Getting in touch with the sexist side of open source [LWN.net]

Getting in touch with the sexist side of open source

Posted Aug 9, 2005 13:11 UTC (Tue) by bacfarc (guest, #4456)
Parent article: Getting in touch with the feminine side of open source (NewsForge)

Several things about this article (including the headline) are indicative of the ongoing cluelessness of the OS community about their own sexist attitudes. Do all articles about women's issues in the programming community have to have such stupid phrases as "the feminine side" or "a feminine touch"? The attitudes of male programmers and journalists (I am assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that Jay Lyman is male)---even those who are generally sympathetic to a fully egalitarian free software/open source community---should be examined in this light. If even allies of women's advancement in the OS community persist in using belittling language, what hope do we have for attaining equality between the sexes in the Linux world?

(Log in to post comments)

How can there /be/ a sexist side?

Posted Aug 9, 2005 15:33 UTC (Tue) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

As the old cartoon could have put it, ``On the Internet, no one knows you're a [woman].''

I'm an old enough geezer that I don't care to address people by their given names unless they're good acquaintances. Thus, I open e-mails ``Dear Ms. Foo'' or ``Dear Mr. Bar'', but frequently I don't know which to use. The same goes for coders---who's to know the sex of ``F. Q. Baz''? How can one practice sexism in such a case?

Therefore, either a bunch of contributors are female, but not identified as such, or women choose to act in other areas. I don't see how the Free Software community could influence matters one way or the other.