A Call to Boycott Ubuntu? An Important Discussion Thread

[Dylan McCall]

I agree with the letter. I don't agree with the junk that surrounds
it. We have a more serious problem than sexism in open source: every
discussion, (in code or prose), no matter how small or how private,
inevitably gets magnified to mammoth proportions and ends with someone
yelling "Boycott!" or "Fork!". This should have stayed between a few
people and Mark, maybe magnified when the dust settles between those
few people and Mark. Not shouted from the rooftops. I think Mark heard
the first time, and anything else is absolutely not constructive.

And here's my comment beneath the blog post with that open letter,
just in case it gets eaten:


"Your examples are off. A lot. I don’t actually think you can know how
offensive that is, and that’s privilege. You are free from
understanding how absolutely utterly offensive those statements are"

I need to call this one out, koipond. I (as someone pretty well in
agreement with Matthew - more on that later) found this REALLY
offensive. "Because you are male you will never be able to understand.
You're too stupid to. But, I'll yell at you about it anyway, and
that's your privilege."
Unless I am severely misinterpreting this "privilege" thing, you are
being a hypocrite. In one swoop you are commenting about sexism in IT
which produces a sense that women can't understand computers. In that
exact same motion, you are saying that men can't understand how people
feel; we can't do feminism. There is not meant to be sexism in
feminism, so obviously you are doing something wrong.

Here is a fact: Mark and Richard are no more sexist than, really, most
other people. I'm not saying this isn't a problem. (Similarly, I doubt
many people are actually legitimately not racist; I have a detector
for when people are battling that tendency and it goes off really
frequently). It IS a problem, but let's not focus a hurricane of wrath
at a single well-meaning person for a single minor comment. We are all
guilty. Yes, you too, Koipond. (You may notice that I am saying this
at once without giving you a chance to explain yourself, no matter how
reasonable your explanation may be. It mirrors the aforementioned
storm exploding out of a teacup about Mark's comment).

On another note, maybe he meant "girls" as in the dictionary
definition: young girls.  The kind who like cell phones and even older
women will stereotype - mostly for fun (on both sides of the fence,
speaking as a similarly stereotyped young guy).
There, complain about that one.

I don't like writing huge things without giving solutions, so here you go:
Sure, I see the benefit here: tell public speakers that they are being
sexist and help them to understand. Do you do this for everyone? You
should. It's a good way to gradually cure the problem. I would benefit
from being studied and emailed like this every day. Yep, I would
appreciate it.
However, that failed here. Mark, without doubt, heard these concerns
the first few times. Why do we have a crazed uprising with torches and
pitchforks? That isn't going to make him here MORE; it's just going to
make everyone else here, which generates a conflict. Pulling the guy
off his podium isn't going to help. (Mark is awesome, after all).
You'll just end up with someone less qualified taking his place
unnaturally. That is NOT constructive.