, but your original post said "good luck trying to find a woman that doesn't care about money" which implies that the stereotype is almost always true.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So your attitude to life is to swan along and ignore everything short of physical coercion as being beneath your mighty gaze?
Language creates effects in the real world, otherwise there'd be little point in speaking or writing anything.
There is also the fact that just because something is oh-so-bravely non-politically-correct doesn't mean it's factually correct, and personally I prefer truth to its opposite. It's nothing to do with indulging in being offended for its own sake.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In other news....women looking for ways to grow neckbeards.....details at 6.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Fair enough. I tend to handle the following jobs: mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage, shoveling the drive way, and the laundry. My fiance, conversely, tends to handle cleaning the washrooms, doing the gardening, and tends to do more of the other jobs (vacuuming, dishes, and what not) than I do.
In fairness, each of those splits has a reason. I mow the lawn because I'm the only one with mowing experience (my fiance never had to learn as her father took care of that, whereas my father pawned the job off on his 3 sons ASAP). I shovel the drive way because she has asthma and would get physically sick trying to exert herself in the cold (I live in Ottawa, and it gets cold). I take out the garbage because no one else in the house will remember. And I do the laundry because she works retail and I have free time on weekends to handle that sort of thing.
She does the gardening because it's her garden, and I made it clear that I will have nothing to do with it. She cleans the washrooms because she finds that I do too poor a job (different standards, I guess), and she tends to do more of the other jobs simply because she notices the mess long before I do. The rest? We split equally, more or less.
Cynical Idealist
I never understood why people refuse to believe something could ever be the case because its labeled as a stereotype, lets take the goldigger example.
You perfectly illustrate the idiocy of believing in stereotypes. Yes, some women are golddiggers. No, some women are not golddiggers. Yes, some men are golddiggers. No, some men are not golddiggers. So some men and women are golddiggers, and some are not. Wow.
So unless you can provide some sort of empirical statistical justification for your statement, it is meaningless. And even if you could find the statistical justification, it still wouldn't tell you any thing about a particular person.
Even if 99% of women were golddiggers it wouldn't mean my wife was.
As for your racial generalisation, it makes about as much sense as saying that pretty girls mate with handsome males, or that intellectual males marry intellectual females. Again, some do, some don't.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Its sad that science despite our supposedly "enlightened" societies still can't tackle truly tough questions about the human animal without having to follow political correctness and dogma.
Because, as we all know, the world is run by well meaning left-wing intellectuals, who are busily suppressing the poor downtrodden immensely wealthy establishment right wing capitalists and politicians.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is extremely common, and some studies have found that something like 15% of people do not have the biological father they thought they had.
It's shocking how those women go around raping innocent men to get them pregnant .
Very similar behavior is seen in many animals. So basically, women aren't any better than animals.
Yes! Also, male dogs scratch their nuts, so do male humans. So basically, men aren't any better than dogs.
Only on slashdot could such crap be moderated as interesting..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"I'd say that most people generally want money in exchange for their work"
I don't think so. Most people generally want respect, being able to survive and have some commodities. It happens that money usually is quite a worthy currency and measure for them.
No offence, but if you think that money either measures or buys respect (other than in the trivial gangster sense) you're a fucking moron.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I see lots of 'flex' given to women in business settings
It's a bit fucking odd how half of CEOs and so on aren't women then isn't it, if they've got it so easy, and it's so tough being a poor widdle man in business these days?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most of the bleating by men about nasty women here seems to be from US-sounding men. The dreaded "political correctness" is a US/Western concept isn't it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Don't forget that a lot of people posting here are fourteen year olds who have no concept of money or real work. It's the only explanation for the absurdly ignorant and stereotypical attitude towards women, apart from anything else.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Anyone who wonders why women aren't interested in open source need only glance at the comments.
The slashdot community manages to give at least some serious insights to all manner of "Ask Slashdot" questions, when the questions range from trivial to quite challenging.
But when the subject of getting women involved in open source comes up, what do I see in the comments? "We don't want any!" No real effort to address the problem. Jokes, insults, and inanity. It turns into the Xbox Live community as soon as gender gets introduced.
The resounding reason we aren't involved in the open source community is because the community has so firmly told us that we aren't wanted. Why would I spend my free time where I'm not wanted? Why make an open source contribution if I have no expectation of it being taken seriously if my gender comes to light? It's like a gay person signing up for the marines while DADT was in effect, or a black guy trying to join the Republicans. There will be a few holdouts who fight for acceptance where they aren't wanted, but most of us have ample opportunity to do good software development work where it might actually be effective, so we will.
You've asked the wrong question.You're trying to convince people that women should be more involved in open source projects.
As a woman, I have to say, I don't think the open source community offers me anything of value.
The great successes of the commercial programming world are known far and wide across the world.
The great successes of the open source community are much more limited in scope, in reach, in appeal. Sure, Linux is a great accomplishment. But there's a reason it lags behind Windows. Sure, OpenOffice is a nice option to have - but there's a reason that Microsoft Office products are still used by the overwhelming majority of businesses and schools. Sure, Octave is nice, but there's a reason people buy Mathematica instead when they need to do heavy mathematical lifting. Frankly, you folks are simply terrible at making products that people like, even if you are quite amazing at producing products that get the job done. If OpenOffice were so fantastic, you wouldn't have Chinese firms still pirating Microsoft Windows.
So I say, what do you have to offer to a woman (or man) who wants to get things done? Why should I, as a woman, want to be involved in your hostile and narrow minded community for little prospective gain? You create lots of stuff that ends up being "a solution" instead of "the solution" and that is just not enough for me to sort through the muck to find the rare diamond in the rough.
You say that as if caring about money is a bad thing.
Everyone should care about about being able to support themselves and their families.
So good luck finding anyone that doesn't care about money, and when you do, be weary.
While I agree that a lot of woman, and man (please don't forget that), are very materialistic, there are quite a few that are not, if you can't find them it's more of a personal problem, and if they don't want to start a relationship with you its a bigger personal problem, and if they meet you and leave you, probably a bigger one too :D
I'm happily married for almost 8 years, with 2 little girls, we are not rich, but we have more than enough, and we value what we got right now, if we don't have as much in the future, it might be an inconvenience, but surely not the reason to break apart our family.
So, pretty much, learn to seek on the right places.
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Because, as we all know, the world is run by well meaning left-wing intellectuals, who are busily suppressing the poor downtrodden immensely wealthy establishment right wing capitalists and politicians.
I think the world is run by people who might conceivably have occasional meetings and get-togethers. If you were nearby during those meetings, you might overhear phrases like:
"HAHAHAHA man, they STILL think that whole left-right spectrum thing is valid and provides any real answers to anything. Oh man, that's a good one! When we came up with that I was skeptical to say the least but it really took hold. It might even keep them in the dark, squabbling with each other over meaningless trivialities, for another century! Just in the nick of time too since they finally rejected feudalism and centralized religious rule. Long as we can divide them we can keep conquering them, just like in the old days of bread-and-circus. Genius!"
Two points and a line defines one dimension. One-dimensional thinking is properly understood as a weakness, a tragic and artificial limitation of the possibilities of human thought and perception. I dearly hope it won't take a Fourth Reich for the mainstream to figure that out...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
So basically, women aren't any better than animals.
Of course not. They are animals, and we men, too -- we are all just primates! :)
This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
Don't be stupid. 15% of people not having the father they thought they did isn't because of rape, it's mostly because of cheating. Women who get raped generally have abortions, give it up for adoption, etc., plus the chances of having a successful conception during rape are poor (it's not like the rapist grabs the woman's ovulation calendar and plans the rape for that day). Women are naturally more horny on their unsafe days, so those are the times they're more likely to cheat.
Really? I don't know, because I don't really spend much time on OSS message boards, but the last time I looked into a publicized incident that hit the OSS press, I could have sworn the asshole men making misogynist comments had Russian or eastern-European-sounding names.
Exactly. I never said men were better, we're just different. Go hang around a prison, or a ghetto among gang members, to see men at their worst.
And to see a place where there's both men and women (though granted, a larger portion of men, but still plenty of women with equal power), which represents humanity at its very, very worst, just go to the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. Or the Hewlett-Packard corporate boardroom.
Here's one quick link I found while Googling:
http://menshealth.about.com/od/lifestyle/a/paternity.htm
This article, from 2005, says that "experts agree" that the number of men unknowingly bringing up another man's child is below 10%, but that the number of men getting paternity tests for their kids is rising fast.
Unfortunately, he's right to a certain extent. Why do a lot of people buy bigger houses, nicer cars, etc.? A lot of times, it's to "keep up with the Joneses". I wouldn't say that "most" people do that, but a lot do.
It's not just middle-class people in suburbia; you see it with poor people all the time: they have some shitty car worth about $400, but then they go buy rims for $2000 (on credit no less!) to put on it to impress their friends in the ghetto. Rich people do it too: they buy massively overpriced bottles of rare wine to show off to their friends, champagne with pieces of gold in it, or they buy bigger yachts to impress people. People are constantly trying to one-up their peers with material goods, and that seems to qualify as "buying respect" to me.
The internet can be a form of pure communication, and it should be. Size, age, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, these things don't NEED to matter as much anymore because no one can see if you are a dog, a cat, a furry, whatever. Unless you tell them, unless you make it an issue, or they make it an issue. If we select for intelligence, coherent arguments, civility, decency (yeah, I know, on the internet?) with each other, instead of what our location on the planet, the region of the planet our ancestors came from, or the color of our hair, or any other physical trait we care to mention, we'll get back to the higher quality of discourse we used to enjoy. Yes, even on slashdot. In other words, if all you are to me is a mind, a voice (well, typed), a being, not a body, why should I care what body you inhabit? It makes as much sense to care whether it's raining right now on the other side of the planet as to care what body you happen to inhabit, or what your preferences for coitus are. THIS ISN'T HIGH SCHOOL, THIS IS THE INTERNET!
Now, what happens if we take this mindset to where the ceiling's painted blue?
Commecial companies with a certain size have a women-quote, they NEED to employ some women to fulfill this. Most Opensource Projects just live from volunteers.
Depends on the games you play. I've made friends online with several ladies that play MMOs while their babies sleep - they'll go AFK for a nappy change, a feed, etc.
Nobody gives them any grief, nobody mocks them, similarly nobody blinks when one of the men in our guild goes "sorry guys, baby's just woken up, I'd better go feed her before she wakes the wife".
Indeed... I get annoyed at men who think that laundry shouldn't be their job either.
I got unnecessarily distressed last year at a woman thinking it was ok to mock me because I do my own laundry.
Gender splits in general are bogus.
Breast-feeding aside, I'd agree.
Golddigging may have other reasons for being associated with women. They have the opportunity. A man can fall head over heels for a woman on sight alone more easily. This puts women in a position they can exploit. Everyone wants money, to get special treatment, etc. Many don't but so many are in that position compared to men that you're going to get more of them. The complain goes both ways. Women are often put out by the fact that men only care about their bodies. Put the two together and marry them you end up with a contract whore and her lifetime client. Have either one in a relationship and you have the oldest soap opera known to man. On the other hand this could be entirely bullshit.
I'll agree with you that differences exist and people find it more convenient to deny this but I couldn't speak on the exact origin of many of them with great certainty.
In my experience I see no great barrier against women from taking up geekier jobs besides that collectively they show little interest in the kind of pursuits that are pertinent to a nerdy career. I have worked with female programmers and have been entrenched in technology for a very long time any single person's experience is minute compared to the whole but mine is at least appreciably non-zero. I have heard of anything but very isolated instances of a barrier being put up against women. I would say that overall there is nothing stopping them but themselves in that regard. Whatever the problem is, I couldn't say it is greatly present in the industry or educational system.
Some of this is cultural and that is undeniable. I can't say how much is based on biological gender but I would expect more than nothing. I do not buy into this blank slate theory of gender roles that dictates that there is absolutely no nature involved in determining the capabilities or interests of an individual. Studies on twins reveal that this is absolutely not so and that the power of nature is significant. On the other hand, many aspects of nature can be wiped over by nurture. In theory you could raise each gender differently in a way that brings them as close together to one another as the end result in terms of abilities and interests over all with some success. I see absolutely no point in struggling to eradicate or reduce differences in such a way.
A friend of mine is one of those "bad boys". He's usually doing two different married women at any point in his life.
He likes married women because they don't try to tie him down (it's just a fling, after all), and they eventually move on, leaving him free to find someone else. Meanwhile, they have an outlet for all their repressed emotions and fantasies, which he's happy to oblige for some truly amazing sex.
These women are people whom you'd NEVER suspect of cheating. There is quite literally no way of knowing, unless she gets careless.
Would that be the reaction where all the white Democrats switched to the Republican ticket and Obama lost?
Or the reaction where all the white Republicans didn't like a black Democratic president? Just like how all the white Democrats didn't like the previous white Republican president?
Sure we can't properly define intelligence, but there are enough tests with racial differences in achievement that the results point to a difference in intelligence. There are enough tests that taken in total, most people would look at them and say in most cases they correlate well with intelligence. Yeah you'll get the 1 in a million who is clearly a genius but fails every test.. that's probably statistically insignificant. So why aren't the existing tests good enough? It seems a case of arguing from a conclusion that you don't like -- one refuses to believe race impacts intelligence, so every test that shows a racial difference is not really measuring intelligence.
People say we can't properly define race either, but I don't buy that. Self-identification seems good enough. Just guessing but probably 95% of self-assessments meet with 95% approval from a random sample of others. In other words, you don't find many people who self-identify as white who are not identified by others as white. Why isn't that good enough?
Surely there's a rigorous approach to dealing statistics on things that are poorly defined but on which there is widespread "fuzzy" agreement. There's got to be, I just don't know the proper name for it.
I think men from western cultures aren't upset about women, but about authoritarian approaches to furthering women at the expense of men. Which makes perfect sense when you're from a culture that values equality.
In my experience, women from non-western cultures are much more likely to be involved in computers and math than women from western cultures. The difference seems, to me, to be that non-western women take it for what it is. They don't want the whole computer industry to change to accommodate them, they are willing to change to accommodate it. That means being nerdy and uncool sometimes, or putting in long hours and sacrificing a bit of family if you're talking about work instead of school.
In my experience, women from non-western cultures are much more likely to be involved in computers and math than women from western cultures.
I disagree with this. I think non-western cultures are not uniform, and differ from each other in giant ways. So, for instance, I see tons and tons of Indian women involved in computers and math; I also see a fair number of Chinese women. But I can't say I've ever seen any Russian or Eastern European women, though I've seen tons and tons of men from those areas involved in computers. I don't think I've seen any Arabic women involved in them either.
Your link didn't get formatted properly, can you please re-post it?
But I can't say I've ever seen any Russian or Eastern European women, though I've seen tons and tons of men from those areas involved in computers.
I was married to one for a long time, so yeah, they do exist.
But gender discrimination in Russia is much more real, even if the laws on the books are mostly same as U.S.; they just lack teeth. Job posting reading "seeking a C++ programmer, male, ..." is exceedingly common.
There was a lot of angst (still is) that young women don't often go into engineering or software fields.
As part of this, we would poll the young'uns about what they wanted to be. Keeping in mind that this was largely sons and daughters of academic and engineering types, you might think that there would be a lot more "I want to be an engineer" form the young ladies
Most all of the young ladies aspired to be lawyers, doctors or veterinarians, if they were interested in a professional field. Not an engineer or software person in the batch.
Anyhow, these were smart girls, who were interested in a career. They weren't the stereotype of girls who had gender issues forced upon them. They just didn't think that the "geek" fields were all that interesting.
So what to do? Do we force women into the fields? If we try to recruit, is it a failure if we don't get more, or could there be something else? Are there certain fields that a woman might be attracted to or not attracted to? It is interesting that the two physician field fit into a nurturing type personality. And the lawyer profession does attract people who are interested in social justice.
Certainly not some sort of exhortation against becoming a geek, if a woman wants to be any particular field, she should not face stereotype blocks to get there. I just fear that there may be some gender specific differences that send people to differing fields, and that it will be difficult to change those traits.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Exactly my point: different non-western cultures are different. I dated an Indian girl for 4 years, and have worked with Indian men and women a lot. They definitely have their gender discrimination, but it doesn't seem to extend much into the workplace; i.e. men and women each have their gender roles, but there doesn't appear to be anything in the culture against women having tech jobs, other professional jobs, or even political jobs. Instead, it appears to be highly valued; when looking for a wife for an arranged marriage, an educated, degreed man and his family will want a woman who's also educated and degreed.
Obviously, this is rather different from Russian culture as you point out. Why India, still considered a backwards 3rd-world country in many ways, is so much better on this point than Russia (an industrialized country with probably the strongest space program on the planet now and a long history of leading in science and technology) or even the USA, is probably a complex topic that maybe some sociologist could write a doctoral dissertation on.
"No offence, but if you think that money either measures or buys respect (other than in the trivial gangster sense) you're a fucking moron."
No offence, but it might be the case that you are the fucking moron that neither thought in the slightiest how money can be a symbol of respect nor knows to keep his mouth shout prior to throw harsh words to others.
On one hand, as another poster already said, money can obviously buy you status which certainly relates to respect (the "awesome" kind of respect rich people get).
On the other hand, why do you think that people isn't glad to know that a colleague with their same job in the same company makes more than them? The amount of money your company pays you is the easiest way for the company to show respect to you -or at least, that's part of its percieved value.
That one.
The Democrats didn't like what Bush did. The Republicans attacked Obama's citizenship through an emphasis on his (half) black roots, and by emphasizing his middle name to create a religious association that didn't exist. Can you seriously claim that those easily disproved crackpot theories didn't get widespread support due to an undercurrent of racism when they clearly appeal to racist/bigoted sentiments?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Wow, wait till you hit 40, you're gonna look back at that post and weep. Unless you're female, in which case you're probably going to be laughing into your cappuccino. Two words for you my son. Monthly Payments.
A meta-stereotype, actually. I call that a dolbysurroundtype.
Actually I'd say its a cultural thing. As I said I was the tutor for the HS football team for four years and while the white players were looking at sports as a way to earn a free college education (and get the hot chicks) the blacks saw it as an end unto itself. In their culture athletes are looked up to whereas the education seekers are 'uppity" "acting white" or "Uncle Toms". Sadly I saw this several times, education for the sake of knowledge is looked down upon, its almost like anyone smarter than they are makes them feel inferior so they would tear them down.
Personally I never got that, my oldest is going on his second year at college to be a doctor and i'll be the first to admit he kicks my 156 IQ ass when it comes to brains but that makes me happy as hell personally. He has noble goal like becoming one of the doctors without borders and his strong faith and work ethic (and by faith I mean in the classical Jesus sense, as in helping the poor and downtrodden NOT the bigotry that is passed off as Christianity nowadays) will help him to be a kick ass healer. but if he was black he'd be getting more than half of the community actively treating him like shit, I've again seen it with my own eyes, i just don't get it. But that seems to be ingrained in their culture, music and athletics is encouraged, educational advancement is not. Crazy huh?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I had a friend that was the same way for more than 20 years, he's now sleeping on a couch and working at Lowe's because 3 of them got knocked up and he got stuck with child support. Karma, it is a bitch. The flipside is of course how culture can affect outlook, my GF is Cherokee and after that many generations of being trodden on with the reservations frankly they are a broken people. her two previous marriages were both abusive and now she is constantly frightened i'm gonna "throw her away" for someone better and its hell getting her to stand up for herself. It'll probably take years to undo the damage her culture has done to her if I ever can.
It still amazes her that there are guys like me out there that will stand up for her WITHOUT using her as a punching bag or trying to sleep with her friends but it just shows you that some times stereotypes don't fit, i'm sure i look like a teddy bear but i spent many a year playing behind chicken wire and biking my ass all over the south. My favorite backup bass still has several dents from guys that didn't know when to back off and if any tried shit at some club I'm playing with my Cherokee princess that bass will be getting another battle scar. But just because I protect what's mine does NOT mean I would ever raise a hand in anger to a female, that shit just don't fly and I was raised a traditional southern gentleman, we don't do that shit.
But I'm happy and if it takes years to slowly build her back up i'll spend the time, my family all think the world of my princess and are being supportive. You do what you gotta do, ya know?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Open Letter to the Reverend Anne L. Schlesinger of LeGrand Methodist Church
Dear Reverend Anne Schlesinger:
This is a difficult matter to bring to your attention. But I do
not believe that your husband David N. “Lefty” Schlesinger has made
you aware of certain illegal and immoral activities that he is
engaging in regards to his pornographic and harassment/stalking
websites. I do not know if you are even aware of Lefty’s 16 year
career of stalking and harassment, which seems to have begun with
his menacing threats and extortion demands on the Waldorf school
teacher Kathy Sutphen. I doubt someone of your position in the
Church *could* be aware of such horrendous activities and not stop
them immediately and by any means. Currently, Lefty under the name
’stonemirror’ and in his own civil name is harassing several
parties unrelated to me. This in addition to Lefty even of this
morning contacting some friends of mine I haven’t even talked to in
months and harassing them. Worst of all, Lefty has decided to
increase his harassment of my person by purchasing from my ex-
partner several home made pornographic photographs over ten years
old which he has now illegally published on one of his many
harassment websites, http://www.extinct-marsupial.org . Here is a
link to the photo in question, one of many:
[as of 2/20 the pornographic material has been temporarily forced offline with the intervention of law enforcement]
This material was never public in any way until your husband David
“Lefty” Schlesinger made it public in order to harm and stalk my
family.
This not only illegal harassment and cyberstalking on Lefty’s part, it is civil
court actionable on several counts including willful invasion of
privacy and infliction of emotional distress. If you can stop your
husband Lefty, perhaps we can avoid involving the police and/or
civil attorneys in this matter. David needs your help, his actions
are not those of a sane and sober man.
The following WHOIS link has your and David’s home address on it,
499 Balch Way, Ben Lomond, CA. This proves that the site extinct-
marsupial.org is the creation of Lefty and Lefty only. Though in
fact, Lefty makes it a public boast that he owns this
stalking/harassment site with its stolen, unauthorized pornographic
photos.
http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=extinct-
marsupial.org&prog_id=godaddy
Lefty also runs other websites devoted to harassing my family
such as
:
http://stonemirror.wordpress.com
Here are other links which document Lefty’s harassment of myself,
my extended family, and several other unrelated individuals:
http://lwn.net/Articles/367498/
http://lwn.net/Articles/366559/
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/30218/
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20559&page=21
Anne: your husband Lefty has been called out as mentally
unbalanced by his own work colleague the internationally regarded
Bruce Perens.
I believe only you can get him the help he needs, and make him stop
this vile and disgusting and illegal activity he is engaged in,
driven by his obvious mental illness.
Reverend Anne, will you do something
to help your husband and also help his stalking victims escape his
insane actions?
sincerely,
The Victims of David “Lefty” Schlesinger aka ’stonemirror’
#
I agree that, at face value, it's self defeating in terms of promoting self advancement. But it's also quite understandable. As I said above, for 30 years athletics has been one of the few fields where success is based on objective metrics (how fast you run, how far you jump/throw/bat, how many times you scored) and that has helped black athletes become successful role models. That success is about as common as winning the lottery but it's often done on those athletes' own terms (with classic examples like Jessie Owens, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, or Dennis Rodman). The same thing applies to musical greats in blues and jazz and pop: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzie Gillespie, John Coltrane, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, BB King, Billie Holliday, Etta James, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson. They composed music on their own terms and many were self-taught.
Contrast that with anybody who takes an academic track, be it in medicine, law, or just post secondary research and teaching. First, it was financially out of reach for most. Secondly all of those involve professional exams and licensing boards that could be very subjective: bar exams, residency periods, medical exams, PhD oral defense, engineering supervised work periods. Those could be heavily manipulated by bigoted board members to keep out black applicants, with the result that much time would have been spent preparing only to be denied the ability to practice. Or even if you managed to get a licence, partnership structures in law, accounting, and other large professional firms would limit your advancement possibilities regardless of your achievements, and the old boys network would prevent you from getting big clients if you started your own firm. How many high profile blacks can you name from those professions? Johnnie Cochran, Clarence Thomas, the Obamas, Anybody else? Do you think one of them might fit that Uncle Tom stereotype a bit? It's not surprising that the "cultural wisdom" would develop that only chumps and Uncle Toms would attempts that track. For decades before and after the Civil Rights battle of the 60s, those opportunities were denied to most blacks unless they were either really lucky or ready to kiss some serious ass. Nowadays the probability of success has likely increased to where the invested effort is likely to pay off. However the perception stays ingrained in the culture because of generational overlap, with 2 generations still alive remembering and passing on their memories of heavy bigotry and discrimination, and because the success stories are few and far between. This is reinforced by constant reminders that the bigotry still exists, from regular racial profiling of young black men by police, to the fact that rich and successful black men still get harassed for DWBs if they are driving better models of vehicles.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire