Thanks! [LWN.net]

Thanks!

Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:03 UTC (Mon) by frodonl (guest, #16826)
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

After reading through the comments on this post and on an earlier post, I can only conclude that these articles are clearly needed. Thanks, Rebecca, for posting them!

Frank

to post comments

Thanks!

Posted Oct 1, 2007 17:42 UTC (Mon) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link] (4 responses)

Seconded.

A couple general points, which nobody will read at the end of the thread...
- many of the posters who are instinctively on edge when these issues are discussed seem to argue "from resentment". I suggest they take some of that brutal honesty and debug their own thought processes. Just answer the question why they get so hot emotionally when asked to respect the fact that people come in different packages. They may be linking to obsolete libraries.
- respect is not a one-dimensional variable. Separate respect for each person as him/herself (this is a right) from respect for technical prowess (this is earned).

Thanks!

Posted Oct 1, 2007 19:44 UTC (Mon) by tuxchick (guest, #42009) [Link] (2 responses)

Thank you, I was intending to make one more post, and you already
expressed what I wanted to say.

"respect is not a one-dimensional variable. Separate respect for each
person as him/herself (this is a right) from respect for technical prowess
(this is earned)."

Well said.

This is a hot-button topic, and it shouldn't be. What's so controversial
about advocating for politeness, courtesy, and respect? What's so
controversial about recognizing that rude, hostile behavior drives people
away from FOSS, to its detriment?

I dare say a lot of this is plain old misogynism, because of course women
are just whiny crybabies who should shut up and take it, and it seems to
be mainly women who are raising this issue publicly. "If you don't like it
here, leave" is not a solution, but a last resort. It happens way too
often in FOSS projects, to their detriment. Maintaining a reasonable level
of civility is hardly something that requires radical re-tooling; just a
bit of self-control and consideration for others.

Thanks!

Posted Oct 1, 2007 22:25 UTC (Mon) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

There are several reasons that this is a hot button topic, including:

- Whatever you think you're advocating, you're calling for a change in
the status quo, that's inevitably going to be looked upon sceptically by
people happy with the status quo.
- Some of us have experiences of the FOSS community that are largely
characterised by politeness, courtesy, and respect; you called
us 'delusional' and 'liars'.
- There are undoubtedly misogynists in the community, that does not mean
that the community is generally misogynistic.

In short, you're trying to change something that many people enjoy, based
on a weakly demonstrated case, and you seem unwilling to engage
meaningfully in debate. Of course you're going to feel resistance.

Thanks!

Posted Oct 2, 2007 14:06 UTC (Tue) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

One thing about courtesy is when you ask something like "you fucking misogynic jerks, be more polite", you won't get what you want, not even as woman. Think before insulting!

The typical pattern I've seen in this discussion (from the rare woman who starts it) is a list of annoying things, where the fault is always on someone else, usually a group as large as possible ("society" or at least the whole "FOSS community"). Claims to support this alleged fault usually paint only half of the truth - e.g. one of those article mentioned that children visiting a hospital selected themselves for boys as doctors and girls as nurses, when the nurse in the hospital was actually a man, and the doctor was a woman. This ignores that more women study medicine than men, so the prejudices of children don't affect this profession at all. It's a good example that children believe far more in role models than when they are grown up.

Another pattern is that whenever someone brings up some statistics about mathematic skills (which they usually do when the question is "why are so few women in xxx"), the technically skilled women claim it's personally insulting her. No, we are not insulting, we are trying to find a reason. Another reason than "we are all misogynic jerks". And this math problem is not out of thin air - most of the girls I've met during my CS studies complained that the math they were forced to learn was too hard. A significant portion of the men complained, as well. But those people who still were in the computer pool at 8pm and hacked on stuff nobody ever told them to do (e.g. free software) didn't. Or they complained when a particular interesting math topic was removed from the lecture list. This is the part of the population who will do free software; we can forget about the others. They might do commercial software, where someone tells them what to do.

Thanks!

Posted Oct 1, 2007 22:10 UTC (Mon) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

sjj wrote:

respect is not a one-dimensional variable. Separate respect for each person as him/herself (this is a right) from respect for technical prowess (this is earned).

FWIW, I mildly and respectfully ;-) dissent from the popular notion that people (as people in themselves) deserve respect as a claim of right -- at least, as best I understand what you mean by that phrase. People as people merit civility (in the general case[1]), if only because the resulting discourse is more pleasant to read, and less likely to digress into time-wasting, irrelevant psychodrama. Civility is worth speaking out for.

It's possible you actually meant that people (in the general case[1]) deserve civility, in which case I think you'll get very wide agreement. If you think, in contrast, that they have an inherent right to receive a reception that will boost their senses of self-worth, then I suspect you're receive only expressions of concurrence that are insincere and/or tactical.

[1] There are exceptions: Not all people behave in a manner that merits civility, though many will grant it anyway for decorum's sake.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Thanks!

Posted Oct 3, 2007 5:06 UTC (Wed) by zasxcdfvbg (guest, #48002) [Link] (1 responses)

A recent news article relevant to this discussion: Women wary when outnumbered.

Quote: Women feel threatened when outnumbered by the opposite sex, such as in math, science and engineering classrooms

Thanks!

Posted Oct 3, 2007 7:09 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Hey, *I* feel wary when a lot of men are around (like, one), and I *am* a
man.

This cross-gender variation, like all the others, has more variation
within genders than between them. :)