An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Michael T. Richter]

On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 16:32 -0400, Eric Dunbar wrote:

> > If you put a hand-full of men into a chat-room full of a diverse
> > selection of single women he'll be bombarded with suggestive comments
> > just as women are in a chat-room (or mailing list) full of a diverse
> > selection of single men.
> 
> If the chat room is explicitly set up for male-female sexual/courtship
> interactions, perhaps!


I roomed with a (male) trainee bank teller for a year.  (Back in the
days when they actually trained bank tellers for extended periods of
time.)  He was one male in a sea of females, bank tellers being a
predominantly female occupation back then.  (Even nowadays this appears
to be the case.)  At work there was, as is usual for a
smoothly-functioning workplace, a lot of playful banter.  The playful
banter of this predominantly female workplace was (just as in the
predominantly male engineering workplaces I inhabited) very often
sexual.  And my roomie, the only male in the group, was frequently
bombarded by suggestive comments (and even one or two propositions) in
that year we roomed together.

I find this whole notion that women are so different from men that
they're intrinsically unknowable (and somehow "better" than men in
social environments and "above" certain classes of behaviour) to be one
of the most perniciously sexist ideas around.  It is obviously damaging
to male/female relations but, more importantly, subtly damaging to the
women themselves.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> (GoogleTalk:
ttmrichter at gmail.com)
In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will
know the man. (孔夫子)
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