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OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be consideringOK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be consideringPosted Aug 27, 2009 4:34 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)In reply to: OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering by maco Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software Read this. It puts a lot of doubt on the assumption that virginity is an anatomical phenomenon even in women. It's really a social thing, a similar statement to "I've never been to Paris".
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OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 7:48 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
Which, as far as I can read the discussion, is all that it has been about. After all, if the social perception of virginity in men and women would be identical, the RMS "joke" on the matter would be much less offensive.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 7:52 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
The "gender-neutral" version, that is.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 15:39 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
The hymen has squat diddly to do with whether a person has engaged in sexual acts, as you would know if you read the page you linked to. What does this have to do with whether or not we are born virgins? Clearly, at the moment of birth, a person has not yet participated in sexual acts in their lifetime. Unless, of course, you are positing that people can do those things in the womb.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 15:47 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] OK, I think it's fair to say that we've wandered off topic here; this is not an LWN-style conversation. Could we maybe stop at this point?Thanks.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 20:09 UTC (Thu) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
Jonathan, I know you are trying to keep things civil, but it worries me that you are shutting down women who are talking about the very issue at hand (the lack of women in free software and reasons why) and telling them it's not appropriate here.
From what I can see here and in previous threads, LWN-style discussion is sexist, ignorant tripe that ignores and attempts to silence women. Is this what you meant?
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 27, 2009 20:27 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] No, that's not what I meant, and I think you know it.On rare occasion (decreasingly rare, unfortunately), I wander into a discussion that, I think, has gone off-track and doesn't really fit on LWN; I'll ask that the discussion stop. In this case, the discussion wandered into hymens and sexual history, which is just a bit off-topic for LWN. I have pointed not tried to stop the larger discussion, despite the fact that I'm tired of it and some of the participants in it. The larger discussion is important. That is why LWN continues to point out things like this summit and your keynote, and that is why I have made my own feeble attempts at writing on the subject. It would sure be a lot easier to just avoid the topic, but I don't think it would be right. LWN-style discussion tends to be technical, intelligent, and useful. Obviously, there are exceptions. I am not proud of them, to say the least, but there is far more to LWN than that.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 2:26 UTC (Fri) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link] Thank you. This entire discussion has been a giant distraction. I don't care one bit whether a coder is an XX human, an XY one, or a lump of old Pentiums and Win95 CDs that's managed to awaken to a tortured self-awareness. The code and philosophy is what's important. This discussion makes thefsync thread look like a lecture at Harvard.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 18:46 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
> I don't care one bit whether a coder is an XX human, an XY one
That makes sense to me, but I'm not part of the group that feels excluded.
Rather than "is is really important?", how about we look at what's being asked for. If the feeling-excluded group just wants a "no sexism" policy to be written down, then why not do it?
Either there's no problem, in which case writing this policy changes nothing, or there is a problem, and this policy improves things.
I didn't see this before, so I'm glad this big long discussion took place.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 18:53 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the problem is defining what sexism is.
there are things that are very obviously sexism, I'm not talking about those
but is referring to a user/developer in the third person as 'him' or 'he' disallowed sexism that needs to be aggressively stamped out?
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 19:11 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
I don't think anyone's asking for that.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 20:43 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I have had the unfortunate experience of dealing with very aggressive feminists who do consider such things to be sexism, and from their reaction, just about as bad as anything else.
if a project is making a formal statement to ban any sexist comments I think there is a need to give some indication where the project considers the line to be.
I have had a boss who, when referring to internal opinion will use the phrase 'just between us girls we know that .....'
this statement could very definantly be taken as sexist or potentially harassment
note that I have not made any comment on the gender of the manager or the staff that this is said to. it happens that the manager and the entire staff is male at this point in time. does this make a difference on if it's considered sexism or not?
I personally suspect that at one time in the past he would have said 'just between us boys' and got called on it as being a sexist comment so altered his habit.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 29, 2009 11:32 UTC (Sat) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link]
The tendency to use language that excludes women is a problem. You might think it's a small one, but it is part of the series of straws mentioned elsewhere in this thread, of which every single one adds to the load of knowing that people think you don't belong in a group.
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 28, 2009 22:26 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
This entire discussion has been a giant distration *if* you don't care that we may be throwing away half our potential developer base, in addition to making lots of people feel unhappy (which should be a reason to change in itself).
(If you happen to think that the reason for this is that women just naturally think differently from men -- I don't -- then you should be even *more* in favour of fixing this. That's a different viewpoint we're not getting, and different viewpoints = better design/coding/bugfixing.)
LWN-style discussion Posted Aug 29, 2009 21:35 UTC (Sat) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
> I don't care one bit whether a coder is an XX human, an XY one, or a lump of old Pentiums and Win95 CDs that's managed to awaken to a tortured self-awareness.
In theory, that's great. But in practice, it means that women face all sorts of problems, and you get it ignore that, because hey, they're just like everyone else. They don't get it ignore it. And if you don't care or think about people's gender, then how certain are you that you've never assumed everyone was male, made sexist remarks, etc.? I'm sure there are people around you who do that kind of stuff, and the human default is to pick up whatever the people around us are doing (monkey see, monkey do, as they say). If you're not making a conscious effort to avoid it, then how do you know you aren't?
> The code and philosophy is what's important.
Dude, we're social mammals. The philosophy's cashed out in the code; the code's produced by communities. Can you really say mailing lists, IRC, conferences, blogs, planets, conference calls, LWN, bug tracker threads, ... are unimportant? Have you ever seen a philosophy department take on multi-billion-dollar industries?
Discussing social interaction is in no way a distraction from the "important" parts of FOSS.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 27, 2009 23:58 UTC (Thu) by maco (guest, #53641) [Link]
He's right that it's OT. I don't know why Bruce brought up that body part in relation to virginity. It's nothing to do with it whatsoever.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering Posted Aug 28, 2009 0:05 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I was trying to make the point that virginity is an artificial concept. You aren't "born" that way, someone whose philosophy or religion considers the concept to be important attaches the label to you.
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