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.
I’d read what he said as a shorthand for “would be able to talk about his job in social situations with non-techy people” and think nothing more of it.
Obviously I don’t over-analyze things as much as some :/ Unnecessary outcry is unnecessary… then again, the fact that I can’t even find a mention of this in the register OR the inquirer suggests it’s only a small group of people moaning
All this rage is about him saying that?
I am amazed…
All I have to say about this issue is:
Anyone who has a problem with his statement obviously never tried to explain Linux to girls.
I do think a lot of the uproar surrounding Mark’s comment was purely a knee-jerk reaction due to the previous sexist incidents that occured some months before.
I don’t think Mark was being sexist – but i do think better consideration should be given to speeches that are going to made in front of a mixed audience. (Note: I’m not saying Marks comment was inappropriate).
I for one would have loved you to have given the keynote though Scott! If only to be able to finally see another gay geek in actual existence! =o P
Well spoken.
Visible people will be bashed on at the slightest opportunity, regardless of what they say. It’s ALWAYS been like that. But with today’s capability of people to mass communicate, this phenomenon is enhanced vastly by people posting this in forums and then everybody sort of goes bonkers on it.
Yeah. He didn’t phrase things brightly (unlike what he does usually)… and he could have phrased this differently.
Unfortunately, now, everybody who for some reason didn’t really love him in the first place, or who compete with Canonical in any kind of way, are jumping on the opportunity and turning this into something way out of proportions…
Gilles.
Zonkers’ keynote and Linus’ git talk had similar sentences and I think all these out of this world feminine fundamentalists should admit their hypocrisy and wrong accusations.
“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.”
Nope. And by getting that wrong, you entirely missed the point.
He didn’t say it would make it easier for *him* to explain what *he* does to girls. He said it would make it easier for *us* to explain what *we* do to girls. He wasn’t just representing himself as a heterosexual male (which wouldn’t really have been a problem); he was representing the entire open source development world (which was the ‘we’ to which he was referring) as heterosexual males.
Actually, his comment was as much exclusionary of gay men as of straight women, so we (I’m gay too…) could complain about it on the same basis.
Oh, and Linux Today never claimed anyone should resign. In fact, no-one on the ‘radical feminist’ side of the debate ever called for anyone to resign. The only resignation calling that went on was Sam Varghese calling for Matt Zimmerman to resign – and Sam’s on the ‘there’s no problem, you radical feminists’ side of the argument.
I think if he’d actually said “what I do,” it wouldn’t be problematic. It’s more the fact that it was “what we do,” the assumption that everyone in the room shares his attraction, that’s bothersome. Does that make sense?
Though, er, I don’t often get the impression that grown men like being referred to as boys, so I’m not sure why grown women should like being referred to as girls.
There’s the problem: Mark’s part of a vastly male majority. The implication — and often, the reality — has been that we are Other. It creates the problem of joining a group without women already present becoming one of there being an them-vs-me relationship. By being other, we are easy to discount, to dismiss, and to silence. That’s where the problem lies.
Mark’s comments aren’t the most sexist things I’ve heard in a long while — and in isolation, I’d be inclined to interpret “to girls” to mean “to those who aren’t technically inclined”. However, it’s a part of a much, much larger problem.
If someone assumes I’m not technically inclined, it’s offensive. It’s another line between who I supposedly am, and what I can do. Girls who do software are good at it. That there are so few of us speaks to something being wrong.
Mackenzie: “Though, er, I don’t often get the impression that grown men like being referred to as boys”
Actually…some gay guys prefer it. Or the even ickier ‘boi’ (ugh). They think ‘man’ makes them seem, well, older. I don’t think it’s an especially great perspective on things, but it’s pretty common.
[...] http://www.netsplit.com/2009/10/11/on-sexism/ a few seconds ago from Gwibber [...]
Given the reaction to similar recent comments that have been construed as sexist it wouldn’t have taken a great deal of foresight to have made his point in a way that would have avoided pissing some people off.
I might then have seen some reporting and reflection on what the keynote was about rather than a lot of pointless infighting.
I’m not that concerned with the folks arguing this point but even as a forty year old man I think I can imagine what a young female programmer might feel about herself and her piers being singled out as needing special help.
Perhaps you might consider extending your analogy to someone speaking about explaining it to gays?
very good and funny post. however I think M.S. should have avoid saying something like that, specially considering that there is a very real and absurd sexism in the foss/open source communities.
on the other hand I think that some other members of the same communities are starting to behave as feminist zealots, and that probably makes more harm than it helps.
Well put Scott. I have similar problems with all this uproar. The whole thing reminds of a conversation I had the other day with a friend of mine who is working towards becoming a police officer. I commented to her that I don’t think I could ever do that because there are too many laws I disagree with and wouldn’t be able to enforce them in conscience. We then went on to discuss an example where an elderly woman bought too much cold medicine that contained a meth component. She was prosecuted under a law meant to target meth producers, even though noone involved in law enforcement believed she was or had any intent to produce meth. If that’s the case, why is she being prosecuted? It makes no sense. The letter of the law is being enforced, with no thought to the spirit or intent of the law.
This situation, and many others I’ve seen recently, reminds me of that one. It’s as if people believe that because they can be offended by a comment, they should be. Regardless of the intent of the speaker. Regardless of the definition of certain words the speaker was thinking of when using them (“guys” in this case).
I appreciate the concept of “othering”. I appreciate all the things that “compassionate communication” are supposed to help us avoid. I appreciate that there are some people out there who are actually trying to marginalize various groups of people unjustly. However, it pisses me off when someone who clearly is not doing any of those things gets raked over the coals by extremists because they speak colloquially or perhaps less precisely than they should. It’s sad, and it seems to me that often the people making the noise are doing a better job of “othering” than person they are so upset with was.
>Though, er, I don’t often get the impression that grown men like being referred to as boys, so I’m not sure why grown women should like being referred to as girls.
My understanding that the opposite of “girls” is not “boys,” but rather “guys.” In this context, it seems like Mark Shuttleworth thinks the same. He uses the word “guys” a lot.
I once spoke with a friend who thought that the term “girls” was derogatory, and that “women” should be used instead. My response was that women is the opposite of men. So, what is the opposite to guys? He said he didn’t give it much thought, and I said that maybe he should before he accused someone of sexism. (He was a good friend). And no one seriously uses the term “gals.”
Hmm, two people have said “s/girls/people who aren’t technically-inclined/” but I don’t really think it makes sense to use an arbitrary segment of the population to mean “people who aren’t technically-inclined,” since it’s bound to insult members of that arbitrary segment. I mean, does it make sense in talking about usability (the context of his pick-up-line joke was that he wants to improve usability) to do any of these?
s/non-tech-savvy people/Jews/g
s/non-tech-savvy people/janitors/g
s/non-tech-savvy people/blondes/g
s/non-tech-savvy people/tall people/g
s/non-tech-savvy people/glasses-wearers/g
Vadim:
Oh, no, not just that. There was a hooker joke too. And there was some rather consistent use of male terms for developers and female terms for hapless users.
My wife refuses to be called a women. She is a women when she have to, but prefer to be a girl.
So my wife is a girl and a mother that do global expatriate positions for the male dominated oil industry.
She loves to play and enjoy life. She gets paid to be a serious and boring women at work so she loves to be a girl when she can.
I am not giving up the boy in me. I am old enough to call the women at work for girls these days. I do it to honour them and make them happy.
Scott, sexism goes beyond sex, sexuality and sexual orientation.
Sexism is as the wikipedia page states “refers to the belief or attitude that one gender or sex is inferior to, less competent, or less valuable than the other”. Placing females as the all-failing and comparing them to men as the all-knowing, is an example of this contemptuous stereotyping.
Mark has recited the stereotype of “females don’t understand tech, but males do”, even though he didn’t intend to say that. Intentions do not dictate how something will be heard or what consequences such interpretations will have. Mark’s saying this and then his refusal to apologise and clarify publicly is like a kick in the face to people who are out of breath from repeatedly having to say “yes, I am female *and* I understand tech just as much as males do”.
It hurts, and you have the privilege of not feeling that particular hurt because you are not female.
Women and girls need to decide when engaging in anonymised online communications in FOSS whether they will identify as female or lose the gender part of their identity, purely for the sake of overcoming the extra ‘getting respect’ hurdle that it places before them that males do not have. Women and girls have to decide if they will participate in face-to-face communications for fear of face-to-face confrontations and outing their online personas.
I have privileges too. I recognise that I will likely never truely know what it feels like to have to decide if I will reveal my sexual orientation for fear of losing respect, and I don’t have to decide if I will be publicly affectionate with significant others for fear of outing.
I can acknowledge my privilege. Can you acknowledge yours?
Mackenzie,
Not that I want to disagree with you completely but I am from India and it is quite common here to refer to adult women as girls. Not necessary old women but early 20’s definitely and a bunch of people as “guys” and even women do that at all the time. While more awareness of sexism is important, it helps to keep in mind that there are strong cultural affinity that influences our language. I am sure people who have ever had their call redirected to a Indian BPO would be aware of that to some extend.
Now that the video has been released, and that I’m assured the actual words were in fact “what we do”, I’ve changed my position somewhat. I still believe that in context “explaining to girls” wasn’t saying anything about the technical abilities of females specifically, but I do think that using the inclusive “we” to describe developers as only people who are attracted to women *does* exclude straight women and gay men, and so is understandably offensive.
As for the hooker joke, was that the “release” thing? Because I really didn’t make that connection…
Most humans of any gender aren’t techies, ergo trying to explain something highly technical to a random date (of any gender) is likely difficult. Yes, it’s unfortunate Mark is a member of the majority and phrased it that way. Yes it’s unfortunate that being in a minority can very quickly feel uncomfortable (something I know well). Unfortunately being sensitised to this (even reasonably so) can create as much of the “them vs. us” as any comment like Marks.
The most interesting thing added to this conversation so far has been Mackenzie mentioning that the offense is at a consistent pattern of Marks and a joke as well as the actual phrase in question.
I just wish at this point we had access to the video (or even just a transcript) to see the actual context here. That seems to be the part that would answer this question in most people’s minds.
It’s not just girls that aren’t technical. Most boys aren’t either. But there happens to be a larger share of geeky boys than geeky girls. I wish people in GNOME made it easier for geeks to get involved (auto-tools are crap) And if you are not already part of the inbred crowd, it’s hard to break in.
I think the “problem” is that we contextualize everything from our own experience, personalities and perspective. I don’t know if he meant to be offensive, but it is hard to discuss stuff and be gender neutral because you can only know what would be offensive to your own gender (race, faith, whatever). I haven’t followed the whole thing, but I believe that it was mostly the tone of the entire speech rather than specifically what he said that have angered so many people.
The thing is, where are you supposed to draw line? Is it at this point, or at the point of being openly hostile towards women?
I personally do believe that an attitude adjustment towards one that is more sensible to the diversity in the community is necessary, but I don’t care about the apology. But then again I am not a woman, so I can’t say how far the line has been crossed and what is needed to make amends.
Whenever you are not something, you are bound, at some point in life to make hurtful comments about that which you are not. It was just stupid of him to do it here, but it is human nature.
For the record I am a gay black man (not an american, so not an african american) and even I have said stupid things about others.
Not trying to start an argument but that was not a hooker joke.
I never did think Mark’s comment were sexist at all. I had a very multi-cultural childhood (race and gender) so the meaning of the keynote is what I focus on, and frankly what should of been focused on, not the words used and if it’s sexist or if other words may offend a certain segment of the audience or not. I’m glad, because that’s a burden and a waste of mental energy which I rather not have. Then again, it’s 2009, and it seems more people are getting increasingly intolerant, so much so that one has to be careful of every word uttered so as not to offend anyone and then if even there is no ill-intent get publicly vilified. It that progress? In some ways it can be but an incident such as this, more hurt has flowed.
Thanks Scott for your post and thank you for your fantastic work and, you should be offered a keynote.
Now, put this behind us and lets get on with the main show. Peace and harmony.
Scott, I think you’re right that the response would have been different in that scenario, but that doesn’t bother me, because it is a different situation.
Sexism is about the intersection of gender with privilege. Privilege is why white folks can laugh it off when someone makes light of their whiteness, but it’s a different story altogether when the target is a less privileged class.
The fact that Mark (a man) evoked such a reaction, by referring to women the way he did, isn’t because of his sexual orientation toward women: it’s because of his privilege relative to them.
The responses are consistent if you take into account the power dynamic involved.
The fact is that there are a lot more tech-savvy boys than girls. Even in my Computing Science class, there are about 10-15 girls and 160 boys. If you’re asking Mark to account for minorities in every single sentence, you’re asking for political correctness, and that’s an even bigger problem than sexism.
It’s like me being offended by a cooking guide that refers to women as the cooks and men as useless around food, me being a decent cook. It would be ridiculous.
This isn’t about sexuality, I think. The way I interpret most of the comments on this issue, Mark’s comment hasn’t been seen as meaning that he cares what girls think because he is a heterosexual. It’s been interpreted as meaning that he cares what women think because they are less technically able to understand the issue than men.
I don’t know whether that is a fair interpretation or not, because I wasn’t at the speech and haven’t listened to it back, but I’ve read some of the blog posts and that’s how I’ve seen people reacting.
heh..good post, can’t believe this is an issue. some people need to grow up. We’re here to do software not be 100% critical of our peers every word.
Maybe Mark should not have said that. But maybe (no really) we are all overreacting.
And I agree with Scott (being a gay man myself) that Mark’s words said by a gay man would have caused a different kind of s**t storm.
I do not think sexsim is right but I also think there a) worse things and b) more important things.
For example: Nobody thinks women are not worthy of living. A lot of people think gays and lesbians are not worthy of living.
So can we now move on to more important things?
My personal opinion is that he said three or four things that were sexist, but only a little bit.
I would like Free Software leaders to not assume that their community is male only because it excludes those who aren’t male, just as if they made a comment about gay or black people, not offensively or anything, but just with the unspoken assumption that none of those type of people are part of the community that they’re talking to and that women (or whoever) are “them” not “us”.
I would like them not to use their older female relatives as examples of people who can’t use linux because a) it’s insulting both to woment and older people, but also b) because it puts the blame for Ubuntu usability onto certain types of people rather the Ubuntu developers. I appreciate that they’re saying “we want to make Ubuntu for everyone” but it’s a crappy meme that needs to die. Use “busy pediatric surgeon” or “Steve Jobs” or “Donald Knuth” if you need an example person who doesn’t have time to fight the UI when they’re trying to print something and get on with their lives. You’re not making the interface “simple” for these people, you’re “fixing it” because it is “broken”, or at the very least “poorly engineered” (avoiding “design” because people think that’s all about color choice). Words and framing are important.
I would like my Free Software leaders not to make jokes about ejaculation (or taking peoples Emacs virginity) in important speeches, not only because bringing sex into things can make some women in the community, who are already outnumbered, feel weird, but because it’s simply embarrassing to me for them to do that, it’s like something out of The Office. Maybe it’s just me but I expect a bit more sauveness and sophistication from billionaire astronauts.
But, as I said, these are only a little bit sexist. I think that, as with say politeness, there’s an expected level of sexism in most aspects of society. I would like fellow members (and indeed leaders and heros) of free software to rise above this level and hope that they show they way to raise the bar for everyone, but also I would only expect public apologies if they fell somewhat below this level.
I guess that’s the hard bit. How can you express disappointment that people haven’t lived up to your high expectations for them without them (or their supporters) from feeling that you’re attacking them. Particularly when they’re public figures who do have detractors that will welcome any excuse to pile on.
It wasn’t that he said “girls” instead of women or “the-gender-I’m-attracted-to, it was that he said females weren’t able to understand Linux and computer hardware unless it was broken down into Romper Room ABC’s by the big strong men. How are we poor stupid gals supposed to set up our wireless connections and printers without the all-seeing and all-dancing Mark Shuttleworth to explain it to us like we were 6 year olds?
I thought he meant he was shy about interacting with the opposite sex. That I can relate to.
Well said, dave.
Lucian: “The fact is that there are a lot more tech-savvy boys than girls. Even in my Computing Science class, there are about 10-15 girls and 160 boys.”
Do you think that’s a good thing? Have you ever put any thought into just why it might be the case?
“If you’re asking Mark to account for minorities in every single sentence, you’re asking for political correctness, and that’s an even bigger problem than sexism.”
No, you’re not. And it’s only a bigger problem than sexism if you’re male and hence don’t have to worry about sexism at all and can spend your time worrying about made-up crap like ‘political correctness’ (otherwise known, to anyone with a backbone, as ‘respect’).
Zac: so, what you’re saying is, we should only worry about sexism reducing female involvement in open source when someone stands up and gives a fifty minute talk on how women are silly little girls who should stay in the kitchen? And as long as no-one does that, it’s not a problem?
Sheesh. It’s pretty unusual for any kind of prejudice or bias to take up someone’s entire talk / email / conversation. Even in the most extreme examples you can think of, it’s rarely the case. That doesn’t make it not a _problem_.
@Scott
Exactamundo. I gave the same example, when this was initially being talked about. People keep trying to use this as a platform for pushing two ideas: a) If I am offended, the other person must apologize. Or b) Lets use this as an opportunity to promote politically correctness, or other sexism issues.
In many interviews with Mark, he has said sex jokes. If you don’t like them, then don’t listen. People need to accept that others will not agree with their opinion, and move forward.
no girls on the internets, nananana.
/me crawls back to seven.
I think this is a bit out of proportion.
In my entire life I have meet only one female person that could understand my geeky talk or project details.
First of all, let me put my perspective. I don’t have any sort of sexual desire towards women or men due to brain damage. For me they are equals in every sense since I don’t want relationships with any. I only value the actual person’s value.
That said, girls in tech environments are very rare. It feels they don’t feel interested in those “geek things”. And I feel sorry about that, since they give different points of view on things that feel fresh. I am a game developer, and that tech-aware person I mentioned is not, but understands a fair deal about it, and can even reason bugs or give insight on character/story material that males can’t. Hence it’s fresh, and fresh is good.
However, we are human beings either way. So it shouldn’t really matter male or female at all. After all, out of biological aspects, what is the difference? The most can be educational differences, rather than anything else. If I pick up one game one day and I find out a female programmer made it, should I really give it importance just for that, or should I judge just the product?
I think only the product should be judged.
Women in general-male communities stand out oddly. It’s like when in an IRC channel someone reveals she’s female and then she gets flooded in query windows. I don’t understand that.
Truth is that I can’t explain Linux to most female persons I know, because…well, they just don’t care at all. They generally focus on single applications and ignore the whole OS works unless they choose to specialize by their own will.
Which is basically the same thing that happens to males.
They just haven’t made the choice to learn OS mechanics, production environments and compiler works. I’d have the same amount of trouble explaining it to my father than to my mother.
Making a big deal out of a sexist commentary will only serve to fuel the trolls and making females stand out more. People will feel awkward talking to them in fear of triggering a negative reaction by a bad commentary.
I am not saying you should be submissive and bend to the will of THE MAN, never, but we have reached a critical point of “political correctness” that, in all honesty, is just annoying.
I know many female persons that would fire away sexist commentary about males, comments that because of physical disabilities mentioned above CAN’T apply to myself. I don’t like them, but you’d laugh at me if I complained about those.
The solution? Ask politely. A “please don’t talk about X that way” after the keynote in private would be more effective than a public outroar. You want to avoid that…unless your intention is punitive.
I wonder if knitting circles do have the same kind of discussions.
Anyway; even though the size of the discussion bothers me a bit, I’m somewhat proud that this discussion can take place.
My point of view; yes, it was sexism. But it wasn’t malicious. And since no one can (or even should?) be political correct all the time, everyone should be able to carry on with their lives.
The problem is the use of “girls” as shorthand for “non-technical people”: it’s insulting to technical women. Don’t answer that there aren’t that many technical women; it used to be pretended that gay people didn’t exist, or at least don’t have to be considered, and it’s just as insulting to pretend that technical women don’t exist.
They really discuss those matters in the context of a Linux meeting already? … Then we can’t be that far from reaching world domination, I guess.
RVA: There’s two more just in this thread!
Raphael: Yes, knitting circles have an equivalent conversation. However, it goes very, very differently because of the way power is held. You’re not talking about a group that excludes a group that is, in society on average less empowered.
The reason that this is coming up is that there are finally a few women present at some of these talks, and it’s an ongoing discussion that’s forming: RMS’s Emacs Virgins schpiel, semi-pornographic slides at a ruby conference, a shy titter of explaining what we do to girls. There’s a pattern here — I’m quite happy to forgive Mark, though the public anti-apology makes it a lot more frustrating — but we need to address the root problem: we get treated like curiosities, we have to fight our way in a bit or be willing to be entirely othered. We have to deal with a flood of query windows on IRC when someone realizes we’re female publicly (and we’re not talking “Wow, awesome that you got involved in tech! Was it hard for you?”, we’re talking “ASL?! Picspls!” in queries)
Fixing it is going to take a gentle affirmative action: We need to affirm that we won’t tolerate sexism, we need to gently correct it whenever it’s present, and we need to do it as a whole community, and not leave it up to the few of us who are women. We need to make a clear effort to keep criticism confined to our work and our treatment of others, not on who we are, and leave out implied inferiority entirely — I think this would be good in principle in general, but we need to make it applied even more carefully to those who are suspiciously under-represented.
I’ve been seeing this discussion for a while now and I think McKenzie and other ‘female geeks’ are being very dishonest.
YOU KNOW WHAT’S SEXISTS IS?
That if a male would start complaining about how they feel ‘theoretically’ insulted, as a desperate attempt to get more attention, they would be shunned.
Yet, when females do it, the people are all ’so understanding’ and trying to enter in a reasonable debate.
This is not about the arguments. This is just existentialism.
If they keep shouting that they are female geeks, the only reasonable conclusion should be THEY are the ones that want to draw attention to the fact.
Oh look a female magazine. “How to get a man to love cooking”.
Should i feel ‘theoretically’ insulted now? Because I love to cook?
The weird thing is: even i’m trying to be extra careful now. When I speak out loud that it’s just a pathetic cry for attention, these specific individuals just play the gender card again.
And it’s not even sexism. It’s just playing to stereo types. It’s quite a bit different to say that more females stay at home while the man works, and saying more females ought to stay at home while the man works. Here’s an insight: if you can’t make the distinction between the two then you aren’t really a geek.
Which brings me to my last point. (and I do hope the females in question get to read this). Your usage of the word geek is insulting. Just because people love linux doesn’t make it okay to suggest they are geeks.
So here’s the counter: I THINK THE LADIES IN QUESTION SHOULD APOLOGIZE FOR THEIR GEEKISM. It’s not okay to suggest we are all socially ackward idiots that do not have average john doe type interests.
(and yes, that’s meant sarcastically. stop crying)
Dave, thats the most sensible and balanced comment I have seen in this whole debate.
raphael: there’s general agreement that it wasn’t malicious, from both sides of the debate. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. It wasn’t malicious, but it was _damaging_. Or, more accurately, the compound effect of all the many occurrences of this kind of sexism in the open source world are damaging to the level of participation in open source by women. That’s part of the reason why there’s so few women involved in open source in the first place. We are asking Mark to apologize for the damage caused by his remark, not for any malicious intent behind it. His refusal to apologize increases the damage done, by implying that he doesn’t care about the damage caused.
matthew: how are you supposed to magically foretell that Mark (or anyone else) is about to make a dumb sexist joke, and then cover your ears and go LALALALA very loudly until he’s done? (And when do you know when he’s done?) The practical problems with your suggestion seem legion…
Neil / tretle: the ‘hooker joke’ was when he said something about a release, then said he wasn’t talking about a happy ending. Happy ending, in that context, can only have the meaning of a paid-for massage being concluded by a handjob. There’s no other commonly-understood meaning of the term in that context. It is hence a joke about prostitution, which seems in rather poor taste for a technical keynote.
human2.0: the video is available. It’s here: http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/linuxcon/shuttleworth . as mentioned in this thread, Mark several times refers to developers as ‘guys’, makes the bad hooker joke, and the exact remark that’s most discussed is clearly audible and uses ‘we’, not ‘I’.