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The Empathy Gap and Why Women Are Treated So Badly In Open Source Projects (perens.com)
Bruce Perens writes: There's no shortage of stories of horrible treatment of women in Open Source projects. But how did we get here? How did we ever get a community where a vocal minority of males behave in the most boorish, misogynistic, objectifying manner toward women? I have a theory: "It’s unfortunately the case that software development in general and Open Source communities are frequented by males who have social development issues. I once complained online about how offended I was by a news story that said many software developers were on the autism spectrum. To my embarrassment, there were many replies to my complaint by people who wrote 'no, I really am on the spectrum and I’m not alone here.'
It’s still an open issue whether males and females have built-in biases that, for example, lead fewer women to be programmers, or if such biases only develop as a response to social signals. There is more science to be done. But it’s difficult to do that sort of science because we can’t separate the individuals from the social signals they’ve grown up with. Certainly we can improve the situation for the women who would be programmers except for the social signals."
It’s still an open issue whether males and females have built-in biases that, for example, lead fewer women to be programmers, or if such biases only develop as a response to social signals. There is more science to be done. But it’s difficult to do that sort of science because we can’t separate the individuals from the social signals they’ve grown up with. Certainly we can improve the situation for the women who would be programmers except for the social signals."
There are some people who really are awful to women, and they're often (but not always) really awful to work with in other ways too. Finding ways to get them to either improve or get out is tricky because they exist in the same career ladders as people who want a decent place to work.
Then there's a subset of people opposing them who insist on overly narrow notions of how people should be allowed to act, talk, and think. They take it on themselves to police speech and behaviour far more than is reasonable or necessary. In their effort to deal with a legitimate problem, they become another kind of problem.
Making all this less clear is that the boundaries between these are unclear and they tend (but don't always) to line up with political views, and political witchhunts in the workplace (or broader society) are dangerous and ill-advised.
It's messy enough that it'd be tempting to just step back from the whole thing, but the stakes are too high for that. We neither should want to waste the potential of half our population (or other subsets of the population) nor should we create a work environment or society where most kinds of differing views on gender or jokes are curtailed. So navigating this is damned tough.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Nope, not even putting my name to this one, I don't feel like getting vaporized this early in the morning.
Reason One: Let's face the truth, here. The 'vocal minority' in technology-related endeavors tend to be the guys who are the most unattractive to women, both physically and (lack of) personality-wise, and by the time they've reached adulthood, they've been rejected so many times, that they make a choice between suicide and deciding 'all women are whores' and hating on them, steadfastly refusing to take the blame for being disgusting. I could be much more descriptive here about the many many faults of the individuals I am referring to, and believe me it's taking a heroic effort not to, but let's just leave it at 'even their mothers have a hard time loving them'.
Reason Two: There are Feminists. Then there are Feminazis. The difference is the former wants to be treated as equals, and the latter wants supremacy. The 'gentlemen' described above are low-hanging fruit for attacks by Feminazis, since they embody everything that's wrong with men, in a concentrated form. Feminazis will polarize a situation as fast as anyone possibly could because of this. Furthermore Feminazis may or may not actually be technically qualified to be working on a project, but if they're not, that fact is of no moment to them, they'll insist that they're not being treated fairly if anyone suggests that maybe they're not. Welcome to the downward spiral! The whole situation starts deteriorating.
Reason Three: Women who are actually qualified, and are not Feminazis or even overtly feminists? They get left in the dust by everybody else, because society raises and conditions them to not speak up, not raise their voices, not stand out, and for god's sake, don't get in a man's way! All of which is total bullshit, of course, if they're qualified they SHOULD step forward -- but they tend not to. Which just reinforces the average mans' opinion that women just can't do STEM.
Reason Four: Human beings, in general are still more dumb animals than we are truly sentient, civilized beings. This problem goes way beyond the tiny scope of the posted article; look out into the world at how humans treat other humans, in general; people treat other people worse than dog shit. We're sitting here right now discussing how women aren't treated fairly in some project or other, meanwhile in innumerable other places in the world, women are being beaten by their husbands, who firmly believe that she's his property, he can do whatever he likes to her, it's nobodys' business, and if he thinks she needs to die for whatever offense she's (apparently) committed against him, then that's OK. Little girls getting acid thrown in their faces because they dared to want to go to school. Young women being beaten and raped because they dared to not cover their hair, or their faces, or whatever absolutely rediculous reason. Female circumcision. The list goes on, that's JUST things being done to women. We're not truly civilized yet, far from it, when we live in a world where things like this are happening. Misogynistic fat neckbeards giving women a hard time in the workplace or in some technical project is really Amateur Night compared to all the other shit that goes on in the world, but it's a symptom of the root cause.
*****
Naturally I expect to be modded down immediately to (-1, Troll) or (-1, Flamebait), because the truth hurts, even if it doesn't apply directly to you, and nobody wants to admit that all your illusions about the Human Race are just that: illusions. But you can't un-read what was presented here, either. Get correct or get wrecked, Humanity. You're behind the curve and you're embarassing yourselves.
Peace, out.
Why does this have to be a "male" problem versus an "asshole" problem?
If you say there are unpleasant women to work with, doesn't that kind of transcend gender?
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Being an expert in a particular area means that you have neglected learning in other areas. You only have so much time to learn things. To many technically oriented people all of the vagueness of social interactions is not logical, it cannot be derived from first principles. If is culture and it is that way because that is the way it is. This isn't interesting to many technical people so we spend our time on more interesting things. So while you may bitch that technical people don't have social skills what you really mean is that instead of learning social skills they spent that time becoming an expert in a technical field. You have spent your time learning social skills and then complain the reason you don't have technical skills is because those with them are mean. That's like me after spending my life learning English moving to a Spanish speaking country and bitching that I could learn Spanish much easier if all of these people would just learn English to help me. Sorry but that's not how it works.
I am an excellent mechanical design engineer that has spend over 20 years learning and honing my skills. This includes studying in my spare time and even my hobbies contribute in some way. Even entertainment I like watching "How it's made" so I can see examples of automation equipment for ideas. Some bosses have asked me to put together a 30 minute talk to help people learn to become a good design engineer. I laugh (maybe my lack of social skills) and say I only need a minute. I'd tell the people to dedicate their lives and spend 20 years learning this stuff and you can be just like me! Most people don't want to do that and spend their time with other things. That's fine, but don't come complaining that I lack budgeting or scheduling skills. No kidding, I have no interest in management. That's your job.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Safe spaces are a symptom yes, but you're wrong about the disease.
The disease: Raising kids to believe that women are always right and men are always wrong, giving every kid a trophy just for showing up, and helicopter parents holding kids' hands their entire lives. We know have a generation of legal adults that require "trigger warnings" before they hear anything the least bit upsetting during university lectures.
So why are you carrying water for a group that prefer to whinge, complain, and force others to act the way they want, instead of getting off their ass and downloading source to start their own projects?
Cover your ears (trigger warning): You're too old to buy into this bullshit, and I believe this is a troll to get back in the headlines.
As a woman who's been in the electronics/computer field for more than 55 years, now, I read with much disgust the attempts by some in this thread to discount women, and then claim that, somehow, "It ain't true."
Believe me, I've been there. After three books, hundreds of published papers and articles, and decades of consulting to Fortune 500 firms, I have been on the receiving end of the misogynistic "swinging dicks" who couldn't write a competent subroutine or draw a working circuit if their lives depended on it. I can (and, in the past, have) named names and identified organizations where women dare not go. What's interesting is having the CEO of a Fortune 500 company hire me (at $2,500/day) and then have twerps three years out of school decide they know more than I and refuse my counsel because my anatomy is different from theirs. Usually, there's a competent male around who steps in and shuts the abuse down. When there's not, I have developed a strong skill in suckering such blithering idiots into cul de sacs of their own ignorant reasoning, until they are reduced to mumbling to themselves. But, why should I ever have had to DEVELOP that skill?
We are all born the same way, and discover our gender as we grow up...but, due to family influences (e.g., drunken men abusing their wives, "men of the house" who want their women "barefoot and pregnant"), some males grow up with a tacit belief that women are, somehow, inferior to men. There's a name for these people: They are BIGOTS (and it often extends to other differences, like cultural heritage, skin color, education, that are patently irrelevant to judging whether the person is "human" or not).
Fortunately, not all men are chained to this philosphers' wall, drawing conclusions from shadows and accepting them as fact. There are many men who exhibit humanity and treat ALL others with respect and dignity...and they are a delight to work alongside. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the dolts, in my experience.
Ian was a really bright and capable guy with a dark side. Unfortunately, at times he had difficulty dealing with anger, debilitating depression, and blame projection. He was arrested for battery and illegal confinement in 2009, this event with SFPD wasn't the first time.
I was his friend once, although that was more than a decade ago. I absolutely hate that he died without a friend left in the world to help him and in such an undignified, unfair, senseless way. But that's what happened. The police were not to blame.
Bruce Perens.
I"ve sometimes wondered if this behavior is similar to the mobbing behavior you see in certain species such as Monk Seals:
http://www.pinnipeds.org/seal-...
"Mobbing" refers to a pathological behavior that occurs when the gender ratio becomes skewed, with an excess of males versus females. The adult males become increasingly aggressive towards females (and immature pups), and will injure and even kill them, as multiple males gang up to play out a violent parody of their normal mating behavior. This problem becomes self-perpetuating as females are hunted down, with natural populations having observed to be driven into ratios as extreme as 3 males for every 1 surviving female.
It didn't take too long after he passed on a (perhaps paranoid, but perhaps not) warning about some people trying to entrap high-profile Open Source people into sexual harassment complaints at conferences before a few women posted some vague accusations of Raymond "creeping" on them at conferences. Including some he wasn't at.
I have an idea for starters. How about, to start, that all sexual abuse and harassment will be considered strictly unacceptable? For example, the kinds of things that Linus Torvalds has said on mailing lists is stuff that would get any employee of a company instantly fired. Yet in his arrogance he thinks that because he's some super-duper-important OSS guru guy that the same code of conduct doesn't apply to him, which is a pretty disgusting way to think.
So yeah, for the foundation, how about stopping harassment and abuse? Because that would be an important, major, and requisite first step to accomplishing even better things, like having OS projects actually seem appealing to women.
As for Autisim Spectrum stuff, I believe that it is very common among all people in this world, male, female, black, white, yellow, green. I don't think that necessarily has any bearing upon whether a person would treat others badly. It may just make them seem a little spaced out perhaps but still a nice/good person. I notice a lot of Japanese dramas have characters who often are in the autistic spectrum and those characters actually make the dramas more interesting and are almost always depicted as being exceptional in more than one way, often with incredible gifts and ability to influence people positively. So I think at least some of the concern/criticism about autism spectrum people is just a cultural take on it.