There's a reason perception is skewed. [LWN.net]

There's a reason perception is skewed.

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:10 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to: There's one final comment I want to make here. by Baylink
Parent article: OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

> 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.

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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 ...