[UbuntuWomen] UWN #51: "... and this even included some wives.."

[Caroline Ford]

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 17:41 -0400, Elizabeth Bevilacqua wrote:

> You are correct, there was no public apology from the UWN staff, which
> is quite unfortunate but not terribly surprising given the stage
> Ubuntu is in now when it comes to women. Men who speak out for women
> right now are routinely attacked within the community for doing so,
> ask any guy who's posted a pro-female blog entry lately. There are
> still men standing up for us, but they understand that taking such a
> stance is not popular and they will be required to spend some time
> defending themselves.

Overwhelmingly hostile? I'm so glad I never get this in my other
projects or I wouldn't bother. It's ironic that Ubuntu - the project
with most women in its marketing materials is so hostile internally..

I'm very glad both my LUG (GLLUG) and the FLOSS project I contribute to
(Tux Paint) are not like this. I have lots of projects I could
contribute to - I see no point in contributing to the backwards ones.

Lyz- you said that Debian is better than Ubuntu in this regard- or is
that me misremembering?

> I also want to encourage you and others to subscribe to more lists.
> One of the best things we can do to shift the tides in Ubuntu is get
> more visibly involved. My direct and very loud involvement in my LoCo
> team has been transformational for the group when it comes to women,
> we have several female members, and it's growing every month! So join
> some more lists, hop on IRC and join the main Ubuntu channels and get
> involved with the community. It'll help you get a handle on how things
> in F/OSS work, and give you more insight into how Ubuntu-Women can
> move forward with our goals.

My experiences with lists have been negative. On launchpad-users both
myself and Vid argued against the "use real names" policy as it means we
have to out ourselves. They argued against us and claimed that we only
get hassle if people are anonymous! Everyone who's ever hassled me has
used their real name - and why not! There is no come-back, and you get
to be one of the boys. The community bonds through its laddishness and
its hostility to minorities.

I think they want a male only space as an escape from their workplaces
and wives. This is the equivalent of those all male trips to the pub of
English working class history. 

I'm copying this to Mark as he ought to know quite how bad it has
become, if he hasn't picked it up. I know there is a belief that we
don't involve "the authorities" as it will be counterproductive but I'm
totally pissed off.

One of my old laptops (stinkpad) runs OpenBSD. It doesn't run on this
machine (can't deal with the Shuttle hardware) but I'm very tempted to
try and install it on my newer laptop (celery). It's a hassle to set up
but less dumbed-down and the community has always been fine when I've
interacted with them. They are rude to idiots and trolls but that's an
equal opportunities rudeness that I can cope with ;)

> - Lyz/pleia2, who has herself ducked out of the light a bit to work on
> a new package

Caroline/secretlondon who has long decided to stick to wikipedia,
tuxpaint and my local social centre..