An Open Letter to the Open Source Community

[Micah Cowan]

Scott (angrykeyboarder) wrote:
> Around or about Tuesday 22 May 2007 01:32 pm, Eric Dunbar spake thusly:
> 
>> The responses this thread has generated demonstrate that there IS
>> indeed a problem with the way people <ahem, men, by-and-large> respond
>> to any mention of sexism.
>>
>>> 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!
> 
> They don't have to be. Trust me, it's a problem all over the Internet. I've
> got a number of female friends around the Internet and they are constantly
> bombarded with come-ons (often very LEWD ones) from men (Instant messages,
> private messages from forums or social networking sites and so forth).
> 
> None of the places I'm speaking of are specific to "dating" or "hooking up". 
> Basically anywhere a Woman on the Internet makes herself available to the
> public at large, she will run into these neanderthals.

Hi Scott,

You actually missed the point a bit: Tristan's claim was that if you put
a hand-full of _men_ into a female-dominated chatroom, he'll be
"bombarded with suggestive comments". Eric was saying that it's only
likely to be true in chat-rooms set up for sexual/courtship
interactions. He wasn't saying that such an environment is necessary for
women to receive such comments.

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

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