derailing [LWN.net]

derailing

Posted Aug 30, 2009 3:31 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
In reply to: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software by hypatiadotca
Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

When I read the derailing website, I said "Yep, this is indeed the correct term for when someone makes a two hour political speech and then a group uses a part of his closing comedy routine to completely change the subject and attack him."

This brings me to another point. There could be a problem with the available texts:

Group A can't see the reason for Group B to have a problem.

Group B, which sees the problem clearly, writes various docs about what they see.

It's quite possible that Group B's docs will be written from a point of view which is completely non-intuitive (and thus not very effective) for Group A. What I've learned from free software advocacy is that, unfortunately, if you want to change attitudes, you have to keep repeating yourself again and again (while trying to improve your technique). Before you've convinced someone that there's a problem, it's unlikely that they're going to be motivated to go read the beginners texts on the topic (and one can't assume that just because the beginners texts seem good to a Group B person, that they'll be appreciated by a Group A person).

My 2c.

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derailing

Posted Aug 30, 2009 4:23 UTC (Sun) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

I can see that being valid for some of the docs on http://geekfeminism.wikia.com , where it's more written for those of us already doing geek feminist work.

There are resources though which are written specifically to be for the "group A" in this case such as http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/the-faqs/faq-roun... and studies like the FLOSSPOLS one, and even Skud's OSCON keynote. These docs aim to be those 101-level documents.

There's also a difference between talking to J. Random Hacker and folks who have explicitly expressed an interest in what they can do to help. If folks (in this case men) want to help, that should include reading the resources we point them at. To demand otherwise is a particularly exhausting form of derailing - in fact, it's the first two points on Derailing For Dummies :)