[UbuntuWomen] Making Ubuntu-for-all _work_

[Vid Ayer]

Hi,

Let me try to set things in perspective from the little that I have
understood from all the discussion till now....

On 5/21/07, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
>
> You asked where I would start. Well to begin with, I would not recommend
> waiting for a Jono to guide us. While I respect him and what he does,
> his word is not the be-all nor the end-all.  We each have our own ideas
> of what UFA should be, we need to take the next step and make something

To get things in perspective, IIRC, the UFA was Jono's idea, suggested
in the second meeting, while we were trying to find a solution to an
incident that occurred in the UK loco-mailing list as a result of
which the only woman member left. That list has many eminent
personalities and yet none said "hey, this is inappropriate, stop it".
 Rather the victim was expected to explain what the COC breach was and
so on and so forth. I am aware of the other stuff but I will avoid
getting into details here but as things stand the issue presently
stands unresolved with no consequences at all.
This is where the problem lies.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Secondly, Jono has mentioned that he does not have the time for UFA
and we understand that. Going forward, many people here gave
suggestions and that was why Jacinta was asking Jono to clarify.  None
of these incidents are new and will continue to occur in the future
unless as Jacinta said, "having consequences means you're serious, and
thus legitimises the issues."

The message currently being sent out to every female volunteer is :
Women are expected to explain themselves if they protest against a
behaviour they find inappropriate. In Ubuntu. men can (will) always
get away with inappropriate behaviour so dont complain, just deal with
it, or worse spend your time (or the little that you have left for
volunteering) in educating them about it instead.

It may come as no surprise that women _dont_  want to do that or put
up with abuse just to increase the female participation levels in
Floss. They would prefer to leave the loco-teams (like Caroline and I
did **).  People dont need to put up with abuse as volunteers and
certainly dont want to spend their time educating men or anyone else
for that matter. That is _not_ their responsibility.

FWIW, the CoC is also a document which asks for self-implementation
and was the reason Ubuntu attracts volunteers in the first place. TBH,
a lot of people here have spent a _lot of time_ in trying to find
solutions in an attempt to pre-empt future negative incidents but I
find that those suggestions are being _ignored_.
Asking for a process [0],[1] is the step towards finding solutions, or
atleast trying. We will _never know if we can succeed (or not) unless
we try_ and by creating documents, we are trying to find solutions,
not win the men or anyone else over.

[0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CodeOfConductDisputeResolution
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CodeOfConductGuidelines

It helps to remember that all of us here, irrespective of gender, can
continue just fine (as in using Ubuntu) without _giving_ back to the
community (read volunteering). Ubuntu needs its volunteer community,
rather than the other way around.

I can only hope that what I have said above will be taken for a honest
attempt at trying to find solutions and hopefully be a step in the
right direction, if such a thing exists.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion.

-- 
Vid
http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/VidAyer

** The curious can read my blog where the UW project is called sexist
and useless and besides the trollish personal attacks, called a
_militant feminist_, because I dared to voice my opinions on "women
and floss".  The comments people  leave each time I blog about UW or
the lack of women in Floss make interesting reads too.  I suppose,
like Caroline, each of us is supposed to put up with it or worse spend
our time educating others. As it stands, UW is fast becoming the place
to be in if you are booted out of your loco team, and that is
dissapointing.