La la la, I can’t hear you!
There’s a post over at Slashdot, FOSS Sexism Claims Met with Ire and Denial (warning: the discussion has gotten large, which means the page takes a while to load) that’s prompted some interesting discussion. (FOSS = Free, Open Source Software) Basically, someone wrote an article about sexism within the FOSS movement, as well as a followup article about the responses to his first article, and was met with a…less than enthousiastic reaction:
Raise the subject of sexism, and you are met with illogic that I can only compare to that of the tobacco companies trying to deny the link between their products and cancer. Because I took a feminist stance in public, I have been abused in every way possible — being called irrelevant, a saboteur, coward, homosexual, and even a betrayer of the community.
As Slashdot is a mostly-male discussion site, I expected resistance to any claims of sexism, and wasn’t disappointed. To be fair, some of them were totally legit, indicating that the examples given in the article weren’t representative of the community as a whole:
If I haven’t seen it, and no around me has seen it, isn’t the onus on you to give some more proof other than, “Really, guys! Sexism in OSS is real!”
At the same time, there were a lot of people who missed the point, and trying to find examples of tactics listed at Derailing for Dummies quickly got old – there were just too many of them.
However, there were also some great comments in support of the idea that maybe, just maybe, the highly educated and libertarian individuals who tend toward FOSS can also be sexist, and that simply dismissing cries of sexism isn’t really helpful.
Feminists say that the structure of society and individuals’ prejudices make it more difficult for women to succeed in (e.g.) the workplace than men. Your response to that seems to be “Get used to it. You’ll get a lot farther by growing a backbone than by bitching.” This is only true in the short term, if its true at all. Tomorrow’s women will be better off if we, today, address the prejudices than if today’s women merely “grow a backbone.
From ObsessiveMathsFreak, responding to this claim: “So if only 1.5% of developers are women … but fewer than 0.1% of comments on development mailing lists are sexist … what is the real “problem” that exists?”
Allow me to answer your question, with a question.
If only 1.5% of your cake consisted of strawberries …. but fewer than 0.1% of your cake consisted of feces, what is the real problem with your cake?
And my own (slightly longer…) response to the same claim:
I’m not going to argue with the idea that only 0.1% of comments in the FOSS movement are sexist, because you’re probably right: the vast majority of interaction and discussion in the FOSS is not sexist. What I think you’re overlooking, however, is that there isn’t a threshold for sexism. Sexism is an issue of perception, not of percentages. For example, simply because we have female politicians doesn’t mean that politics isn’t also a sexist field.
The problem trying to be solved is the feeling of exclusion by some women from the FOSS movement. For example, I’m having difficulty finding apologies for the examples of sexism people are linking to. That’s not an issue of numbers, but an issue of perception. It tells me, a woman, that people in the FOSS will make mistakes. But everyone makes mistakes – that’s not a deal-breaker. But it also tells me that members of the FOSS movement will be reluctant to apologize for their mistakes, and that can become a deal-breaker.
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think those standards are unreasonable. I don’t shun or reject friends, family, coworkers, whomever, simply because they carelessly said something hurtful or offensive. But if they A) don’t acknowledge what they said is problematic and B) refuse to apologize, I eventually will decide to remove myself from situations where I have to interact with them. That’s what the issue seems to be here. Not merely that FOSS has issues with sexist jokes – western culture has an issue with sexist jokes – but that a movement which, to me, has connected itself with ideals of rights and equality isn’t able or willing to apologize about them.
And, from superdana, unfortunately far down the discussion:
It is quite amusing to read an entire page of comments by men who think that their gender doesn’t limit their perspective on this issue. That demonstrates the very root of the problem: maleness is still the default, the essential; a woman’s perspective is considered especially different from a man’s but the reverse is never true. With very few exceptions, all of the comments on this article reveal an attitude that the male perspective is complete and true while the female perspective is a special subset.
Slashdot is one of the least female-friendly places on the Internet, so this conversation is basically hopeless no matter what. But let me share with you some anti-feminist clichés (courtesy of jezebel.com) so we can at least get them out of the way now.
- Feminists can’t take a joke. The problem is not that feminists can’t take a joke. (We can.) The problem is that you can’t take feminists seriously.
- Some girls like [X], so it must be okay. Men often disagree on things. Women do too. One woman’s disagreement does not invalidate the opinions of every other woman.
- Criticizing misogyny is a waste of time. This might actually be true here.
- Feminists have no lives. The implication here seems to be that feminists had to have suffered some great personal disappointment. Sorry, no; I just have to endure cat calls from sleazy strangers on my walk to work, get interrupted in meetings (and then get pigeonholed as a bitch for standing up for myself), and frequently have to put up with people who are blind to their own privilege. I really, really wish that my having a life would make this all stop.
It really wasn’t surprising that most of the comments in the discussion seemed to boil down to, “There isn’t an issue, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.” (Which is just as bad as their claims that the author of the articles was saying, “There is an issue, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.”) I was pleased, however, to see posts (like the ones quotes above) that didn’t go in that direction, and that were still moderated up.
random, theory
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feminism, foss, technology
Themocracy