An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

Scott (angrykeyboarder) geekboy at angrykeyboarder.com
Sat May 26 02:07:17 BST 2007


Around or about Tuesday 22 May 2007 03:13 pm, Michael T. Richter spake
thusly:

> 
> 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.
> 

You just gave a classic example of why Women in the FLOSS community are
having such a problem. Just like your bank teller friend, they are vastly
outnumbered by members of the opposite sex. And they share a commonality:
the same (rather significant) interest (employment - or in the case of
FLOSS employment  - or a hobby that's very predominate in their lives).

But in your typical reasonably balanced male-female ratio workplace you will
find that more often that not, it's the men behaving badly.  How many
(in)famous sexual harassment lawsuits have been brought on by Women?

I've not heard of any but I've certainly heard the opposite. I'm not saying
they've not occurred, but if they have I'd be surprised if their numbers
were anything but a fraction of those brought on by Women.

BTW...I spent 20 years in an industry where Women vastly outnumbered the Men
(and still do). I didn't have the experience your Bank Teller friend did.
That is likely due to the fact that I was one of a very small minority of
straight men in my industry (in fact, I had propositions from Men every so
often, but never from Women - they most often just assumed I was Gay).

-- 
            Scott
http://angrykeyboarder.com
©2007 angrykeyboarder™ & Elmer Fudd. All Wites Wesewved




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