On Sexism
The ongoing debate about Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote at the Linux Plumber’s Conference has been bothering me for a little while now, but I’ve been avoiding posting until now.
Before I do, let me make one thing clear (as if it wasn’t already), I am a gay man.
Mark is a heterosexual man. In his LPC keynote he is accused of sexism because in his keynote he said that making Linux easier to understand would make it easier for him to explain what he does to girls.
Now, let’s pretend for a moment that I’d gave that keynote. Let’s pretend that I’d said that that making Linux easier would make it easier for me to explain what I did to boys.
Would there be this uproar?
Oh they’d be an uproar alright, but it wouldn’t be about sexism – the homophobic right of our community would be throwing their bibles out of their prams with vigour!
But nothing about sexism!
In fact the very people who are currently attacking Mark would be defending me as a gay man for right to say things like that. And if they didn’t I could cheerfully accuse them of homophobia.
And that’s why this bothers me.
If Mark was sexist, than he’s sexist for only being attracted to women and understandably caring what they think of him. That’s not sexism, that’s biology!
Sometimes a spade is just a spade.
Sometimes when a man says that he likes girls, HE LIKES GIRLS!
If your complaint is that he uses “girls” to mean “women” then you need to get (a) in touch with some mystical arbiter of the colloquial English language & (b) a grip.
I suspect this has ended my chances of ever being offered a Keynote (not that I ever have) and that Linux Today will now claim I should resign (I don’t work directly for mdz, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for him) then so be it.
And this is why the outcry bothers me.
@andy: that’s kind of a common fallacy. Should the police not worry about fraudsters because there’s muggers out there? Should they not worry about muggers because there’s bank robbers? Actually, forget the bank robbers, there’s rapists out there. Whoops, no, there’s murderers. Then mass murderers. Then genocidists.
You can get rid of virtually any inconvenient problem you don’t want to worry about by saying oh, well, there’s something more important to care about, but if you were to try and hold everyone to that standard, everyone in the world would be a hypocrite. We don’t spend our every waking moment worrying about how to solve world hunger and end oppression, so either we’re all terrible people or you need to give up that argument.
@Adam Williamson
Notice it says “sex joke” not “sexist joke”. I do not think his comment was sexist. I have already explained my opinion on this issue, in a blog post over two weeks ago: http://www.mattjones.workhorsy.org/2009/09/23/mark-respects-girls/
In practically every interview Mark has done, he has said sex related or crude jokes. If you don’t like what he is saying, then get up leave. No one should have to censor themselves with the level of political correctness, that as being requested here. And it is not their fault, if you are offended.
matt: whatever the merits (or otherwise) of making “sex related or crude jokes” in a serious software development keynote, making sexist and prostitution-related jokes is different.
Hey Scott,
I don’t think you can be accused of sexism if you talk about your own sex.
And this is probably a high level sexism debate. The sexism in the statement is that he would have to explain his work to girls or women and not to boys or men.
Greetings from Germany
Tim
@Tim: sure you can ! If a woman says something like “women are best left home caring for the kids”, isn’t that sexism ? Likewise, if a black man says bad about black people, that’s still racism.
@Stefan:
Okay, it might be sexism, but that statement wouldn’t be that explosive.
It is always sexism, as long as you talk about differences in genders, i think. And even if your statement is positive, it would be some positive discrimination.
Am I right?
Great post Scott, the funny thing is that if you weren’t gay, the things you said would be frowned upon.
Too many people have agendas and chips on their shoulders, the fact that biology and upbringing makes people different is lost on most people, especially when someone stumbles on one of their world view tripwires.
I’m just sick of reading “sexism issues in FOSS”, I want to read about technology.
I hope your post gets read and understood.
Matt
Tim: no. sexism is specifically negative discrimination. Mark’s comment is sexist because, while referring to ‘we’ to mean all F/OSS developers, he said that making some particular improvements to Linux distributions “would make it easier for us to explain what we do to girls”. This implies that the ‘we’ in question – again, that’s all F/OSS developers – are straight men, and it also implies that women find it particularly hard to understand what F/OSS development involves. The statement’s meaning – not necessarily its _intent_ – is to exclude women from the possibility of being F/OSS developers.
Matt: see above, and my earlier comment. Scott’s post is not great, as it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of what Mark actually said.
What is the opposite of “boys’ if not “girls”?
Meneer:
Stereotypes are part-and-parcel of sexism. Also, geek hasn’t been an insult in a while. “Socially awkward idiot?” What? Hell no! First, it implies intelligence, not idiocy. Second, it’s about intense interest and possibly expertise in a specific field. It’s a compliment second only to “hacker” in my mind.
Don’t worry, I find women’s magazines overwhelmingly insulting too
RVA: Matt took Mark aside in private after the keynote.
Adam:
-isms do not have to be negative. Even “all Asians are good at math,” a “positive” stereotype, is bad. It means that if you’re a Chinese kid who’s bad at math, you feel extra-fail-y.
How do you know Shuttleworth is heterosexual?
“This implies that the ‘we’ in question – again, that’s all F/OSS developers – are straight men, and it also implies that women find it particularly hard to understand what F/OSS development involves.”
There’s no implication of this sort at all in his statement. Rather it is an inference taken by some the hearers. Especially regarding the “ALL” part of your comment. The reactions say a lot more about the people reacting then they say about Mark.
Everyone’s doing a fine job at answering this already, but I’ll chime in as also being disappointed by Scott’s post:
* Mark said *we’d* have an easier time explaining what *we* do to girls. He was talking for you, and he was talking for me, and he was talking as a leading role model in free software. Don’t you think there’s something wrong with announcing that you consider your audience to consist of heterosexual men, and that anyone else should feel like they don’t exist, or only exist to be the target of jokes about how they don’t understand how computers work?
* The reason there would be no outcry if you said the same thing about “boys” is that there isn’t already a pervasive and damaging stereotype of “boys” as being unable to use computers. People would just stare and say “Huh?”. The fact that they react with laughter when “girls” are the target of the joke, but would not for “boys”, is *evidence* that a stereotype exists and is being invoked.
My memory is that Mark didn’t refer to himself “talking to girls about what I do”, but to the audience or community in general “talking to girls about what we do”.
Mackenzie: fair point, sorry.
Mike: well, the ‘explaining what we do to girls’ rather suggests it, doesn’t it?
Aoirthoir: I don’t see how you can interpret that ‘we’ in any other way. Listen to the whole context in the speech. He talks about ‘we’ improving support for printers, wireless adapters, video cards…how is it not sexist for the ‘we’ who do all that work to be identified as exclusively male? How is it not reasonable to consider that ‘we’ as referring to the F/OSS development community in general? What other group of people could it refer to?
Adam I will quote again:
“This implies that the ‘we’ in question – again, that’s all F/OSS developers – are straight men, and it also implies that women find it particularly hard to understand what F/OSS development involves.”
The “we” in question can be *inferred* any way a person chooses to infer it. Implications are what a person *intends* to be understood in one manner or another even in cases of a deliberate double meaning, comedy, slight of speech or plain old direct meaning. Inferences are what a person *interprets* a person as having meant, even if the person did not mean what is inferred in any fashion whatsoever.
In no case was Mark *implying* that women are not capable at tech or are incapable of working with Free Software, despite the numbers of people that are choosing to infer that is what he meant. As I said in my original comment, especially when you use the word *all*. To believe that Mark was trying to imply, suggest, believe, claim, promote, or in any other manner state, that *ALL* women are incapable of tech is to practice by definition transference.
So feel free to *infer* anything you want from his speech, that won’t change what he was *implying* and says more about you, than it does about Mark.
@Aoirthoir:
All you’re doing is stating a belief that you care more about what the person causing offense might have meant than what the (many) people who received offense felt. Why is that valuable or interesting? Apologies aren’t self-destructive things to give to other people — they make you feel better, because you don’t feel so bad about having made other people feel hurt, and they reassure the people you’re giving them to that you care more about them than your careless words led them to infer.
It’s not unreasonable to ask for an apology in cases where many people feel hurt and marginalized. Apologies don’t cost anything to give, and a community’s leaders should be especially willing to give them, since people who don’t know everyone in the community may use the leaders’ spoken thoughts as a proxy for the whole group’s views.
Aoirthoir: in addition to what Chris said, your logic is simply faulty. The fact that something is implied by a statement doesn’t mean that you can’t be entirely sure that the statement actually has that meaning, as you seem to be assuming.
If I state that ‘all sunflowers are yellow’, I haven’t definitely stated that any _particular_ sunflower is yellow. I have only _implied_ that any given sunflower is yellow. However, you can’t interpret my statement in any other way. I couldn’t protest that, sure, I said all sunflowers are yellow, but I didn’t actually mean _your_ sunflower is yellow. That would be a nonsensical position. One of the two statements I’d made _must_ be nonsense, in the strict meaning of that word as it applies to argumentation.
Mark’s words do not explicitly _state_ that all the developers to whom he is referring are men. But they do _imply_ it. That’s not a subjective position – it doesn’t depend on interpretation that’s up for debate. The only way you can possibly interpret those words to have any coherent meaning relies upon that idea. It’s not a case where one person might infer some particular meaning from his statement, and another person might reasonably infer another. If you infer any _other_ meaning from it, you haven’t understood the statement correctly, you are making an undisputable _error_ of interpretation.
This doesn’t mean that Mark _consciously intended_ that his statement have the result of offending women. No-one is suggesting that he did. But the actual meaning of the words he said is not the same thing as the intent behind them.
He implied that one gender would not be able to understand open source software.
It doesn’t matter what gender he was refering to, what gender he is or what gender he wants to have sexual relationships with.
Men and women are equally able to understand technology regardless of their sexual preferences. He implied they weren’t.
“All you’re doing is stating a belief that you care more about what the person causing offense might have meant than what the (many) people who received offense felt.”
Nope. That’s what you’re *inferring* I’ve stated. I’ve made no such statements, either outright or by implication. Rather, I’ve made to main statements (not by implication or inference but by stating outright). First is that an inference does not an implication make. Second that Mark was not implying what others have inferred he implied in regards to the abilities of women.
The conclusions I’ve drawn, outright, not by inference or implication, is that those that infer someone meant something which the person neither said, nor implied, say more about themselves, than about the person they are referencing.
“It’s not unreasonable to ask for an apology in cases where many people feel hurt and marginalized.”
I made no statement for, or against an apology.
“If I state that ‘all sunflowers are yellow’, I haven’t definitely stated that any _particular_ sunflower is yellow.I have only _implied_ that any given sunflower is yellow.”
Actually you have not *implied* anything, you have stated it outright. Mark made no such statement outright, nor did he imply anything about *all* women or women as a group.
“Mark’s words do not explicitly _state_ that all the developers to whom he is referring are men. But they do _imply_ it. ”
You are playing bait and switch here. I never made a claim regarding the gender or sex of the developers he was speaking to, either outright, by implication or by inference. So I will quote what I said:
“In no case was Mark *implying* that women are not capable at tech or are incapable of working with Free Software, despite the numbers of people that are choosing to infer that is what he meant.”
I infer from both of your statements that you hate the Sidhe, dislike buck tooth people, want to eat Coffee Ice Cream and are willing to work with the Illuminati to destroy all life on earth. Of course, I’m lucid enough to realize that what I *infer* you are *meaning*, despite being completely contrary to your *actual* words, are not what you’ve *implied*.
aoirthoir: you’re the one playing bait and switch. You’ve suddenly started talking about capabilities – no one else has made any reference to this. I’m not saying that Mark stated or implied women aren’t capable of developing F/OSS. Neither, as far as I’m aware, is anyone else. Where did you get that from?
You also suddenly started talking about ‘the developers he was speaking to’, which is nothing I or anyone else brought up. I said ‘the developers to whom he is referring’. That’s not the same thing.
You continue to use the word ‘mean’, which is unfortunately ambiguous in this context. As far as I can tell, you are _still_ using it in the context of intent, which is not what I’m talking about. I’d prefer not to use the word ‘mean’ at all. Mark probably did not intend for his statement to imply that the people doing the work to which he referred are all men. However, that _is_ what his statement implies. Whether he intended it or not, the words he said imply that.
“You’ve suddenly started talking about capabilities – no one else has made any reference to this.”
No suddenly about it. It was the statement I made originally. Further, it is exactly one of the complaints that some folks have made.
“Mark probably did not intend for his statement to imply that the people doing the work to which he referred are all men. However, that _is_ what his statement implies. Whether he intended it or not, the words he said imply that.”
Right. So then it was not an implication at all, but an inference of those listening to him.
No. it is an implication. His statement makes no sense unless the ‘we’ in question are all male. If the ‘we’ included members of both sexes, the bit about ‘explaining what we do to girls’ would just not make any sense. It doesn’t depend on a subjective and questionable interpretation. It’s the only possible way to interpret the sentence. Implication, not inferral.
We do agree that there was likely no malicious intent behind the statement. No-one’s ever said there was. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause harm.
@Adam Williamson
Nope. He was talking about the work ubuntu is doing in the area of design. The “we” is clearly referring to people in the ubuntu project. Since he was talking about explaining what ubuntu is trying to do to a potential date, it makes perfect sense.
Once again, you are not understanding his intent. You are talking in circles.
“If the ‘we’ included members of both sexes, the bit about ‘explaining what we do to girls’ would just not make any sense. ”
Sure it does. It all depends on the person speaking. I for instance alternate my pronouns and nouns when speaking about persons. Sometimes I will use neuter nouns, sometimes male, sometimes female and sometimes plural. I alternate with deliberate intent, *even* when the gender is presumed by another. Because I do this often, and because I am around a plethora of persons that likewise alternate language in such fashions, I never make the kinds of inferences about another’s speech patterns or believe that any inference I would make are actually implied by the speaker.
Matthew, please do not confuse anyone with the facts.
@Aoirthoir An broc
Yeah really. The part about “we” is probably the most unambiguous part of what he said. To interpret is a “us men” is just silly.
matt: he wasn’t talking about design, he was talking about device drivers. Not that important, though. still, I’m interested why you think it would be any less sexist if his statement assumed that all ‘people in the Ubuntu project’ must be men?
once again, I’ve been saying for seventy three gazillion posts that neither I or anyone else thinks Mark had a conscious intent of saying something that would be insulting towards women. Given that, I really don’t know why you and Aoirthoir et al keep bringing up the issue of intent. No-one is arguing with you about intent. There is no disagreement on the topic of intent. Regarding the issue of intent, we are in accord. Is that clear enough? Can I explain it in any other way for you?
oh, and I’m not talking in circles. I am repeating myself a lot. This is very tiresome and I’d rather not have to do it, but it seems like Aoirthoir still doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say. I’m patient.
aoirthoir: that sounds like an excellent way to confuse the hell out of people, but be it as it may, if you watch Mark’s entire speech, he does not display anything like that speech pattern. So bringing up the way _you_ speak when we’re not talking about anything you said seems a bit irrelevant.
There was no reason to use a gender-specific word in the statement in question – which is, let’s remind ourselves, ‘we’d have less trouble explaining to girls what we do’ – unless the gender were somehow important. If gender didn’t matter, he could as easily have said ‘we’d have less trouble explaining to people what we do’. That’s a perfectly sensible statement. There’s no _need_ to pick a gender-specific word, so no need to argue over why he picked one gender rather than the other, and whether it was just coincidence or serendipity or whatever that he picked a female-specific word rather than a male-specific one. He didn’t need to pick any gender at all. The fact that a gender-specific word was used at all means the gender is important to the statement.
(my Flash appears to be on the fritz, so I can’t re-watch the talk at this particular moment, or else I’d provide a more extensive transcript for context).
matthew: I’m not interpreting the ‘we’ as ‘us men’, directly. Never said that. What I did say is quite clear, I’m really not sure why you have any trouble understanding it. The ‘we’, in context, means F/OSS developers (or Ubuntu developers, or whatever hair you want to split, it doesn’t really matter). The problem is that placing that ‘we’ in opposition to the later gender-specific noun ‘girls’ makes it gender-specific. It identifies the ‘we’ in question – the developers – as male.
Imagine you’re a female F/OSS developer (or, again, Ubuntu project member, or yadda yadda). How do you consider yourself to be included in that ‘we’? As a female F/OSS developer, do you often find yourself trying to pick up girls and having trouble explaining what your job is? No. No, you probably don’t. So you’re excluded from Mark’s ‘we’. You’ve suddenly become a non-person! Wouldn’t you find that a bit jarring?
To take an argument from someone who used it in a different thread – imagine Mark had said ‘we’d have less trouble explaining to people called Matthew what we do’. But you’re called Matthew, and you’re an F/OSS developer! Why is this guy’s statement assuming that people called Matthew can’t possibly be in the F/OSS developer group? Why are you being left out? Why would only people who aren’t called Matthew be F/OSS developers?
“Given that, I really don’t know why you and Aoirthoir et al keep bringing up the issue of intent. No-one is arguing with you about intent.”
By using the language that Mark *implied* this or that, you are exactly speaking of intent. Since you claim you are not arguing intent, then you should use the accurate word “infer”.
“but it seems like Aoirthoir still doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say. I’m patient.”
No, you’re redundant and inaccurate. It’s not our fault that your using language incorrectly.
“aoirthoir: that sounds like an excellent way to confuse the hell out of people,”
It’s not confusing at all.
” but be it as it may, if you watch Mark’s entire speech, he does not display anything like that speech pattern. So bringing up the way _you_ speak when we’re not talking about anything you said seems a bit irrelevant.”
It’s completely relevant in light of your claim “If the ‘we’ included members of both sexes, the bit about ‘explaining what we do to girls’ would just not make any sense. ” It doesn’t make sense to someone that would consider gender bending terms confusing. It makes perfect sense to those of us who use such language regularly. Thus, it’s fully relevant. You *interpreted* his remarks one way. I interpreted in a completely different manner.
“The fact that a gender-specific word was used at all means the gender is important to the statement.”
No it doesn’t.
“(my Flash appears to be on the fritz, so I can’t re-watch the talk at this particular moment, or else I’d provide a more extensive transcript for context).”
Uh huh. How convenient for you. (See *that’s* an implication, infer from it what you shall.)
“The problem is that placing that ‘we’ in opposition to the later gender-specific noun ‘girls’ makes it gender-specific. It identifies the ‘we’ in question – the developers – as male.”
No it doesn’t.
“Why is this guy’s statement assuming that people called Matthew can’t possibly be in the F/OSS developer group?”
Mark’s statement made no such assumptions. But you’re contradicting your earlier statement:
“I’m not saying that Mark stated or implied women aren’t capable of developing F/OSS. Neither, as far as I’m aware, is anyone else.”
@Adam Williamson
Huh. I would have interpreted “happy ending” just as “orgasm”. What an odd figure of speech. I guess you learn something every day…. :/
This whole debacle got on slashdot as well http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/12/1512238/FOSS-Sexism-Claims-Met-With-Ire-and-Denial
There are some interesting comments.
@Aoirthoir:
Okay, we get it: you want to invalidate the offense that people received by showing that they invented it, and that any time people think there is an obvious consequence to a statement, it’s their choice whether to go forward and extrapolate from the statement to its consequence, and the fact that they have the choice means that they’re responsible for the offense rather than the person who made the obviously-extrapolated-from statement. (If this is not in fact your argument, please elaborate on which parts of it you disagree with.)
I don’t want to be premature, but I’d say tentatively that this appears to be the least useful idea of all time. Are you honestly advocating that in cases where we don’t understand how a sentence evoked hurt feelings and marginalization in a group of people with a different life experience to us, we should feel free to ignore it and dismiss it as not what the speaker meant? What kind of a community results from doing that? How can it be argued that this would be an ethical way to act?
Matt Zimmerman wrote a blog post on the White Boy test back in June that presciently describes why Mark’s statements are harmful. I encourage you to read Matt’s post and try acting in the sensitive way that he advocates:
Aoirthoir: you’re the one using language incorrectly. The difference between an implication and an inferral is not one of deliberate intent on the part of the speaker. The words Mark said are sexist by implication. This does not mean Mark *intended* to cause offence, but it doesn’t change the fact that he did.
On your last point – you’re right, I didn’t say that very well. I should have said “Why is this guy’s remark assuming that there aren’t any guys called Matthew in the F/OSS development group?” Sorry.
See? I phrased something slightly wrong, you pointed it out, I acknowledged it and said sorry. No-one’s dead, and I don’t feel mortally shamed. That wasn’t very hard.
Erm, you’re all involved in a battle of semantics, over what was meant or not by the statement, whether it is sexist or not.
When I went to university all my technical classes were underpopulated by women, the same way that now I’m working in medicine-statistics-biology I’m surrounded by women, with men being few and far between.
In my experience (that is nowhere near as valid as a census or survey), women are less interested in technology hence it is more probable to find people who are not proficient with technology in the female group.
Now if you think the two paragraphs I just wrote are sexist, you need to have your head checked, because it is just mere factual observation. And nowhere is it implied that women are less proficient with technology when they chose to take an interest to it.
Now what Shuttleworth said may have been less than optimum, true, but it stems from an observed situation and underlines a problem.
You think his comment stigmatizes women, I think you’re pushing it.
But most of all, accept, cherish and respect the difference between men and women because there are some.
Can we all move on now, these discussions are not going to get more women using free software, nor do I think people are going to move to windows or MacOS because of them.
Just my 2c
Matt
“You think his comment stigmatizes women, I think you’re pushing it. ”
So, we should value your belief about what effect his statement has on women more than the stated opinion of multiple women who heard it? That’s an…interesting perspective. Why?
“Can we all move on now, these discussions are not going to get more women using free software”
Wow, because you’re tired of the topic we should all stop trying? You make it so clear to me! I’ll just happily accept that we’ll never have more than a tiny minority of women involved in F/OSS and hence lose over 50% of our potential talent pool, and move on to something really *important*. Gee, thanks for opening my eyes. (Side note: it’s not about using, it’s about contributing. last I checked, most people were quite keen on the idea of contribution. Sort of vital to the whole point, as I understand it.)
“Okay, we get it: you want to invalidate the offense that people received by showing that they invented it, ”
Nope. First, you don’t get to tell me what my *feelings* are or what I *want* anymore than I get to tell another what zer feelings are. This is a classic marginalization and dismissive technique. Nice try though.
“Are you honestly advocating that in cases where we don’t understand how a sentence evoked hurt feelings and marginalization in a group of people with a different life experience to us, we should feel free to ignore it and dismiss it as not what the speaker meant?”
That’s your inference, not my implication. I am advocating that appropriate language be used.
“Aoirthoir: you’re the one using language incorrectly. The difference between an implication and an inferral is not one of deliberate intent on the part of the speaker.”
Yes it is.
“The words Mark said are sexist by implication.”
The sexism or lack thereof of his statements was not detailed at all in my comments. Since you’re playing bait and switch again, I’ll *again* quote myself:
“In no case was Mark *implying* that women are not capable at tech or are incapable of working with Free Software, despite the numbers of people that are choosing to infer that is what he meant.”
Finally,
“This does not mean Mark *intended* to cause offence, but it doesn’t change the fact that he did.”
I was not talking about the emotive (valid or otherwise) response that Mark intended to create in others. I specifically talked about what *meaning* he intended to convey, compared to the *interpretation* others took away. (*implication* vs *inference*).
Further, Mark did not *cause* offence. Rather, people *took* offence. Offence is *always* taken (and yes that includes when I’m offended, it is offence I have taken.)
“He implied that one gender would not be able to understand open source software.”
Nope, he *stated* that certain persons would not be able to *explain* what they did to other persons. That talks to the explainers abilities, not the listeners.
“So, we should value your belief about what effect his statement has on women more than the stated opinion of multiple women who heard it? That’s an…interesting perspective. Why?”
Mine isn’t a belief its an opinion, which I’ll happily have rebuked with given reason.
I’d like to know, of the women who were exposed to this “poisonous statement” what percentage was hurt by it, and how many were hurt by it after their attention was brought to it with the subscript of “you need to be offended by this”. BTW my simpathy to those that feel hurt, but (opinion follows) I don’t think there’s much to be hurt about.
“I’ll just happily accept that we’ll never have more than a tiny minority of women involved in F/OSS and hence lose over 50% of our potential talent pool, and move on to something really *important*.”
You’re potential talent pool isn’t (unless proven contrary by surveys I don’t know of) made of 50% women. Now if you want to discuss that there is a higher percentage of females in non F/OSS then there’s something to discuss.
“Side note: it’s not about using, it’s about contributing.”
From my point of view its about getting users first, contributions later. There’s a higher percentage of possible female users and a bigger base. Contributors are usually people who have an interest and know how in technology, they’ve already chosen, whatever their species.
It’s left to be seen whether they’ll do F/OSS (see point 2).
Isn’t there some sort of ethical conduct regulation that sais something along the lines of “everything said should be interpreted as having the bestest of intentions and the meaning most positivest possible” that makes all this discussion moot in the first place. ;P
My point is that energy should be directed towards positive action to find ways to interest more women towards what is beign done in F/OSS (which is being done by some groups as far as I know), rather than disecting statements that could possibly be considered sexist or not.
Again just my 2c
Ush, don’t engage with Aoirthoir. He’s banned from the Ubuntu-Women irc channel with good reason. Some of his more choice opinions include that “women are shit programmers and lazy as fuck” – from a post where he agrees extensively with our pal MikeeUSA :/
-Leigh
“Isn’t there some sort of ethical conduct regulation that sais something along the lines of “everything said should be interpreted as having the bestest of intentions and the meaning most positivest possible” that makes all this discussion moot in the first place. ;P”
Nope, because again, that speaks to _intent_, not result. You could bring that guideline into play if people were saying that Mark intended to demean women, or that Mark’s remark means he’s an intrinsically sexist person. That would be a bad thing to do, and the guideline you cite would be a good thing to draw into the conversation to explain why. But no-one’s doing that.
Again, too often you (your side of the argument) seems to be working from the denial-by-default position that the feminist side needs to prove incontrovertibly that any statement they identify as problematic was actually sexist, there’s no wiggle room, and they must convince 100% of everyone in the world that they’re right, or the fact that anyone else disagrees means they’re wrong and can be ignored. This is placing all the onuses exactly wrong.
This isn’t a case of women fighting for access to some awesome privileged group, and the privileged group having all the power to demand legal standards of proof before they change any of their behaviour. This is a case where there’s a group that wants to attract as many people as possible, and is almost entirely failing to attract _anyone at all_ from a certain group. When members of that group show up and volunteer to try and help us understand why we’re failing to attract those people, the sensible response is not to default to suspicion and denial and refuse to accept anything they say unless it’s backed up in triplicate with detailed legal proofs and peer-reviewed hundred-thousand people surveys, it’s to say ‘hey, thanks for the pointers, maybe we’ll think about that’.
Adam, thank you — that’s exactly it. I’d really love it if we backed off from seeing it as an attack, but the problem stands: If we’re going to see a naked body in a presentation, it’s going to be more like mine than like most men’s. If we hear someone as an example of a less-technically-able group, it’s more likely to be an aunt, sister or mother than an uncle, brother or father. It’s got to change. Mark made a pretty innocuous comment — one I find even a tad amusing, with his shy, wry, understatement — though the failure to apologize for the implication of it irks me a bit.
But it’s not Mark himself who needs to change. It’s the constant barrage, and that’s going to take a community effort.
[...] thought that Chris’s post covered pretty much everything I would have said, but after reading Scott’s entry on how people would have interpreted Mark’s remarks differently if he’d said [...]
Leigh: Ugh. Thanks for letting us know.
Matt, good points all around. The two points that are most important though are regarding the numbers of folks that felt offended after they were told to feel offended. Considering that most of the blog posts admit to posting, *not having even heard the actual speech* is telling. They’re judging not on content but on opinions of others.
Secondly there was a time that one would assume first that a person was well intentioned with miniscule statements. So I am with you on first assuming they mean well and then going from their. But, making such an assumption does not lend itself well to victimology.
Leigh,
You should read my post there you linked to more fully. MikeUSA was making the claim that the bible authorized a father to force his daughter to marry her rapist. Indeed it *does* do so. Several others in the thread and on the site were denying this fact. I was merely correcting their false claim. You should have noted that this law was one of the things that caused me to discard Christianity.
As to his claims that FOSS doesn’t *need* women, well if the claims are factual, that only 1% or 2% of FOSS developers are women, that would lead one to wonder, how it’s gotten so far without women if it *has* to have women. What Free Software needs is not men, (waepmen or wombmen or any other sex or gender), but rather developers that are skilled and produce needed software.
One final quote from the article “Except, that foss developers are all jack asses.” Nuff said.
Ignoring that you did still say that “women are shit programmers and lazy as fuck. There are some that learn, write good code, and produce a lot of code. But most are fuck all terrible at it.”… FOSS doesn’t just need developers. Newsflash: it also needs users, documenters, people to do support, people to report bugs.
If there’s one reason among the many to fight sexism, it’s so that we can reach more people, in more places and fields, with the idea that software should be free-as-in-freedom. If you can’t see that, that’s fine – just please stop trying to derail every conversation those of us who do think it’s a problem try to have about sexism. Go back to writing code, if you actually know how in anything besides COBOL. Or contribute to support, documentation, etc.
As for most FOSS developers being jackasses, well, most people are point blank from what I’ve seen. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try harder not to be
People just keep on looking for things to get upset about. Where do you get all the time?
Aoirthoir: That biblical law is to the advantage of men, why do you dislike it? If a man wants an unmarried/unbetrothed* female for a wife, according to the Biblical law, he can have her. Choice is good when it is in the hands of men wishing to do the choosing.
*Bethrotal in that time was the young female living with her husband for 1 year prior to the marraige. Kindof like today’s live-in-fiancee thing, exept she dared not be a bitch to the man.
It would have been less degrading to 50% of the population, if Mark had said, ‘explain to his friends’ or ‘girl friends’. At least he would not have debased everyone that isn’t like him. Smart people say dumb things. Ho hum. But, from what I’ve read about S. Africa, Mark seems to be a product of his environment.
When people pigeon hole other people, I often thing of this quote:
“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering.” – Dr. Who
Leigh,
Yes I did say that. I’ve also said EXACTLY THE SAME THING about male programmers. As regards your silly “newsflash”, that’s EXACTLY THE SAME THING I keep saying. In fact if you’ve actually read my posts you would have seen that.
As to derailing, just about any time a claim of sexism is made, and someone disagrees, the claims *HAVE* to be that the person is derailing. Nope. We’re just disagreeing. See, I AM a sexist, and as such I recognize sexist behavior. Mark’s actions don’t qualify. (Mine certainly do. But then I’m more than sexist, I’m everything-ist. In fact I’ve concluded that the rest of humanity pales in comparison to my greatness, so *TECHNICALLY* I’m an aoirthoirist.)
Finally “As for most FOSS developers being jackasses, well, most people are point blank from what I’ve seen. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try harder not to be”
Agreed. Why though should we try harder not to be? We shouldn’t and here’s the reason. Whether someone is a jackass or not is ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE. I’ve met the nicest folks that others INSISTED prior to my meeting them that they were jackasses. And I’ve met the most ludicrous people that were almost always treating everyone else with disdain and folks thought they were wonderful.
In the case of Free Software, merely refusing to add features can have you called a jackass. I for instance do not distribute my software in the wild. But ALL of the software I write is freed to the company or person or client I write it for. Occasionally I use the software on other projects. So when someone does occasionally get hold of my software and ask for additions, I generally don’t accommodate, I just don’t have time to work for gratis in addition to the gratis work I am already doing. So that makes me a jackass to them. Why then should I “try harder not to be [a jackass in their mind]” and just give them whatever they want of my time?
Stoffe, Yup. Feminists are noted for that. Go spend some time on feministing.com. You’ll notice that if a company creates a pink product BECAUSE OF DEMAND for it, they will make a post, accuse the company of HATING women and that post will acquire 50, 60, 100 or more comments agreeing with steamed ears. But then someone will make a post about women being murdered in Africa and you’re lucky to see 3 posts. So much for intersectionality.
MikeUSA, As I’ve said before I do not believe the Biblical law that allows a man to force his daughter to marry her rapist IS beneficial for men. It is perhaps beneficial to SOME men (the rapist) in that he then has the woman he wants without regard to anyone else. (Though I would state that since the Biblical law forbids divorce in this case it’s not even beneficial to the rapist). In reality though every culture that has allowed women to be enslaved, has likewise allowed men to be enslaved and stripped EVERYONE of their autonomy. Governments in such areas have carte blanc to do whatever they want and they’ve used it freely.
DJ,
Mark didn’t degrade anyone. There are some broads that no matter how you speak, no matter how respectful you are to them, no matter how much you cater to their entitlements, are still going to be upset.
Also, how Nationalistic of you to state:
“But, from what I’ve read about S. Africa, Mark seems to be a product of his environment.”
right after you stated that smart people say dumb things. Which is also very ABLEIST of you.
When will you Feminists and Feminist Supporters understand it is NOT OK to practice one ism in defense of another ism? So far on these Ubuntu Feminists blogs I’ve seen:
Racism,
Classism,
Nationism,
Ableism
Sexism
Ageism
Homophobia
Queerphobia
Bi-phobia
Polyphobia
Anti-Christianism
Anti-Paganism
Anti-Satanism
Anti-Islamism
and otherisms
all used to defend women. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it folks. If you stand up and demand that you or a particular group be treated with respect, then you are required AT LEAST DURING YOUR DEMAND to treat ALL groups with respect. Calling people who are sexist “dumb” or saying they say “dumb” things as a way to object to their comments DEMEANS persons that cannot speak. Saying someone is INSANE or CRAZY because you disagree with what they say (whether what they say is right or wrong0 DEMEANS persons with mental illness.
So you DEMAND that folks like Mark change his language, how about starting with the person in the mirror?
But let me tell you what will follow my comments (if anything follows) and what will not follow. What will follow if anyone response is excuses. Rather than focusing on CHANGING THEIR LANGUAGE to complain about sexism, they will INSIST on using the SAME DEHUMANIZING ISMS (especially ableism) to attack people they feel are sexist. Whether the person ACTUALLY IS sexist or not won’t matter to them. Why not? Because it gives them free reign to practice their own [usually abled] privilege, and continue to say things which CATEGORICALLY DEMEAN entire groups of people, while patting themselves on the back that they got their Feminist 101 on.
Here is what you will likely NOT see. The SAME KIND OF HONEST APOLOGY for using their own -ist language (usually ableism) that they demanded from Mark for his [supposed] sexist language. So then that leaves us with the question, why if they act, as they claim Mark acts, should we even hearken one ear to their complaints? After all, we’re just acting EXACTLY like they are, but to a different group of people. (Assuming we are indeed acting sexist, which Mark was not, but I certainly am).