To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 17:01 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) by alankila
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Acrobatic intelligence very rare in women?

Bwahaha. You've never known my relatives, boyo: men timid, dull and staid
to a fault and rather unimaginative (anti-blowing my own trumpet here),
women ultrabright assertive quick thinkers. (Some of them are also insane,
but that's neither here nor there.)

to post comments

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 1, 2007 9:28 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe you could put me in contact with one of your hot sisters? Preferably not the crazy ones, though.

Now, seriously. I want to stress that it's all about _my_ experience. Anyone could flame me all they want, but both you and I have to realize that in this instance I'm looking at the world through this particular peephole called my eyes.

So when I say that I just don't meet the sort of bright women, it doesn't mean they don't exist. It could simply mean that they are somewhere else and do something different. And that is why A. Tang seemed so remarkable to me, which combined with the mistake (also made by article's author) made me comment about it.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 2, 2007 4:10 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

>Now, seriously. I want to stress that it's all about _my_ experience. Anyone could flame me all they want, but both you and I have to realize that in this instance I'm looking at the world through this particular peephole called my eyes.

And I for one would like to thank you for your thoughtful comments on the matter. I think your taking a position that is otherwise occupied mostly by complete boors may have caused some shortened triggers to go off, and it's nice to see someone willing to have a discussion, rather than just rant.

>So when I say that I just don't meet the sort of bright women, it doesn't mean they don't exist. It could simply mean that they are somewhere else and do something different.

I think what most of us are trying to say is that yes, in our experience, that's exactly what's happening. Keeping in mind that very few people of any kind are as smart as Audrey Tang, it's not surprising if your limited sample of female acquaintances don't include any. But, as a point of information, in fact women in other fields (the ones that actually have women in them) seem just as likely to be "acrobatically brilliant" as men... so why hardly any of them are getting into IT, and especially FOSS, is another question still seeking an answer.

Hope that helps.