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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."
Bruce Perens is the last person who should be pointing out people with social development issues.
Don't bother with the link - standard armchair psychoanalysing to the tired tune of "this is all fault of those nasty, nasty nerds".
We were always "there" to start with. Men are the creative intelligent gender, women are the reproductive and emotional gender.
What's so fucking hard to understand about that? You don't use a NPN transistor to do a PNP's job, and so what? They complement each other, they work best when each one is in its role.
How dare you presume Bruce is a man's name? Say it with a big enough lisp and it's anyone's name!
I know they are there. I have had some startlingly unpleasant interactions with a handful of them. I don't know enough about them yet. Probably someone else should handle that side of the problem.
Bruce Perens.
Obviously I don't know a thing about his upbringing, but I know about the general situation
Exactly. You don't know any particulars, but you feel free extrapolate your lack of knowledge to general 'open source community', do some amateur psychoanalysis and end up with a lazy stereotype.
and I suggest a solution, although it would take a generation to implement.
Link just died unfortunately (404).
Just what are you doing? Denying there's a problem?
I deny there is some general problem with open source projects. There are many of them with different cultures. Some of them antagonistic, others focused only on merit and not giving a damn about gender and some unfortunate others that got invaded by SJWs (example: Gnome Foundation that got its coffers emptied by Stormy Peters on idiotic stuff like OPW).
There is nothing preventing women from starting their own projects and making sure that repositories, forums, wikis, etc. are perfect safe spaces for precious snowflakes. I also don't see 'diversity' as some kind of fetish - if it helps making better projects, cool, but not as goal of its own. How much money and time has to be wasted for stuff like Ada Initiative, OPW, countless 'get more women into IT' programs funded by various companies until someone decides it is just not worth it?
And has any of your experience been as a man? No? Then how can you explain and recognize the problems and hostility men face, that, to the man, appear just as devastating and unpleasant as your story, but gets ZERO traction, because as gestation bags, women are "more important" and "need protecting" (not any more, hence the quote marks over what USED to be a sensible survival strategy) than men, who are expendable and expected to sacrifice themselves "for the team".
Rape happens to men nearly as frequently as women (most median estimate about 2:1 for women), but gets less than 3% of the effort to bring to justice. Yet, despite having been sexually abused as a young boy, Richard Dawkins' experience in sexual assault was UTTERLY DISCARDED because he was a white aged male in a position of power.
Due to family influences, we have golddiggers who think that the world (male parts of it anyway) owe them EVERYTHING. Women rape children and the boy is told BY HIS OWN FATHER that he really did enjoy it, because, hey, he's a man, right, and all men want sex, can't get enough. That the boy said otherwise was irrelevant. AND THE JUDGE AGREED.
Most of the household assault is done by the mothers. Mostly explained by the larger fraction of time the mother spends with the children. However, the opposite story is the one everyone hears,and that has no rational explanation, other than keeping the fiction of female purity and specialness alive.
After all, most of the spending is done by the women, so you don't want to piss off the customer with the money, do you.
I would like to understand how we have brought up some folks like, to take the worst example, weev.
I would like to understand how we have brought up some folks like Bruce Perens, who hate on us so much that they make up victims in order to bludgeon us with his sympathy-fueled hate.
Go fuck yourself, Bruce Perens. I never befopre today expressed any negative feelings towards you or generalized you, but then you did that very thing to me. Go fuck yourself, Bruce Perens.
"His name was James Damore."
Yes. You CARE. We have all been hearing the dirge of the so-called progressives: "if you CARE about people, this is the way you should feel about X situation", or else MISOGYNY.
The fact that you care makes it all right for you to mischaracterize the problem?
-LaurenC
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.