Slashdot Mirror
Girls Like Linux Too
BootHead sent us the article at ZD-Net that appears most designed to draw a link from Slashdot in quite some time. Its about Women and Linux. Course they call them "LinuxChix" (cough) but its just sorta the standard tirade on "Girls can be Geeks Too" (which no geek argues with in theory, we just never be able to find girl geeks of our own ;)Update: 09/16 09:29 by H :Check out the additional linkage about the debate of whether "Women need an OS of their own."
As far as I can tell, there are as many women in IT as really want to be in IT. I wish it were otherwise, but the aspiring techie women that I have worked with have typically lacked the "fire in the belly" that drives guy techies to be really successful in the business.
I don't think this is because women are stupid, or that IT is intrinsically hard. Women are just socialized with different values and priorities, and geeking out is not usually one of them.
That said, women who bitch and moan about the glass ceiling bug me. In my experience my advancement has been pretty much based on how hard I worked and how smart I am. If you are good enough, your gender becomes irrelevant. Sure, every now and then a poorly socialized male makes a stupid comment, but that's what a sense of humor is for!
Having the good fortune to be married to a girl-geek, I can tell you that they are a most interesting and entertaining tribe.
:)) Even better, all my friends are jealous that my wife actually understands what I say.
It is especially disconcerting when you fire off a stream of techno-babble and she ripostes smoothly. For example:
Me: Honey, I really need to get another 256MB of RAM.
Leisa: Why?
Me: Because it will make my computer faster and I need to do some software development... for work. yeah.
Leisa: You already have 128MB of memory... What kind of software needs more? And isn't that a game???
Me: Well.. you see it's a new C compiler and...
Leisa: A new C compiler? Whaddaya think I'm stupid?
Me: Uh... Please?
Leisa: You don't need more memory. When are you going to get me a CDR?
Having said that, the she-geek is a wonderful creature. Because, ultimately, she understands the technology lust that drives the true geek (I'm going to make her read this post
Of course, the biggest downside of female geeks are that they are hard to find. You just gotta hang in there guys.
-- Slashdot sucks.
It's the *ratio* that sucks, right?
-=Maggie Leber=-
Great idea! As long as he also posts a list of
all the male slashdotters so we can write some
appropriate procmail recipes:
:0:
* ? formail -ISubject | grep -iqsf $SLASHDOT_GEEKS
/dev/null
From what I've seen, it's not the male geeks that
are the problem as much as school and university
teachers, parents, and non-geek/hacker/etc workmates.
All the male geeks/hackers I've known have been
pretty good, but the other problem is just the
sheer numbers. I heard from a women the other day
who walked into a LUG meeting to find that she was
one of only a couple of females in a room of 100 males.
She nearly ran out again. Luckily she stayed, and will no doubt
become a keen member of the user group, but you can no doubt imagine how intimidating it might be for a newcomer. Oh, and while most geeks are pretty cool in RL, some people in certain online fora can be complete assholes.
Yup that sounds pretty sexist, but then again, I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm female but I'm not even slightly interested in talking about girlie topics, however the majority of females I know are and it bores the crap out of me.
I do have a number of intelligent female friends though who are capable of going to the toilet on their own and who don't talk about makeup or weddings (my workmates favourite topics) all day long.
I'm sick of being asked when I go for interviews how I feel about working in a mostly male environment. It makes absoloutely no difference to me whether I'm working with males or females. If they're intelligent and have something interesting to say then I'll get on well with them, if they're assholes then I won't. Gender doesn't enter into it.
Kathryn.
JPS said geeks aren't supposed to have a social life, making geek couples even more unlikely to. Very true, but there's an upside to it, more time to be naughty....
Ayup. Women just aren't usually that obsessive. /. didn't see fit to post it, so check out
Ellen Spertus, who wrote a paper on women in
computing that was slashdotted recently, comments
that maybe women just aren't insane enough to spend
all their time eating, sleeping and breathing computers -- and that maybe that's a good thing.
Personally, I think that since women in our society seem to be better trained at "having a life"
and doing all those communications kinda things that might keep some of us from hacking as obsessively,
perhaps we should put those skills to use in the geek/hacker/OSS field. I wrote a whole rant on it, but
http://netizen.com.au/~skud/articles/chick2/ if you're interested in reading more.
Much as I hate to say "me too", Me Too!
I'm with you 100% on this. Well, 99%. I'm on
linuxchix until it drives me up the wall. Which,
with the number of posts today, is about to happen
in the next hour or so.
But then a woman joined the faculty, and had a lab in the basement. And by golly she wasn't going to go upstairs just to go to the bathroom! So she just started using the men's restroom! :)
Now it is technically a coed bathroom, and has a sign you can flip to indicate whether it is currently being used by a man or a woman. Alas, I hear that the guys don't bother with the sign, so if you are a woman, you can't mind walking in on a guy in the restroom. A Physicist
I suppose it's probably settled down by now and there's some interesting topics on it. I just got really pissed off because of the amount of crappy mails I had to go through at the start so I unsubscribed.
I don't think I'd dare subscribe again now after posting that last message, so I'll just have to take your word for it that it's improved...
It's sad that the article was as full of sexist comments as *anything* it simultaneously complains about.
Linux groups don't need to be gender based, you don't need to whine about glass ceilings, just put your nose in the 'pute and get to work.
Deal with the glass celings when they happen, compile evidence and sue. If some discriminates against you, you have a good chance of proving it -- and collecting a sizable settlement.
As far as male geeks being insensitive to female geeks, that makes me laugh. Male geeks RIP on each other all the time -- win, lose, draw -- no holds barred. They use words like "asshole", "dick", "idiot", "moron", "chimp", "fool", "luser" -- good god, the list goes on forever. Don't be suprised if you get whacked by other geeks, you have to get thick skinned to deal with any community. Just look at what politicians go through, it's not that different.
If Barbara Boxer can get in a debate with some right wing freak and come out on top, surely another woman can take on a male geek and win.
I saw a lot of women drop out of my CS classes. I don't know why, but it appears to be cultural; why study when you are popular and get lots of dates? It might be an ugly thing to say but it has truth in it. Girly girls don't compute, but true geek girls are unstoppable; history has shown Women *can* and *do* fit right in as uber geeks.
We have a woman geek in our Linux group who has written several fairly sophisticated Unix/X apps. Great at systems, too. Married to a male geek who is of similar geek stature. Her ability, knowedge and the way she carries herself put her far above gender and well into the realm of the uber geek.
Women : forget sexist cliques and stereotypes. Rise above your gender. You'll get called names, just like the men. It'll hurt, just like it hurts men. Let it go, release your inner geek!
Me, I joined linuxchix because I have a passion
for Open Source meta-issues. Pity there's so
little discussion of that on linuxchix.
Is there any good mailing list for such topics?
All the geek girls I know played with dolls, had tea parties and did all that other "girl stuff".
Yeah, but that doesn`t mean we`re not ashamed of it now. I was into Flower Fairy dolls when I was eight, and I`m dreadfully embarrassed about it now..
Slashdot runs an article on Compaq's new CEO, but not H-P's new Chief Exec. Figure it out (hint: Compaq & H-P's respective CEOs are *not* the same gender).
I've been getting an overwhelming attitude among geek guys recently that women geeks are just a toy like their new 21 inch moniotr. with a "Where can I buy my own?" attitude. You guys go on about petrifying whatever female geek catches your fancy for the day, you talk about 'creating' your own linux nerd, you suggest female geeks as great beowulf clusters, you say "I wish I could show her my box, heh heh heh". You guys pride yourselves on your intelligence, and you want to be respected for your mind, well so do I. Geek respect is earned, no matter what gender you are, and you're never going to find a female geek if you can't give her the basic respect you'd give any other geek.
That's very true -- it's a common attitude. (The statue thing is just creepy.)
That attitude isn't confined just to geek guys, though. It's present in guys in general. Just think back to the junior high or high school locker room. Sure, the metaphors are different. Lots more sports euphemisms... but it was there, and in all sorts of people.
Now there may be a larger percentage of geek guys with underdeveloped social abilities than the percentage of non-geek guys with the same lack of personal acuity, or there may not be. That's not really my point. It's just too common everywhere.
I do wonder if other industries went through the opposite growth pains. Did the flight attendants of the 60's lament the lack of men in that role? How about in nursing?
I also wonder if the geek tendency to let his job and related interests dominate his life has anything to do with the curious desire so many of us have to bring more women into our field. It's probably not as altruistic as the simple desire to even the playing field.
I'd prefer to meet someone with at least some divergent interests. Keeps me challenged with something other than the latest O'Reilly book. You can only recompile your kernel so many times, but arguing over "opera or action movie?"* lasts forever.
* My pick depends on the opera.
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I guess that makes sense. Being a male, I don't quite grasp the extent to which females find it hard to integrate into predominantly male groups.
Personally though I would welcome females, and it isn't even a case of "looking for a mate" kind of welcoming that was expressed elsewhere. Males and females think so differently in some situations that a male approach isn't always the answer - women have a lot to offer. We have a lot to offer women too!
How's about FreeChix?
Help me out here. What are us males doing that's so chauvenistic or sexist?
I'd ask the female geek types I know, but unfortunately I don't know any. Not one. I work in a hardware / software company with just under 50 employees, 5 of whom are female. They are not geeks.
Now it's not like my company is hiring only guys for technical positions -- we just can't find qualified female tech types. We have a hard enough time finding qualified people to begin with. Half our recent hires have been hired from overseas after a phone interview.
Outside of work, all the women and girls I know are pretty far from being geeks. Most of them know how to use Windows, Word and Netscape, but not much more than that.
When I was in University I knew a few girls who may have qualified as "female geeks" so that's my only real experience with them. From my perspective it didn't seem that they were being treated unfairly or even differently by either the profs or the other students. Now in one sense they did have to "sacrifice their femininity" a bit, but not because of discrimination -- rather because of time. We were so overworked in our program that girls didn't have time to style their hair or paint their nails -- but then again the guys had to go days without shaving.
In my (albiet limited) experience the opression against female geeks is just as imaginary as the forces trying to make girls into barbie dolls. I don't like the "barbie doll" look and most guys I know don't either. Yet I seem to constantly hear whining about how I (as a member of some larger group) am pushing girls to anorexia, or into having boob-jobs, or discouraging them from doing science, etc.
There are only three ways I can explain the huge discrepancy between my experiences and what I'm always hearing:
Now my preference is to go with the third option, because it implies no great failing on my part. But also because it matches my experience in other areas.
I have a (very nongeeky) sister. And I've spent enough time around her to know that males and females experience the world very differently. What passes as "friendly ribbing" among guys, is serious inults among girls. And where girls tend to be loving and supportive of eachother -- the closest you see to that among guys is friendliness.
As for the original source of complaint, it didn't seem too sexist to me at all. She-Geek to me is more inane journalistic "headline eye-grabbing stupidity" than sexism. So I'll leave with a question -- what would have been a non-sexist appropriate title that's just as "eye grabbing"?
I've decided that I will only date women can kick my ass at quake DM and can recite the voiceovers from the theatrical realease of bladerunner.
So far I havn't met any so I think I may have to settle for women who don't ask computer related questions and then get that glazed look in thier eyes when I answer. I may even have to settle for a woman who can plug in her own i-mac
Because it IS primarily about issues relating to women. This doesn't mean that men are excluded from contributing but I've noticed the percentage of men on Linuxchix has seemed to decrease over time. I suspect it went up today, but I'm also reasonably sure that'll change.
There are men who are sincerely interested in issues of sex, gender and also gender bias and I suspect those sorts of men will stick around.
And then there's of course the transgendered and transsexual crowd, who are also welcome for their unique perspectives on gender and sex.
_Deirdre
How do you get them away from irc though? How do you keep them from getting nasty little word macro viruses on your windows boxes? How do you get them to shutup and play halflife? The only thing I know to do with em is get them naked and put em on the net.
I'd be willing to bet that they are still a tiny minority, which I feel is a shame.
I have seen this with other 'hobbies' and technology in general. "Not that I am saying that Linux is a hobbie", but I have noticed that there are certain things that are considered 'male' and certain things that are considered 'female'. Now don't take this out of context, I don't agree that tech is male, but the fact is that not many women got into tech until the last 20 years it seems. In my engineering classes there were 3 women, as opposed to 50 men.
I watch Star Trek Voyager, religiously every wednesday. Many people don't watch it because the captian is a woman. I do. I think it portrays our future as rather 'mature'. A future where woman can be captians of star ships, engineers, and lets not forget 7 of 9 ;-).
I think that the fact that there are women in Linux or Linuxchix is actually a precursor of things to come.
Without technology many people would have died from hurricane Floyd that were given time to evacuate. This is a fact folks. Tech is good.
Tech brings people together. However we as a species still need to learn to 'control' tech and not abuse the power that it gives us like certain companies do just to make money.
This is just my opinion on the subject. I am a male not a female. So send all flame and hate mail to > /dev/null. :-)
Only 'flamers' flame!
has it occured to you that maybe we'd rather not be found by you guys? :)
nyah.
I think that there are many geek women -- their area of geeky interest is just usually not computers and they are usually a bit more practical than we are. For example, This article from Alan Cox's wife was published in LJ a few years back.
Just thought you guys would find it interesting.
-- Slashdot sucks.
This is essentially true. There was a very good BBC Open University programme on the history of computing which seems to be repeated annually which outlined this phenomenon. In the early days of computing when "coding" was very much a menial task, viewed in much the same way as data entry is seen today - often consisting merely of converting machine language into holes in a punch card (for example) - there were a lot of women filling this role. With the advent of assemblers, compilers and larger secondary storage, the need for these coders dwindled, IIRC, and "coding" became more and more the province of engineers and scientists. The original coders were eventually pushed out of the picture, it would seem.
--
This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
Don't make me laugh. It's easy to point the finger at men and discrimination but it is not, and was not, true. I have never seen a teacher or prof or student discourage or do anything but favour womyn. The jobs are there too, I've had orders [from our almost all female business analysts] to hire any semi-qualified womyn ahead of men because our programers were all male... 200 resumes later... no womyn have applied.
If there is a finger to point, it's at Cosmo, Seventeen and at womyn themselves. Even IF there is some bullshit to put up with in IT, it's trivial compared to the rewards of the field and the advantages given because of the lack of females. If womyn would rather take french, psych, run-jump-and-play[kinesiology] or english lit than a course which will give them easy money, well, thats their choice to make, isn't it.
> they tend to view programming as a job and an
> interest - not a lifestyle
Actually, this point WAS brought up at the meeting
(I was an attendee). One of the women said that
she has lots of female co-workers, but very few
true "geek" co-workers - a kinship that she likes
to have and an attitude that I understood.
There are quite a few of us out there. It's
jusk taking time for SWE and SysAdmin to become
a goal for more younger girls.
When I grew tired of Windows crashing and slow running aps, my geek boyfriend introduced me to Linux and Perl scripts. Now I am learning to manipulate data with blazing speed. There are geek girls out there for you geek guys. Just don't expect us to look like a supermodel.
Why a *closet* TS? What's wrong with an out TS woman? They're more fun, IMHO. Ya can't get reassignment surgery while you're still in the closet, for one thing.
-=Maggie Leber=-
They need to call the group Linux Chix in order to get women to join it... but it's not restricted to women. So, are these women in other Linux related groups, or are they only able to join things that have the word 'chix' in the name?
I'm sure they were really hard done by. Were they overlooked for scholarships because they weren't female... err male? Were they not allowed in classes? Were they practically the only man... er I mean woman in a typeing... err, math class?
I doubt the UK has been much different than NA, and I seriously doubt females have been 'discouraged' more than males to any serious degree and in fact I've seen nothing but a lot of encouragement here.
At my current place of employment we have a fairly diverse group of people and they are generally 'older' than the typical 20 something high-tech. No one I've talked to can point to any gender related discriminiation or discouragement aside from maybe peer pressure.
It's a nice easy strawman to beat your frustrations out and make you feel better you've found the answer but it's not the answer. If anything it's the promotion of girls doing more socializing but developing computer skillz being a more anti-social thing. With the internet and computers becoming a more social experience you're going to see a lot more females. A lot of women are going to be patting themselves on the back for starting up www.women.com or pushing things in school, but the fact is that computers becoming a more interesting thing to what little girls are taught to like will be the thing that brings women to the field. Things like Slashdot and ICQ are doing more to bring women into IT than getting Barbie to say how much she loves finite automata.
Heeeeeloooooooo baaaby!
;)
Erm...
Now, do I believe you?
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
*sigh* I sense a circular argument....
...the fact is that computers becoming a more interesting thing to what little girls are taught to like will be the thing that brings women to the field...
;)
Okay, so you have found no evidence of discrimination against women in the classroom (I shall suspend disbelief and take you at your word). That does not make the fact that several women I know have found evidence of discrimination any less valid.
"what little girls are taught to like"?
Bravo, sir. I believe you just made my case for me.
--
This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
Well, maybe after they do that, they can make an :)
OS for people like me who have scottish blood.
Us Scots need an OS all our own too!
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Hehehe... ;)
Exactly!
-- No, no -- Not that one!
I have to forget about looking for girls here on campus and find one in a Linux users' group instead :) Any female Linux fans here?
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
If geeks are know to be chauvinist pigs then lets stereotype more and say LinuxChix are fat
-Kris
Well, geeks are known to be chauvinist pigs...
Oh this macho feeling of the true man riding in the plains of the TCP/IP stack.
:)
I noticed Systers was mentioned on LinuxChix, too. That was a mailing list I bailed on rather quickly after I flamed someone for posting one of those 2M "send this to all your friends and save the headers" deals. All the other women jumped up and had a hissy fit because I was a "meanie".
WTF? We're supposed to be techno-savvy women and you're pulling a June Cleaver on me because someone acted worse than an AOL luser?
I think women sometimes have a hard time in this field because you really do have to buck the traditional female enculturation. Hanging out with geek guys is not about being passive and ornamentive and *nice*; it's about being a right bastard who slings data with the best of them.
I've noticed that women do tend to get whacked career-wise often - but it's mostly their fault. In our team, the women tended to get the scutwork and maintenance type tasks. Why? Because the guys wouldn't touch it with a bargepole and the gals caved and did it. Well, except for me. I'm good at metrics and documentation (a LOT better than any of the guys), but until my manager demonstrated how highly he valued those tasks AND how much he admired my work in those necessary areas, I refused to let them saddle me with "secretary work". The gals would cave and do the meta-work (the curse of the BigCorporation) and the guys would get all the plum tech jobs.
I talked to my manager and together we made sure that, although my work was critically important to the team and I enjoyed it, I would also get plenty of tech training and always have at least one new tech project on my plate. But you can't just be passive and expect to get the career you want - and too many women in my team expected the managers to magically see that they were martyring themselves and fix it, even when they weren't complaining.
While I didn't have to be "one of the boys", I do speak up for myself, clearly declare my needs and desires, and go after my wants and interests. Too many women are taught otherwise.
-- Raven
Don't forget this related story. It's talking about a Linux distribution for girls..
Hetz (Heunique)
Well, not that Deb or the LinuxChix list needs any defence but it seems obvious your girlfriend didn't read the welcome message. It clearly states "There are no posting rules. There are some guidelines, and as long as people follow the guidelines, we'll be able to avoid having to set out any hard and fast rules." which makes things pretty clear to me.
So, instead of complaining please get your facts straight first. As far as I am concerned, LinuxChix is most probably the most helpful list for women and men who are fed up with answers like "RTFM!" every time one may have a question and may be so new in the game that one might not be a star in reading man pages and HOW-TO's.
Sincerely,
Johan T. Lindgren
So you think the only "non-geeky" things that women might talk about are their asses or periods? Come on, you can troll better than that.
She's three, and right now her favorite computer activities are painting with Gimp or Paint (she prefers adding strokes to Teletubby images), searching the web for cat pictures, or posing for my parallel port camera.
The other day I captivated her by playing a wav of her crying at 2 months, she couldn't get enough of it.
Once she can read, I think I'll teach her to rebuild the kernel.
George
I'm not gonna flame ya.
:) )
But saying you can't be a feminist is like saying you can't be against racism if you're not a minority. (well, you are, and heck, I growl when people refer to me as 'white' -- and then take out the pics of my mom, who is definetly japanese)
And I've never seen a guy flamed because he was a guy (actually, flames are rather rare period) on the grrltalk@linuxchix.org list, and I've been there awhile.
Come on down. Join us. We don't bite (often..or hard
My girlfriend signed up to Linux chix a while ago, and signed off shortly after because most of the talk was about linux-unrelated matters.
She show me a few choice messages, and I sniggered mightily.
Of course, I haven't signed up to a mailing list yet that didn't have some non-zero signal-to-noise ratio, but I do like some of the messages to be relevant.
Another point: are nerd grrls really as marginalised as once they were? Most of the developed world is suffering from a shortage of qualified IT staff, and even the most entrenched chauvinist has to consider the unthinkable; females or even -- gasp! -- saggitarians.
I totally agree with you about having a more "friendly" distribution for non-geeks, however I still don't believe that there should be a separate distribution specifically for girls. What would be the purpose?
Well, I think they should call it
Bitch'n'Linux
But, alas, I fear nobody else will realize
that such a double-entendre name would gain
the distro instant fame and glory...
Someone also just suggested to me that they
change the name of the man command to woman...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Okay who doesn't know by now that a 20 man pileup on a geek chick is stupid? And who doesn't know that only a lame troll posts ignorant garbage about how women can't be good at computers? That's old old news.
When I hear guys talk about sex on here it's usually "Man I'm only gonna shag the pamela lee kinda geek chicks, man, I'm pimpin' all da hoez". That's b.s. and y'all know it. I bet dollars to donuts if I catch you in the street you ain't got NONE. Or you're just like the rest of us, dating a regular gal because she dazzled ya with her personality, compatibility, and friendship. There's only one Pamela Lee in every 10-20 women, so what I say is a mathematical certainty. And 9 out of ten of ya darned sure ain't no Tom Cruise.
I think geek chicks are just as sexually hot to trot as any guys here. But with all the big talkers and pouncers, they're always gonna be wary. However I should add... I'd much less rather see guys inhibit their sexual expression, than women get just as wild! :) But that's not the case, thanks to hundreds of years of Victorian (non)sexuality, so we just gotta deal until feminism finishes the big flush. Oh well.
> we just never be able to find girl geeks of our own
That's because the geek girls are all home glued to their screens, just like any other flavor of geek.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"man, these would make a great Beowulf cluster.."
:-)
Shouldn't there be some sort of moderation option like "Beowulf Cluster" or something along those lines?
....about how few women there are in I.T., but with the word "Linux" thrown in to make it sound trendy and up-to-date.
There's a simple reason why there are few women in I.T. A lot of the "alpha geeks" of today (to rip that awful phrase from the article) tend to be in their late twenties and thirties - which means they were first using computers, on average, back in the late Seventies or early Eighties when home computers started coming into the mainstream - and at a time when education was still so backward that even those schools which had any kind of I.T. curriculum certainly wouldn't dream of having girls on their course.
Geeks have to be caught at an early age. You want more women in I.T.? Get your four-year-old niece/daughter interested in how to code, and sit back and wait twenty years.
--
This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
Sorry. It had to be said. (:
Quite frankly, I'd go for any woman, as long as she's not from the Windows clan. :P
Wish I knew of a few female linux enthusiasts in the DC area. I'd love to show them my box. ;)
(no alternate meanings implied
Seriously though... they took the Linux Expo from us; the least they could do is charter a LinuxChix around here, or hand out computer science scholarships or something... we need more geek grrls!
On the other hand, and I'll use my wife as an example, they did care intimately about how the software worked. My wife is a software engineer at heart. She cares that the software is PERFECT. She will rake you over the coals for the littlest error, which is good. Other girls in the group followed a similar line, being programmers at heart. I know the program was wierd, because the math dept, which was linked to the CS dept, was also half women. One of my professors commented that that attittude of "women can't be geeks" had not gotten to that section of the world yet. Lets hope it stays out.
I think, though, that this illustrates an important point, that women geeks may not look like the traditional geek, but still are technically oriented. Work with it. Having that different view point will only help you. Girls out there reading this, do not be afraid of geek guys. They respect knowledge most of all, and will probably get all horny at the thought of a woman who can code them under the table ;)
BTW, my wife uses linux. Just last night we dicussed her doing her senior project on open source software and software engineering. She RABIDLY hates Microsoft. I mean RABIDLY. SHe was saying to me that when she gets her new computer (she has picked it out, yea she picked it because it was cute, but it comes with linux, from buypogo.com) she was going to put BeOS and OS/2 warp on it, and Linux. Oh yea, and she can Calculus me under the table any day.
If you are interested in the school, check my email address.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
"I think Malda should post a list with all girls on slashdot (where else would the geek girls hang out?) complete with emails so everyone can choose his own geek girl :)"
This would be really unethical and I'm sure Rob would never do this. Besides, Rob is already doing his part by funding The Rob Malda Hot Chicks in CS scholarship fund.
Yeah, that ought to make sure none of them ever come back. And encourage most of them to change their email addresses. Most female geeks I know (and I'm married to one) just want to be treated as another geek, which the pseudo-anonymity of the net provides. Why add them to a "Dating for the Desperate" club without their consent? "To understand what recursion is, you first have to understand what recursion is."
http://www.codemonkey.net/misc/linuxchiq.jpg
>On the eve of the twent-first century men do
:) )
>still dominate most walks of life. But given the
>massive advances in attaining equality for women
>in this century, I don't think it will be long
>before the issue of women in computing becomes a
>non-issue.
That's pretty damned optimistic. Where the hell do you work/go to school?
In any job I've had, there have been many many fewer techie women then men. Is that because I've worked for places that hired on a sexist basis? No, it has to do with the supply of women entering the field.
When I did my BCS (graduated ~ 5 yrs ago), the babe ratio was about 6:1
Last year I taught MCSE and CNA classes. The female ratio was better... about 4:1 or 5:1. (Shouldn't really be referring to students as babes, eh?
We've got a hell of a long way to go before we have anything close to equality.
As a previous poster said, we've got to change the attitudes of the preschoolers and elementary kids, that's our only hope of getting more women in the field.
Speaking of attitudes, the guys who are interested in getting more women in the field because it'll give them more women to look at/hit on/whatever.... You aren't helping.
It's hard to find a good geek girl.. I think there needs to be match maker board, just for geeks.
But back on the subject, it's cool that females are getting into the linux scene, but there are going to be alot of fights becuase the whole male ego going on about how 'guys are better' at such and such.. I never agreed w/ that. So I back the whole female particapation.
-Ellis of Geeknews.com
Well, that is an interesting notion. Why would
women need a distro of their own? What inherent properties of current Linux distributions would provide any kind of barrier to a woman working with Linux?
Would a Woman's Linux be a pandering "Distribution for Dummies" that sought to remove all the "manly difficulties" in setting up and maintaining a real Linux or UNIX distro?
I don't think the difficulties of an OS like Linux, as compared to, say, the MacOS are experienced only by women. I know plenty of men who are computer idiots and probably have difficulties operating a light switch, never mind Linux...
Would, say, Evi Nemeth want to use the Linux for Women distro? What would make it just for women?
Why wouldn't women just want to integrate more fully into the existing Linux community? Why not contribute to the Linux kernel core? Show the men that they can compete on equal footing, without a special Chick Linux... What is the point of building some kind of separatist distribution? It seems counter to my anti-segregationist, "we should all get along" inclinations that I have about everything. It would just give the lamer men an excuse to give women a hard time ("Oh, you just use chick Linux, what do you know?") and separate women from "real" Linux users...
I see no advantage to it, other than some kind of pride of having "their own" Linux, but lots of disadvantages that outweigh the advantage...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Wasn't it just a day or two ago that /. had a link to the ghost of the great Ada Byron. Yet I haven't seen her mentioned anywhere in these posts.
Who says geekgirls need to find geekguys?
I found a nice guy who isn't a geek. We get along great. I fix his computers when he breaks them, and I fix mine when he breaks them, too.
Though, I admit, it would be nice to be able to have him install software on his own without help. And for him to be able to install it in the right location.
But just as guys mentioned training girls, so am I training him. Slowly, but he's learning...
Julia
Alot of points have been raised, there's the issue of the lack of women in the industry. (I loath the acronym "IT" sounds like suit-talk to me.), and the legendary Glass Ceiling(tm) issue.
I don't have alot to say about the second one. I'm a white male, glass ceilings don't effect me. They certainly used to exist. Do they today? Perhaps. I haven't actually seen anyone smack into it, but I'm just out of college. I tend to think of the high-tech industry as "enlightened" when it comes to that kind of shit. (Pulling stunts like enforcing a glass ceiling is shit, pure and simple.) That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, I'm just not "in the know" if it does. (I tend to think more about racism, instead of sexism.) Unequal pay certainly exists. It's a dispicable act, and I don't see how anyone could possibly justify it in their own minds so they could sleep at night.
As for the lack of women in the industry that's a totally seperate issue. (In fact I see it working against Glass Ceilings(tm). Afterall it's going to be INCREDIBLY obvious if the sole woman on the staff never gets promoted.) There's not alot of women in the the industry because there's not alot of women majoring in CS/Engineering. Why? I don't know; not alot of men major in elemetry education either. Why? I don't know. I'm sure a similar machanisms are at work in both of these phenomena.
There's not alot of blacks in CS either. Why? I don't know. There isn't though. I came across 2 in 4 years of college, and I can only think of 3 where I work (One of them is in project management and runs the change control meetings. That impressed me. (Well not necessarily "impressed", but it made my inner integrationalist/liberal happy.)).
Of course not all CS/engineering women are geeks, just like not all CS/engineering men are geeks, but I'm confident that the geek to non-geek ratio is the same for both groups. (No I have no data, just a feeling.) I don't think you can intentionally set out to make a geek like the one guy is trying to do. Geeks are born not made. All the geek girls I know played with dolls, had tea parties and did all that other "girl stuff". Sometimes it suprizes me ("You had a Cabbage Patch Kid?!?") but it only make sense when you think about it. A geek grrl is a girl first, and a geek second. Just like how a geek guy is a guy first, and geek second.
Just some random line noise I thought I'd throw down about this.
Why do so many people assume that Pamela Lee is some sort of paragon of superhuman beauty/attractiveness? I've never understood why anyone would find her attractive (short of a knee-jerk genetically programmed reaction to blond hair and inflated lips and breasts).
Maybe I'm just strangely wired, but the abovementioned meat-sculpture does nothing for me.
After finding her root vulnerabilities, I penetrated her box.
Hands in my pocket
I think it's a fascinatining idea. I didn't know there was an organized entity like this for women who use linux. yey slashdot.
:P But now I have one (the slackware mailing list which is very very good IMO) It's just too hard to sort through all the noise sometimes...
I think I might subscribe at least to be able to meet other girls who use linux (IRL, there's one girl I know who use it, me and it can get pretty depressing) but of course, I do like on topic mailing lists.
The first time I learned the word "mailing list" I must've subscribed to at least a dozen. I'm sure my isp hated me
back to work.
But saying you can't be a feminist is like saying you can't be against racism if you're not a minority
No, actually, it's not. It's more like saying that you can't be a part of the black panthers if you're not black.
Hands in my pocket
Hmmm, only problem is a ring lasts forever, while a notebook computer lasts about as long as a mayfly - six months later, she'll throw away your expensive token of love and buy another.
...
Much as I love computers, I think I'd stick with the ring - the computer symbolism just doesn't work.
Sadly, I can't stand flowers - what's the romance in giving someone something that's already dead? I'll never get that one
D
----
It doesn't make sense to find geekesses unless they want to be found. I think that if you did a survey, you'd find the overwhelming majority of female Slashdot readers already have significant others and aren't keen on changing them. Even if one happened to be single and available, there's the matter of geography - every woman I've found interesting on the net has lived circa 3,000 miles away, and the woman I found most interesting lived in another country entirely.
That being said, I think User Friendly [http://www.userfriendly.org] has a matchmaking section someplace that might prove useful.
D
----
It's not like most people don't use the words "geek" or "nerd" in a derogatory manner to describe us in the first place.. I suppose it's easier for them to cope with than saying, oh, the "intellectual elite" or the "future rulers of our world to whom all must submit or face their technological wrath".. Er, ah.. I mean to say.. :)
~ Kish
My most recent ex was an NT Server babe.
;)
It should be reasonably clear why she's an ex.
Mine are turbine-driven. :-)
Come to think of it, in addition to being gender-biased, this discussion is awfully hetero-centrist too...
Bi/trans/poly/geek/grrl...that's me.
-=Maggie Leber=-
I totally agree that women need to make an effort to integrate into existing Linux groups. However, as an experiment go to a local quilting bee (imagine that you really like to quilt). Now imagine a quilting bee where the quilters were predominately male (assuming you are male). It would be quite a different experience and while both would be fun, the second would make you feel more at home and "normal" as it were.
Hopefully that lame analogy helps just a little.
You complaining about being male?
If you don't want to be male, then take steps to change that (hormones don't cost all that much, and nothing's stoping you from living a female lifestyle). If you want to be male, then don't. Its your choice. Don't bitch. We have a free will; we can make choices; technology grants us more choices.
You are what you want to be.
Live it.
- Rei
I have yet to find one geek girl (Linux/*BSD/UN*X using female if you prefer ;-) in my area (Bellingham, Washington State or anywhere in Washington State for that matter). The only ones I ever run across are Windoze or MacInSquash users... I don't think there are any, if I'm wrong, PLEASE CORRECT ME! I can be reached at the address above, *hint* *hint*. Be sure to remove the .no.spam.please from my address!
I know I'm gonna get moderated down for this, but I don't think you should complain that the whole "I'm gonna get moderated down" thing is getting very tiresome. :-)
Humm... strange... I work at a computer where there are more women in the IT department than men. Even the VP is a woman. Seven outta nine of our cobol programmers are women and the head of the department is a woman. They're programming an old IBM mainframe and an OS/390 machine, and make fun of my "PC or Pretend COmputer". We've got 3 women, that I know of in our networking deparmtnet and one of them is also the head of the department or pretty damn close to it... But I know of zero women who use Linux work on linux or even any flavor of Unix. Our networking department is a (gasp) MS shop and our big iron is IBM. THere's a bunch of HP9k around but I've never seen anyone using them.
Humm... strange... I work at a computer web position where there are more women in the IT department than men. Even the VP is a woman. Seven outta nine of our cobol programmers are women and the head of the department is a woman. They're programming an old IBM mainframe and an OS/390 machine, and make fun of my "PC or Pretend COmputer". We've got 3 women, that I know of in our networking deparmtnet and one of them is also the head of the department or pretty damn close to it... But I know of zero women who use Linux work on linux or even any flavor of Unix. Our networking department is a (gasp) MS shop and our big iron is IBM. THere's a bunch of HP9k around but I've never seen anyone using them.
Look everyone, if you are a geek, then don't look for a geekette. That's a no-no. Oh sure, you'd have plenty of things to talk about first, but then... Two friends of mine are living together and they are both (good) sysops. When I discuss with them on monday, it's like:
/usr/src/linux/foo/bar.c? Let me explain, blah blah blah blah blah blah... :)
:)
- [Me] So what have you been doing this week-end?
- [Him] Oh. That was cool! We spent the whole saturday night debugging our new kernel driver! By the way, did you know that there was a bug in the file
- [Her] That's not perfectly accurate, in fact, it turned out that we found the bug by analyzing network traffic using the tool we developped last month and that the module was sending a bad IP header when blah blah blah blah
- [Him] Well yeah, it was lot of fun! [to her:] talking about networking, have you solved the network problem in our company, you told me that a box was loosing a very high number of packets.
- [Her] Well, no I spent the whole day yesterday to change cables but nothing, the problem must be coming from somewhere else. Any idea?
- [Him] mhhh
- [Her to me] how about you?
- [Me] err. I went to see a movie on saturday
Geeks are stereotypedly (what a cool word) supposed not to have a social life. I thing the stereotype would apply even more to geek couples
There's a gorgeous geek girl working for our Y2K team, but can I pluck up enough
courage to talk to her? (the answer rhymes with "hoe")
I misplaced my email address. Can I have yours?
I have a harddrive. You wanna mount it for me?
You know what the 'A' in 'A drive' stands for? That's for All Night Long.
Seriously, dude... just say something to her. Ask her out or something. Maybe she is waiting for you to ask her. The worst she'll do is to say no.
Hasdi
Very well said indeed....Anyway, as a girl, I find all the sexist attitudes towards technically inclined women very frustrating! But I won't rant and rave about that one since it's been said so many times. But I would like to let my fellows know that they need to take a look at their attitudes about girl geeks.
Everone knows that geeks tend to be very chauvanistic, and I don't think many girl geeks speak out about what it does to us ! Not only do we have society's hang ups about geeks to deal with-but our own kind gives us shit. Alot of girl geeks feel they need to sacrifice their womanhood and femininity to be accecpted as a serious member of geek society. Which is a motherload of shit!!! Most women don't talk about it but it's the truth Take a GOOD look arond at the girl geeks you do know, and you'll see what I mean.
I am one of 4 women in one of my classes and 2 of them are total mud-ducks. In the beginning of the class-the teachers took a bet on which of the students would fail-and of course I was in the list of do-nothigs and the two ugly chicks were said to do well. All because I have long red nails and I'm quite good looking(not to be conceited) and I REFUSE to give up any of my feminine traits to be taken seriously! Needless to say those ugly chicks routinely fall behind me, and one of the teachers actually apologized to me.
All this girl geek, boy geek stuff is ridiculous. We are ALL geeks, and should stick together!
Death to ZDNet for publishing that article.
~~
"Most of my heros won't appear on no stamps..." Chuck D from Fight the Power
Maybe I'm not the typical geek type guy... but I really have no desire to meet or date a geek girl. I mean...why would I want to date someone who is like me, I have always gotten the most from relationships with women who are very different from me. I spend enough time with my PC... I would rather be with someone who will expose me to new and different things.
It is not so much that male and female geeks are necessarily different, but that all people express their geekiness in different ways.
That said, there are a number of different factors that affect the female geek. I can't speak for those in buiness as I am still in university. But there certainly does seem to be a lack of other female geeks in my cs program. Thus, because I wish to have geeky friends, most of my friends are male. And these being enlightened guys raised in the 80's, they accept me as an equal.
However, sometimes, the female geek runs into the problem that to be accepted she has to be "one-of-the-guys". While this is fine for some people, like me, some women are not like that. They may be geeks, but they do not want to just be "one-of-the-guys". This should be ok, too, and often, isn't.
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
And here I thought it was a testosterone thing driving people to Linux...
I know women who specifically went into computer science back in the early-mid sixties because, as a field, it was too new to be completely dominated by men. We can all see how long that lasted, eh?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I'm a linux girl geek. I consider myself a superuser, but NOT an uber geek. I've recompiled the kernel, configured my own LAN, set up Apache with NAT so that I could see my web directories outside of my dsl, etc. I'm also into linux a/v. I *heart* bttv.
So I'm a 32 yo, 5'7", 120 lb, alterna girl geek living in seattle. If you are close to those specs and live in seattle email me at my sleezy anonymous hotmail account -
girlbyte@hotmail.com
Notice: I got an account at hotmail after the first got hacked. It appeals to my perverse sense of humor to have an email account on the most hacked email server (after AOhELL) in the world.
That's easy just add a few lines to the kernel that asks you trick questions and when you get them wrong it won't do anything because it's feelings are hurt. Then it can complain about how it's not appreciated. God help you if you have been using "other" computers.
Then we need a cron job so that a few days a month it just gripes at you because it's pissy and it's YOUR fault.
Why would we want a ''female'' distro? Cron jobs would refuse to run, root would receive mail from
cron stating "You always take me for granted". Log files would become bloated the 3rd week of every month. The kernel would panic if you were'nt home at a decent hour. If you use bash for your shell you'll be acused of domestic abuse!
etc. etc. etc.. Come on, the whole Idea is stupid? What would you make female about it? How about a gay Linux distro, it could come wraped in latex, and all socket connections could be lubricated? A Black linux distro, sure why not? The default language could be ebonics, and kde could be installed with a snoop dogg theme!
I personally have only ever met a single girl interested in computers (& she was one of the early 80's generation). Where I live, there are few enough geekguys... Yet New Zealand has a one of the highest amounts of internet usage in the world. I'm convinced that there is a reason why so few people here are 'geeks,' and it's not through shortage of access to technology (although the lack of *real* computer classes in schools is partly to blame). There has to be some sort of environment or attitude within a group in society / society that makes it succeed or fail in computing. I just wish I knew what it is.
:)
There need to be some serious studys done upon why certain gender & national groups do less well than others in computing. I think the answer could lay in our attitudes...
As for girls geting into computers, I love the idea
It's a great idea, but that one lacks.... Alot! 20 and up? I'm 19 and there are no pics.. Oh i'll shut up and send them a letter.. =>
-Ellis of Geeknews.com
I'm sorry to see that linuxchix was formed after some comments on Slashdot. I've never read anything that really put me out on here. perhaps rather than creating our own niche, we should look at the root of the problem, though?
I like the idea, and will probably subscribe to linuxchix. but i wouldn't want us girls (sorry, but i can't stand the term geekgirl - does every male user say 'geekguy'?) breaking away to start our own thang and completely miss the point that linux is for everyone together. all hold hands!! lalalaa, etc.
sooo...could we have a mission statement from linuxchix pls?
Well, well. You wonder why there's so few female geeks? Hmm, just look at this /. post for example - it is rather typical of the system:
"it's just sorta the standard tirade..." means to me "stop whining, girls, it's not an issue anyway". You men want us to stop "whining"?
Well then start by taking an unfortunately still valid issue *serious*. btw: why is it that when women complain it's always viewed as "whining" while when men complain ist "protest" or "justified anger"? Could it be that that is because you just don't *want* to take us seriously? Because that would mean thinking about whether you have to feel guilty yourselves and maybe (gasp) having to change your attitude a little? Ohmigawd, that would be WORK - can't have that, right?
"which no geek argues in theory but..." means to me "they don't really exist anyway because _I_ (read: cmdrTaco) never had one let me have sex with her" Tell me: why's it that all the techies who surround me, even those who have far superior knowledge are scared shitless of me because I know my stuff pretty well ? They all LOVE to TALK with me about computers/EE/technology and stuff but when it comes to dating who do they pick up?
Some "barbie" to whom they can feel superior to because she'll come to him with the "please do this and that for me you big strong man I'm too weak/dumb for it" routine for each and every crap.
You want a geek-girlfriend? Here's the 3 step easy solution:
1. open your eyes. Chances are there is one around you already but everyone is playing her achievements down or she just doesn't boast about herself which makes her invisible between all the loud shouters
2. respect her for what she is. She's probably no "barbie" so don't expect her to spend 5 hours in front of a mirror every morning - that's not what you said you wanted anyway, right? And she's not in the world "to get laid by _you_" - she's not a target but rather wants to choose her mate among *equals*.
3. don't be frigthened yourself. As I said - most men I know are *terrified* to "loose their face in front of a woman" and therefore are damn tough to the geek women they meet. Result: many geeky women are very tough in return as self protection.
Just 2 cents from a geek woman.
I would like to be one, I really would. But I lack the one quality that would, without question, allow me into the folds, the inner circle: being a woman.
Now, before I get slammed for being either naive or cold-hearted, let me explain. I am (mostly) white, (mostly) male, (mostly) hetero and (mostly) Protestant. But I'm also compassionate, empathetic, and eager to help those around me. God knows I've been helped in the past in one way or another, and I know what it's like to be marginalized and oppressed. Do I know what the world is like from a woman's perspective? No. Just like I don't understand what it's like to be black in a white society, gay in a hetero culture, and a spirtual person where temples and mosques and forests and skies are not considered "real" places of worship.
Does this mean I can't be a feminist? Seemingly. Because not only am I not one of "us" (the women), I am one of "them" (the men) -- a member of the group of oppressors.
I understand the perspective: it's important to have a group of people that you feel safe with, and when that group is a collection of people with a common suffering, the last person you want in your group is someone who reminds you of that suffering.
It saddens me, but I'm afraid that's just the way of things. In a world I try so hard to make better, I ended up, by no control of my own, being part of the dominant, oppressing group.
And sadly for me, I'm not totally white (I'm half Asian), I'm not totally hetero (won't get into that...not ready yet. ;-) ), I'm not totally Christian (lots of leanings towards Buddhism and others).
But I am totally male. *sigh*
--jeddz
P.S. I have a feeling I'll get flamed for this, but I just had to get that off my chest. Be gentle.
I found a geekgirl and I married her. Having a geekgirl as a wife has a lot of benefits:
/.
Geekgirls can understand the long hours on the computer or at work.
You always have someone to play quake with.
You always have someone to tell you when something cool comes on
To the geekgirls of the world, don't fret, you will meet a nice geek someday.
Stop with winging and get on with your life, ego boy.
-=>>=-
...Now what a disaster that would be. I personally prefer to be dominated by sea-lions. Rahhh!
-=>>=-
www.linuxchix.org is running Apache/1.3.3 Ben-SSL/1.28 (Unix) FrontPage/3.0.4.2 mod_perl/1.16 PHP/3.0.7 on FreeBSD
It would appear that they're even smarter than we thought. Keep trying dilweed.
Trust me, with the ratio of geek girls to geek guys-looking-for-geek-girls, we "chicks" have no problems at all finding the hackers of our dreams... ;)
Well, since so many slashdotters are bothered by their inability to find their very own geek girls (TM) - I think Malda should post a list with all
girls on slashdot (where else would the geek girls hang out?) complete with emails so everyone can choose his own geek girl
How would you like it if Rob sold your email addresses to Microsoft spammers? Every day, mail saying "buy windows!" That would be just as bad as anyone trying to gather a list of female slashdot readers for your "choosing". Every day I'd open up my mailbox with "duh huh huh, can I have a picture" when I have to get
I've been getting an overwhelming attitude among geek guys recently that women geeks are just a toy like their new 21 inch moniotr. with a "Where can I buy my own?" attitude. You guys go on about petrifying whatever female geek catches your fancy for the day, you talk about 'creating' your own linux nerd, you suggest female geeks as great beowulf clusters, you say "I wish I could show her my box, heh heh heh". You guys pride yourselves on your intelligence, and you want to be respected for your mind, well so do I. Geek respect is earned, no matter what gender you are, and you're never going to find a female geek if you can't give her the basic respect you'd give any other geek.
But just when you thought I was going to bash men my whole comment, let me say: Women are worse. They whine that there aren't enough women in management, that they can't get along with the male geeks, blah blah blah. Damn, get over it! I can get along with geek guys just fine, and so can you if you just stop thinking it as "us" vs "them". As I said before, respect is earned, and you're not going to earn any respect by talk instead of action. Oh yeah, and girls, if you're fat and ugly, stop trying to convince the guys that just because you're a lardball that all of the rest of us are too. "Don't expect us to be barbies!"
You'll never find any self respecting female geek in a group like "linux chix", for one, by this time they've gotten so used to male company that they often prefer guys to women, they don't want to talk about "how can we get more girls into computers! (I like having no competition), and they don't give a damn about how there aren't enough women in management. Don't try to look for us in groups like "nrrdgrrl.com" either. I can't stand that name, and besides, the whole board is about 13 year old girls complaining "Booh hooh! I'm so fat! I'm so ugly! I want to kill myself!" I really have a hard time resisting giving them some encouragement, heather style.
On a final note: As the Misanthropic Bitch says when people ask you "How can you be a woman and think the way you do?", "How could anyone but a woman think like me? Men rarely see the nuts and bolts of womanhood. I see it on a daily basis, and I'm expected to behave in a similar fashion because of my gender. Nothing can make one a misogynist faster than being born a woman. "
Finally, a topic we all (well, most) actually care about! However, I might point out that a girl found on campus would probably be easier to spend time with irl than one found on a users' group unless its a local group (or you have money to drop on plane tickets, moving, whatever :). Which is not to say that I'm against following through on /both/ methods. Ha!
~ Kish
Our assitant net admin is a female. As geeky as they come. She plays games with the rest of us on the network.
Of course, now I know why I don't date geeks...
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
0) Clitorix
1) Vaginix
2) Cunnilinux
3) Ovarix
4) Caldera OpenBeaver
5) RedPad Linux
6) Crackware ("Get Crack")
7) Fallopian GNU/Linux
8) Linux Ho!
9) Feminix
I am one of the fortunate few to have a Linux babe that fixes anything I can break and then explain how she fixed it so I don't do it more than 3 more times.
:)
She is incredibly patient with me and only gently suggests I read the Readme or Install files before simply charging ahead and installing packages and expecting them to work the first time.
So I repeat....Nya Nya ! I got a Linux babe
So much to learn so little time.
"LinuxChix isn't gender biased, though. Men are welcome at meetings and, by Richardson's count, about 20 percent of the 200 members of LinuxChix list are male."
Wow, those guys are smart (where do I sign up? :). Of course, it seems sort of like the idea of guys taking Home Ec or other "girl-oriented" classes in school just to meet women. Sort of defeats the purpose of a female-oriented club, though, doesn't it? Well, aside from the fact that it will draw more women than men due to its very name (or will it..?)
~ Kish
What kinds of things would you put in such a distro?
Well, I expect that if a male knew that, there would be no need for one.
Anyway, I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with distros aimed at specific groups of people, if there was actually an advantage to it.
I guess I belong more to the "We are all individuals" camp, then the "Everyone is equal" one.
But I think it needs to be said, that if there was to be a Linux distro for women, it would have to be based on Debian.
http://www.debian.org/intro/about--
Jim Wase
For better or for worse, I have no formal computer qualifications, so I cannot comment on the numbers of women undergraduates coming through the system. The only course I did attend was an evening HNC (somewhere between A-Level and BSc), this had a very healthy ratio of women to men. More of the women dropped out early on, but by the end of the first year more men had dropped out overall.
...
As for my optimism - after the week I've had I'm trying my best to look on the bright side of things at the moment. Normal (grumpy) service will resume next week when I find out if I will ever get full use of my left hand back
Chris Wareham
You mean that's not what BitchX is?
well since slashdot is quickly becoming the geek portal of choice it's high time they start acting like it and offer us a more stuff. and lets not stop with "Slashdot Personals" lets also have "Slashdot Mail Aliases" and "Slashdot Homepages" like a pobox.com type of thing. and after that there is always room for "Slashdot Instant Messaging". hmm.. and after that we could even have the official "Slashdot Auction" page that would be much better than EBay because it would have all the stuff we would be interested in and none of those annoying auction for antique lawn ornaments that always seem to come up when you do a search for something.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
But...its just an OS. I, for example, use and know FreeBSD. And I belong to a good coed FreeBSD user group. It seems silly to make a FreeBSDgrrl group. Especially since there aren't enough grrls using FreeBSD to warrant it.
Or maybe I should try to put one together :)
If you build it, they will come
Hmmm...I wonder if I can come up with a catchy title like Linuxchix. Suggestions?
-Lisa
What's wrong with IRC? I've been compiling different clients trying to find one I really like! Word macro virii? um....hand me my mcAfee...oh! wait! that's wright, we're not in windoze anymore.......
I think it's farily obvious why YOU haven't found the geekette of yer dreams......
I'm not feeling that clever this morning.
I think that there are quite a number of women who are successful in their fields. Just as example, what job does Madeleine Albright do anyway?
Part of the problem is that men must mentally stop looking at a woman as female, when we want to look at them as just another professional in her field; which is sometimes difficult, if she is attractive. By the way, if she is attractive, she doesn't always want us to forget that she is female. That's part of life too. This is an aspect of men-women relations that will always be there, to some extent.
Another problem may be the fact that mankind has a tendency to create informal hierarchies amongst people in the workplace. There seems to be tendency for women to rank lowlier than men in the informal hierarchy.
However, if a woman insists on getting to the top, and she has the talent for it, and she is willing to give up time-eaters like, for example, fully-enjoyed motherhood, I don't really think it is harder for a woman to reach the top. It is simple hard for everyonek; and men will eventually respect her for her professional work.
Well, since so many slashdotters are bothered by their inability to find their very own geek girls (TM) - I think Malda should post a list with all girls on slashdot (where else would the geek girls hang out?) complete with emails so everyone can choose his own geek girl :)
Happy hunting!
Giraffit
Ballerinas have fins that you'll never find
I couldn't take the article seriously after the headline, in which it calls female geeks "she-geeks," and then whose subtitle was about battling sexism. I'm sure the article was informative, but it just seemed to laughably hypocritical to, right off the bat, make female geeks seem like something to be belittled.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
They may be hard to find but you can make them. No I don't mean you should code one or buy one at a store. Just introduce a girl you know to computers. Women will become just as interested as men. The problem may be getting them away from the screen after they get there. Be afraid, be very afraid!
To think I was talking about there being too many distros in response to /Corel/! You know, there is a very good reason why there are only a few "real" distros.. That's because only a few actually serve to fill a particularly niche that needs to be filled, and the rest is just another pile of ammunition set down on the table with the "big boys".. except that they're firing blanks rather than the full-force cannon shots of Debian and Red Hat.
To be honest, a distro (much less an OS) targeted toward women makes less sense than anything else I've heard lately (ever..?). This isn't body wash or perfume we're peddling here, people!
~ Kish
Heh heh! This was the case in the early days of the company I work at. There was a one-to-one ratio of female-employees-to-stalls.
Late one evening, the girlfriend of one of my co-workers was visiting. She came out of the women's bathroom laughing and dragged her boyfriend into the bathroom to show him something...
Not only were each of the stalls individually decoratively labeled, they also had color printout pictures of their "owners" :-)
"(which no geek argues with in theory, we just never be able to find girl geeks of our own ;)"
:)
hahah i found one
and she's root on one of the shell boxes i use (no i'm not root, so much for being nice to her bf i guess)
its my humble and probably ill informed opinion that if ppl would get over the fact that other than a few specialized tasks (involving reproduction) males and females can do the same work at the same quality, then threads like these could be obliterated and we'd have *gasp* equality between the genders.....
but the ppl who say 'look at me i'm a (fe)male and i did (insert task here), aren't i groovy' ruin it for the ppl who are doing it regardless of their gender anyhow
Need a Catering Connection
I hate being quoted out of context.
... I guess it's too much to expect journalists to act ethically or slashdot comments to be sensible.
I posted the original linuxchix question about
distros aimed at females as a thought experiment.
Someone had suggested it to me a while ago, and
I thought it was a weird idea, but an interesting
one to think about. If anyone bothers to read
the mailing list archive, they'll see that nobody
really thinks that women need their own distribution,
and that most of the things which might encourage women to use linux already exist in other distributions. *sigh*
When everyone complains about the proportions of
geek guys to geek girls, I just have to think of
people like you to remember why being a scarcity
token is not always all it's cut out to be.
While geeks will be geeks no matter what sex they
are, it's the non-geek users who might want to see
more "friendly" distributions. Sure, encourage
women to get into computer science and technology,
but for those that just want to "surf the web"
and type up letters or play games, why require
them to understand the guts of the system as well as the geeks do?
Yeah, I think it'd be nice if the whole world understood the guts of their OSs, but it's not going to happen. In the meantime, making Linux viable for the desktop for users who *aren't* UberGeeks is probably a worthwhile target. And many of those potential users just happen to be female.
The underlying structure would have to be the same, becuase after all, the hardware would be the same, there are no "gender bias computers" unless all of a sudden we call the iMac or something a womans computer, and then one of the Mac distributions becomes a "womens" distribution...
The file structures would have to be the same, because without interoperability, they would be seperating themselfs in the workplace, and files couldn't be shared, and they couldn't be a "team" player...
What's left? I think I would suggest (at the risk of really offending EVERYONE, and generally making myself look like a pig), that women might have a great place in GUI or theme development.
In thinking about it, browsing through the GTK, KDE, WindowMaker, E, and other themes, there isn't a whole heck of a lot out there for women to like. I know my wife was just flat out offended by some... and Caitlin Fairchild themes sure aren't gong to win them over to Linux...
Women have always been very "visually smart." (here goes the really chance for me to look like a PIG). As artists, they have always been impressive, and GUI overlayers (like themes) would be an awsome place to get more women involved and stop some of the gender bias of UNIX. I tried to create a theme once myself for my wife (see this pathetic attempt). But she ended up useing KDE, and wanting me to buy her a book on GIMP so she can do her own graphics.
Frankly, I don't think many of the GUI enviroment "visual layers" (hard coded or themes) really are as attractive to women as they could create for themselfs. I would love to be able to point my wife to a "women's theme pack" or something, but themes.org has soo much almost naked women, sci-fi, or dark and demented stuff, she doesn't even want to waste her time looking at them.....
So, a distribution? I don't know. But are plenty of areas for them to work in. The hard coded application and kernel stuff, I would hope women wouldn't divert from the general code, and contribute to the base where all people can benifit. But as for GUI, I think they would be well justified in comeing up with some creative visual stuff that would please _THEM_ insted of having to sort through all the borderline porn themes to find something they can stand working with.
In the last 4 years of hacking UNIX software I must have gotten 1 email from a woman. Let's face it. Don't get excited about a %0.01 penetration when you have a much better chance of getting sunburned in antarctica during the summer solstace.
Speak for yourself. ;) They're out there, boys; you just have to do a little footwork out there to find one. Once you have, your life will never be the same. Imagine having a conversation with your girlfriend about the intricacies of structured C programming and having her not only participate but reciprocate as well!
I'm one of the blessed few to find such a woman, and I remind her how lucky I am every chance I get.
assert(expired(knowledge));
One thing that I have noticed about women computer programmers as compared to their male colleagues, is that they tend to view programming as a job and an interest - not a lifestyle. Many male computer people, and especially wannabe ones live and breath computers, from hardware to software. For the average male geek it's reflected in the books that they read and the clothes they wear - typically cyberpunk and sloppy casualwear.
Obviously this is still a generalisation, but walk around any IT office, and the female staff will be less distinguishable from their counterparts in say accounts or human resources, than the males.
Maybe that's why women are a less vocal, but rapidly growing part of the IT workforce. As men tend to be more openly and loudly competitive than women in most walks of life, they leave the impression that they dominate the field.
On the eve of the twent-first century men do still dominate most walks of life. But given the massive advances in attaining equality for women in this century, I don't think it will be long before the issue of women in computing becomes a non-issue.
Chris Wareham
At my company we've got quite a few women geeks around. More men, but my department has 12 people in it, 4 of whom are geeks. I guess I've always been lucky, I've never had trouble finding myself a snappy little geek girl. There's something so amazing about a cute girl who calls you up and says 'something's wrong'... then proceeds to ask questions about why SNMPd is disappearing without a core file.