OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd [LWN.net]

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 27, 2009 22:17 UTC (Mon) by CyberDog (guest, #29668) [Link] (4 responses)

So 80% of the 1.5% of the community noticed something, plus 20% of the other 98.5% noticed something. That sounds like it falls between a fifth and a quarter of the community overall. Not trying to trivialize the problem, but those numbers don't exactly sound earth shattering or unusual.

(I recall my computer science classes looking a lot like that kernel summit photo.)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 6:03 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link] (3 responses)

"That sounds like it falls between a fifth and a quarter of the community overall."

Yes, a fifth to a quarter of the community *notice* that there's a problem. But 80% of women are *having* the problem. I haven't seen a survey that determines how many people in the technical community are *causing* the problem, but for 80% of women to have had this problem I'd say there's probably about 80% of the technical community that are causing the problem.

You say you're not trying to trivialise the problem, but you then go and do that anyway. You're making excuses; you're trying to make the numbers sound less important by doing specious maths with them. Your implication is that if it's not earth shattering we can allow it. If you're going to say you're "not trying to trivialise the problem", then don't.

Let's look at it this way. At what percentage would it *be* 'earth shattering'? When would you say the collective open source developer community should act on this? As Kirrily points out, the aim is not to convert the existing developer population to an even gender balance, the aim is to *expand* the developer population to *include* all the people that want to participate but who are currently being excluded. If we can stop some people in our community being sexist and antisocial then we attract a huge extra group of people who want to be involved.

Have fun,

Paul

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 8:27 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

In other contexts, what you see is a minority of people causing the problem (maybe 10% to 20% of the total involved), but spreading their offensiveness round such that it hits 75% to 100% of women in the group. The remaining people, who aren't actively offensive or offended, often simply don't notice what's going on, because this is fairly standard in any group - it's just that in groups with significant numbers of women involved, those people (mostly men, but not all) who are actively sexist are sidelined until they learn how to behave.

So, I could well believe that only 20% of FOSS participants are actively sexist, affecting all women in FOSS, but not being noticed by other men in the group, as the public face of it is just "jock" behaviour that we tolerate in the Real World. Combine that with the people being sexist not necessarily realising that they're actually offensive, and you've got a bad situation, where women are pushed out of participating, yet no-one can tell you why.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:48 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

I'd argue that it's worse than that. Perhaps only 10-20% of the community engage in outright sexism. But, looking at the comments to most discussions of this nature, significantly more than that appear to expend time and effort arguing that it's not a real problem and that women should just get a thicker skin if they're going to get involved. If we define "the problem" as "involvement in the Linux community is unattractive to women", then those people are part of the problem just as much as the ones who engage in sexual harassment and threats. And it's those people who have to have their minds changed, because dealing with the poisonous minority is almost impossible unless you have the majority clearly on your side.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 7:31 UTC (Wed) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

>but for 80% of women to have had this problem I'd say there's probably about 80% of the technical community that are causing the problem.

Uh? Pulling numbers out of nowhere isn't helpful.

A small percentage of the population being sexist and the majority of the other being just indifferent (ie this guy made inapropriate comments? Bah, grow a skin) is enough to have a big proportion of women feeling that there's sexism.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 27, 2009 22:39 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (23 responses)

Fact is, the majority of FLOSS developers are male. It's also quite likely that many of them are on the asperger/autistic spectrum. One of the characteristics of that is that you treat other people as equal to yourself.

So, if I, as a FLOSS developer, treat all the other developers I meet as being similar/the same as me, the male 80% will be quite happy with that, and the female 20% will be offended and/or feel oppressed.

Thing is, UNLESS the majority are careful about it (which most aren't), minorities will almost always feel oppressed even if the majority isn't oppressive. It's just a fact of life (often, but not in this case, made worse by members of the majority speaking out "on behalf" of the minority. We have that in Britain, where the majority of the Moslem community are regularly offended by the Politically Correct saying "we don't want to offend the Muslims").

Cheers,
Wol

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 2:26 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

It's also quite likely that many of them are on the asperger/autistic spectrum.

Spare me the pseudo-diagnoses.

Let's have a small thought experiment and kick out all people with Aspergers and autism from FLOSS projects. Do you think the result will be women-welcoming FLOSS projects a week later? Even a year later?

I suggest that our problems are not medical. If that were the case, they could be easily solved. I suggest our problems are social and behavioural, and changing those will take substantial efforts.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 6:37 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link] (2 responses)

"So, if [...] a FLOSS developer, treat[s] all the other developers [in my normal way], the male 80% will be quite happy with that, and the female 20% will be offended."

Well, unless you're Ulrich Drepper, who seems to annoy a large swathe of male developers too. He obviously thinks that being downright rude is the normal way to treat everyone else.

In other words, assuming that anyone will 'be quite happy with that' is really actually perpetuating the problem through ignorance. I hate blatant sexist rudeness, but there are still all sorts of social reasons why I can't give someone who offends me the arse-kicking they so richly deserve. My gender is irrelevant to the fact that I take offense.

People also keep on apologising for Ulrich, too, thus perpetuating the delusion in his mind that his behaviour is appropriate. Look at all the excuses people invent for tolerating his behaviour and you'll see the same process all over again.

As for the whole 'minorities always take offence' question, I'd like some hard facts there to back that assertion up. The "Well it's going to offend someone anyway so I might as well do it" is a tired argument.

Have fun,

Paul

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:06 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

As I heard it put once, "being brilliant does not give you a license to be nasty". (In fact, being brilliant should really lead to your being *more* humble than otherwise, to avoid scaring everyone else away.)

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:55 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

To extend the Aspie references a bit: people who have real clinically diagnosable Aspergers Sydrome and work on projects like ours *are not being nasty* in behaving in the ways that people are pointing to.

"Nasty" requires what criminal lawyers refer to as "scienter", the knowledge that you're committing a crime.

Aspergers is almost defined as *not having the circuits to detect that*.

So again, we're talking past one another here.

They're not *exercising* "a license to be nasty". They're just being them, and they don't have time for ... no, that's not the right way to put it, either, as it again implies choice. See how hard this stuff is to talk about?

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 7:43 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (18 responses)

> So, if I, as a FLOSS developer, treat all the other developers I meet as being similar/the same as me, the male 80% will be quite happy with that, and the female 20% will be offended and/or feel oppressed.

I've read a fair number of these discussions, but I've never seen any female developers complaining that they were just treated *too much* like men. (Except perhaps when it was assumed that they were cool with misogynistic jokes, hetero-male-oriented porn, etc.) The O'Reilly thread about this has discussion of comments like "who'd you sleep with to get that patch accepted?" and how much more bearable things are if adopt a non-female pseudonym.

Besides which, your argument is based on the assumption that the proper treatment woman would receive in a perfect world is some a special feminine treatment, that is different from the treatment which men receive. While I'm sure you weren't thinking of it quite that way when you wrote it, do you see how that comes across as offensive?

(BTW, "the female 20%" is actually the female 1.5%, according to the original post's citation, and I've never seen an estimate higher than 3%. The imbalance is much, much worse than you see to realize.)

> Thing is, UNLESS the majority are careful about it (which most aren't), minorities will almost always feel oppressed even if the majority isn't oppressive.

This boils down to "woman feel unwelcome because they're the minority, and they remain in the minority because they feel unwelcome". But if that were true, then we would never see women entering traditionally male-dominated fields, and that's nonsense. Even closely related fields, like academic computer science and professional software development, now have *vastly* higher female participation than FOSS.

> We have that in Britain, where the majority of the Moslem community are regularly offended by the Politically Correct saying "we don't want to offend the Muslims"

And have you ever asked one of these people why they found it offensive, and thought about their answer until it made sense? Have you ever read one of these discussions through (say, the talk linked to in the parent article plus its comments) and then thought them through? It's easy and comforting to rattle off a post that explains away the problem and lets you stop thinking about it, but I'd suggest resisting the temptation -- it's part of the problem. This kind of thing isn't easy to understand or discuss, but it's worth the effort.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:26 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (17 responses)

Even closely related fields, like academic computer science and professional software development, now have *vastly* higher female participation than FOSS.

I have no idea about female participation on FOSS, but at the university and during professional software development I haven't seen more than 10% female participation. On the other hand I'm yet to meet a male assistant, that's a 100% female occupation.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 23:32 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (16 responses)

I'm not sure where you are, or how carefully you gathered statistics, but 10% is consistent with the studies I've seen (though at the low end; 20-30% is more commonly quoted). There's some discussion of this in the parent article.

Female participation in FOSS, on the other hand, is generally estimated at ~1-3% (again, this is in the parent article), and that's wholly consistent with my experience. So we're talking a 3x difference in the best case, 30x in the worst. I think that's consistent with my original statement.

...I can't tell if you're trying to disagree or what, though. Did you have a particular point to make?

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 23:50 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

how much of the difference is different values and choices in what to do with their free time?

I suspect that you would see similar drops in hobby versions of male dominated careers (construction vs woodworking, auto-industry vs hotrods, etc)

just because there is a differing percentage doesn't mean that there's some grand conspiracy

in the case of opensource software there is less of a difference between day jobs and the hobby (to the point where for some people the day job _is_ the hobby), but it still boils down to what do people choose to do with their free time prior to getting involved with 'the community'

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:59 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, sure, that may be a factor. But it's hard to tell, isn't it, while we *know* that there's blatant sexism at play too? And this kind of explanation can itself be harmful: it's not testable; it doesn't suggest any useful course of action; and anyone who's looking for some way to ignore the real, demonstrable problems can (and does) take it as an excuse to throw up their hands and stop thinking. So, yeah, maybe in a perfect world the gender ratio in FOSS ends up being 40/60 or 50/50 or even 30/70, who knows -- but I don't think that should affect what we do here and now.

(And do you really want to point to hotrodding culture as a model for appropriate attitudes toward women?)

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 14:44 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (2 responses)

while we *know* that there's blatant sexism at play too?

Do we really know? I accept that there's blatant sexism, but how can know it doesn't drive away males as well in the same ration as females?

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:52 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Can you propose a plausible model for why sexism against women would drive away men in the same proportions?

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:13 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

If it drove away 90% of men the mailing lists and user groups would be
exploding. The very suggestion is utterly ludicrous.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:57 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (10 responses)

I would assert that given the small percentage that what we view as the FOSS community comprises of the total CompSci/programming/engineering communities, that the issue is statistical noise.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:40 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (9 responses)

I'm not sure what you mean by "statistical noise". In the social sciences, that would mean the uncertainty about a figure like "1.5% female participation" caused by only surveying a small number of people. You seem to think it has to do with the size of the community itself, though, so you must be talking about something else?

In any case, the FLOSSPOLS survey had 1541 participants, which is huge. With that many respondents, the uncertainty in an estimate of 1.5% is only about 0.7%. We're talking about an order of magnitude difference in large studies. Statistical noise is just irrelevant.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:38 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (8 responses)

What I meant was that 1 death threat in 5000-10,000 developers in a (relatively) small social space such as FOSS development stands out quite a bit more brightly than 1 death threat in 400,000 people in a metro area, or 5M in a state, or 307M in the US.

That doesn't belittle the threat; it merely points out that the difference between 0 and 1 is much larger than the difference between 1 and 100.

Statistical significance

Posted Jul 30, 2009 20:23 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (6 responses)

Your previous statement (FOSS communities are statistical noise compared to the larger scientific and engineering community) made little sense. Now what you say has no meaning at all.

Catastrophic events are not usually measured statistically: comparing them to the whole population is meaningless. Otherwise we would dismiss earthquakes as "statistical noise", since they happen very rarely at any point on the Earth crust. Or, say, nobody would have cared about the Tiananmen killings or the WTC attacks since the probability to die in any such events is "statistically insignificant" across the whole population. Nevertheless it may be interesting to put the whole thing in perspective, such as comparing it to the much worse death toll of traffic accidents, but a comparison cannot hide the horror of a massacre.

One death threat is one too much and should be repelled by any human being, be it in the whole US or in a small town, but especially from within Debian developers given what Debian stands for. What is the use of pointing out its "statistical insignificance"? I can only think that you are trying to hide the fact that they are horrific events, and that is sad.

Statistical significance

Posted Jul 30, 2009 20:33 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (5 responses)

Sure, cause that's a perfectly reasonable derivation to draw from everything I've said here.

You're makin stuff up now; quit it.

The point remains, though, that however you characterize a death threat, and howver you characterize "everyday" sexism, they have little to nothing to do with one another, and things which might mitigate the latter will have pretty much no impact on the former at all -- it's not a discomfiting behavior pattern based on a difference in perception, it's a *crime*.

Even the threat, in case people have missed that, is a crime -- a felony in some jurisdictions, depending on how it's phrased and delivered.

Here, though, it's just a red herring. Trying to tie it to other behaviors you consider sexist merely makes you look like you have no other rhetorical points left to make.

Statistical significance

Posted Jul 30, 2009 21:17 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

I am sorry if I misunderstood you but I honestly don't see how.

Anyway, you are right that I don't have many rhetorical points to make. The fundamental issue is this: there are very few women in free software projects and that is a problem. You may disagree about the reasons or about the remedies but if you don't see the problem then we don't have a common ground.

After this acceptance, we may start discussing whether death threats specifically made to women participating in Debian (according to the DPL: "harassing women for supposedly destroying the free software movement") are sexist or not. Once we determine that they are, we may try to link them to other sexist behaviors because, well, all of them are sexist -- that is the common link. But until you see the problem there is certainly no point in all of this.

Statistical significance

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:33 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

> there are very few women in free software projects and that is a problem

For the projects?

Or for the women?

If the former, show your work; I'll stipulate the latter as a problem (to the amazement of some of my detractors here, probably).

Statistical significance

Posted Aug 3, 2009 20:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Excluding half the human race from any endeavour is a problem.

If you only listen to purely economic arguments, look at the leap in GDP
of most nations when it became common for women to have jobs.

It appears that we are, intentionally or not, excluding women from our
endeavour. Thus...

Statistical significance

Posted Aug 12, 2009 23:09 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not half the human race. It's "the women who would participate in OSS development but aren't going to now because we do things they don't like". That is a fairly small number and, given current CS enrollment statistics, amounts to /maybe/ 10% of the current OSS developer base.

So, if we spent some enormous time and effort eradicating whatever these women consider "sexism" from all OSS projects everywhere, we'd get a 10% boost in developer numbers. We'd have to subtract from this all the men we lost because we either kicked them out for being "sexist", or they left because OSS development wasn't fun for them anymore.

I put "sexist" in quotes because it doesn't really matter whether the behavior is sexist or not based on any legal or reasonable definition of the term; all that matters is what these women consider sexist, which, importantly is likely to be a much more expansive definition. It might be impossible to reject a patch from a few female contributors -- for any reason -- without being called "sexist" by them. Since some patches need to be rejected, regardless of the gender of the contributor, we'd need to create some official definition of sexism and then have ways to try accusations. This administrative overhead would be an additional cost to be deducted from that 10% figure.

I don't doubt that there's some actual sexism in OSS. There are assholes everywhere. But, from a practical standpoint, sexism in OSS is, always has been, and always will be a complete non-issue. We're talking about volunteer groups, not companies with a legal obligation to pretend to care about this particular type of assholery, and these groups of volunteers have all naturally created behavioral standards that by and large work well for them. They'll expel the worst assholes without prodding, but most people learn when they are children that it is usually fairly easy to ignore assholes, so they'll let "productive assholes" stay on and just mentally killfile them. This is exactly the right response. Outside of groups like Debian that /enjoy/ doing everything with a tour-de-force, no one will ever care if a few whiners claim they're being discriminated against even though they're being invited to contribute with open arms -- just like everyone else -- and no one ever should.

Statistical significance

Posted Aug 12, 2009 23:27 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

We have repeated evidence of death threats being received. Thinking that
this is problematic is not 'whining'.

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 30, 2009 23:38 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

I just checked, and no-one in this particular sub-thread has mentioned death threats besides you. There've been several *other* examples of horrid behavior endured by female FOSS developers, and a discussion of the exact percentages of women in FOSS vs related fields. You clicked reply on that comment and typed "the issue is statistical noise".

Now you say that "the issue" you meant was not, you know, the statistics in the comment you were replying to, but actually the number of death threats specifically?

Point 1: Either you're wildly inarticulate and expect your readers to have magic psychic powers, or you saw the responses you were getting, changed your mind, and are lying about what you originally meant. I realize neither of these is very charitable, but I don't see any other explanation -- feel free to offer one.

Point 2: Assuming you were talking about the statistics of death threats -- why? That's not what we were talking about. If you want to talk about the astonishing rarity of females in FOSS, or harassment in general[1], then that's responsive. Focusing in on death threats and how they're really not a problem just makes it look like you want to quash substantive discussion by changing the subject to something you think you can argue with more effectively.

Point 3: Your comment text here is arguing that 1 death threat in FOSS is a really big deal (you point out that it's a relatively large number given the size of the community, say it "stands out brightly", it's a "much larger ... difference"). But you seem to conclude from this that 1 death threat is not really important. Even assuming you were trying to address the point at hand, your argument makes no sense. (Nor is a death threat a minor occurrence, regardless of statistics, especially when it occurs as part of a broad spectrum of harassment.)

Point 4: Even if your argument made sense, it assumes that death threats are rare and isolated. A quick google reveals that debian-women and LinuxChix (and others) have been receiving regular death threats over a multiple year span. And, of course, even the original article here says "death threats", plural. So where did you get the idea that there was only 1 death threat anyway? It makes you look like you value your preconceptions over facts.

Conclusion: You come across as a sexist troll thrashing about wildly in an attempt to derail the discussion. Stop it.

[1] For example: "The O'Reilly thread about this has discussion of comments like "who'd you sleep with to get that patch accepted?" and how much more bearable things are if [they] adopt a non-female pseudonym."

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 27, 2009 23:17 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link] (1 responses)

I had not noticed any sexism in the Free Software world until the last time that LWN ran a story like this, at which point various unpleasant lifeforms crawled out from under their rocks to explain that women had smaller brains etc. etc.

I would be very interested to hear whether those lifeforms have found themselves more or less welcome as "community members" since revealing their sexist views here.

I would also repeat the comments that I made at that time, that the Free Software world includes many different projects with a wide range of "vibes". I find some projects too full of unpleasant (i.e. mainly rude) individuals to want to be part of them. On the other hand, there are plenty of other projects that do suit my temperament. There is nothing wrong with choosing a project to be involved in based on the kind of people who are already working on it.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:55 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

I'd love to think so, but I've seen little evidence so far for the community being willing to exclude people for continuing to express sexist views or behaviour.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 27, 2009 23:42 UTC (Mon) by smadu2 (guest, #54943) [Link] (31 responses)

"So what does it feel like to be a woman in open source? Jono Bacon, at the Community Leadership Summit on the weekend, said addressing the guys in the room that if you want to know what its like to be a woman in open source, go and get your nails done at a salon. He did this a week or so back, and when he walked into the salon he realised he was the only man there, and felt kind of out of place."

How can anyone feel out of place to subscribe to mailing lists, participate in the discussions, and start posting patches etc ? Thats where most if not all stuff happens.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 0:30 UTC (Tue) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link] (17 responses)

Some people are shy. Some people don't like confrontation, even implied. Some people wait for others to ask them to participate.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 0:45 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (16 responses)

And if they see other people being flamed to a crisp for tiny (often
imperceptible) infractions, and other signs of terminal testosterone
poisoning, they may choose not to participate.

Not that any free software development lists are remotely like that.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 11:58 UTC (Tue) by ctpm (guest, #35884) [Link] (15 responses)

[chromatic]:
> Some people are shy. Some people don't like confrontation, even
implied. Some people wait for others to ask them to participate.

Sorry, but this is true for *both* women and men. To me, the above
sentences suggest that you think that women are somehow "inferior" or
unable to withstand confrontation.

[nix]:
> And if they see other people being flamed to a crisp for tiny (often
> imperceptible) infractions, and other signs of terminal testosterone
> poisoning, they may choose not to participate.

And again, how does that specifically pertain to women as opposed to
men? So, if I'm a guy and I get flamed to a crisp, well tough luck, now
if I'm a girl, oh nooo, just not acceptable!...
Also, please remember that women can flame as good as men. I've seen my
share of women that can bring a guy/girl to tears in tech or semi-tech
jobs, so when it comes to being unpleasant, both genders are equally
capable.

People, don't you notice a pattern here? Most articles I've seen
referred on LWN about the subject of women equality on free software
projects are actually arguing for the opposite, that is, differentiated
treatment.

The current article is outright *sexist* (despite claiming against it)
and to me, it seemed to suggest that women are somehow handicapped.

An lets look at some gems from the article:

"It's kind of like being handed a box full of random bicycle parts: it
doesn't help when you don't know how they go together and just want to
learn how to ride a bike."

Well, that would be true for anyone trying to join the project, man or
woman. So there is no evident relation.

"I considered getting involved in Debian, but the barriers to entry
seemed high."

Ditto.

What the author of the article needs to understand is that usually a
free software (or any other) project sets out with a goal of a specific
technical complexity. If the project is to succeed, its developers need
to have a certain level of technical skill.
Obviously not every newcomer is at that skill or experience level. Now,
as an inexperienced newcomer, you have to options: you can chose to be
humble, lurk on the lists and try to slowly learn the necessary skills or
you can choose to whine about how you are unskilled and don't learn
anything and that others are unpleasant to you.
Its the same thing as a job interview. Would you find it odd that a
company tries to hire the right person for a job? You either convince
them that you have the potential or you're going to fail the interview;
no amount of whining will save you.

I'm not saying that free projects should be done in a "kill or be
killed" kind of environment but they certainly are about solving
problems, surpassing difficulties and improving ourselves as developers
while withstanding adversity and competition. If you don't have that kind
of attitude as a newcomer, chances are that people won't value you as
much.

So, in fact to me it seems that what this article says is "women are
morons, please cut them some slack". And that certainly doesn't help.

And in conclusion, again quoting from the article:

"Call people on their crap.
If someone's being an asshole, call them on their crap. How do you tell
if someone's being an asshole?"

Yes, I have to call the author of the article on her crap.

Best regards

Cláudio

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:16 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (9 responses)

Sorry, but this is true for *both* women and men. To me, the above sentences suggest that you think that women are somehow "inferior" or unable to withstand confrontation.

Obviously I don't think that: but let's have a thought experiment. Room full of women, man speaks up: is he likely to get shouted down, even if what he says is controversial? Now flip the sexes. Is the result the same? Not in my experience.

It is a matter of documented fact that e.g. in single-sex (11+) schools girls do dramatically better than in mixed-sex schools, apparently both because they're not being intimidated by testosterone overload and because the classes are less hectic. For boys the proportions are reversed.

Extrapolating from generalizations about entire sexes to the behaviour of any one member of that sex is fallacious: but it is generally true that in groups men tend to be confrontational with each other, that this behaviour gets more extreme the more unbalanced the gender ratio, and that there are fewer women who enjoy acting like that than men (especially if the women get extra unpleasant attention merely because of their sex, that shy men are spared). This could very well scare away both large numbers of shyer men *and* yet larger numbers of shyer women.

In fact the 'women get an extra burden of attention from unpleasant members of the opposite sex which is not given to men, shy or not' could explain quite a bit of the imbalance without requiring any such generalizations at all. Flip the gender ratios over and it would still work (for other fields, of course, we don't have an excess-of-women problem here).

This is all purest speculation: input from women is needed! Are my speculations wildly off-base?

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 18:02 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (5 responses)

My girlfriend always envies me because I work in a nearly male-only environment. She used to work as a teacher in a primary school, where most fellow teachers were women. She said that's a terrible place to work, because female teachers did nothing, but spreading rumours, bad-mouthing each other (of course, only when the other turned their back to them, etc.), bickering, etc. Think about negative cliches about women - it happened there: for example teachers were shouting at each other in front of the parents of the children. The mood was especially bad around the time they had their period (the periods of females living close together tend to synchronize over time). I heard similar things from my (male) headmaster.

The mood at my workplace is quite different. Of course there are tensions when the deadline is coming, but generally we're helping each other out, because we're working for the same goals (not against each other), there's very little confrontation. In that mostly female-environment it was a constant theme that "why does she get the promotion, why don't I?" and the like, but in the last 10 years I've only found one guy here with a similar mindset. I guess that when females are removed from the environment, there's no point in competing for them. That's the kind of competition that leads to the confrontation you mention.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 23:48 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (4 responses)

> She used to work as a teacher in a primary school, where most fellow teachers were women. She said that's a terrible place to work, because female teachers did nothing, but spreading rumours, bad-mouthing each other (of course, only when the other turned their back to them, etc.), bickering, etc. Think about negative cliches about women - it happened there: for example teachers were shouting at each other in front of the parents of the children.

Then think what it means that despite all that, the students still do *better* there than in a mixed-sex school. (Assuming that nix's data are accurate, which I haven't checked myself, but I don't see any reason to doubt. In particular, your anecdote is striking and all, but anyone who looks at an anecdote and a proper study that seem to contradict each other, and chooses to believe the anecdote, is choosing to guide their belief by something other than reason.)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:38 UTC (Wed) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]

>> She used to work as a teacher in a primary school, where most fellow teachers were women.

>Then think what it means that despite all that, the students still do *better* there than in a mixed-sex school.

Don't confuse mixed-sex teaching staff with mixed-sex student body. Primary schools will usually be female-teacher-dominated, whether they're single-sex or mixed; and single-sex schools often don't restrict themselves to teachers of that sex (mine, a boys school, had an approx. 60/40 male/female staff).

That said, I'd still be wary of NAR's anecdotal evidence: primary schools and technology companies are very different places to work, perhaps too different to be able to seperate out gender influences from other factors.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 7:32 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (2 responses)

It's not about student performance (which BTW decreased as the teacher profession became felame-oriented, but that's I think mostly a coincidence), it's about a mostly female work environment. I think I'm not able to properly channel my thoughts into proper English sentences, but I'll try.

If you work in a mostly male environment like me, that we're probably shielded from much of the ugly dealings of females. First of all, there are very few females around, most of these dealings go behind the scenes and what I've heards is that primary motive behind these deailng is to get a (specific) male - when there's an abudance of males (in a mostly male work environment), there's not much competition for them. On the other hand in the above mentioned school certain female teachers would rather claw each other's eyes out to get to know the PE teacher really well.

I have an other female friend who works in a mostly female environment, she said similar things. At her workplace females are badmouthing each other to get into the (male) boss's bed.

I don't know if you'v seen the file Maléna (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213847/). The women in the village are loathing the title character - because she's beautiful. I'd thought that it's just a film and real life is different, but what I've heard from female friends real life actually resembles the film a lot more closely than I'd like. It's not sexist males who try to hinder female advances, but other jelaous females. This is not related to FOSS at all, this is related to a mostly-female environment and to the fact that females are not angel-like creatures, they are just like us, males: humans.

One more comment. On the weekend I've participated in a bicycle race. Nothing extreme, so there were 225 participants. 25 of them were female, that's about 10%. I'm pretty sure that females are not flamed to crisp in a bicycle race (mostly because noone has enough breath to do that :-), still there were lot less females in the race that I see day to day on the streets commuting (that looks like 50%). Participating in a bicycle race is a hobby, just like participating in the FOSS movement. Maybe, just maybe, the real reason for low female participation in FOSS is not due to the unwelcoming environment (which scares away males as well), but due to not trying to participate in the first place? I'm not saying there aren't assholes in the community - there certainly are. But they drive away males just like females, and the reason why few females stay in the community is that fewer are trying at all.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 7:41 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

One thing I forgot: there very well could be cultural differences between an ex-communist Central European country and the U.S.

patriarchy

Posted Jul 29, 2009 8:21 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Traditional patriarchy is perpetuated by women as well as by men: both in the divide-and-conquer sense where women compete for male favour and in the sense that mothers raise their sons to rule and their daughters to serve; and in the double standard where "boys will be boys" and "sow wild oats" but girls are expected to remain chaste.

That's absolutely normal and expected in a community where power and advantage flows through male veins: to get ahead within the system, you must uphold it.

And yes, I'd say there are huge cultural differences amongst countries, but also "the past is another country". Exceptional individual women have always been able to go far outside traditional boundaries in almost any society. In limited ways (ie. in the law books) some communist countries were for a long time far more progressive than the USA, and but becoming ex-communist those countries have probably also become somewhat ex-progressive. Once again, this is normal and expected.

However there is probably no place in the world where the whole society continues to operate on purely patriarchal principles, nor anywhere sexism has actually been eradicated. The latter is probably not really possible.

The microcosm of the female-dominated workplace in your anecdotes is interesting, but it in no way contradicts the notion that it is men who benefit from historical male privilege and from ongoing sexism along traditional lines. Any place where female subordinates compete sexually for the favour of a male boss (however well-behaved) remains utterly patriarchal.

Womens' spaces exist wherein the privilege is deliberately reversed -- but they are few and far between, and justified on precisely the grounds that male privilege remains strong in society at large.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 14:42 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

let's have a thought experiment. Room full of women, man speaks up: is he likely to get shouted down, even if what he says is controversial? Now flip the sexes. Is the result the same?

Let's have an other thought experiment: room full of men, a woman they all know enters - will anyone tell her "Oh, you have put on some weight, haven't you?". If the room is full of women, my girlfriend is pretty sure that someone will mention those extra kilos.

An other thought experiment: I'm standing at a koncert in the thightly packed arena and a couple of guys are elbowing their way to the first line. I think you'd guess that males would tell those guys off - but in my experience it's always females who tell these kinds of guys off.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 18:03 UTC (Wed) by yatima (guest, #59881) [Link] (1 responses)

"This is all purest speculation: input from women is needed! Are my speculations wildly off-base?"

Not off-base at all. You're right on target.

Incidentally, while studies show that teenage girls do far better in single-sex schools, the same studies show that teenage boys do better in co-educational environments. If this translated over to the real world, what might you expect to see? Men in male-dominated environments decrying the absence of women but not sure what to do about it, while women form female-dominated groups to work on similar projects in a more congenial environment? Oh look, it's open source software.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:47 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That's fascinating and depressing. I hope it doesn't mean there is no
solution :/

your privilege is showing

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:23 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Dude, check your privilege.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 21:02 UTC (Tue) by chromatic (guest, #26207) [Link]

To me, the above sentences suggest that you think that women are somehow "inferior" or unable to withstand confrontation.

I believe you're reading too much into what I wrote: I specifically avoided any words which imply gender. I know plenty of men and women who dislike confrontation.

I'd like to see free software projects favor respect over rudeness, hostility, and personal disagreements. I believe that will encourage more participation from many people who currently choose not to participate.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:10 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (2 responses)

I just had this conversation -- or it's analogue -- with a black cow-orker.

I'm white and male, and have worked with people of various races and nationalities over my life, but this is really the first time I've worked with black people in what I guess I would call an upper-socioeconomic business environment, closely enough to get to know them fairly well. As I expected, they're little different from me.

But it has made for some interesting conversations on race, and -- Robert Parker's Hawk and his opinions on the topic aside -- I've found that a lot of my assumptions are pretty close on.

The one that's at hand right now has to do with the phrase "you people", or "your people", as black people often get bent up about the use of by white people. I said something that was *not* that as a throwaway the other morning while talking with 2 of our HR ladies, one of whom is about a 60-40 mix, colorwise, and the other, a... Cape Verde Islander? One of those accents that sounds vaguely Jamaican, but isn't.

The door being opened, I later asked one of them about the disconnect between "we don't want you to discriminate against it just because we're a minority" and "say it loud; I'm Black and proud!" She really couldn't find much to say about it.

It really does seem to be that they want it both ways... and it's common amongst groups who are (or perceive themselves as, or are perceived as) minorities in their larger society: Deaf people (with a capital D) have some similar intersocietal behavioral tics. (If you want more on that, Google up "cochlear implant Deaf culture" and be prepared to duck)

So indeed, Claudio, I agree with you: there seems to be some schizophrenia in the group behaviors of minority groups, and it comes out pretty squarely in conversations like this.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 3:36 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

> Deaf people (with a capital D) have some similar intersocietal behavioral tics. (If you want more on that, Google up "cochlear implant Deaf culture" and be prepared to duck)

This is off-topic, but since today seems to be my day to call people on things... I am genuinely offended by this statement. Certainly cochlear implants are a complex issue, but to dismiss a marginalized group's opinions on an often-problematic medical intervention as a "tic"? That's disgusting.

(Perhaps this makes our interchange an example of the "schizophrenia in the group behaviors" of white males; but then again, perhaps not, because members of a unprivileged minority can't get away with half the things you're doing.)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:48 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

I haven't the impression from the (admittedly somewhat cursory) googling around that I did that "often-problematic" was the proper characterization; certainly CI surgery doesn't always provide what the non hearing impaired would call "good hearing", but you're correct in that the analogy with this handicap is probably not all that good.

I have, though looked into the arguments made by the Deaf community on CI surgery (capital D on purpose), and I have to tell you, as what I consider to be a reasonable man (yeah, yeah, don't bother :-) I have to say that someone who can *afford* CI surgery for a child, whose physician tells them that it has an excellent chance of allowing that child to function in the "real world" (where sound is, y'know, pretty common -- like car horns?), and deciding consciously not to allow that *because they want their child to grow up in the Deaf Community -- for me, that's so close to child abuse that you have to talk me down off the ledge...

and I'm about the most liberal 40 year old I know.

Hence my choice of wording; I apologize if you took it personally.

(I'll note here, for what it's worth, my view that if you are not deaf, you're not really *entitled* to be offended by what I said...)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 3:00 UTC (Tue) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link] (6 responses)

"How can anyone feel out of place to subscribe to mailing lists, participate in the discussions, and start posting patches etc? Thats where most if not all stuff happens."

Many mailing lists and IRC channels have a quite aggressive culture, unwelcoming to newcomers. Others have a culture where sexist comments or "humour" is allowed. Some open source forums have even had people posting death threats against women in open source. See, eg, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/debian_death_thre...

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 3:44 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (4 responses)

The flip side, however, is some sort of a thoughts police. If somebody did something stupid, not telling her about it is equally as bad.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 8:02 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (2 responses)

We are not obliged to pick between death threats or Orwellian thought police. There are other options.

No-one's saying "when you see people being wrong you should pretend that everything is just fine!" You might notice that plenty of people in this discussion are happy to argue their points quite vigorously :-). But it is possible -- sometimes difficult, sometimes taking more time than one necessarily has, I know -- to help someone in a way that is, well, helpful.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 9:27 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

And maybe I do things just for fun. And maybe "a community" is not my primary concern.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 0:58 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

I didn't say anything about communities or your motivations for doing things, so... uh... is this a response and you accidentally left out the part that makes it responsive, or are just changing the subject, or... what?

Also, I'm not sure how to say this: Reading over this thread, the only way I can make *some* kind of sense of what you've written is as saying that aggression and sexism, up to and including death threats, are things you do for fun. I'm pretty sure that's not what you *mean* to say, but... you might want to read things over and think about how to say what you do mean, if that's not it?

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 22:16 UTC (Tue) by smadu2 (guest, #54943) [Link]

exactly! If I do/say something stupid (technically) - I would want people to correct me ... else I see no point for me to be a part of that group ...

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:14 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Yes, one.

Especially if not more than one, you're making an *awfully* large amout of stew from one oyster.

I'll fall back on the statistical noise argument I made earlier: there is almost *no* statistical extrapolation that is likely to be safe to make about "the entire FOSS community" because it is so flippin small.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 15:16 UTC (Wed) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583) [Link] (5 responses)

It's very possible to feel out of place (do you remember when you first started posting?): it is entirely possible that it is even more unwelcoming for some people than others.

When I *once* adopted a female-sounding pseudonym in such a space (by accident -- my usual username was taken), I received a threat of violence.

One of the people (not in this discussion, but another of the many on Skud's talk, which was excellent, reasonable and perceptive), has been arguing that women are complaining too much about sexism in open source. I know that this man harassed at least one woman coder on a project -- sending her inappropriate males, groping her in real life. The woman involved won't speak up because to do so will subject her to this kind of barrage of abuse and suspicion online, and she received no back up when she mentioned it to her male colleagues at the time.

Why bother? Why not just go to an environment that is friendlier, and not have to constantly fight within an environment where even criticising is viewed as "whining" about nothing, and whose conversation simply highlights how much people ignore and tolerate behaviour that in other communities would result in censure?

I'm really glad there are now projects that won't put up with this kind of crap in the open source community and wish them the best of luck. As the keynote says, I suspect they are heading for a much larger community of contributors, and will reap the benefits of attracting brilliant individuals who have been systematically derided and excluded in many of our projects until now.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 23:58 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (2 responses)

> When I *once* adopted a female-sounding pseudonym in such a space (by
> accident -- my usual username was taken), I received a threat of violence.

Sobering. Distressingly sobering. It only takes a single arsehole -- in a private communication -- to make a public, supposedly all-welcoming, space into an extremely hostile, threatening arena. One must feel as though thrown to the lions.

> The woman involved won't speak up because to do so will subject her
> to this kind of barrage of abuse and suspicion online, and she
> received no back up when she mentioned it to her male colleagues
> at the time.

With colleagues like that, who needs stalkers? I'm very disappointed.

It's a pity this anecdote is anonymous. I am very glad that others are not.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Aug 12, 2009 23:27 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link] (1 responses)

I've said a lot about this without ever doing this, intentionally or by accident. I think I'll try this sometime as an experiment.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Aug 12, 2009 23:28 UTC (Wed) by linuxrocks123 (subscriber, #34648) [Link]

I meant adopting a female-sounding pseudonym somewhere, btw.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:50 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

Why *not* go to another project?

Schily scared everyone away from cdrecord, finally, and now we have wodim, and we don't have to deal with it anymore.

Is not the alternative merely enabling?

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 9:44 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That would be a more impressive argument if wodim wasn't almost entirely
maintenance-dead.

(Of course, that's because it basically *works*.)

Something worth reading.

Posted Jul 28, 2009 2:58 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

Here is a interesting opinion peice. Worth reading.

"I'm angry, because I have a vagina."
http://attrition.org/news/content/09-07-14.001.html

Nothing useful came out

Posted Jul 28, 2009 18:43 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

I am sorry, is that supposed to be funny, entertaining, insightful or what? I honestly don't get it, probably because of my poor language skills. What little I understand seems to hint that (the few) women (that grace our geek caves) can also be offensive to themselves.

Nothing useful came out

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:19 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

She is tired of people attempting to somehow elevate themselves by being pendemic, exploiting issues, and creating drama over what really mostly amounts to oversights and misunderstandings.

It's annoying behavior and very intolerant of others. (I am not saying that the author or blog or anybody here is guilty of that. The article I link pre-dates this article and is a general thing, not specific)

Nothing useful came out

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:22 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

I dunno; thought it was pretty well written and insightful about everything, myself; perhaps a bit combative, but that perception might be in the reading instead of the writing. :-)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:35 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (11 responses)

I do notice that the FOSS community is overwhelmingly male, more so even than commercial development demographics. And I agree with others that the at-times aggressive nature of FOSS discussions puts off a lot of men and probably even more women. This is really too bad.

We should find ways to include more women in software development, if only because we're ignoring a huge development resource.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 13:40 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (10 responses)

The purely resource-based argument might not go how you'd expect. Spolsky is right - one or two superstar programmers can get you a lot more work done than dozens of merely competent ones. And hundreds of clueless noobs? You could easily get less done with them than without them. So for it to make sense to alienate some existing contributors (e.g. by telling them their behaviour is unacceptable) under the logic of maximising resources, you need to be sure that these contributors are less useful than the people you'll attract by getting rid of them. Get rid of one superstar and attract five competent people and you may find your project is struggling even more than before...

But not all projects are _about_ getting stuff done. The projects used as illustration for this keynote seem to have a "getting stuff done" as only one of several objectives. If your priorities look like:

1. Enjoy ourselves
2. Learn stuff
3. Build the world's fastest regular expression engine

then you will need a different approach to a project whose priorities look like:

1. Build the world's fastest regular expression engine
...
17. Enjoy ourselves.

Anyway, all I wanted to say was that you should beware of arguments that its efficient to do something when what you probably _really_ care about is that it's Just or Fair, or Good.

I do wonder if the fact that we're mostly working via the Internet in the medium of written text (which is somewhat opaque to questions of gender) perversely makes this problem worse. I'd always rather live and work with a mix of people. If I was conscious of a particular Free Software project having a better mix, I might be more interested in working on it. But as it is I don't notice at all. I couldn't give you even a rough estimate of how many women contribute to e.g. Gnumeric. Maybe (this keynote seems to say it's depressingly likely) there are none at all.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 18:51 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (4 responses)

The purely resource-based argument might not go how you'd expect. Spolsky is right - one or two superstar programmers can get you a lot more work done than dozens of merely competent ones.

You are absolutely right. But I can only assume that somewhere in the large numbers of people (men and women) who decide not to participate in FOSS are some superstars. The more people you attract, the more likely you'll stumble across a superstar.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:24 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

I would assert that *if they don't dive in and start doing, and -- if necessary ignore the idiots until they cannot be ignored*, *then they are by definition not superstars*.

Problem solved.

FOSS is a meritocracy, even if not everyone agrees on which merit is important.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:40 UTC (Thu) by jlokier (guest, #52227) [Link] (2 responses)

If a superstar is defined as a person who gets a great deal more done in a particular domain than most of their colleages, then by only considering people who get a great deal more done in environments which require diving in and ignoring a high level of idiotic confrontation, you are dismissing other people who, by their nature and abilities, would get a great deal more done than most of their colleages in a _different_ environment.

By that definition, the latter class of people are superstars in less confrontational environments, and when we fail to make those environments, we are losing access to their potential.

Do you mean that a true superstar would transcend their environment and get on with what needs doing in _any_ environment? Certainly there's a type of person who does that.

But I suspect that many of the programmers we call superstars because they are outstandingly productive in competitive, harsh environments would fare quite badly in less confrontational, more polite environments - at least, until they'd had time to adjust their personality to suit.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:51 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

+1, Insightful

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:50 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I don't think super-star-coderness aligns with thriving-on-confrontation (which implies they have a somewhat confrontational personality themselves).

The super-star coder I've dealt with was, if anything, the reverse. They not only could get through tricky bugs quicker than others and get beautiful code written faster than others, but they also spent a lot of time on mentoring others. In short, they enhanced the productivity of the other coders around them.

With a grain of salt

Posted Jul 28, 2009 19:07 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

What you say has a kernel of truth, but I think you are stretching it too thin. It is true that a superstar developer can do more work than ten mediocre workers, but not "dozens". And that is only developing; creating documentation, helping others on mailing lists etc. does not scale the same way. Also, dedication varies wildly from the paid developer to the person that can dedicate a few odd nights; if your star developer is in the last position he or she will probably produce less than a dedicated but less gifted cooperator.

Finally, notice the "mediocre" bit in "ten mediocre workers". At work you have surely experienced what these "mediocre" people look like: social butterflies, people uninterested in technology but looking for high salaries, climbers up the corporate ladder... These are the people that lower the average. In most open source projects they are not a problem, so differences in skill and productivity are rather in the same ballpark. A really good guy might do the job of two or three others, but not much more. In this light, your sentence:

Get rid of one superstar and attract five competent people and you may find your project is struggling even more than before...

does not really hold water.

With a grain of salt

Posted Jul 28, 2009 23:21 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

It is true that a superstar developer can do more work than ten mediocre workers, but not "dozens".

Sure it's true. One developer might be able to achieve things that no amount of mediocre developers could.

With a grain of salt

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:00 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I stand corrected; for several categories of work, one developer can do things that hosts of others cannot. (For ordinary, every day grunt work not so much.)

With a grain of salt

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:05 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

What you say has a kernel of truth, but I think you are stretching it too thin. It is true that a superstar developer can do more work than ten mediocre workers, but not "dozens".

I think the original poster was correct and possibly even understated things. One excellent developer can often make the difference between success and failure. One superstar can sometimes produce something an infinite number of average programmers could never produce. This has been my experience as a professional software developer for the last 20 years or so.

I want to include more people in FOSS development so we're more likely to discover superstars.

With a grain of salt

Posted Jul 29, 2009 6:40 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

That is true, we are assuming that the superstars are men (because they have traditionally been), but that does not need to be the case. It seems that Asperger's syndrome is more common in men, so the archetypal superstar developer that manages to annoy everyone should be more often a man than a woman. On the plus side, you might find a superstar developer that does not annoy people.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 14:22 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (10 responses)

Strangely, I can't imagine anything more sexist that a keynote described as "encouraging women in open source". But it doesn't particularly bother me, and if some time later I were asked if I had noticed sexism, I would probably reply no.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 16:58 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (7 responses)

Ssssh.. Stop using such logic. It's dangerous. We are not talking about reality or anything practical. Political correctness is a end in itself.

Remember, ++Thought Crimes++ are punishable by a endless barrage of annoying blog posts assinating your character.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 21:57 UTC (Tue) by ariveira (guest, #57833) [Link]

I have to give the comment above a +1 (or maybe just raise my hand)

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:16 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

> Ssssh.. Stop using such logic. It's dangerous. We are not talking about reality or anything practical.

The reality is that women who try to participate in FOSS get harassed, and when people try to talk about that, they get dismissive comments like this one, full of cliches that contradict each other. (Are these OMG scary womyn thought police!1! or cute, annoying, ineffective girls who will try to talk you to death on their blogs?) Really the only consistent part of these arguments is the conclusion: that there's no need to think about what women are saying.

Certainly not everyone here is talking about reality, but you and I may disagree on who that is.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:53 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> The reality is that women who try to participate in FOSS get harassed,

The reality is that fallacious argument (such as the hyperbolic generalization you utilize here) does nothing positive for your argument, and loses you points amongst those perceptive enough to spot it.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:06 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (3 responses)

Can you point at a single example of people being persecuted for thought crimes on this issue? While it'd be awesome if people didn't think of women as inferior or primarily as sex objects or as jealous whiners, realistically the aim is to discourage patterns of behaviour, not thought. We're trying to avoid people being discouraged from getting involved in the community in the first place.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:50 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, us.

We believe that the problem is not as general, or as clear cut, as the people we're arguing with, and when we try to break it down into its constituent parts, and come to a clear understanding, we're called "derailers", and in other ways diminished and minimalized, merely for failing to kowtow to their unproven assertions about what's really going on.

I, personally, would call that being accused of a thought crime -- especially since what I'm trying to do is give thought to the issue.

I will, of course, be shouted down here as well... who knows; maybe I'll get a death threat.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Aug 3, 2009 20:23 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Now you're making fun of people receiving death threats. You do realise
that your actions here are making you appear at *best* contemptible?

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Aug 3, 2009 20:42 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

It should have been perfectly clear that what I was making fun of was the idea that death threats are in any way *caused* by the behaviour of the person being threatened.

Sorry that's not clear to you.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 0:55 UTC (Wed) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link] (1 responses)

Sad. Another person who wilfully misuses the term 'sexism' to mean 'I feel threatened by any woman who wants a bit of respect'.

You're prepared to get offended but then you can't understand why other people get offended? You're truly warped.

Feminism isn't about discriminating against men. Feminism isn't about promoting women over men. It's about giving women - and everyone - the respect we all deserve. It's about trying to redress the imbalance caused by a hugely biased environment where discrimination against certain types of people is not only endemic but completely beneath notice. It's not that 80% of men never see anything that counts as sexist behaviour - it's that they see sexist behaviour and don't think it's worth mentioning because they weren't the target of the behaviour.

And no amount of saying "you must respect my version of the word 'sexism'" gains you any respect.

Have fun,

Paul

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:27 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Alas, Paul, just as soon as you say "redress the imbalance", you are actually saying "give women an extra break, to make up for how it's sucked to be them in the past".

You don't want to *fix* the breakage, you want to break things in the other direction. By examination.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 17:30 UTC (Tue) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link] (5 responses)

This may be considered rude, but IMO something like the beautiful articles by Valerie Aurora can do much more for the women cause than this whining crap.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 28, 2009 18:45 UTC (Tue) by Skud (guest, #59840) [Link] (1 responses)

MisterIO, I agree that Valerie Aurora's articles are fantastic, but I disagree that my keynote was "whining crap". You are welcome to think so if you wish, but I won't let it go unchallenged.

I presented some facts, showed a couple of examples of open source projects bucking the trend, and offered some tips that might help projects and individuals interested in doing likewise, with, I think, good will and humour.

If anyone would like to judge for themselves, they may read the linked article and slides, or watch the video at http://oscon.blip.tv/

Rude?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:02 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

This may be considered rude, but [...] whining crap.

Why on earth would that be considered rude?

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:42 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

This would be the Valerie Aurora who's written about just this kind of thing? Having role models for women in Linux is an excellent thing, but doesn't solve the fundamental problem that many parts of the Linux community are (generally justifiably) perceived as hostile to women. I'm not clear on how proposing solutions for that counts as whining.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 0:21 UTC (Thu) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree on this position. I love Val's articles because of their technical attention, good writing and fascinating subject matter.

On to the wider topic. There are a number of topics that you should not discuss in the course of a profitable evening: politics, religion, free software licenses, and perhaps one has to add "women in open source software" into that set. We can't talk unemotionally about politics and religion, and we aren't lawyers and don't understand licenses, and I can't contribute to a discussion about women without saying something people here would gladly kill(file) me for.

Lately I have been lamenting the emphasis on the "community" part of the open source community, as I'm more of a "source" sort of person. I love code and coding, and I keep on stubbornly believing that if we could just ignore our personalities and get back to coding we could do great things.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 0:38 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It would be nice if that could happen, but unfortunately humans are human
and have emotions. The only way you can avoid politics in a human
community is to restrict its size to one person, and I'm not entirely sure
that even that would work.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 2:32 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (31 responses)

Female firefighters?

They have to pass precisely the same physical tests as the male ones.

Cause the unconscious guy you're dragging out of the firezone *still* weighs 220 pounds, whether you're female or male.

Measured solely on technical merit, the same rules ought to apply to any programmer whether they're female or male. If you're *really* trying to stamp out sexism, rather then run an affirmative action program.

Certainly I've met some really smart women in my life, even technically smart and geeky ones. Even given that, it is *really* rare, IME -- 1% of *that* crowd -- to find a hotshot programmer.

So, who is *really* whining here? Women who *have* geek cred to flash? Or just ones who wish they do? (Yeah, sure, go ahead, tell me *that's* sexist, too. And then go read Nikita's piece again. She sounds like someone who wants to get ahead on her skillz. Not her 'vag'.)

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 3:42 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (5 responses)

Man, this is like a greatest hits album of privilege. I guess we should be grateful you're not dragging out the *really* crass entries on the anti-feminist bingo card? (But if that's your goal, you might find Derailing for Dummies useful as well.)

But briefly, the only place people are claiming that female programmers should receive preferential treatment is in your imagination. It's a strawman. Man up and think about what people are actually saying, even if it makes you uncomfortable. And it's really rare to find a hotshot programmer even among really smart men, too -- maybe, say, 1%. (Unless you live your life in such a way that most of the really smart men you meet are gathered together because they're hotshot programmers, but I'm sure you wouldn't make such an elementary statistical error.)

And as for your last note, about how anyone complaining about the current situation is a whining wannabe: let me be the first to say "screw you". And I say that in full sincerity as a white male who is entirely happy with the size of his *cough*geek cred.

To everyone else: Apologies for the last paragraph. Possibly I should have just ignored the parts of this discussion that piss me off the most. But then, I have that option; women don't...

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:59 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

I believe there was a comment earlier regarding the creatures crawling out
from underneath their rocks.

Oh, look, the same damn names are back again, derailing like crazy and
claiming they're not sexist while routinely saying things that would get
them punched or ostracised or both if they said it to someone's face.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:13 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

Oh, look. Ad hominem.

I'm bowing out now, before Jon has to ask us to quit.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:42 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

No, it would only be an ad hominem attack if I was claiming that you were
wrong *because of who you are*.

I'm saying 'look, there are people here making the same wrong arguments.
Oh, look, they made them before.'

That isn't the same thing. The arguments would be wrong even if completely
different people were making them, but it's curious that the same small
group are still at it and appear to have learnt very little.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:58 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

No, you're making an ad hominem reply because you are "replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim."

Not that you're claiming I'm wrong *because* I crawled up out of <mumble>, just that you're diverting the argument from whether I'm right to my parentage.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 31, 2009 1:25 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

He also said you were "derailing like crazy and claiming they're not sexist while routinely saying things that would get them punched or ostracised or both if they said it to someone's face." You may disagree, but you can't claim that he's not talking about your words.

But anyway, you've started this whole tangent about whether or not he's derailing, when *he wasn't even replying to your post*. I attacked your argument, he commented on my attack. You ignored my attack to go off on some irrelevant side-discussion, trying to make yourself out as a victim of a fallacy you don't even understand. Who's derailing here?

Stamping out sexism

Posted Jul 29, 2009 3:47 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (2 responses)

It is fallacious to describe something as sexist which is nothing more than an attempt to dissuade people from sexist behaviour.

Sexism is *NOT* recognising that men and women are different and may require different facilities or courtesies. It is *not* sexist to ask for those facilities to be provided, or for those courtesies to be extended.

Sexism and other such -isms consist in *behaviour* which *creates* a disadvantage for a class of people. Not behaviour which ever-so-slightly inconveniences a privileged group in order to accommodate a disadvantaged one.

Pretending everyone is the same, or that everyone "ought to" make do with one-size-fits-all facilities and courtesies, doesn't prevent sexist behaviour. Indeed, it stops you from recognising it when it happens.

The only way to "stamp out" sexism is to prevent sexist behaviour. You can't ignore it at the same time as preventing it; you have to recognise it, you have to label it, you have to say it's not acceptable, and you have to call the perpetrators on it.

To say all that is too hard and you'd prefer to pretend there is no problem -- well, that's your privilege. If you're not personally disadvantaged, that is.

Now if "affirmative action" is making a point of calling people on their bullshit when they say or do something that discriminates against women -- well then I see every reason to take that affirmative action. It's not a dirty word.

(I understand "affirmative action" to mean something different and altogether more revolutionary -- an attempt to redress a historical imbalance with a temporary modern one in the opposite direction in order to end a "minority problem" -- and it still isn't a dirty word, though it isn't always appropriate, mainly because a virulent knee-jerk backlash to it is likely and may become a bigger problem than the historical one you're attempting to correct)

Stamping out sexism

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:14 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

Man, do I wish I had the ease to express my thoughts with such clarity -- and be brave enough to have such clear thoughts in the first place. Thanks!

Stamping out sexism

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:13 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Yo no merecen esta adulación, Alessandro.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:13 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (21 responses)

The problem with saying that we should apply exactly the same technical standards to men and women is that it's a wonderful example of setting up a straw man and then knocking it down. People aren't unhappy about being judged on their technical ability. They're unhappy about the crap that goes along with it.

Let's go back to your firefighter example. We'll keep the physical tests - if you pass them, you're in. But anyone born on a Tuesday has to either pay $5000 or be viciously beaten with an iron bar before getting to take them. What do you think that's going to do to the proportion of people born on Tuesday in the firefighting community?

The objective is to remove the additional barriers that make it harder for women to get to the point where they can prove themselves technically in the first place. Not to give women a free pass.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:28 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (19 responses)

> But anyone born on a Tuesday has to either pay $5000 or be viciously beaten with an iron bar before getting to take them. What do you think that's going to do to the proportion of people born on Tuesday in the firefighting community?

And you suggest that... *what* barrier to entry into FOSS development constitutes that?

Cause unless you can make a case for that analogy in fairly fine detail, I'm going to call *it* a strawman argument, right back. :-)

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:31 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (18 responses)

I'd have thought that harassment, occasional threats of violence, continuing belittling of contributions, prevelance of sexualised environments and so on could be reasonably construed as factors that may discourage people from being engaged in the community for long enough that their technical abilities can be fairly measured.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:16 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (9 responses)

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Are there any actual numbers on "number of total developers/number of female developers/number of incidents"?

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:34 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (8 responses)

81% of women surveyed in the FLOSSPOLS study felt that it was easier for men to gain recognition than women. 75% of them had observed discriminatory behaviour (55% of them within projects they were directly involved in). While arguably not statistically rigorous, there's been at least two cases of "I hope you die" type attacks on the debian-women project - given the proportion of women in the project as a whole, we'd expect there to be somewhere like 200 against men. I haven't been able to find any.

Do you have any numbers at all to indicate that these issues don't disproportionately affect women?

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:48 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (7 responses)

I do not.

But the undertext is "most male FOSS developers are assholes".

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'm not the one making that claim.

Clearly, men and women perceive social interactions differently. I haven't heard any reports for trained social scientists who are accustomed to avoiding gender based perception bias; are there any? I'm not saying that lots of male developers are not understating the case... but everyone seems to be assuming that all the females are being perfectly objective, and not *overstating* the case in their own anecdotal reports, and that doesn't seem reasonable either.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:54 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (6 responses)

That's not the undertext at all. The undertext is "some male FOSS developers are assholes, and this creates a community that is disproportionately hostile to potential female contributors".

As for whether women are being perfectly objective - does it matter? Given the 80% figure, you'd need a huge proportion of women to be overstating their case to get to male-equivalent figures. The question is "Is there a problem", not "How big is this problem to several significant figures". And given that basically all the evidence points at there being a problem, I think the burden of extraordinary proof is on your side of the discussion.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:10 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (5 responses)

The point I was trying to make was this:

The percentage of problem perception is clearly gender skewed, markedly.

So that casts into some question the justification, as I see it, for the "disproportionately" in

> The undertext is "some male FOSS developers are assholes, and this creates a community that is disproportionately hostile to potential female contributors".

Some contributors to *all* projects are assholes; I'm male and middle aged (shudder), and I've given up on projects because a major developer was a massive jerk, in environments where there were no females in sight.

So while fixing that problem will probably lift all boats, *that* issue has nothing to do with sexism. My assertion, though, is that many people involevd in this issue are *conflating* developer assholiness with developer sexism, and trying to use the former as evidence of the latter.

Socially, there's evidence that women and men interact differently, and while I think this issue points directly to that, I don't think that's "men behaving badly", I just think it's "men behaving like men".

I'm not here to be an apologist for the death threat or vagina slide crowd; there are *certainly* sexist assholes in (and probably running) FOSS projects. But not all assholes are sexists. And yes, it might turn out to be the case, even if only historically, that a given project is going to have to decide explicitly "we want to be female-friendly", and go out of their way to do it.

And that may, in the final evaluation, impact on how that project does things, and how much it gets done. Could go one way, could go the other. Anyone who makes the blanket assertion that *merely* because that decision is taken and enforced, everything will be mercy and goodness and sweetness and light *for the project* is blowing blue smoke out their ass.

It'll probably be better for *female developers who want to work on that project*, but that is a separately measured quantity.

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:10 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (4 responses)

> The percentage of problem perception is clearly gender skewed, markedly.

That might just be because the worst-offending death threats, sexual propositions and the like are sent as private messages to the woman in question, not to a public list. I mean, even most arseholes don't want everyone to *know* they're arseholes.

In contrast, the milder comments which do get posted in public are much more likely to register and attract the attention of the people they're directed towards, and from other women who are alert from a lifetime's experience of sexism directed against them, than from the average bloke.

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:04 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

But you know something? Maybe some *guys* got death threats in private emails too. And, for whatever their reasons might be (I'm big enough to take care of my self; he's 3000 miles away; he's blowing off steam; yeah whatever), they just ignored them.

Both reactions would strike me as characteristic (though it's been established in this thread that there are *lots* of people who don't consider me a Reasonable Man :-), but you can see how those reactions would skew the public perception of the issue at hand.

And there's just no real way to tell, is there?

Again: is there *data*?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:27 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

What data do you want beyond the previously mentioned FLOSSPOLS study?

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Jul 31, 2009 0:07 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

Again: is there *data*?

I'm glad to see you're getting good use out of that link I gave you.

Seriously, you're arguing: There are a large quantity of anecdotes all pointing the same way, but no formal data (well, there is, but it's not exactly the sort of data I demand). Therefore, ~~nothing can be concluded~~ we can conclude that there is no problem.

Also, you're arguing that women are fragile flowers who of course will whine about little things like death threats, unlike Strong and Reasonable Men who will shrug them off. Rather ignoring the bit where the most recent debian death threat thing only came out when project leadership solicited members for information on their experiences, and the bit where women are both more used to being the target of such behavior and have less reason to believe that publicizing it will help, and the bit where they got these death threats specifically *because they were women*, not because they got into some heated argument and someone needed to blow off steam or whatever. You can't say that those threats are okay because some other guy got threatened for some other reason and so the women deserved it to keep things balanced.

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:56 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

<sigh>

I've said it a couple of times already, in other places, but I guess I can say it again.

You're drawing statistical inferences from a "survey", about which you cannot speak to the selection bias of... and selection bias -- which I can for myself infer from the report in question -- would make this "survey" worthless for the purpose for which you're depending on it to make your argument.

So, if you agree that anecdotes are not sufficient, then let's nail down how they got their answers, shall we?

And if you don't agree, and think that a self-selecting online survey is enough to make this argument, well, then ...

Anecdata

Posted Jul 30, 2009 4:41 UTC (Thu) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link] (7 responses)

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

Anecdata

Posted Jul 30, 2009 4:59 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (3 responses)

I like Hooters, too; they have a decent hamburger.

Again, anecdotes, the clever portmanteau title aside, are not data. I see an amazing number of what the Wikipedians would call weasel words in those summaries.

First, again: let's let out anything that involves a crime, ok? Murder is not sexist, no matter whom you kill.

Debian is a boys club. Yeah, so's NFL football. I got news for you: I ain't breaking into that club, no matter how much I try.

But that's not sexism.

I won't be hosting the View any time soon either. *That* *is* sexism.

The Warty Theme: both sexes include in the images; how is *that* sexist? Or are you implying that women don't enjoy looking at nekkid men; that's just a boys thing?

As for Lawrence Summers, he appears to be an equal opportunity offender; you know: a shithead.

Why should Launchpad not be permitted to require real names? Facebook, a much more intentional community always has; hell, even MySpace is now encouraging people to use their real names; the majority of the females I know on there do.

I guess my current crystallization of my point is that -- especially given that list -- I think there's some confirmation bias going on there in the definition of what constitutes "proof of sexism in the FOSS development community"... our original topic.

Anecdata

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:22 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (2 responses)

> let's let out anything that involves a crime, ok?
> Murder is not sexist, no matter whom you kill.

You have some data to back that up, Baylink? It's an appallingly ignorant falsehood. Much crime targets the weak (and weakens the targeted). An awful lot of violent crime is highly sexual.

Anecdata

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:31 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

A matter of your definitions of words.

But being sexual in its nature is does not make it sexist. Gay men kill one another for reasons of passion as well, and they're the same sex, and both minorities -- the same minority. That's a question of preference, not one of gender, per se. IMO.

Assuming that man on woman crime is the product of sexism is therefore in itself sexist behavior, precisely the point I (and one or two other commenters) have been making.

But here's a case in point:

Why am I worrying this bone? Because the process of argument, of getting all the various pros and cons out on the table is *fun*, the same reason hackers write code. But the intensity of the process has almost certainly scared off some other people with something useful to say, and I'd bet a lot of them are male...

We weren't doing that to drive them away... but that doesn't mean it might not happen.

It *also*, though, doesn't mean that that is *our* problem.

And as for someone's innuendo as to my posting count -- it's a conversation; I work a desk job, stay up nights, and get my comment notices on a Blackberry; it's not like I'm sitting here hitting Refresh every 30 seconds waiting for the next round...

Anecdata

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:32 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Oh, and if you're sure it's a falsehood, why would you want data?

Naw, my real problem

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:01 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (2 responses)

is that I feel like any response that I make to anything from the "you're all sexists" side of the table, no matter how rational and well thought out or justified, is merely going to be construed as further evidence that I'm one of those nassssty sexists.

Ask yourself how I might have come to feel that way tonight...

Naw, my real problem

Posted Jul 30, 2009 10:25 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

Because, uh, you are? As far as anyone can tell from your comments,
anyway.

Either you're an old-style unreconstructed sexist or you're aggressively
defending sexism for some other reason. I have no idea what that other
reason might be.

Naw, my real problem

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:57 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Nope. I'm defending clear thought, and not using self-selected surveys to make your arguments, and y'know, things like that.

Or worse: not *caring* about the quality of the data you're arguing on.

There's one final comment I want to make here.

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:37 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

People would of course be popping up saying that this is perfectly normal
and that it doesn't constitute privileging people not born on a Tuesday
and being beaten with an iron bar wouldn't hurt if they just grew a
thicker skin.

And, look, at the LinuxFund booth we have several people born on a
Tuesday! It sells more merchandise and is in no way creepy!

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 5:39 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (8 responses)

Being male and having a somewhat critical view of sexism in the Free Software world seems to automatically gets you relegated to being "part of the problem" in discussions about this particular subject, so what would be more interesting is the opinion of the 20% of women who have *not* noticed any problems whilst participating in free software.
According to the various collected statements sexism is prevalent within the community; so it is safe to assume that these 20% witness, all around, the same behaviour as the 80% do.
What makes them *not* classify this exact same behaviour as "sexist" ?

It is not at all clear what you are referring to

Posted Jul 29, 2009 7:42 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (7 responses)

> Being male and having a somewhat critical view of sexism in the Free
> Software world seems to automatically gets you relegated to being
> "part of the problem" in discussions about this particular subject

What do you mean by "having a somewhat critical view of sexism"?

And what sort of "relegation" you are referring to?

Men have a natural privilege in any male-dominated environment. The privilege is not much of a problem -- indeed it's invisible -- except where it becomes painfully obvious that some people don't benefit from it.

Male privilege gives men the option of ignoring obvious inequality, ignoring the pain caused by discriminatory behaviour, and pretending that (a) privilege, and (b) discriminatory behaviour, are nonexistent.

That doesn't mean you are "part of the problem" simply for being male and benefiting from male privilege.

If, however, you make loud, defensive statements denying the existence of male privilege, or denying that you benefit from it, or disputing the acceptability of sexist behaviour, or asserting that something which excludes or disadvantages women actually isn't sexist -- well then, your statements themselves are sexist behaviour. And such behaviour *is* part of the problem.

Not you. Your behaviour. You can recognise that it is a problem. You can change your behaviour. And your behaviour can *cease* to be a problem.

It is not at all clear what you are referring to

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:10 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (6 responses)

Yes, certainly.

Men have the natural privilege to be suspected of child molestation for no reason, to have their children taken away from them in divorce with no visitation rights, but to be forced to support them -- even if there is proof they did not father them, in several fairly notable cases -- and the right to lose their jobs and wave bye bye to their careers because they are accused (not convicted) of sexual harrassment on the job, again, often with no grounds.

Sure, men have all the power in America.

Keep telling yourself that.

(If anyone needs anything more on that, read Crichton's _Disclosure_, based on several true stories; his attorney lays it out in pretty clear cut detail. Oh, look! His attorney's female.)

I think the winning fallacy in this particular argument is "circular argument": If you deny that sexism exists or that you are sexist, then you are *because of that denial* a sexist.

Do you feel sexist today?

Posted Jul 30, 2009 3:11 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (5 responses)

Men do have a natural privilege in environments where they dominate. A few environments exist where men do not dominate. There are even a very few situations where, it may fairly be argued, there is nowadays a bias against men.

In all such situations I can think of and in every case you mention, the bias against men is a relatively recent development (ie. a century or less ago, the systemic bias in the comparable situation was against a female protagonist) and it has developed through processes and for reasons which are worth exploring.

Now I'm sure sexist injustices against men occur, particularly where issues of child protection are involved. Prejudice and fear are very powerful things.

So no, men don't have *all* the power, in America or almost anywhere else. But I don't think anyone said that.

As to the circular fallacy -- someone won't get called sexist merely for denying he is a sexist, though if some other behaviour on his part plainly *is* sexist, he might get called a sexist *and* a dissembler. If he dominates a discussion with constant protestations he might also get accused of derailing or monopolizing. But no-one would do such a thing on lwn.net.

But if someone protests loudly and often in a public place where he hasn't been accused of sexism that no, he's not a sexist, other people might start to wonder if he has been accused of sexism elsewhere, and if so, why.

You're only guilty of sexism if what you do causes a disadvantage for women. If you're defending a status quo which has been established (albeit anecdotally, and that is enough) to disadvantage women, yes that's sexist.

Some actual data about the total lack of actual data

Posted Jul 30, 2009 3:53 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (4 responses)

> Men do have a natural privilege in environments where they dominate. A few environments exist where men do not dominate. There are even a very few situations where, it may fairly be argued, there is nowadays a bias against men.

Magnanimous of you.

> In all such situations I can think of and in every case you mention, the bias against men is a relatively recent development (ie. a century or less ago, the systemic bias in the comparable situation was against a female protagonist) and it has developed through processes and for reasons which are worth exploring.

I personally would call it backlash, but I'm sure there are other reasons it might occur.

> Now I'm sure sexist injustices against men occur, particularly where issues of child protection are involved. Prejudice and fear are very powerful things.

> So no, men don't have *all* the power, in America or almost anywhere else. But I don't think anyone said that.

Well, you said:

> Men have a natural privilege in any male-dominated environment.

Is not your fundamental argument that USAdian culture is in fact such an environment, generally?

Cause if so: *you* basically said that. I merely crystallized it before responding to it; clearly *I* do not think it's true.

> As to the circular fallacy -- someone won't get called sexist merely for denying he is a sexist, though if some other behaviour on his part plainly *is* sexist, he might get called a sexist *and* a dissembler. If he dominates a discussion with constant protestations he might also get accused of derailing or monopolizing. But no-one would do such a thing on lwn.net.

Wow. Slip a little innuendo in there, too. Nicely played. :-)

> But if someone protests loudly and often in a public place where he hasn't been accused of sexism that no, he's not a sexist, other people might start to wonder if he has been accused of sexism elsewhere, and if so, why.

I was not -- to take the targetting you're not explicitly giving for whatever reason -- "protesting that I was not a sexist"; I was questioning whether there is sufficient clean, normed data to justify a belief that there's actionable sexism in the FOSS community. If you don't believe that there's a lower limit for actionability (and let's let "death threats" go, here, ok; the action there isn't "fix sexism"; it's "arrest someone for aggravated assault" -- death threats have nothing to do with sexism, no matter what the sexes of the people involved), then we're probably done with this conversation, I suspect.

Ask an actuary the value of a human life some time.

> You're only guilty of sexism if what you do causes a disadvantage for women.

Personally, I believe you're guilty of sexism if you believe that people have non-sex-linked characteristics in greater or lesser amounts merely because of their sex; a much broader spectrum.

*Behaviors* are sexist if they advantage or disadvantage a person, and policies and practices, a group, based on (the) sex (of its members).

Clear thought. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

> If you're defending a status quo which has been established (albeit anecdotally, and that is enough) to disadvantage women, yes that's sexist.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on "and that is enough"; this is a pretty major issue, and I don't believe that anecdotal reports are in fact enough.

===

To answer someone else's question, I've just gone and looked at TFA (which doesn't contain any actual data, and doesn't cite any source which *does* contain any data, and then at the highest ranked (by google) independent reference on the FLOSSPOLS survey, Hanna Wallach's presentation, which - mirabile visu - doesn't have any either.

I finally found the original report at

http://flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16-Gender_In...

The paper makes several assertions which I'm not sure hold true based on the data they draw them from, but at least here, there's something that looks like it might be data... though, after scanning the paper, I don't actually think that's true, either.

It's difficult to evaulate the assumptions as much as anything else because the authors are not identified as to the credentials they hold for making such assertions; no degrees, no titles, merely a university affiliation. But we'll let that pass for a minute.

Let's see what they actually say:

Among other things: "flaming is accepted as a key means of developing a reputation".

What?

In my 25 years of experience, people who are flaming for the fun of it might fit that description, but actual hackers who you would interpret the writing of as flamage aren't even remotely thinking about its effect on their reputation: they're thinking about *the code, damnit*! You're screwing up the code; don't *do* that.

That was almost certainly the motivation for Linus' comments this week on the tty driver work. As I noted in that thread, Alan Cox is not especially a shrinking violet, and he certainly has enough work invested in the Linux kernel to want to see it continue to succeed.

But if that was Aurora he was chasing off, his behavior would be evidence of Sexism In FOSS? Nah; I don't think so.

Has nothing to *do* with their reputation: most of the hackers with whom I've ever interacted, people like Henry Spencer, Gene Spafford, Steve Bellovin, hell even Linux and Alan, are at best amused if not bemused at the idea that they *have* reputations, at least in my perception of them and their interactions with others.

Their *code*; sure.

And that's just the third of three "I don't understand the people I'm trying to evaluate" comments; the hits just keep on coming.

I'll say it again: show of hands: how many people here *went back to the source material and read it*?

I'll tell you what I *don't* see: I don't see the raw data. I don't see individual questions normed by anything, or separated by anything other than sex, though they clearly collected other data such as level of education. I don't see anything about how the respondents were selected, or confidence intervals or any of that cool stuff.

I will admit that I have not read every word on every page... but raw data tends to stick out pretty prominently as you scroll by.

Social science ain't physics... but it does have its own rules. And the source paper here doesn't seem to be following them as I have come to understand them.

Before y'all start aiming the "sexism" gun at people any further, you might want to make sure it has some bullets in it first.

Flaming is a big part of the problem

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:42 UTC (Thu) by jsgf (guest, #43115) [Link]

> Among other things: "flaming is accepted as a key means of developing a
> reputation".
>
> What?
>
> In my 25 years of experience, people who are flaming for the fun of it
> might fit that description, but actual hackers who you would interpret the
> writing of as flamage aren't even remotely thinking about its effect on
> their reputation: they're thinking about *the code, damnit*! You're
> screwing up the code; don't *do* that.

No, I think the original comment is perfectly accurate in the Linux community. There's no justification for using flaming as a means of patch commentary: it doesn't provide a useful critique and it doesn't help the patch poster produce a better patch. The only effect it has is establishing the dominance of the flamer over the flamee; a likely consequence of that is to drive the submitter away, and anyone else looking on who doesn't want to be part of that scene.

Several of the more prominent lkml personalities with a reputation for flamboyant and intricate flaming have been asked to tone it down for precisely these reasons - with varying degrees of success.

As a well-known Linux developer said to me privately: "It's horrible how these guys flame below and lick above", which I think is about as succinct and accurate as one can get.

Now you might argue "but they don't flame because they're trying to drive away women". Sure, but that's irrelevant. It drives away lots of people, and a disproportionate number of them will be women.

And it really doesn't take a very large number of assholes to set the tone. Even if its very small proportion - say, <5% - that's enough to drive people away, especially if the assholishness is not challenged by the rest of the community in a consistent way. Silence is read as implied agreement.

definitions

Posted Jul 30, 2009 8:09 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> Personally, I believe you're guilty of sexism if you believe
> that people have non-sex-linked characteristics in greater
> or lesser amounts merely because of their sex; a much broader
> spectrum.

Well, that's the entirety of our disconnect.

I don't much care what your beliefs are if your behaviour remains acceptable.

And I don't care very much about the statistics of minor infractions if there's an existence proof of offensive behaviour.

There's a long and vigorous discussion to be had around the definition of sexism, and another more interesting one to be had around the particular definition you've given, but any scrupulous efforts to avoid sexist *beliefs* according to that definition have little to do with avoiding behaviour which other people will recognise as sexist. And frankly while sexism in your sense might involve believing a falsehood, I don't see how "guilt" applies. Being wrong does not, of itself, cause injury.

I mean, *I* have no good sense of whether one's thick-skinned-ness in an online forum is a gender-identity-linked characteristic, an XY-chromosome-linked one or a non-sex-linked one. And it shouldn't matter.

Logical people cling very hard to their beliefs about universal matters, whereas it's not too hard to convince them that certain behaviour isn't considered polite by some other people -- it is a pretty basic fact of social interaction that different people have different sensitivities.

From there, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to propose that people try to avoid causing offence.

Some actual data about the total lack of actual data

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:13 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

"the highest ranked (by google) independent reference on the FLOSSPOLS survey, Hanna Wallach's presentation, which - mirabile visu - doesn't have any either"

A presentation that was originally written for the review session of the final report from the FLOSSPOLS project, so not especially surprising.

"I finally found the original report"

By typing "FLOSSPOLS" into Google and looking at the top result? You were pointed at that several times.

"Among other things: 'flaming is accepted as a key means of developing a reputation'"

It is. Well-crafted total destruction of someone's argument is admired, and if people see you as tear a respected developer's position to shreds they'll remember you much better than the person who politely pointed out that they were wrong. People will laugh and clap you on the back and point each other at the link and you'll feel like part of the club. It's much easier to gain reputation by engaging in unnecessary conflict than it is to do so by reasoned discussion. It certainly helped me.

Some actual data about the total lack of actual data

Posted Jul 31, 2009 0:39 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

> Social science ain't physics... but it does have its own rules. And the source paper here doesn't seem to be following them as I have come to understand them.

Pro-tip: this would be more convincing if you weren't on record -- on this very page -- demonstrating that you have no idea what "statistical noise" means[1]; and if you want confidence intervals, I already calculated one for you from the exact paper that you're complaining about[2]. (You ignored it and changed the subject.) Where, exactly, did you acquire your "understanding"?

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/343944/
[2] http://lwn.net/Articles/343947/

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 15:52 UTC (Wed) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] (1 responses)

So this conversation has predictably gone to crap. Not quite as hard or fast as the Healthcare one though, so I'm a bit impressed. Maybe some who participated in that one have gone off to ESR's blog to plan out their field trip to light a burning cross on the White House lawn?

Another project that -- from my understanding -- has a decent set of female contributors is Wikipedia. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing that to be the case. I wonder what effect their 'assume good faith' type argument-diffusion policies have in making the project more welcoming. I think if the LKML, etc, were to adopt a 'don't keep the flamethrower cocked and loaded' policy, then such places might become a little bit more hospitable.

It's something worth thinking about. Although I hold that my criticisms of Kirrily's speech at the top of this thread still stand: if you're going to use participation as a launching point you need to correct for other sources of bias. I think it very likely that it's a lot easier to find women willing to write in their free time than program. Wikipedia's success with gathering a broader cross-section of the population as contributors might be because the activity of writing articles is more broadly appealing; it might have nothing to do with community dynamics.

On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to observe that most men don't like to be flamed for the most minor infraction, and recognize that poisonous communities are not good regardless of how you feel about feminism and female participation. What I mean is, it might be good to de-politicize the issue of basic civility by avoiding looking at it from the context of female vs male needs.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:13 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

+1, Sanity.

Very nicely put.

And I'm going to make a prediction here: you've said roughly the same things I have, but you put them much more politely, and wrapped them in nice fuzzy pink language... and you're going to get much less flack than I did, and people who think I'm a wingnut are going to agree with you.

Which makes your point, I think.

OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 15:59 UTC (Wed) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (62 responses)

Times like this, I'm deeply embarrassed to be associated with this group.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:16 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (61 responses)

Gee, thanks. Could you be more specific so we get more substantive reasons to be offended?

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:51 UTC (Wed) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (60 responses)

It's tediously, morbidly sexist. See comment above re: "greatest hits album of privilege". It's like the comment section here is competing to come up with the most overused derailing clichés.

Not that bad

Posted Jul 29, 2009 20:35 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Oh, it is not that bad. You will remember how a couple of years ago we were discussing about brain sizes; at least now we as a group are firmly planted in the first half of the 20th century. Hopefully in a couple of years we will grant them full vote and let them go out alone. We are making fast progress!

My favorite quote in this area is from Carmela Soprano, when complaining about Tony's lack of confidence in her (approximate quote, have not been able to find it online): "I don't ask for equality like those feminist radicals, but I sure would like Tony to trust me a little bit more".

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:24 UTC (Wed) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (53 responses)

... competing to come up with the most overused derailing clichés

Is there a way to disagree without "derailing" though? A punchline to several such presentations seems to be that "even if you don't think you're guilty, you probably are". I mean what's a defense to that?

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:06 UTC (Wed) by yatima (guest, #59881) [Link] (49 responses)

<i>I mean what's a defense to that?</i>

Maybe a person in that situation could listen carefully and think about the stories these women are telling, examine ways in which their own past behavior might have contributed to women's sense of exclusion, and try not to behave in those ways in future?

Honestly, we are not asking you to donate a kidney.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:15 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (48 responses)

No.

You're asking us, though you don't seem to understand it, to admit to being Bad People.

Through malice, or -- which is worse -- stupidity.

Of *course* people aren't fond of that...

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 4:28 UTC (Thu) by yatima (guest, #59881) [Link] (15 responses)

I understand what I am asking. I went through something very similar during <a href="http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09">Racefail,</a> when I started to understand all the ways in which my white privilege has allowed me to act insensitively in the past.

Acknowledging that I have said and done harmful things is not the same as admitting that I am a Bad Person. It's an important first step towards trying to avoid saying and doing harmful things in the future.

I wasn't fond of the process. It was uncomfortable, even painful. But I didn't want to carry on being oblivious, either.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 4:43 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (14 responses)

I skimmed the wiki page, and while I haven't read all of it as yet, the very first thing I come across is "a thread filled with fail".

Look! People being judgemental of others.

That's always fun, too.

I also note that there's a lot of redlink on that page; someone came through and pruned?

Understand this: I don't consider myself to be a racist, or a sexist, or an anythingelsethatcomestomindist -- I realize that such behaviors exist, and I'm agin' em, and I do with that knowledge what is mine to do with it: I exercise it as best I can, when I am dealing with other actual people, in person or (lately, since I'm a department head now) in policy.

Other than that, it's mostly fun to watch both sides shoot at one another, and while I wouldn't characterize any of the things I've posted on this thread as devils' advocate, by any means, I don't have a lot of personal investment in the larger topic because I'm not involved in any major way (except as a customer) with any FOSS projects of any size these days.

If I were in charge of one, and there was a clear problem involving something like this, I'm sure I'd do something about it.

But the situation that's being discussed here, as nearly as I can evaluate it is this:

The basketball players should not cuss at each other and chest bump and call each other names in the locker room, and -- in general, act like male jocks -- *because some female basketball player MIGHT wander up to the locker room door wanting to play*, and they would scare her away by acting like that.

And that's just prima facie unreasonable. Rules for conduct in a small subculture are set by the subculture to suit its members; it has always been thus, and there's no reason it should not continue.

Contemplate, if you will, some girls-club activity that you engage in with other women, and evaluate whether you might all or individually moderate some specific facets of your interactions if the club were suddenly coed.

Now contemplate whether you want to make that change *now*, *just so you're more inviting to men*.

The guy in the nail palace wouldn't get looked at weird cause he's the only guy in the room, he'd get looked at weird because men in USAdian culture are not prone to manicure, and even less so to false nails.

It is very easy to conflate these issues, but it is very important not to.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:07 UTC (Thu) by yatima (guest, #59881) [Link] (10 responses)

A more accurate comparison would be a woman wanting to play basketball and getting death threats for her presumption.

This has happened, twice, on the Debian list.

Contemplate, if you will, some activity that you personally would like to be part of - because you had an aptitude for it, for example, or because you felt it was a good and useful thing to do. Imagine you tried to join in and people threatened to kill you.

Wouldn't you at least try to get them to examine their behavior?

That's all women in open source are trying to do.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:11 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (6 responses)

As I noted, if that happened to me, I would have cops and district attorneys on the phone the next morning; that day if it seemed necessary, and I would be getting people arrested and imprisoned -- that *is* a crime.

It's not sexism, and I would not construe it as "condoned" by other members of a community.

And I think that's a reasonable response, and I'm truly curious as to why other people don't. After a certain point, folks, it is *not* merely ones and zeros anymore, to paraphrase a famous calming suggestion.

Being part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 6:38 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, that is a great way to enter the amateur basketball team: get a few prominent members imprisoned. If possible get the star player or the alpha male. That teaches the rest to treat you like one of the team.

Recommended watching: Ragtime (1981). It shows how far the courts will get you in getting accepted when you have all bets against you.

Being part of the group

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:01 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

So... you're saying: just because that would make the other players not like you, we *shouldn't* Do The Right Thing when someone commits aggravated assault?

Way to stand up for the team there, dude...

Yes, being part of the group

Posted Aug 3, 2009 0:27 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Are you serious? It seems to me you are being deliberately obtuse, but I will try to give a (very boring) explanation that will have to stand in for something called "empathy". A death threat is not "aggravated assault", it is a verbal action that can sometimes be a crime. In any case the actions to take are up to the threatened person. Reporting a death threat to the police is not always the cleverest route, or even practical: when said threats come from a different country, an anonymous email handle or just an unknown person the judge will not have much grounds or ability to do anything, not to speak about the police. (Do you think they are going to watch your house 24x7 because a stranger from an unknown location sent you an email?)

Formal complaints are not very useful even in the best conditions -- many wives report death threats from their husbands, and the result is just another murder statistic. (Even after an injunction; a guy about to commit murder is not the person most likely to obey a court order.)

So, a formal complaint would probably not achieve anything. On the other hand, it would likely make the reporter be further excluded from the group. Sometimes it's better just to expose the thing and try to make the community react -- at least when there is some will in the group to react.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:00 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm not sure how threats of hate crimes targeted at women because they're women can be seen as anything other than sexism.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:08 UTC (Thu) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (1 responses)

Well probably, but then again, the thoughtcrime of "sexism" is nowhere near the realcrime of "uttering death threats". In practice, the latter occurs next to never in our community, so while tragic, I do not get much argumentational oomph out of it, so to speak.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:15 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

A good thing that people are asking for changes in behaviour rather than changes in thought, eh?

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:19 UTC (Thu) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (2 responses)

If you read over Baylink's posts in this thread, and compare to the "derailing for dummies" page, you may note that he's regurgitated nearly every one of them. And thrown a few of anti-feminist bingo in for good measure.

Hypothesis #1: remarkable confluence of clichés.

Hypothesis #2: troll.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:25 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

Hypothesis 3: yet more confirmation bias.

You will always find what you're looking for. I've made my points farily clearly, and avoided purposeful fallacy, and the accidental ones I could spot.

This accusation returns us to ad hominem, pretty much in a textbook fashion.

The site Graydon refers to is this:

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

I suggest to the people who created it, and to you Graydon, that the humorous approach taken there is dog-whistle sociology, and just as with fundamentalist Republican politics, it endears them to their base, but doesn't win them any arguments.

Libertarian, here, registered, 9 years. No particular pro-Democrat bias inspiring this observation.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:49 UTC (Thu) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link]

There is no argument here. You keep thinking there is because you've got your defensiveness on. There is only a related experience that makes you uncomfortable to hear, and then there is you flailing around with every "point" and "argument" or other diversion you can dream up to make the bad emotion go away.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 11:46 UTC (Thu) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

"And that's just prima facie unreasonable. Rules for conduct in a small subculture are set by the subculture to suit its members; it has always been thus, and there's no reason it should not continue."

One of the key points of the so-called non-sexists' side is that we should change the culture anyway. You know, to be more welcoming to women, who do seem to dislike the typical male competitive culture. This culture, which I do respect, seems to be put down with terms like this:

- terminal testosterone poisoning
- testosterone overload

Add to the mix characterizations of FLOSS male developers. One commenter thought that "many of them" suffer from Asperger's syndrome, or perhaps autism.

Here's a thought experiment. Would I be within my rights to demand somewhat more respectful terminology for male attributes, which have, after all, produced quite a lot of cultural artifacts, engineering and scientific marvels along the thousands of years of slow progress of civilization. I'm not saying women should be excluded, but I'm saying that this discussion treats neither men (or women) fairly.

Further food for thought: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

As part of the group

Posted Jul 31, 2009 3:08 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (1 responses)

It's true, some people dislike the "typical male competitive culture" currently common in FOSS communities. (Though all the references to Asperger's/autism that I've seen have been from people defending the status quo.) As a male, I often find it unpleasant myself, for reasons totally independent of its attitude towards women. I'm also not convinced that this culture is exactly "typical" (with its connotations of "natural, "desireable"); but, say we accept the usual stereotypes for a moment -- did I really suffer through high-school just so I could grow up to become an (online) jock?

But.

To me, that's a different discussion. If women don't want to hang around with men "being men" or whatever, then fine, we could debate whether that indicates a problem or not, but it's not what we're seeing here. Women who try to participate in FLOSS face nasty, active discrimination from a number of directions, and if they point this out they're met with a mix of apathy and violent dismissal. I don't think that's acceptable regardless of a subculture's internal values, I don't think it's at all necessary to "male culture", and I certainly don't think it's an example of a positive male attribute that deserves better terminology. Really, this is a very specific point, and one that I hope we can agree on even if we don't see eye-to-eye on other matters. (Do we agree?)

I know it's not the point you necessarily want to talk about, but I find it difficult to discuss the culture in general when some of the people arguing are just using it as a socially acceptable way to shut down the sexism debate. See where I'm coming from?

As part of the group

Posted Jul 31, 2009 13:22 UTC (Fri) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

We agree.

The issue is just very multifaceted, and it's easy to try to fix it in some way that produces a worse result than status quo. That's what worries me about all gender politics, which this discussion is an instance of. I think it's a problem of limited attention: people only see the problem they are trying to fix, not the good stuff that also works, but which will be broken by their fix. So that's where I'm coming from.

Unfortunately I have no useful personal experience about the sort of discrimination you are talking about, and I can't really contribute to that discussion.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Jul 31, 2009 10:32 UTC (Fri) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link] (31 responses)

Baylink said:
> You're asking us, though you don't seem to understand it, to admit to
> being Bad People.

Well, we sure ain't perfect yet, me neither.

It's actually the secret of any genuine improvement, to realise that,
yes, we are indeed, in certain ways, and more ways than we previously saw,
and as our friends have tried to tell us, Bad. We then have something to work on,
something in which we can change for the better.

Of course it's bitter medicine, to admit that I've been crass and unable to
put myself in the other person's shoes. But do we want to continue in serene disregard
of what others can see about us so much more clearly than we ourselves? I know I don't.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Jul 31, 2009 12:12 UTC (Fri) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (30 responses)

But do we want to continue in serene disregard of what others can see about us so much more clearly than we ourselves?

Oh dear. "Not an argument". "Don't be defensive". Right. QED.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Jul 31, 2009 16:47 UTC (Fri) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (29 responses)

You know what systemic marginalization looks like? This thread. Someone says "I feel excluded and hated", and a bunch of strangers jump out to debate the experience, make sure that we all know that subjective experience doesn't stand up in a court of law. Make them feel ignored and belittled and dismiss the topic.

Bravo. You're right. You win the debate. Minus several hundred points for empathy, but you "win" whatever you wanted to win. I hope you don't speak this way to your family members, or people you actually respect.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Jul 31, 2009 17:29 UTC (Fri) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (27 responses)

You know what systemic marginalization looks like? This thread. Someone says "I feel excluded and hated", [...] Make them feel ignored and belittled and dismiss the topic.

Where did you see that in what I wrote?

...Minus several hundred points for empathy...

This is what bothers me most about this kind of discussion. It is a vehicle to affix blame on anyone who's not actively on "your side". One can't be a bystander, because one's probably guilty and ignorant. One can't argue with the logic of the presentation, because then one "lacks empathy". "If you're not with us, you're against us."

There's also the pattern that such discussions are also ivory tower "meta" in the sense that they do not discuss any particular current incident where the participants could actually take meaningful action. We don't get to berate the actual offenders, to right some actual wrong. Instead we raise awareness of the world in the anecdotal abstract. Good enough: should anyone see things less lamentfully, we can take some low-risk "action". At the least, accuse them of whateverism by virtue of their ignorance of their own latent/eminent/inherited whateverism. But really, what does that accomplish?

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Jul 31, 2009 18:59 UTC (Fri) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (26 responses)

In what you wrote? You wrote yet another nit-picking reply to someone's choice of words, to score "points" rather than making any single attempt -- anywhere in this thread -- to validate, acknowledge or even accept the OP's perspective, or even say you would try to notice the cultural pattern she's pointing out, assuming you don't currently.

I'm responding angrily to you because you appear, like so many in this discussion, to be speaking in bad faith. But I respect you enough to try to calm down and give you a longer, more explicit reply.

Look carefully at yourself and your own words. Just now, you've made, on one hand, a blanket statement about a group cultural behavior you dislike. The first sentence in the second paragraph. You expect that group-cultural-criticism to be taken seriously, listened to. You think that I should reflect on the fact that I'm all ivory tower, that everyone sharing my concern about sexism here has sloppy rhetorical style. Collectively. We're expressing a pattern of thought-policing, of nanny-state, censoring whining.

Ok. I know you, I accept you're sensitive to being censored and dictated-to, I even know enough of your life experience to know why. I'll try to assuage your concerns about the discussion here by saying that nobody wants to accuse you: we're all sexist sometimes. I am too. The discussion's not about individual guilt or individual incidents. A few incidents at random would not make a culture. The culture is much more systemic.

Now let's go back to what you wrote -- bearing in mind that you are not the only one who's done this, and I don't mean to make you per-se feel like The Sexist Culprit, just demonstrate a pattern -- and let's look at the remainder of that paragraph. Look at the substance. You want to dismiss any group cultural criticisms of sexist culture because they're too vague, too abstract. Pointing out a pattern of sexism is pure fluff; we should only look for individuals. If you don't focus on the sexist person and incident, you're being too wishy-washy and vague. Berate the individuals, exonerate the culture.

Do you see the double standard here? Your general and abstract emotional impression of a group is valid, but a woman's general and abstract emotional impression of your group is invalid.

This kind of dishonest dealing, and indeed most of this 150+ message thread, is a passive-aggressive encoding of rejection and exclusion. It looks like the phrase "I'm not interested in accepting your concerns", coded via a bunch of irrelevant debate about particulars. It's the collective message our culture keeps sending out. And no, you're not going to get me to reduce that criticism to an individual or an incident. It's a mass action. Open up any thread on this topic from the past decade and you will see the same parade of cultural behavior with different names attached. You either perceive it or you don't, and if you don't, you can only choose to say "I will try to keep my eyes open" or "I will insist it cannot be perceived".

I keep hearing my colleagues saying the latter, which is sad. I wish we could do better than that.

Patterns of denial

Posted Jul 31, 2009 19:30 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (24 responses)

Very well written. It looks like fuhchee feels like we are treating him (we will assume it's "him") unjustly: "affixing blame" and "accusing him of whateverism". It's a common pattern in this wildly long thread: "demand somewhat more respectful terminology for male attributes", "This accusation returns us to ad hominem", "just prima facie unreasonable", "relegated to being part of the problem", and I tried not to put these soundbites out of context. However we are not here to discuss how these men feel. Why do they feel threatened by discussions of sexism? I work with more women than men, but still can recognize I'm sexist a lot of the time and then try to correct it; I am not scared by it. (Well, not too much anyway.) Maybe that's the difference between both sides of the debate.

Notice also how fuhchee wants us to:

discuss any particular current incident where the participants could actually take meaningful action

while previously he said:

In practice, the [realcrime of "uttering death threats"] occurs next to never in our community, so while tragic, I do not get much argumentational oomph out of it, so to speak.

It's a common pattern: we see a stupid game going from requesting specific cases to dismissing them as anecdotal and requesting a pattern of incidents, to dismissing the bulk of the incidents as irrelevant and requesting then a more generic approach. Denial again, now in a circular fashion.

Patterns of denial

Posted Aug 1, 2009 3:29 UTC (Sat) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (23 responses)

What I said was sort of a trap, and I realize that I was not entirely on topic. My point would have been something like that it's ok to say "terminal testosterone poisoning" casually, but not quite ok to say "terminal estrogen poisoning". At least this is how I tend to see these debates: one-sided and almost invariably skewed for women. However, since nobody took the bite, perhaps I'm mistaken, or the pedantic/boring point I was making didn't interest anybody.

As I see it

Posted Aug 1, 2009 10:54 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (22 responses)

It is somewhat offensive to say "terminal estrogen poisoning" (just as with the male version), so you have to be ready to bring proof that the alleged poisoning is really causing trouble. Estrogens are much milder hormones than testosterone, so the context has to be chosen carefully: surely it would not come as a surprise if I told you that my prebirth classes were a bit too estrogen-laden. But, as it turns out testosterone poisoning does not have a scientific basis (apparently aggression is more related to some androgens), and "poisoning" is a loaded term anyway; so the testosterone version is also a pejorative term and it should be used with similar care. If you see nix's original context he was sarcastically referring to random flaming on some extreme "macho" mailing lists, so there should be no reason for offense. How's that for being wikipedantic!

The problem is that too many people were "laying traps" such as yours, instead of pondering what was being discussed. This has led to 170+ posts carefully winding around the issue of female participation in free software projects. This behavior is not typical here on LWN: presumably it would not have happened if we were discussing about kernel pointers or free software licenses, and that is a pity.

As I see it

Posted Aug 1, 2009 19:48 UTC (Sat) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (21 responses)

Anyway, I'm not going to discuss biology on this topic.

The problem here is that there is not enough data for me to make any kind of reliable conclusion. One thing that irks me is that the discussion goes like this:

- industry has 20 % female participation
- oss has less than 2 % participation.

=> OSS has a problem, we should have 20 %, too. Let me offer one potential cause for why not: different incentives. OSS work is mostly unpaid, industry work is not.

I'll back this up, like everybody else, with an anecdote. My girlfriend is a programmer, but she is not an OSS programmer. Programming is just a day job for her, she doesn't really like coding and doesn't derive much pleasure from it. So she's not interested in spending her spare time on it.

As I see it

Posted Aug 1, 2009 21:16 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (13 responses)

That's not a plausible model. You need an explanation for why women in the computing industry are less likely to also have it as a hobby than men are.

As I see it

Posted Aug 1, 2009 21:31 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Also, OSS work is not mostly unpaid, and hasn't been for years (despite
strange outliers like me).

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 12:44 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Let's consider the word "mostly". Is it true that over 50 % of OSS contributors are paid programmers now? I definitely have missed that change. I thought most of us were just a freelance army...

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 19:55 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

It's been true for many years that >>50% of code is written by people
employed to do free software development. Whether >50% of *developers* are
paid for it is, as you point out, a somewhat different matter: you'd
expect things to take longer to reach that point.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:06 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> It's been true for many years that >>50% of code is written by people

Again; your source?

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 12:42 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (8 responses)

Different priorities in life? I thought it's quite self-evident that women and men don't enjoy quite the same things.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 19:54 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

It is fallacious to extrapolate generalities about both genders to
anything about any specific members of either gender. The sexes are much,
much more similar than they are different.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 20:29 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (6 responses)

... and as you can see, I was making a quite generic statement about men and women ...

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 21:36 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

"Women and men don't enjoy the same things" would explain these ratios
only if *almost no* women enjoyed software development. As the much more
even gender ratios in proprietary software development make clear, this is
not the case. Some other explanation is necessary.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 21:40 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (4 responses)

Do you have some justification for assuming that a majority of people -- even in IT, or more specifically programming -- do what they do because they like it, rather than merely because it pays quite well?

Certainly those are not mutually exclusive, but we wouldn't have the phrase "golden handcuffs" if that were not a consideration.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:20 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

In computing in the UK there was a long period when it was considered
the 'default employment choice' for young males with no particular
interests, because it paid well. The universities gorged on this and by
2000 some had single yearly intakes so large that they had to split
lectures into several groups to fit them into the lectures theatres.

Then the dotcom crash hit. That supply was choked off, and has not
recovered.

I suspect that anyone who's worked in the field across the dotcom crunch
is either doing it out of desperation because they have no other
experience, or is doing it because they're hooked. (Some people who joined
later may have done so for the pay, but it's been pretty stagnant since
then in my corner of the field in any case.)

(And in any case, are women more or less likely to do things because of
money than men? Again you're derailing, changing the subject from 'why is
the gender gap so large' to 'women are Just Naturally Different', when no
differences in ability or inclinations of more than a few percent have
ever been documented in any properly controlled study I've ever heard of.
Again, we are not a very sexually dimorphic species as mammals go: any
argument for the absence of female free software developers that is based
around assumptions of radically differing abilities or inclinations
between the sexes is probably incorrect and should be considered only as
the last option.)

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 22:29 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (2 responses)

Wow.

Again, no I'm not.

The fundamental issue here, as you are playing it, is "the majority of men in FOSS development behave in sexist ways, and much change their behavior".

(If that's *not* the argument you're making, please tell me now.)

That is an extraordinary assertion (that 80% of 20,000 someodd people need to change the way they behave), and requres, as I have noted before, extraordinary proof.

At the least, it requires you to show your work as you go, and you continue not to. I've kept my mouth shut on this for a couple of days, since as a couple of people noted, it could be construed that I was sucking up all the oxygen in the room... and lo and behold, several other poeple (appear to me to) agree with my fundamental position.

My argument was precisely that I see no gender difference in "doing things solely for the money", even though you try to paint what I said the opposite way. In this case, the person "derailing" is you: the argument is yours: that all developers are doing it for love, not money, and I don't believe that a whit.

As I see it

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:45 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

The fundamental issue here, as you are playing it, is "the majority of men in FOSS development behave in sexist ways, and much change their behavior".

That's not the case. There's no reason to believe that the majority of people in the open source community are sexist. The concern is that there's a minority who engage in sexist behaviour and a larger body (perhaps a majority) who either don't recognise this behaviour or who aren't concerned about it. To deny that this behaviour exists is unrealistic. Anecdotes don't provide statistics, but when they're describing verifiable events they do prove whether or not something has occured. So really, what you're disagreeing with is the scale of the problem. And that's fine. I don't have hard statistical data to back my belief that it's fairly significant. You don't have hard statistical data to back up your belief that it isn't.

That's disappointing to some extent, but it makes little difference. The changes in behaviour that would help here are simple things like not using sexually loaded language, not making off-colour jokes in a technical environment, not turning a conference into a sexualised environment by hiring women in short skirts purely to hand out flyers. These things cost approximately nothing, but doing them removes a great deal of the perceived sexist environment and means that anyone engaging in more flagrantly sexist behaviour is more obvious.

Will that magically get the number of women involved in free software up to 20%? No, of course not. But if there is a barrier to reaching that figure, then the onus should be on the people who want to maintain that barrier to justify it.

But let's get back to where this thread started. "Women and men don't enjoy the same things" would explain these ratios only if *almost no* women enjoyed software development, followed by a discussion of whether people do things for love or money. That's not the point. Let's say that 10% of men involved in the software industry enjoy it enough to get involved in free software in their spare time. If the same figure were true of women then we'd have the same 20%/80% split (approx) that we see in the commercial world. Given that the actual figure is more like 2%/98%, if differing levels of innate interest are the reason then the figure for women has to be around 0.8%. Or, to put it another way, women have to be over ten times less interested in engaging in free software development than men. This seems an awfully large figure to assign to nature. Of course, if 10% is an overestimate (which it is) then the 0.8% figure drops in the same way. At which point it becomes pretty obvious that "Women and men don't enjoy the same things" would explain these ratios only if *almost no* women enjoyed software development is true.

So "Men and women are just interested in different things" doesn't seem to hold. You're being accused of derailing because you've managed to turn a discussion of sexism in free software into an argument about whether or not people write software because they're paid to do it or not. That might well be an interesting discussion to have, but there's no realistic way that it's relevant to this issue. And by changing the topic you imply that the original topic isn't the important thing here. Which isn't a great way to reassure people that their concerns are being taken seriously, which in turn isn't a great way to convince them that they'll be able to fit in. Which is where we came in.

As I see it

Posted Aug 3, 2009 20:18 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

An accurate description. I cannot imagine what misreading of what I had
said could lead to anyone interpreting it as '80% of men are sexist'. That
is plainly ludicrous and nobody has proposed it. (It is also tangential
and thus yet *another* bloody derailing.)

Sidestepping the issue

Posted Aug 1, 2009 23:21 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (6 responses)

My girlfriend is a programmer, but she is not an OSS programmer.

A veritable red herring. I work directly with 30+ developers, men and women; none of them is a free software developer but me, and I'm just a small time contributor to a few random projects. What does this show? Nothing, it's an unrelated issue.

The problem here is that there is not enough data for me to make any kind of reliable conclusion.

Let us see if we can find any data -- wait, the announcement that started this discussion contains a lot of hard data, and from women already involved in free software development. Don't you think that solving the problems perceived by these women (sexism, lack of respect, death threats) would be a first step, and that we can try to make it more comfortable at least for those that choose to join us?

Do we really need to play with statistics? Imagine that we were discussing this link:

Alleging a string of racist incidents and management indifference, a group of black Halifax firefighters files a human rights complaint.

And when talking about why there are so few black firemen in Halifax, I said: "I don't know, maybe black people don't enjoy fighting fire". Don't you think that we would be sidestepping the real issue?

Sidestepping the issue

Posted Aug 2, 2009 13:04 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (5 responses)

I know anecdotes are worthless. That's why I ironically used one, and copiously even flagged it as such. I disagree on one point: I refuse to believe that it didn't support the point I was making.

Let's assume OSS work would be just like any other work: same background level of sexism, lack of respect and even death threats. My point was that even if you fixed all that to same level as industry in general, I doubt we would have 20 % women. The anecdote I used was there to distract you about the more important point which is that incentives in OSS work are different in industry work. And that matters when you have two groups which seem to have different priorities in life. You will get different participation rates.

I will not go into black firefighters in this topic. I know you are implying that I have a blind spot just because we are discussing women and not blacks. However, I insist that my contribution is not worthless.

Let's assume we do all the things that would "fix" our community, and in 10 years we find that we have 10 % women instead of 20 % as is industry average even then. We will still be talking about subtle sexism and structural misogyny and things like that, if we just keep on staring at "20 %" and "10 %" and insist that this is evidence of a problem.

Exacerbating the problem

Posted Aug 2, 2009 13:54 UTC (Sun) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] (3 responses)

Anecdotes are only worthless if your interest is in assessing trends and nothing else.

We aren't particularly interested in assessing trends here. Obviously most of us are caring, sharing men and a small but very much appreciated minority are caring, sharing women.

The interesting statistical question is, why is the female minority so small. And a very plausible answer is, because some men behave badly. The question of *how many* men are behaving badly isn't half as interesting as how many women there are, or how many there might be if the men did not misbehave.

Any problem of sexist behaviour in our community is not a major trend. It consists a few isolated examples of totally-unacceptable behaviour, of which anecdotes are an existence proof.

Oh, and another problem consists in this kind of thread, which demonstrates that as long as no-one mentions sexism everyone is cool, but as soon as it is adduced a small minority of posters make a very loud noise trying to insist that no problem exists, or that if it does it is statistically insignifigant, or that it's not as bad as problem Q "in the real world", or that women have the upper hand these days, or that even if a problem does exist in this community, the poster isn't responsible, etc.

When you do that, you don't make the problem go away, you exacerbate it.

You are defending the indefensible.

Please don't.

Exacerbating the problem

Posted Aug 2, 2009 15:07 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

My mistake. I thought it was fair to discuss it. I didn't realize everyone needs to be on the program and just nod their heads in agreement.

Anyway, I grow tired of this, so you get your wish.

Exacerbating the problem

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:10 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

> Any problem of sexist behaviour in our community is not a major trend.

This is precisely the opposite of the argument which has been being made here by you, njs, nix, man_ls, and others, all week long.

Care to clarify?

Exacerbating the problem

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:45 UTC (Sun) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

Unfortunately, a few people are arseholes.

Others, also a minority, quibble and "derail" in a defensive manner, questioning the validity of the whole discussion. The quibbling and derailing *of itself* contributes to an atmosphere of hostility, the existence of which the quibblers contest.

Most people are neither arseholes nor quibblers, therefore this is not a general trend. But it's still a problem.

Clear now?

Sidestepping the issue

Posted Aug 2, 2009 17:30 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Let's assume we do all the things that would "fix" our community, and in 10 years we find that we have 10 % women instead of 20 % as is industry average even then.

Let us not just assume it; let us do it. Let us fix our community so that we don't harbor sexism anymore. Once women feel comfortable within us (or at least as comfortable as men) we may continue debating the other issues: interests, abilities and whatever you like. Until then, it is like discussing whether aspirin or paracetamol are best for skull fractures: you may have a point but it's better to take care of the bigger issue first.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:04 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

There's a female OP on this thread? We're all commenting on a presentation written up by an editor.

From one Bad Person to another

Posted Aug 1, 2009 10:06 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Bujold put it wonderfully (talking about romance, but I think it applies
well to most matters of inter-human and especially inter-gender
relations): 'The only way to win is not to fight.'

If you start arguing about this you have already proven the other side's
point, and have already lost. In fact *both* sides have probably lost.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:11 UTC (Wed) by graydon (guest, #5009) [Link] (1 responses)

There is no "defense", because it is not an argument. The point is not to win a fight; the point is to listen and reflect.

If it helps, maybe try treating discussions like this as personal mental challenges: can you exercise sufficient self-control to suppress your defensiveness and accept, without a critical response, what's been said?

Seriously. It's not like you're going to suffer any negative consequences either way.

As part of the group

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:14 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> can you exercise sufficient self-control to suppress your defensiveness and accept, without a critical response, what's been said?

No.

What's being said is "Baylink - you (and many others) are a bad, thoughtless, uncaring person, and you must figure out how, and change it"

I expect someone who's going to tell me that to have to convince me, in a palatable way, that it's true. If you can't be bothered, at *least* to convince me that it's a general problem in a believable fashion, then I'll blow you off.

Some ways to do it

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:44 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

How about the helpful "I think women are approaching the wrong problem, they should ignore or ridicule the bullies"? Or the gentlemanly "Hey, I wasn't aware of the problem but it may be true, I'll be on the lookout and if necessary try to defend any women from the bullies"? Or the more sensitive "Sorry, I didn't know that women felt like that, I will try to pay some more attention". Or even the skeptic macho "I doubt that is the case, but if I see anyone bullying a woman they will learn to fear my fists!" Or you could just listen and suspend judgement.

But please, don't just negate the kind of problem which you would never notice unless you were actively looking for it (and even so). Also, we men don't need to feel guilty about it by default; we are just part of the inertia. But we can fight it. To me it's helpful to remember that the world's greatest hacker is a woman.

As part of the group

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:34 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

At least we're proving Skud's point: there is a problem. (As if it needed
proving after the *last* appalling go-around on this topic.)

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 5:40 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, the clearest demonstration that there is a problem, is all the men here who loudly scream that there is no problem. Especially given the language they use to do so.

Why not ask the women whether or not there is a problem?

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 10:30 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

We did. They said yes. Baylink and others seem to think this is not
adequate...

As part of the group

Posted Jul 30, 2009 18:47 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

So I noticed.

As part of the group

Posted Aug 2, 2009 23:15 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

Language like "selection bias"?

C'mon...