OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering [LWN.net]

OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering

Posted Sep 22, 2009 17:15 UTC (Tue) by Lefty (subscriber, #51528)
In reply to: OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering by BrucePerens
Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

Sigh. It would serve you well to actually read what's being cited before you respond to it, Bruce. It's a bad habit of yours, just like "responding" to people in person before they've actually finished what they were saying.

That aside, since you seem to doubt the comments in my blog posting, I'd direct you to Celeste Lyn Paul's identi.ca feed, and Chani Armitage's blog.

Celeste asks (while RMS was giving the keynote in question), "Do men really think RMSs virgin joke at #gcds was not sexist? Very disappointed in FLOSS comm chatter about this."

In the comments to the posting, Chani writes, "talking about relieving women of their virginity casts women in a submissive role, with men in a dominant role, and brings up thoughts of oppression and (indirectly) rape. (yes, thinking about a roomful of guys thinking about taking womens virginity does eventually lead me to wondering how many of them would take it by force.) it becomes less about the non-sexual meaning of virgin and more about all the crazy ideas societies have had about virgin women. and thinking about that stuff would make any woman uncomfortable."

Apparently you know a lot better than these women who were present at RMS' GCDS keynote, Bruce. Maybe they're just being "sickly nonlinear" here.

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