What puts women off FOSS? [LWN.net]

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 9:20 UTC (Sat) by Clytie (guest, #47882)
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

It's not "just" the constant sexual demands and put-downs, once you're known to be a woman
online. We get death threats.

There are several Women in Computing groups, trying to encourage more female participation
in FOSS. I am a member of some of these, and over the past few years, I have received multiple
death threats, sent both to the list and to me personally. Some of the personal emails have also
threatened to kill my young daughter.

The people sending these emails do not know me personally: they have only seen my
occasional posts to lists like Debian-Women and Linuxchix (my daughter was mentioned,
thankfully not by name, in a post on encouraging more girls to study IT). I am not politically
important in any way: my posts generally deal with voluntary efforts in different free-software
groups. I am a free-software voluntary translator. Most of my contributions to the free-software
world aren't even in a language these people can read.

I am only one of many women in FOSS who have received death threats in the past few years.
It's sick, it's frightening, and I can't say I'm surprised that most women don't want to take these
risks.

Clytie

to post comments

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 10:31 UTC (Sat) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

There are men who will attack any prominent women that takes an active role.

I imagine it is because such a woman is seen as a threat (by a process I do not quite understand). These are small men: they will not carry out their threats. The only purpose of the threat is to get you to shut up again.

As a check-in with the real world, when was a last time you heard of a software engineer being beaten (or killed) for being a woman or something like that? It is unthinkable and it just doesn't happen.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 12:41 UTC (Sat) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (12 responses)

> We get death threats.

I do hope that you have reported this to the police.

Honestly: if people are getting death threats, that's a serious criminal offence. It needs to be dealt with using the full power of the law, not by running campaigns on mailing lists.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 16:35 UTC (Sat) by tuxchick (guest, #42009) [Link] (11 responses)

I'm familiar with some of the incidents Clytie is referring to, and yes, the people involved are taking it seriously. They're getting law enforcement involved and making abuse reports to ISPs and so forth. For whatever good it does, but it beats just taking it.

The bigger point, I think, that Clytie is making is that women receive special evil attention simply for being women, and all the people who claim there are no problems are lying or delusional. And that the FOSS world is much too tolerant of evil and hostile behaviors. Me, I don't expect men to come riding in on white chargers to rescue us- I would like more people to admit that there are problems, instead of denying it or expecting us to tolerate them as the price of participating in FOSS. No one should have to tolerate hostile or rude treatment as the price of participating in FOSS. That's so obvious I feel silly having to say it, but obviously it's a debatable issue to a sizable number of people.

As always, the LWN readers are the best, and post the most thoughtful, rational comments. Thank you. This particular discussion is happening all over, and the noise ratio is always a lot higher elsewhere.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 16:46 UTC (Sat) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (2 responses)

the noise ratio is always a lot higher elsewhere.

This I find alarming, because in this thread the percentage of commenters who are Lubos Motl (an openly misogynistic physicist who sometimes posts on this topic in physics) is much higher than it is when the topic comes up in physics.

This reminds me of something I read that came out of the discussion of RPG geekdom. Insofar as there are community overlaps and similarities between FOSS geekdom and RPG geekdom, it might be relevant: Give Geek Social Fallacies.

It's not directly applicable, but the "Friends Accept Me As I Am" fallacy sounds related here. FOSS accepts evil behavior because of the social fallacy that we're supposed to accept evil behavior from somebody who's got the chops to be a programmer. It's very ironic, of course, because it's very hypocritical; women find themselves very much not accepted as they are, whereas the misogynists too often are.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 17:04 UTC (Sat) by tuxchick (guest, #42009) [Link] (1 responses)

Heh, maybe the noise ratio is higher than I realized at first. I still appreciate the intelligent, thoughtful comments.

I think that the "Friends Accept Me As I Am" fallacy is definitely a factor. Five Geek Social Fallacies discusses this, and I think it's right on.

Five GSFs

Posted Oct 2, 2007 12:55 UTC (Tue) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

I haven't observed these fallacies. Trolls are regularly kill-filed and people reply to their baits with "don't feed the trolls". If they behave too awful, they are kicked out of BBs, where that's possible. It's difficult on usenet and mailing lists where everybody can subscribe and it's technically difficult to kick somebody out. The same thing is true for friends. This GSFs seem to come from a parallel universe. There are a lot of things to debate with geek friends, and maybe you put the priority differently. You may criticize your geek friend for using Ubuntu instead of Gentoo (or the other way round), but his pony tail+goatee hairdress is definitely not important. This sort of discussion - if at all - comes up in political discussion, like "Have you ever been harassed by the police for looking like a long-haired bearded bomb planter?" and you get actual fact based answers on that ("No, I haven't, but the guy next to me with a much better shaved beard has been twice").

We might have different standards, though, but we have standards. If you think in usual academic standards, Linus would have kicked out of usenet and OS development when it came to the famous flamewar with Tanenbaum. Linus just didn't follow the conventions, and insisted (in a rather childish manner) that he (beginner) was right, and Prof. Dr. Tanenbaum was wrong. So we can't remove this sort of "jerks". Today it's probably the other way round, Prof. Dr. Linus (ok, he hasn't got the title, but the reputation) calls some thread "idiotic", like the "large block" discussion, and a few other guys simply continue, because they don't care about reputation. That's how it ought to work, that's our standard. Reputation is nothing, show us the code.

Some people have already complained here about how we treat people who don't follow the conducts, like clueless newbies or "normal people" who just want their computer to be fixed, and no discussion. Hey, it's hard if there are rules and you chose not to follow them or not even to know them!

Do women actually receive special evil attention simply for being women ?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 20:05 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It looks mightily strange to me. How many women who never participated in "let's bring women in ...." campaigns (but are involved in FOSS) got such "evil attention" ? To me it looks like the campaign and participants got evil attention, not just women in FOSS. And I certainly can understand why: to declare "sexism in FOSS" big problem and then to organize sexually segregated group to solve said problem looks just hypocrisy to me, but to misogynists in FOSS it certainly looks like conspiracy a-la SCO. So actual surprise is not that some women got death threats but that they expected they will avoid them!

And yes, that's actual problem with FOSS: since there are so few women misogynists can thrive here. It's kind of catch 22 problem: while women treatment does not affect FOSS misogynists will be tolerated - and women treatment will not affect FOSS till women will not become active participants! Tough problem to solve.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 29, 2007 21:16 UTC (Sat) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (3 responses)

I would like more people to admit that there are problems, instead of denying it or expecting us to tolerate them as the price of participating in FOSS.

I admit that there are problems like sick people who send death threats to Darl McBride or to females as general, and I think these people should be dealt by the police or mental institues (so I don´t tolerate them) - but what does it have to do with the community in general? Is there anyone in the FOSS community who tolerates these people?

Bye,NAR

Unfortunatelly yes...

Posted Sep 29, 2007 21:26 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

How can you know if someone from LKML or even LWN threatened Darl or someone from Debian-Women group ? You'll probably never know. And since there are so few women in "normal" mailing lists it's hard to catch such guys...

So yes, they are tolerated - not because anyone likes them but because
1. People don't know.
2. People don't care - sometimes actively don't care (we care here only about technical superiority - don't ring any bells?).
If someone if antisocial in general and hates linuxchix in particular but does good technical work - will he be tolerated ? Sadly quite often the answer is "yes" - and it affects not just women.

Unfortunatelly yes...

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:05 UTC (Sun) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

1. How on earth can one tolerate someone, if one doesn't even know him or what he does? Without an object this action cannot be carried out, so a statement like "they are tolerated because people don't know" ha no meaning at all.

2. That someone is antisocial in general or hates linuxchix in particular does not mean that one has to shut him out and ignore his technical contributions. That's his personal views and he is entitled to that, even if I'd personally think he's a dork. Now if he actively offends someone else (e.g. a woman), not even to mention death threats, that's a whole different issue. That's exactly where toleration has to end.

Unfortunatelly yes...

Posted Sep 30, 2007 13:41 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I think khim meant that the specific people who made the death threats or
whatever are tolerated in the community because nobody knows that those
specific people made the threats, and that if it was widely known, those
people would (one hopes) be ostracised or in some other way receive
negative social reinforcement. (Being nasty to people who send death
threats seems fine to me. Such people have shown themselves to not be
shrinking violets already.)

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Sep 30, 2007 0:03 UTC (Sun) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (1 responses)

> the FOSS world is much too tolerant of evil and hostile behaviors

"the FOSS world" is composed of many smallish enclaves. There are plenty of them where people are much too rude for my sensitivities. But there are enough others where I get along fine, so I ignore the rude places.

> women receive special evil attention simply for being women, and
> all the people who claim there are no problems are lying or delusional.

That's a bit strong; please also consider the possibility of ignorance. I have never seen any of the abuse that you're describing; I'm not lying and I don't think I'm deluded.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Oct 1, 2007 11:40 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

People like you do wonders to get me off my edge with this whole "women in OSS" issue. It is because you seem to oppose what I interprete to be much more radical forms of feminism.

For instance, to cast this "women receive special evil attention just for being woman" in such black-and-white terms as tuxchick is doing doesn't really leave any room for discussion. You either agree with her instantly, or are cast as delusional?

(Well, sure, some women at least sometimes receive some "evil attention" which wouldn't come their way if they weren't women. I can agree to that much, but I feel it's already watered down version of the problem and thus I'm "delusional", no doubt.)

Just how is looking at issues this way supposed to promote any kind of understanding or lead to positive actions to fix the problem. It's obvious that only a few people can be doing this. And they may be nothing more than internet trolls. The rule one of dealing with internet trolls is that you don't talk back to the internet trolls.

It seems to me that we are yet to agree on what the problem specifically is and what should be done to repair it. (And that means getting to level of practical actions, not handwaving about how women are entitled not to feel oppressed, we can agree to that.)

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Oct 1, 2007 13:52 UTC (Mon) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

Could you please explain how you know that the threats originated from a contributer to FLOSS? You painting the community with a very large brush given that the Internet is open to anyone and nothing is preventing crazy people from latching on anywhere they choose.

Let me suggest this: There really is nothing wrong with the FLOSS community. The problems that women are finding are do to the larger acceptance of FLOSS in the world and the flocking of all sorts of disturbed individuals to areas where they can easily get attention or strike out in pitiful attempts at having any power at all in the world.

I really have no idea how an actual FLOSS _contributor_ could find the time or inclination to send out death threats to anyone. What would be the point? Don't you think it is more likely we are dealing with your run of the mill jackass here and that it is not likely to be a central problem with all the blood thirsty sociopathic FLOSS developers so prevalent in society?

Kind Regards

Not unique to women at all...

Posted Sep 29, 2007 19:41 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Our friends Darl McBride and Rob Enderle got a lot of death threats as well. The big question is why. I certainly find this hoopla around "women in FOSS" annoying but to send death threats ? Gosh. That's overkill if I've ever seen one... Of course I've not ever sent death threats to Darl or Rob too, so may be I just have wrong mindset...

Not unique to women at all...

Posted Sep 29, 2007 21:25 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

There is no cause so good that fools will not follow it. Subsitute `raving
misogynist maniacs' for `fools' and it's still true.

(well, mostly. I don't think I'll find many raving misogynist maniacs
running women's lib organizations, for instance. But still.)

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Oct 1, 2007 13:13 UTC (Mon) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] (1 responses)

Okay - this is shocking. This is a potentially criminal matter. One for the authorities. It shows my naivety that I had never imagined that events like this can occur. Can you document this for the community in general? You would be doing a great service if you exposed this kind of behaviour in an explicit and non-anecdotal manner. Can you provide links? You can mask the identities of your assailants if you fear recrimination.

It must be very troubling for you to have your family attacked. I am not faulting you for it but it is perhaps better not to put them in harms way? I would like to offer my support and sympathies. My only consolation to you is that these people (this person?) is all bark and no bite, you can be reasonably sure of that.

What puts women off FOSS?

Posted Oct 3, 2007 9:24 UTC (Wed) by Clytie (guest, #47882) [Link]

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply: I can only sometimes be online.

Thankyou for your concern and support. It is indeed a frightening situation, and the police are
involved. They, unfortunately, do not consider the people sending these messages to be "all
bark and no bite". Perhaps some "death threat" messages are sent by blusterers, but the texts I
have received were classified as coming from people who will, in the police's experience, very
likely cause physical harm. :(

I posted in this thread to point out that women contributing to the FOSS world are not "just"
confronted with men viewing them as second-class citizens or as freebies from the Blow-Up
Doll factory. Hostility covers a wide range.

I agree with you that this hostility doesn't reflect the behaviour of all men, or in some places,
even of men in general. I work in over 20 free-software projects, and I invariably encounter
only polite and helpful behaviour. I can't speak for the projects at large, since I specialize in
i18n, but within my area of expertise, I enjoy very positive relationships with all my colleagues.
This applies not only to the large projects, like Debian, GNOME and KDE, but also to the
individual projects, like Mailman and Inkscape.

My male colleagues in these projects have been just as shocked as you by the death threats I
have received, mostly because they have never personally encountered anything of the sort, but
also because they suddenly realize we have no mechanism for reporting such behaviour and
dealing with it.

I believe it will be useful to emphasize the positive behaviour that does exist, and to follow
Ubuntu's example by creating Rules of Conduct for participation. Then we _do_ have a
mechanism within each project, and we have models to follow.

Dealing with hostile behaviour _within_ projects is the key step forward, even if things like
these death threats may attract more attention. Make projects a positive and welcoming place
for people of all backgrounds, and you will increase your membership and QA'd contributions.
This is a win-win.

Outside the projects, it's still frightening to be targetted, but there are some laws in place, and
the people causing the suffering will hopefully be caught and face the consequences. Outside
FOSS projects, it's more of a wider community issue.

Which brings me to something you may have wondered, or asked. Why do I continue to
participate, while receiving death threats against myself and my family? Am I crazy? (Well, just a
tad eccentric, I prefer to think. ;) )

I continue for the reason I've mentioned above. Within the projects to which I contribute, I am
welcomed and valued. I believe it is worth the risk, to experience that kind of community, while
being useful (which is very important to me).

If I had experienced hostility within any of my projects, I would not have felt it worth
continuing in those. Volunteer time in order to get hassled? No, thanks.

So, if you want volunteers and participation, treat your participants the way my i18n colleagues
treat me. Since I have been unable to code for some years now, due to illness, I do not know if
the rest of each project is as welcoming. But you can do your own part in making it so.