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mjg59John Scalzi recently wrote a piece on straight white male privilege. If you haven't read it already, go and do so. No rush. I'll wait.
So. Some facts:
(If you disagree with any of these then that's absolutely your right. You're wrong, but that's ok. But please do me a favour and stop reading here. Otherwise you'll just get angry and then you'll write something ill-tempered and still wrong in the comments and then I'll have to delete it and why not just save everybody the time and effort and go and eat ice cream or something instead)
I know I've said this before, but inappropriate and marginalising behaviour is rife in our community, and at all levels of our community. There's the time an open source evangelist just flat out told a woman that her experiences didn't match his so she must be an outlier. There's the time a leading kernel developer said that most rape statistics were basically made up. There's the time that I said the most useful thing Debian could do with its money would be to buy prostitutes for its developers, simultaneously sexualising the discussion, implying that Debian developers were all straight men and casting sex workers as property. These aren't the exceptions. It's endemic. Almost all of us have been part of the problem, and in doing so we've contributed to an environment that has at best driven away capable contributors. You probably don't want to know what it's done at worst.
But what people have done in the past isn't important. What's important is how we behave in the future. If you're not angry about social injustice like this then you're doing it wrong. If you're reading this then there's a pretty high probability that you're a white male. So, it's great that you're angry. You should be! As a straight white male born into a fairly well-off family, a native English speaker in an English speaking country, I have plenty of time to be angry before going back to my nice apartment and living my almost entirely discrimination-free life. So if it makes me angry, I have absolutely no way of comprehending how angry it must make the people who actually have to live with this shit on a daily basis.
(Were tampon mouse able to form and express coherent thoughts, tampon mouse would not put up with this shit)
The point isn't to be smugly self aware of our own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. The point is to actually do something about it. If you're not already devoting some amount of your resources to improving fairness in the world, then why not? It doesn't have to be about women in technology - if you're already donating to charity or helping out at schools or engaging in local politics or any of the countless other ways an individual can help make the world a better place, large or small, then keep on doing that. But do consider that many of us have done things in the past that contributed to the alienation of an astounding number of potential community members, and if you can then please do do something to make up for it. It might be donating to groups like The Ada Initiative. It might be mentoring students for projects like the GNOME Outreach Program for Women, or working to create similar programs. Even just making our communities less toxic by pointing out unacceptable behaviour when you see it makes a huge difference.
But most importantly, be aware that it was people like me who were responsible for this problem in the first place and people like me who need to take responsibility for solving it. We can't demand the victims do that for us.
So. Some facts:
- Women are underrepresented in free software development
- Those women who are involved in free software development are overwhelmingly more likely to have been subject to sexual harassment, belittling commentary or just plain ignored because of their gender
- When asked, women tend to believe that these two facts are fairly strongly related
(If you disagree with any of these then that's absolutely your right. You're wrong, but that's ok. But please do me a favour and stop reading here. Otherwise you'll just get angry and then you'll write something ill-tempered and still wrong in the comments and then I'll have to delete it and why not just save everybody the time and effort and go and eat ice cream or something instead)
I know I've said this before, but inappropriate and marginalising behaviour is rife in our community, and at all levels of our community. There's the time an open source evangelist just flat out told a woman that her experiences didn't match his so she must be an outlier. There's the time a leading kernel developer said that most rape statistics were basically made up. There's the time that I said the most useful thing Debian could do with its money would be to buy prostitutes for its developers, simultaneously sexualising the discussion, implying that Debian developers were all straight men and casting sex workers as property. These aren't the exceptions. It's endemic. Almost all of us have been part of the problem, and in doing so we've contributed to an environment that has at best driven away capable contributors. You probably don't want to know what it's done at worst.
But what people have done in the past isn't important. What's important is how we behave in the future. If you're not angry about social injustice like this then you're doing it wrong. If you're reading this then there's a pretty high probability that you're a white male. So, it's great that you're angry. You should be! As a straight white male born into a fairly well-off family, a native English speaker in an English speaking country, I have plenty of time to be angry before going back to my nice apartment and living my almost entirely discrimination-free life. So if it makes me angry, I have absolutely no way of comprehending how angry it must make the people who actually have to live with this shit on a daily basis.
(Were tampon mouse able to form and express coherent thoughts, tampon mouse would not put up with this shit)
The point isn't to be smugly self aware of our own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. The point is to actually do something about it. If you're not already devoting some amount of your resources to improving fairness in the world, then why not? It doesn't have to be about women in technology - if you're already donating to charity or helping out at schools or engaging in local politics or any of the countless other ways an individual can help make the world a better place, large or small, then keep on doing that. But do consider that many of us have done things in the past that contributed to the alienation of an astounding number of potential community members, and if you can then please do do something to make up for it. It might be donating to groups like The Ada Initiative. It might be mentoring students for projects like the GNOME Outreach Program for Women, or working to create similar programs. Even just making our communities less toxic by pointing out unacceptable behaviour when you see it makes a huge difference.
But most importantly, be aware that it was people like me who were responsible for this problem in the first place and people like me who need to take responsibility for solving it. We can't demand the victims do that for us.
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no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 02:26 am (UTC)All you did was sexualise the discussion. You didn't however imply that DD's were all straight men. Prostitutes come in all flavors; male, female, gay & straight. Implying all prostitutes are females is disrespecting the prostitute community :p
On a more serious note, I couldn't agree more with everything you said, and like you, I can fess up to mistakes like you stated in years past. One thing that has opened my eyes is working with the wonderful women I have had the chance to work with in the Ubuntu & KDE communities. Thanks for bringing this up, and I hope that we can all work together to bring true change to the greatest communities in the world.
--nixternal
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 02:30 am (UTC)Re: Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 03:01 am (UTC)Re: Enough
Date: 2012-05-22 03:02 am (UTC)Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 03:04 am (UTC)I know the fedora women group is defunct, but Ubuntu women, Gnome women, Linux Chix and Arch women are still going strong. (maybe you know some women who might be interested in reviving it?)
I helped found Arch Women and you guys are welcome to come work with us. :) I won't mind if women who use other distros come hang out in the IRC chat/website either.
http://archwomen.org
-meskarune (Dolores)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 03:12 am (UTC)http://johnwilker.com/2012/05/an-open-letter-to-women-in-tech/
*sighs*
~Máirín
(Dreamwidth doesn't like my openid)
Arch & Ubuntu
Date: 2012-05-22 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 03:20 am (UTC)excellent post.
Date: 2012-05-22 03:20 am (UTC)I agree 100%. At GNOME, we've tried really hard to make women feel welcome and an integral part of the project. We've had some fantastic passionate contributors to GNOME thanks to the GSOC program funding the women in technology program.
I find that a lot of people who are involved in FOSS and in Linux are looking for a niche community that they can just geek out. I think a lot of these people find women threatening to that. Some of course are just out and out male chauvinistic pigs.
There are differences though in how male and females approach problems that does make things a little interesting in how we interact. Still we will be stronger as a community by being more open. How ironic it is that we advocate free and open in our code, but not in our community.
Re: excellent post.
Date: 2012-05-22 03:22 am (UTC)Re: Arch & Ubuntu
Date: 2012-05-22 03:32 am (UTC)-meskarune (Dolores)
Re: Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 03:39 am (UTC)Are there any specific benefits to having a women's group in Arch that you've found make it particularly valuable? We have seen an uptick in women getting involved through more general mentorship programs (like the Fedora Design Team bounties) so I do wonder whether or not the gender specificity is an effective part of the equation.
I really like the Debian Women's group and I believe it's the oldest and strongest - the reason I like it is because the participants have a specific goal: becoming a Debian Developer. I did model the Fedora Design Team bounties vaguely after this - when you complete the bounty you're granted membership in the design team account group (as well as mailed swag. :) ) Does Arch women have any kind of goal-based thing like this or if not how do you folks operate?
Looking forward to sharing info -
~Máirín Duffy (duffy at fedoraproject dot org if you want to take the discussion offline)
Re: Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 03:47 am (UTC)The past is important too
Date: 2012-05-22 03:57 am (UTC)I strongly disagree. Both are important and neither should ever be neglected. Indeed after a time of violation and repression, the past is often alive and it guides its victims. Ideologies in our culture about the nature of time can make us blind to this pervasive reality, but actually it's quite logical.
Galton describes the relationship between past and future quite well, I think: "We remember the past, but anticipate, fear, dread, or hope for the future; we feel we can know the past but only guess at or estimate the future; and we feel that the future, but not the past, can be causally dependent on our current actions."
Source:
Galton, A. (2011). Time flies but space does not: Limits to the spatialisation of time. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(3), 695-703. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.002
Re: Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 04:09 am (UTC)Also, the times I have gotten the worst harassment is when I point that out (or call a software engineer on his sexism). Which is sad.
(Here via John Scalzi, btw.)
Re: Thanks
Date: 2012-05-22 04:33 am (UTC)We've got a shared news feed in the works at http://news.archwomen.org and I'm working on a calendar and events feed as well http://phpicalendar.archwomen.org (those haven't been integrated into the main site just yet)
On our blog we try to link resources to programs that teach women how to program and write scripts, as well as linux tutorials. (rails girls, pyladies, ladies learning code, dev chix, etc)
I would also love to organize meet-ups with other Linux women users, to Linux cons and tech events. Its more fun and safer to go to those events with a group of other women.
There were apparently a ton of women Arch users who kept their gender hidden, and "came out" so to speak after Arch Women was formed. (I was actually pleasantly surprised to meet them all) When I first started using Arch Linux 6 years ago, I didn't know any other women who did, and now being able to network in an easy way and teach more women how to use Arch has just been amazing.
I'd love to have ya'll come hang out in our IRC channel or even join the mailing list, comment on the site, etc. I think one reason why women's contributions to FOSS projects is so small is because of the segregation into xyz software/linux distrobution -- its easy to feel like you are the only one. But we all often use the same software packages and even if one community has few women, others might have a ton who could offer support and encouragement. I really think that networking with other Linux projects will help increase exposure to women role models and possible mentors.
There are a lot of plans and ideas for Arch Women right now. We still haven't exactly figured everything out yet, (I'm sure thats obvious lol) but I do really think its been worth it so far.
I believe fedora women used to have a website and IRC channel, but I haven't heard much of anything from them in years.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Women
-meskarune (dolores)
Re: My $0.02 worth
Date: 2012-05-22 04:54 am (UTC)AP
Date: 2012-05-22 06:24 am (UTC)When I mentioned that during one heated GSoC related discussion, someone told me that not specifically targeting women and not doing special projects to get women contributing was wrong. He did that rather emotionally.
My argument that we welcome all contributors and never harass women was discarded as irrelevant. I was told I was just plain wrong at not doing extra activity. In fact, I was shouted down.
Do you think this kind of behaviour makes people want to deal with GNOME Women or other kinds of organizations? The way I see it, no.
Yet Another "We Need To Stop Being Sexist Twits" Post
Date: 2012-05-22 06:28 am (UTC)You know, like the rest of the world's employers hold their employees accountable.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 06:31 am (UTC)There's a special form of equality whose advocates seem convinced that as long as what they say is pedantically and explicitly not sexist, then it must not be discriminatory. I'm not accusing you of that here, but it's a pretty weak form of equality.
Use Debian money for outreach program
Date: 2012-05-22 06:35 am (UTC)Re: AP
Date: 2012-05-22 06:52 am (UTC)At a minimum, we should all ensure that the projects we involve ourselves with should welcome all contributors, proscribe harassment, and not ignore bad behavior. If all projects went at least that far, the situation would already become immensely better. Any project refusing to take those steps has serious problems.
In some cases, projects (or more to the point, motivated people within those projects) take the additional step of organizing outreach programs to counteract the massive imbalance in contributors. If people want to take such steps, they absolutely should, and doing so can help provide a more friendly environment and a more active indication that a project really does welcome all contributors. On the other hand, I don't consider it reasonable to call a person or project *wrong* for not taking such steps, as long as the person/project doesn't stand in the way of someone else volunteering to do so. (I've seen cases where people feel so strongly about maintaining $attribute-blindness, for values of $attribute including gender, that those people actively objected to outreach programs and similar; I can understand the reasoning behind such a position, but I consider it unreasonable to block someone *else's* efforts for that reason.)
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 07:04 am (UTC)One thing I wonder about, related to the "most" in your title: do you genuinely believe that *most* people actively create a hostile environment, or is it that it only takes a few people in a particular community to create a hostile environment, and a larger number of people are simply not taking the necessary steps to cluebat the smaller subset?
Re: Use Debian money for outreach program
Date: 2012-05-22 07:05 am (UTC)Thanks for considering,
Zack