Laurabelle’s Blog

My last post (about being a geek) made me think about how attractive female geeks are to many male geeks. Jeff, for example, appreciates my intellect and the fact that I can not only understand what he's talking about but far out-geek him in some areas (such as information science and web development). I don't think he's alone. Who wouldn't want a partner who can understand and share one's interests?

Unfortunately, there do seem to be a number of men who feel that way. A recent article in ComputerWorld discusses the lack of women in open-source projects, the causes of which include chauvinism from some male developers who post or verbalize nasty comments as well as an old boys network that discourages them from taking part in open-source projects. I think some of the discouragement is unconscious and stems merely from male-dominated hacker culture, but some of it is conscious.

For example, the debian-women mailing list (part of the Debian Women Project, whose purpose is to increase women's involvement with Debian) received a large number of identical, abusive messages in July:

From: Death To womens Rights
To: debian-women
Subject: Get the f— out of our hobby, women.
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 16:27:10 -0700 (PDT)

Get the f— out of our hobby, women.
You come here demanding 50% female representation; we
made this f—ing place, b—es. Go to hell, order
around your husband, you don't own us though (and may
your husband cut your head off once you start ordering
him around again).

Linux, Debian, computers, civilization. This was
pretty much all created by men. We don't need you, we
don't want you interfering and taking credit for our
work. Go die in afghani caves, it's where you belong
as that is where you would be living if not for men
dragging your worthless disrespectfull asses with them
as they advanced.

My reaction to this was was roughly wow, what pointless vitriol and stupidity. I don't think it's possible to take this guy seriously, but he did inspire a thread with some great rebuttals:

Jenn Vesperman:

He's obviously very ignorant.

Lady Ada Lovelace.
Grace Hopper.
The thousands of women who did the 'easy' 'women's work' of programming
the ENIAC generation of computers, and the next couple of generations as
well.

And that's just the early-days.

Clytie Siddall:

I think it would be extremely difficult to be so prejudiced without
being ignorant. It takes determination, though. [...]

Physical disability is bad enough: voluntary mental disability is
hard to understand.

Steve Langasek:

Don't kid yourself; this is a cretin who uses every means available to him
(tor, disposable yahoo.com email accounts, etc.) to hide his tracks, so that
nobody can hold him accountable for his disruptive -- and destructive --
behavior.  Of course, like all such cretins, he claims that these are acts
of Free Speech; and like all such cowards, he won't stand up and take the
punch in the face that is his due for such speech.

It is a curious instance of people believing that "free speech" refers to
speech without cost to them. ;-)

He did make a brief nuisance of himself, but I don't think he convinced any woman to stop programming. I wonder where and how he developed that attitude. If he's expressing this hostility, then the same attitudes are probably latent in other parts of the open-source community.

I find it ironic and disturbing that in open-source hacker culture, with its emphasis on self-reliance and progressive thought, also has an undercurrent of misogyny. If women can't even find easy acceptance in the world of open-source software, will the fight against discrimination ever end?

Some people want more women to be involved in open-source projects. I think that's great, but what I really want is for women to be able to join if they want to, unconditionally, without fear of discrimination or aggression.

And while we're at it, can I have true equality for all skin colors, ethnicities, religions, sexual identities, and every other possible category of people? Thanks so much.