An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

Wed May 23 10:32:04 BST 2007

Tristan Wibberley wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-22 at 09:20 +0100, Pete Ryland wrote:
>> Sheesh.  First hit on Google for "linux women" provides this:
>>
>> http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x28.html#AEN41
> 
> That howto itself is sexist. The first comment it points out as being an
> attack on women claims that it diagnoses the problem as an
> "over-stressed female" when actually it doesn't. It neither diagnoses
> the problem nor says the female is "over"-stressed.

I'm sorry, but how can you possibly try to make such a claim? The
messages were clearly referring to her, and were clearly implying that
it was because she was an "over-stressed female" that she had managed to
force the DIMM in backwards. The exact quote:

---
Catie:
> I ended up frying my other 128M
> stick by, er, putting it in backwards. It's now a nice keyring.

Gnuthad:
> How did you even manage to get the memory into the slot? Last time I
> checked, DIMMs and DDR were both keyed and can only be inserted one
> way without physically brweaking either the slot or the stick.

Steve:
> Never underestimate the strength of a stressed-female installing more
> RAM.

Gnuthad:
> Uh huh, the reply of "over-stressed female" appears to be totally 
> correct :P
---

Tristan (quote repeated here):
> It neither diagnoses
> the problem nor says the female is "over"-stressed.

Even if you were correct, from what do you derive the claim that "[t]hat
howto itself is sexist"? That seems quite non sequitur.

> The message points
> out how strong a woman can be in a manner that indicates the poster is
> respectful of that strength (in the same manner as the phrase "hell hath
> no fury like a woman scorned" which many women seem to like).

The poster is being respectful of what he attributes to be the cause of
someone jamming RAM in backwards?

...Look, the reason "over-stressed female"/"stressed-female" is a sexist
remark, is that there was no justifiable reason to bring "female" into
the equation. If they had said, "never underestimate the strength of an
over-stressed person", nobody would've complained. But what does being
"female" have to do with it?

Bear in mind too, please, that this is a gender whose mistakes have been
continually blamed by men upon PMS- and menstruation-related stress, and
against whom the word "bitch" is a commonly applied term when referring
to any ingraciousness. It is also frequently the case that a woman who
voices a complaint--or God forbid, loses her temper--is simply written
off by her male audience as simply "Pee Em Essy".

> A woman
> could have said the same thing and it would not have been taken as
> sexist but rather a simple boast[...].

A "boast"? No. It would have been taken as a joke, just as it was when a
man said it. The difference being, that it would have been made by
someone perhaps more entitled to say it.

> The only reason gender was even highlighted here is due to the
> scarceness of female community members.

I'm sorry; is that a reason to be less careful not to offend?

> 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.

I have never witnessed this. If you have, you had probably better post
log links, as it appears many others on this thread have also never
witnessed this.

What I /have/ noticed, is that, in a chat-room with a high
male-to-female ratio, there is a tendency for a few assholes to
immediately start in with "a/s/l?" and the like. There is often also a
more subtle variety of general chauvinism (usually just ignorance, not
willful harassment, but the effect is the same) or "gentle" teasing.
When teasing is a consistent experience whenever and wherever a girl
arrives online, it of course ceases to be "gentle". This is why "it's
just due to the scarceness of female community members" is not an
acceptable justification to dismiss acute feminine sensitivity to sexism
or perceived sexism; if women online are more sensitive to sexist
remarks than men are, it is because men have /conditioned/ them to be
more sensitive to such remarks.

Conversely, in a chat-room with a high female-to-male ratio, rather than
seeing the women teasing or ribbing the men (and even if they were, see
the above on justifiable relative sensitivity), I've seen _exactly_ the
same sort of thing as in the high-male-to-female situation: some asshole
logs on with ":) :) :) is anyone here looking for a boyrfiend? :) :) :)".

> The problem is not that men think of women in a way that women do not
> think of men, causing them to act in a sexist way (although there are of
> course some of those). The problem is that men and women do not converse
> in the same way and due to the disparity in population in these forums
> women end up taking more sexual pressure and gender-related banter than
> feels right and comfortable. If the populations were more "natural" that
> pressure wouldn't be there and it would go both ways in equal measure
> just as in every other walk of life where it is normally regarded as a
> bit of fun by both sexes. Hell, in the absence of women men make
> comments to each other that are far more suggestive than anything they
> would say to a woman - for example "while you're down there" is my
> personal favourite.

All true. How then, does this mean that we should therefore be less
aware of when our "normal" banter has a greater potential to offend than
if the ratio had been more even?

> IMHO, the problem is only in the ratio of men to women. The "women's
> clubs" like ubuntu-women are therefore only slightly useful in changing
> the proportion as they provide somewhere where women outnumber the men
> rather than a balance (although due to the nature of the forum any men
> there will be unlikely to receive much of the attention I mentioned
> above).

AFAICT, it is not the primary goal of ubuntu-women to merely provide a
place with a higher proportion of women to men (and indeed, AFAICT, it
may fail to do so, at least wrt the #ubuntu-women IRC channel). My
understanding of this group and others like it is to provide the
infrastructure for women to band together for _unity_, for the purpose
of initiating changes in the attitudes, sensitivity and education of the
community as a whole, to promote an atmosphere of tolerance, sensitivity
and respect toward women, so that they can participate with more freedom
in the community, without feeling constantly threatened or badgered.

And don't deceive yourself: women in the FOSS communities /are/ feeling
threatened. And we need to stop asking, "should the women feel
threatened?" or "are they right to feel threatened?" or "is there a
basis for them to feel threatened?", and start asking, "why /do/ they
feel threatened?".

Does it seem an isolated thing? Aren't women in a variety of forums
saying essentially the same thing? How many women have you heard
claiming that there is no problem with sexism, or questioning the
experiences of women who have encountered sexist behavior?

The problem isn't spite; and I don't think anyone is claiming a general
attitude of willful harassment. The problem, AFAICT, is overwhelmingly
one of ignorance, and at a very fundamental level. Men simply aren't
aware of how offensive many of our attitudes are. Couple this with an
unwillingness to accept that there may be any offense, and the reason
why so many women are so frustrated is revealed.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/

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