SCALE 8x: Moving the needle

Posted Mar 6, 2010 2:26 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: SCALE 8x: Moving the needle by speedster1
Parent article: SCALE 8x: Moving the needle

"Be nice to women like Sarah Mei who are interested in technology,"

WTF? No one is asking you to "be nice to women". No one is asking you to go out of your way to do anything, or put yourself to any trouble. The only thing you're asked to do, nay you MUST do, is just treat people *normally* and not be an arse.

Also, this quote of yours is mild WTF material, though I believe you mean well:

"That's a far cry from being welcoming to females who show up interested in technology and willing to learn about it from geeks in t-shirts and jeans..."

Can you spot the subconscious, but not very subtle, chauvinism in this comment of yours?

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SCALE 8x: Moving the needle

Posted Mar 6, 2010 7:37 UTC (Sat) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]

I suspect we'd get along fine if we met in person...

Obviously you are not all gung-ho about affirmative-action type of social engineering, which can backfire in various ways. So I really don't see where we even disagree on this topic.

"Be nice to women like Sarah Mei who are interested in technology,"

That doesn't sound like an unreasonable goal to me. I aim to be friendly to all who show up at my LUG. People generally seem to like it. Probably that fits somewhere into your definition of "treating people normally".

"That's a far cry from being welcoming to females who show up interested in technology and willing to learn about it from geeks in t-shirts and jeans..."

This is not patronizing if taken in context. Consider that the topic of this article was about attracting females who are not currently part of the community. So their first role would be that of learner. If Valerie Aurora were in town, I'd try to talk her into doing a presentation. If I asked the organic avocado farmer in my LUG to do a presentation on anything Linux-related, she'd turn me down in about 0 seconds flat.