I feel like I have found a useful school :)

“Do that again and I’ll rip your balls of you sad little turd.”

Transgression is often prevented by the threath of sanction.

-s-

And believe me, there’ve been times on IRC I’ve been quite glad to be able to say “I’m not part of this community” because the people in those channels were such jerks.

Nice flounce!

Oh wait! He’s back to reiterate that the solution to the problem of women in FOSS projects being marginalised to the point where they leave is for them to complain loudly at every transgression, (getting themselves still more marginalised) then leave!

Oh rejoice, everyone! It’s so childishly simple! Why did nobody see this before? *facepalm*

The fact of the matter is that there is no simple fix.

Change can be wrought, but it takes hard, exasperating work on the part of the people who are noble and devoted enough to speak up. They know they will cop the “too rude” slings and “too nice” arrows from well meaning but inadequately informed people who imagine that they have superior insight into the matter.

You see, as soon as one person stands up in a conference hall, points at the projected image of nearly naked and provocatively posed women on the screen and says “That’s not cool!” they make themselves a target.

If they are a male, their “manliness” will be called into question. If they are female, they will be called over-sensitive, frigid, unreasonably angry and most likely they will be chided for “not being a good sport”. (Please bear in mind that being a “good sport” is easier when you are not the ball.)

Anyway, I suggest that you re-read the whole thread before offering more sage advice. Genuine good will is cool. Assumptions that this is some new problem that someone can swoop in and fix are tiresome.

@Anna: “When you mention three-part responses, I feel happy, because they are useful.”

Right now, I’ve got a novel to write, a motorcycle to tune up, a wedding to plan, a faith community to keep organized, and, oh, a day job. I don’t have to light myself on fire. I just have to go leather up and take a ride instead of volunteering with people who don’t treat me with respect.

When we tell the OS community what it is you’re doing that’s keeping women and minorities from contributing–including, btw, telling us it’s our responsibility to call people on their porn instead of doing it yourself–we are not doing it for us. We’ve got a million other things we could be doing with our time. We’re doing it for you. Out of the goodness of our hearts, we’re telling you how to make your community bigger and more productive.

If you don’t want a better and more productive community, or if it’s just not worth it to you if it means you have to do the work of building it (and you do have to do the work, because you’re the one with commit privileges to the social code here, not us), well, that’s your loss, not mine. I can always just go play somewhere else.

The question isn’t what we’re going to do to change you. The question is, what are you going to do to deserve us?

“Thanks Kirrily for this blog post. I wish I would have received this advise earlier, I would have more than certainly said:
“It genuinely was not my intention to marginalize or exclude anyone from my talk or from the Ruby community, nor to make them feel uncomfortable.”

Hopefully my mistake will help others.

- Matt”

Based on this gracious and welcome apology from the speaker concerned, I would venture to suggest that Skud’s words and actions have already reduced the likelihood that this incident will happen again.

Since what she is doing and saying is directly achieving her goals, how (and why) do you suggest she should change her tactics?