sexism and open source

[jrusso2]

I liked this and maybe should be stickied?

I have experienced some of these things on this forum.

Full Article
http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009092600135OPCY


Editor's Note: Sexism and Other -isms Hold Back FOSS, part 2
Sep 26, 2009, 00 :04 UTC (7 Talkback[s]) (434 reads)
(Other stories by Carla Schroder)

by Carla Schroder
Managing Editor


Last week I wrote about Sexism in FOSS and much to my surprise, received more supportive comments than I expected. Maybe we are moving forward. Maybe more people are getting braver and more willing to confront the issue. As I see it, the problem can be roughly defined in three parts, something like a steep bell curve:

1. There is a minority of vocal and dedicated bad actors in FOSS, who are disproportionately loud and destructive.
2. There is a larger number of ordinary people who, for whatever reasons, are unwilling to call the jerks on their bad behavior, and find it's easier to pretend there are no problems. Or worse, tell anyone, especially women, who is bugged by it to go away.
3. Then there are a small number of people who speak up and try to do something about it.

For all of the talk about "community" and "freedom" there is an awful lot of cliquish and exclusionary behavior. A good step would be re-defining "freedom" as "the freedom to be welcoming and supportive", rather than the freedom to be the most unpleasant person. Is there a trophy for that? There must be some reward, given the energy and passion some folks devote to being horrible.

[loell]

just quoting someone.



I don't know why free software/open source people still find the fact that sexism lives and breathes in their communities shocking. we should do away with the assumption that teckies live in a meritocracy, that the shell is gender-blind and that technology is neutral. for such a bunch of supposedly intelligent people, (we) techies could sometimes be clueless.

[LoloftheRings]

Whatever, Linux is just created by normal people, just like closed source software. The difference is, close source developers and companies got to stay representive, open source developers just show who they are ;)


What wrong with that?

[etnlIcarus]

Having not read the original article, I went back and did just that. The examples provided were mostly anaemic - evidenced by the fact that most were presented in the context of a response to the offending comments/act, with the implication explicitly elaborated upon or even narrated.

While I'm going to defer from accusing anyone of prudishness, there does appear to be a bit of a non sequitur, in the implication that anything 'sexual', beyond simply being inappropriate (an assertion I'll grant for the sake of brevity), is automatically sexist. The first and most drastic example used: the flash conference, is a good example of what I'm talking about. Regardless of how tasteless or inappropriate these jokes may have been, there seemed to be the suggestion that it was sexist for a straight male to approach the subject from a straight male perspective.

I can certainly empathise with women who feel out of the social loop; I'm as out-of-place amongst average guys, as anyone (and I certainly don't fit-in here) but I'm getting the distinct impression of victimisation from some of the examples provided (Fun in the workplace). As they were presented, a few were just very narrow and deliberate interpretations of ambiguous circumstances, with nothing that could even vaguely be described as sexism (unless we count any incidence involving a woman feeling alienated or ostracised as sexism). The ideas that many men are awkward (doubly so in IT) and people in-general express themselves poorly aren't even entertained, in lieu of these anecdotes' use as 'unequivocal examples of sexism'.


Ironically, something similar happened to me on these forums, recently. I'm pretty sure it was this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1259576&page=3), where the last page of posts got deleted before the thread was locked. In response to my pointing out that someone's argument was an appeal to emotion, I received the response 'So? I'm a woman. Women tend to get emotional sometimes. What's wrong with that?' Obviously, the posts don't exist anymore, so I'm just working off memory.

I was completely unaware of this person's gender and didn't particularly care. Evidentially, they did and they expected some kind of special treatment because of their gender. This, along with some of the vague rhetoric used in both articles, leads me to suspect that at least a few women may be creating a bit of a self-fulfilling tall poppy syndrome.

[koenn]

I liked this and maybe should be stickied?

I have experienced some of these things on this forum.

http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009092600135OPCY

OK, I've read that. twice. Can't make head nor tails of it - some vagueries about there being jerks in any collection of people so, surprise !, also in FOSS projects, and an observation that woman are undrerepresented in OSS ... wathever that's supposed to mean.
And some rambling about 'freedom' as if that has any bearing on the subject ...

So I went and read part 1, to see if things made sense in context ...
What i saw was a collection of anecdotes, most of them not about FOSS ... - like somewhere in Belarus there's this company where the guy in charge is a prejudist a-hole that refuses to hire women. And this illustrates sexism in FOSS ... how ?



Maybe there is a problem with sexism and FOSS, or maybe there isn't, but if there is, those 2 editorials don't contribute anything to pointing out what the problem is, to a better understanding of the problem, or to a solution.

[sydbat]

1. There is a minority of vocal and dedicated bad actors in FOSS, who are disproportionately loud and destructive.
2. There is a larger number of ordinary people who, for whatever reasons, are unwilling to call the jerks on their bad behavior, and find it's easier to pretend there are no problems. Or worse, tell anyone, especially women, who is bugged by it to go away.
3. Then there are a small number of people who speak up and try to do something about it.Didn't read the whole thing, but these 3 points are valid for the entire planet, on every subject.

[Tipped OuT]

....I was completely unaware of this person's gender and didn't particularly care. Evidentially, they did and they expected some kind of special treatment because of their gender. This, along with some of the vague rhetoric used in both articles, leads me to suspect that at least a few women may be creating a bit of a self-fulfilling tall poppy syndrome.

Got to agree there... Not only women, but sometimes men too.

[wilee-nilee]

It Turns out that in the IT industry and among College professors there is a higher rate of Asperger's then is found statistically among the general population. This is not a answer to socially taught gender biased views, but should be part of the consideration of the validity of a the overall schema.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

[Lunx]

[QUOTE=jrusso2;8008407]I liked this and maybe should be stickied?

I have experienced some of these things on this forum.


http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009092600135OPCY


Editor's Note: Sexism and Other -isms Hold Back FOSS, part 2
Sep 26, 2009, 00 :04 UTC (7 Talkback[s]) (434 reads)
(Other stories by Carla Schroder)

by Carla Schroder
Managing Editor

Last week I wrote about Sexism in FOSS and much to my surprise, received more supportive comments than I expected. Maybe we are moving forward. Maybe more people are getting braver and more willing to confront the issue. As I see it, the problem can be roughly defined in three parts, something like a steep bell curve:

1. There is a minority of vocal and dedicated bad actors in FOSS, who are disproportionately loud and destructive.
2. There is a larger number of ordinary people who, for whatever reasons, are unwilling to call the jerks on their bad behavior, and find it's easier to pretend there are no problems. Or worse, tell anyone, especially women, who is bugged by it to go away.
3. Then there are a small number of people who speak up and try to do something about it.

</quote>

Not sure why you think this should be stickied, why/how is this more of an issue than many other aspects of FOSS.

Point 1. Blokes I imagine from tone of your title?

Point 2. Seems to reinforce my thought on point 1

Point 3. Some of us simply choose to ignore it and get on with sharing ideas, without wondering if we have testicles or ****.

[chriskin]

about that linux women-dedicated site :
i find it strange that there can be linux sites dedicated to one gender (or any site of course)
if that gender is male, those sites are sexist
if that gender is female, those sites are all about genders being equal (!)

i think that even though i happen to be male, in case i didn't want anyone to notice it, noone would - at least at these forums or at any other civilized place of the internet.

[TBOL3]

Hmm...Maybe I just avoid projects that have people that are likely to be somehow sexist, as I really don't see it. (I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but projects such as LibriVox http://www.librivox.org, aren't really sexist, if you know what I mean).

[etnlIcarus]

about that linux women-dedicated site :
i find it strange that there can be linux sites dedicated to one gender (or any site of course)
if that gender is male, those sites are sexist
if that gender is female, those sites are all about genders being equal (!)

Every FOSS community is male by default. Unless these exclusive communities are just that: exclusive, then there's nothing sexist about it. Tailoring to a specific demographic it not, in itself, discriminatory.

[chriskin]

Every FOSS community is male by default. Unless these exclusive communities are just that: exclusive, then there's nothing sexist about it. Tailoring to a specific demographic it not, in itself, discriminatory.

the communities are not male by default, they are male because females don't want to join


as for the tailoring part, if one was to start an ubuntumen.com forum, wouldn't you consider it sexist?

or to give another example, certain shops before or during the second world war wouldn't accept people from certain countries to enter, isn't that racism? they have already tailored their target group , so it's ok? come on now...

[etnlIcarus]

the communities are not male by default, they are male because females don't want to joinUm: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/default

You've basically just agreed with me.


as for the tailoring part, if one was to start an ubuntumen.com forum, wouldn't you consider it sexist?

If it precluded women, yes. If it didn't, it would just be redundant.

[bodhi.zazen]

I have experienced some of these things on this forum.

Such behavior (*-ism) would be a violation of the Code of Conduct.

If you come across what you feel are inappropriate posts on this forum please report them and allow the staff to intervene. The forums are very active and we can not review each and every post. This is a simple fact and does not mean we condone such bad behavior.

[jrusso2]

My main reason for posting this was hopefully some of the people would recognize their behavior and stop. But I guess its too much to ask.

[RiceMonster]

I find in a large amount of online communities, people have to make a big deal out of it if someone happens to be a woman. In a perfect world, such a thing wouldn't even matter, but unfortunately that's not the way things are. This isn't just something exclusive to the Linux world.

[jrusso2]

I find in a large amount of online communities, people have to make a big deal out of it if someone happens to be a woman. In a perfect world, such a thing wouldn't even matter, but unfortunately that's not the way things are. This isn't just something exclusive to the Linux world.

Thats something I have not seen here and usually I don't mention what sex I am.

[bodhi.zazen]

My main reason for posting this was hopefully some of the people would recognize their behavior and stop. But I guess its too much to ask.

I have helped people change their attitudes, and no change is not so simple.

The information you posted is helpful, thank you.