OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

Posted Jul 29, 2009 5:39 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335)
Parent article: OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

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" ?

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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 (subscriber, #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/