
Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment - darkduck
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/50641-female-foss-dev-quits-tech-industry-due-to-harassment
======
bkrausz
Last year at FooCamp I went to a panel about women in tech (I believe I was
the only guy) for two reasons:

1) I have no qualms about offending people if I feel my point is valid, and in
fact enjoy being in situations where I risk such things (I find it incredibly
rewarding to have meaningful discussions about things that are considered
taboo).

2) To find out what the problem was

Let me clarify #2: I didn't see a problem within my circles other than the
fact that there were few women in startups. I didn't see blatant sexism, I
didn't see harassment, I didn't see something that I was comfortable changing
to encourage women in my industry. I still occasionally quote South Park or
make a dirty joke, but nothing targets women specifically: I just can have a
crude sense of humor. Was that what women were concerned about? Were they
offended by my jokes, expecting me to be stiff as a board to avoid offending
them? In my opinion that's expecting special treatment and is sexism in and of
itself.

In my YC class the 4 women were respected and treated like peers. Yes, I'm
sure there was some flirting, but I didn't see anything that I wouldn't
consider more offensive than I've seen guys do to each other on a regular
basis.

What I learned was actually very interesting: from their perspective I was not
the problem. Somehow in the middle of the media hype about sexism, I had
assumed I must be doing something wrong and was trying to figure out what was
inappropriate about my behavior. It turns out there's a whole group of men in
tech who are blatantly offensive, harassing, and generally sexist towards
women just because they were women. I genuinely think most men are in the
better bucket: we aren't offensive, and provide mostly non-hostile work
environments. We are not part of the problem. On the other hand, I bet a lot
of us aren't part of the solution.

This needs to not be a "men vs women" battle: this needs to be a "people vs
jerks" battle. There are a few sour apples poisoning the environment for
everyone, and it needs to stop. I do think the only way to fix this is for
there to be a social change, but most men just need to change the way they act
towards other men. Don't allow it to be ok when one guy crosses the line, and
don't just assume HR will take care of it. Call him out on it. I'm confident
that that's all 99% of guys need to (and can) do to help with this problem.

~~~
tptacek
I thought the same thing, and argued (I felt persuasively!) on behalf of that
perspective for many years. Then I watched my wife Erin, who has as many years
of experience in this industry as I do, interview for tech jobs. Please take
my word for it that this is not a "few bad apples" problem.

~~~
bkrausz
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the lack of magnitude of the problem. I don't
think the problem is as prevalent in YC, one of the main circle of startups I
know. Maybe that's because JL does a good job filtering out jerks, or maybe
it's something inherent to the YC-compatible startups.

Out of curiosity: was she talking to larger companies or startups? I am
curious how prevalent the problem is in the larger startup community, as I
genuinely don't know what % of valley companies with < 10 employees show signs
of sexism (though I believe that question may be too vague and ill-defined to
answer properly).

~~~
tptacek
Both.

Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take
care of the kids.

Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing
pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time,
thankfully.

I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff.

I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field
and female. They are all extremely touchy about this subject. They are touchy
because crazy shit like this happens to them all the time.

There is, I think, no magic solution to this problem other than consistent
public declamation, and of course being prepared to fire people who engage in
this kind of behavior. People who harass women or act out on the belief that
women are inferior to men or somehow likely to have obtained their position
through anything other than merit have no place in any company I'm affiliated
with.

~~~
zoips
> Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to
> take care of the kids.

Not to excuse this, but it made me think of a rather terrible mistake I
recently made, which I am glad has not come back to bite me. I was the last
interviewer for a guy who was Jewish and didn't use technology on the Sabbath.
As I was walking him back to the lobby I mused out loud that that was
interesting since we have pager duty and I wonder what other teams do in that
situation, since surely we wouldn't be the only team at the company who
employed someone with that or similar restrictions. It wasn't until my wife
pointed out to me that that was probably completely illegal and could have had
serious repercussions for me that I thought I had done anything but muse about
something meaningless out loud.

Sometimes people just don't think, I guess is my point.

~~~
Tycho
You were thinking clearly and rationally; it was the candidate who had chosen
to embrace an irrational restriction. _shrug_

------
mootothemax
Skimming over the comments here, once again I find myself distressed at the
large number of men in the tech community who _just don't get it_.

Whether it's sexist jokes, inappropriate language or illustrations, or plain
old stereotypes, it sometimes feels like the tech community's firmly stuck in
the 70s.

The worst thing is that none of this is difficult to solve, it just involves
growing up, frankly.

~~~
tptacek
This is mostly nerds wanting to have something to argue about. For reasons I
can't put my fingers on, nothing seems to irritate nerds more than the idea
that _they're_ oppressing people; it probably has something to do with the
fact that so many of them were picked on growing up.

The reality is that the stuff we're talking about here would, for the most
part, be a firing offense at most companies.

~~~
bermanoid
[tl;dr: With a lopsided sex ratio in a field, women are more likely to
experience sexism, and men are less likely to witness it, than if the ratio
was closer to equal, regardless of the actual frequency of sexist behavior.
The fact that you (male) don't see much of it doesn't necessarily mean that
it's not happening, and the fact that you (female) experience a lot of it
doesn't necessarily mean that the men in the field are worse than elsewhere.]

I'd like to just add a bit (edit: okay, a rather long-ish bit...) about how a
reasonable, non-sexist guy could end up assuming that things are not that bad
in the industry, whereas a reasonable women can have experienced more sexism
than in other industries, and both can be "right". All without the typical
(and IMO, rather cynical) assumption that guys are just playing along,
encouraging it, or putting on blinders. And also (more importantly) without
the assumption that men in the industry are any better or worse than in any
other.

This should make both sides pause a bit before they scream about how
unreasonable people on the other side are being...

For a lot of men, the skepticism is not over whether actions are sexist or
not, but over how often they actually happen.

My argument is that this difference in perception is almost exclusively due to
the extremely lopsided sex ratio in tech, not due to people _in_ tech being
any better or worse: I don't know exact numbers, but let's say somewhere
around 10% of tech workers are female (in my experience it's even worse than
that, but I don't know for sure, industry-wide).

Going with that number, that means that out of a random sample of interactions
between other people that you (let's assume "you" are a non-sexist guy that
can accurately recognize sexism when you see it) personally witness over the
course of a career, only 18% will be between a man and a woman. As for the
percentage of sexist guys (I'm making the simplifying assumption that a guy is
either sexist or not-sexist - I could easily remove this restriction and
replace it with a probability distribution, but it would needlessly complicate
things)...I'm not sure about that, but let's aim high and say it's 20% (I
don't think more than 20% of us would, for instance, show pantless pictures of
ourselves, send harassing e-mails, proposition an intern, ask about kids at an
interview, etc.). Even when a sexist guy interacts with a woman, we should
probably assume that it's a reasonably small percentage of those interactions,
maybe 10%, where he'd actually say or do something offensive, especially with
someone else present.

[Again, all these numbers are pure fiction, placeholders for the purpose of
demonstrating the extreme effect that the sex-ratio has, rather than figuring
out anything in detail]

Put that all together, and let's say that you, a not-sexist guy, witness 1000
interactions between other people at work during some time period. By these
estimates, only 3 of those interactions would be "sexist interactions." The
problem seems rather small when you look at it that way, and in fact, it's
small enough that statistical variation could mean that you never end up
witnessing such interactions at all, even if they are happening at your place
of work.

Now, the meat of the argument: consider, instead, the point of view of a
woman. 18% of all of her interactions are with sexist men, and 1.8% of her
interactions involve a guy acting sexist towards her. _By the percentages,
that's a sixfold increase over what you would notice as a man, even though the
actual frequency of sexist behavior is the same_.

I think that's where this sort of discussion breaks down: those of us that are
not sexist, but are not women, see an apparent level of sexism that is _six
times lower_ than what women observe in their own work interactions, and
that's arguably the difference between the perception that sexism is pervasive
and oppressive, versus barely worth considering. And it's all due to the sex
ratio - if it was 50/50, then the percent of interactions that are sexist that
men observe (holding the other numbers the same) would be 50% * 20% * 10% =
1%, and what women observe in their own interactions would be 50% * 20% * 10%
= 1%, so there would be an equal _perception_ of sexism.

We all need to keep this in mind to bring some sanity these sorts of
discussions: girls, it's not that the men that doubt this are assholes or
privilege-denying-misogynists, it's that they _truly, honestly witness sexism
less often_ than they would if they worked in a field with a more balanced
gender ratio, and it's _not_ necessarily that they're complicit or ignoring
it. And guys, the women aren't being whiny or weak, they _truly, honestly
experience_ a higher percentage of sexist interactions than they would in a
field with more women.

FWIW, all of this applies to any minority situation, and is (IMO) one of the
biggest unrealized factors that leads to disagreement whenever these arguments
come up.

~~~
lotharbot
Further, many of the more blatant sexist actions are intentionally undertaken
without the presence of witnesses. Assuming 1/3 of sexist actions are of this
type, the non-sexist guy might only see 2 minor "sexist actions", while the
woman might see 18 "sexist actions", including 6 of the more blatant type.
This is going to skew the different perspectives even further.

Another factor that contributes to male skepticism is that many of us have
experience in companies that are extremely intolerant of sexism. Like Thomas
said, most of what we're talking about would be firing offenses at most
companies. I know if my wife ever witnessed this sort of thing at BigCo, the
guy would've been fired on the spot.

------
Rariel
I've worked in IP Law and for the Senate and I've never really experienced
overt sexism so I kind of thought it was on the decline in the work place.
Imagine my surprise when I started joining tech/start-up communities (like
this one) and witnessed unparalleled sexism and ignorance. I mean attitudes
that make you think you're in the 1800s (once had somebody on HN tell me that
women are genetically less likely to want to do tech![!!!!!!!]).

I'm still pretty shocked by it and also curious as to why this industry is so
antiquated with regard to its' attitudes about women. There are a lot of women
who want to distance themselves from the argument. At a SXSW session there
were women extremely opposed to even acknowledging the discrimination for fear
they'd be labeled a complainer and be seen differently than their male
counter-parts (which unless you're an idiot you can see the difference between
a man and a woman). I didn't consider myself a feminist before but the tech
industry has made me up my feminism...

~~~
endtime
>(once had somebody on HN tell me that women are genetically less likely to
want to do tech![!!!!!!!])

Are you trolling? That does not seem to be a sexist or retrograde statement.

~~~
flatline
I think this highlights the problem nicely: the recipient of the comment took
it that way, and you don't seem to understand her response.

~~~
franticpedantic
I think your attitude highlights a big part of the problem nicely as well.
Whether or not women are more, less, or as interested in tech on average than
men due to biological predisposition should be treated as a scientific
question, not outright rejected as absurd because it could hurt someone's
feelings. Maybe it's not a worthwhile question to examine, but to say it's
wrong because it's offensive is incredibly unscientific, and geeks often are
more interested in truth than getting along.

This attitude is totally different than harassing people, being disrespectful
towards people, or discriminating against an individual. But when advocates of
women's rights or whatever cause group these two separate attitudes as the
same, there will be backlash from would-be sympathizers.

~~~
zasz
People have historically used "scientific" evidence to prop up spurious claims
that women and blacks were inferior to white men. [1] OP is probably reacting
to that whenever people try to bring in biological explanations for gender
gaps. If you want her to be more understanding to your hopefully pure
motivations in seeking truth, you should also be more understanding of her
recognition that people often hide bigotry behind science.

[1] See "The Mismeasure of Man," by Stephen J. Gould. Broca, a pioneering
scientist into brain research, devoted a lot of effort to measuring brain
capacity in skulls and thereby "proving" that women and blacks would never
achieve as much as white men could.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You couldn't have picked a worse example.

Go read the article "The Mismeasure of Science", by Jason Lewis et al. It's a
fairly detailed analysis which shows that Stephen J. Gould was simply wrong
about skull measurements (which were accurate).

From the abstract:

 _...We investigated these questions by remeasuring Morton's skulls and
reexamining both Morton's and Gould's analyses. Our results resolve this
historical controversy, demonstrating that Morton did not manipulate data to
support his preconceptions, contra Gould. In fact, the Morton case provides an
example of how the scientific method can shield results from cultural biases._

[http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001071)

~~~
zasz
It's a perfectly fine example. If you read the book, Gould is accurate in
reporting that Broca genuinely thought differences in cranial capacity and the
racial variations thereof meant differences in achievement. That your abstract
reports that Morton's skull measurements were actually accurate actually just
reinforces my point.

------
pnathan
I read a private blog of a lady in the games industry, and the level of
_ordure_ and harassment she gets is simply unbelievable. It's well beyond
anything in the 'people are jerks, suck it up' level.

I can well believe Skud got sick of it and is doing other things with her
life.

I'm going to come right out and say it - if you, or someone you know - has a
penchant for writing these sorts of harassing emails, it needs to stop. Quite
possibly, professional help needs to be sought. It's simply wrong.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Foul language and harassment in the games industry? I'm shocked. Perhaps it's
just due to white male privilege that I've never been called a "gaaaayyyy nig
faggz" while playing online games?

[edit: sarcasm. Like anyone who's ever delivered a headshot, I've been told
"fu homo chink".]

~~~
biot
The games industry does not refer to anybody who plays games but refers to the
development of games; in the same way the automobile industry does not refer
to anybody who drives a car.

------
jimwise
No disagreement with the basic, point, but was a bit surprised by this quote:

 _"So, here's our situation. We have a man (presumably; at any rate he appears
to want to be identified as such) in the Australian Linux community, who
targets women by sending them private abusive emails from a throwaway address
and with a name that can't readily be connected to any publicly known member
of the community. His ISP won't hand out information about him without a court
order, his abuse doesn’t present the kind of imminent threat to physical
safety that might interest law enforcement, and despite Linux Australia’s
diversity statement and Linux.conf.au's anti-harassment policies, it's not
clear that there’s any practical thing that either of those groups can do
about him."_

Is it Bayley's position that ISP's _should_ give out information on their
users in response to warrantless requests -- from private individuals, no
less?

Is it likewise Bayley's position that law enforcement _should_ be going after
people for making lewd comments online?

~~~
DiabloD3
MikeeUSA frequently states dumb shit like "oh, women deserve to be raped since
the day they first bleed because this is what God created women for" and other
shit.

He does it purely for the sake of trolling, and people periodically bite the
trollbait.

Is this illegal? No. Should he be beaten with in an inch of his life? Yes. Is
that going to happen outside of a prison? Probably not, no one is quite sure
of his exact address.

~~~
maximusprime
He's not the problem though. The problem is people being offended by it or
taking the bait.

Ban, ignore, report, shun etc...

Setting up a geek feminist movement is pretty much the worst thing you could
do if you wanted the abuse to stop.

~~~
bigB
I don't know about you, but that's a poor and weak excuse. Would your be
offended If I said that to your wife, daughter, mother in person.

If someone said that to my wife in person I would break their nose, so why
should online be any different.

~~~
maximusprime
If you said things to me / my family in person, there is the added threat of
violence.

Online, there is no such threat. You could just as easily be a bot spewing
hate, as a real human being. And being offended by a bot is pretty irrational.

Online, there is "data". If I know you, or have formed attachment to you via
ongoing conversations etc or divulging details about myself, then the data
becomes more meaningful and has emotion attached to it. But random data? No
point being offended by that.

FWIW If someone I didn't know said that to my wife/mother/etc we'd just ignore
them and walk away.

~~~
bigB
If that person kept coming back again and again with the same or similar
comments, would you see the threat, this is what is happening here if you care
to actually read the articles

~~~
maximusprime
I do have sympathy, but I think it's pretty sad to call the 'sexist' card when
it's clearly just a case of a troll.

If you ignore him, he'll move on to someone else soon enough. It looks from
the article that he wasn't being ignored at all.

~~~
anigbrowl
_If you ignore him, he'll move on to someone else soon enough._

Citation needed. You are assuming the trolling person is moderately rational
and will go somewhere else if his selected target isn't yielding sufficient
lulz. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to find stories of irrational people
who escalate their harassment under such circumstances. Every few weeks
there's a news story about some marginal person who loses the plot and goes on
a shooting spree, so the risk of escalation is clearly non-zero.

------
i386
This sort of behavior coming from members of the Australian FOSS community is
unfortunately somewhat of a consistent underbelly.

I used to help run and host the local LUG chapter in Sydney for a few years.
One particular meeting I had to ask a speaker to leave the premises (hosted in
my employers building) for displaying bared breasts during his talk.
Unsurprisingly, people walked out. So much of this sort of shit goes on and
it's ugly, ugly, ugly.

------
gatlin
Another day, another HN thread about misogyny and sexism in STEM, and another
sampling of "hackers" who can't seem to agree 100% that sexism, harassment,
and stereotyping are categorically wrong.

It's not even the overt sexism that is the problem. It's the educated
troglodytes making up bullshit like "civilization has always been like this"
and "she invited harassment with such bold feminism" and "this just proves
women can't handle pressure."

That half the community seems to have reached adult maturity is good; that
half has not is so incredibly depressing and _tiresome_

~~~
hugh3
_Another day, another HN thread about misogyny and sexism in STEM_

Actually, we're not talking about STEM in general, we're talking about
computer programming in particular. As I was reading this thread, I was just
thinking about how other parts of the STEM community aren't nearly so bad.

For instance, if you go hang out in your local university's maths (or physics)
department, you'll find many of the same conditions. You'll find an
overwhelmingly male group, ranging from slightly nerdy to very nerdy, with a
sprinkling of a few women. But you won't find these sorts of problems
occurring nearly so often.

Why? I think it's part of a culture of professionalism vs unprofessionalism,
and it's largely age-driven. A university department is dominated (socially if
not numerically) by people in their forties and fifties, giving the workplace
a much older, quieter, more professional feel than you get in a tech company
where just about everybody is in their twenties. It's just a matter of having
plenty of adult supervision around, I think.

Linux user groups are even worse. They combine the worst features of a party
(a lack of professionalism) with the worst features of a high tech workplace
(a twenty-to-one sex ratio) so it's not surprising that bad things can happen
there.

~~~
DanBC
> _For instance, if you go hang out in your local university's maths (or
> physics) department_

There's the trans-gendered (male to female) mathematician who'd disagree. She
says that when she used to give talks (as a male) she got respect, but now
people say things like "Her brother was better" not realising it's the same
person.

~~~
hugh3
Maybe they just disrespect him because... let's face it, surgically mutilating
your penis, taking a bunch of hormones and demanding that everybody call you
"she" is just plain _weird_ , regardless of what current orthodoxy says.

~~~
jbooth
".. not realizing it's the same person."

He's talking about the difference between the response to a male and female,
in other words highlighting sexism rather than transgenderphobia or whatever
you call it. Thanks for putting yours on display though.

~~~
nieve
The word you want is transphobia (for the generic fear, hatred or contempt) or
cissexism for the more general "it's your choice but it's weird and unnatural
and I don't believe you actually are that way" sort of bigotry. The cis/trans
construction people are using in the pair cisgender/transgender is my favorite
Latinate neologism of the last few years.

Joan Roughgarden (biologist, founder of the Earth Systems Program at Stanford)
and Ben Barres (a neurobiologist also at Stanford) transitioned in opposite
directions and reported the same phenomenon in mirror: Roughgarden saw people
assuming her work was suddenly less important, Barres saw people in his field
not realizing he was the same person and commenting that his research was so
much better than his sister's. He authored a commentary in Nature 442
(p133-136 (13 July 2006), DOI:10.1038/442133a) that's worth reading. They're
certainly not the only ones!

------
peterwwillis
A couple of points if I may:

1\. If you speak at conferences, especially about a non-technical subject like
"women in FOSS projects" (which is more likely to get sexists riled up), you
are going to get unwanted attention. Pretty much every speaker who speaks on a
controversial, or non-technical, or just media-glamorized topic is going to
get harassed - if not hacked. It happens all the time _to men_ and i'm sure it
happens to women.

2\. She started a "geek feminist" website, so that didn't help in terms of
getting some sexist asshole's attention. It's like starting a "geek black
people" website and not expecting white supremacists to send hate mail. I'm
not saying it's justified, only that you have to expect the assholes out there
will come out of the woodwork to give you shit.

3\. _I need to do something that feels rewarding and fun, and the work I was
doing - which involved lots of speaking at conferences wasn’t giving me that
any more._ \- So stop speaking at conferences? The tech industry has more
going for it than giving talks.

4\. If the guy isn't posing a physical threat, suck it up and _ignore it_. Do
you know how many people troll me every week? A lot. But I make myself a
target - just like being bullied in school - and thus I need to defend myself
or move on.

5\. Stop trying to 'get more women in technology'. Why is this seen as a
serious problem that needs fixing? Go ahead and work to reduce sexism, I think
that's necessary because the internet tends to reduce everything to childish
unprofessional behavior. But nobody's code is going to get better just because
there's more females working on it. Instead, focus on improving the tech
industry as a whole instead of one little facet of it (like the distribution
of gender).

I'm sorry if I sound unsympathetic. I do sympathize. A friend of mine stopped
working in the underground infosec community because he was putting out a
magazine and people were sending him hate mail. I understand he didn't want to
get shit, but he had to expect haters - it's the fucking internet.

~~~
drhayes9
Your first two points are classic victim-blaming. "You are going to get
unwanted attention." Well, yes: there are assholes out there. But you seem to
be implying that she is at fault for attracting the assholes, rather than
saying there shouldn't be assholes in the first place. We should focus on
rooting out the assholes rather than throwing up our hands and saying there's
nothing we can do.

I admit there's a fine line here. People doing obviously dangerous and stupid
things should not be surprised when horrible things happen to them. But
starting a website or speaking at a tech conference are neither dangerous nor
stupid. Why are we taking a grin and bear it attitude here?

~~~
peterwwillis
See here (<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3164269>) on why i'm not victim-blaming.
I am not trying to imply anything. I'm simply pointing out what potentially
motivates sexist assholes.

I only advocate a "grin and bear it" attitude when it comes to getting trolled
on the internet in relation to publishing material you know some people will
disagree with greatly. You can not wipe out sexists completely just like you
can't wipe out racists and religious extremists. These people will always
exist. _I AM NOT SAYING YOU HAVE TO TOLERATE IT._ I am saying, _expect it_ ,
don't sit there with your head in the sand pretending they don't exist. I'll
say it again for dramatic effect: _I AM NOT ADVOCATING PRETENDING SEXISM
DOESN'T EXIST, I AM ADVOCATING PEOPLE USE COMMON SENSE AND EXPECT EXTREMIST
ASSHOLES TO ACT LIKE EXTREMIST ASSHOLES, THEN DEAL WITH THEM ACCORDINGLY_

~~~
drhayes9
Those are good points and I'm glad you explained them further. It's the
expectation that you talk about that we should be careful about. It's too easy
to answer, "What did you expect?" as a dismissal, rather than talking about
the real issue: bigotry.

So, given that there are sexist assholes out there willing to harass women,
what are some options beyond tolerance and turning-the-other-stupid-cheek? I'm
not advocating violence, I'm thinking more like sexist asshole outreach, or
something. I dunno.

Beyond commenting on these stories as they come up, what can we do as a
community? Education (starting with "sexism exists and happens near you"),
open dialogue with less fear of reprisal, etc? Like, "I may be a sexist and
I'd like to talk to other people willing to understand what I'm trying to sort
out"?

These stories are like toxic waste on all sides: sexism and racism are touchy
stuff that I think most people don't even want to talk about and, if they do,
are afraid that they're saying it wrong.

~~~
peterwwillis
Yeah, it's pretty hard to have a dialogue about this stuff without it
devolving into a bitter quarrel. I agree that we need practical solutions and
a plan of action to give to people.

The first thing we need is to open up lines of dialogue. What is sexist and
what isn't? How can guys act or what can they do to improve working
conditions? Are there ways we can work with employers to get them to make
changes that foster more cooperation and less divisiveness? You could get a
kind of town hall discussion going to get more ideas.

I do think you have to work with the sexists to help them change. It's not
going to be a night and day thing... I imagine most people who are sexist find
nothing wrong with the way they behave. So part of it may be not demanding
they follow a strict moral code, but just tone it down at first. Work with the
most extreme cases and get more widespread community support to show that kind
of stuff (like putting tits in a presentation) is unacceptable. Probably
getting a lot more men to speak out will help.

Then you can work it the way you would any other PR job. Make some kind of
bumper sticker that (in a way that isn't too pretentious or annoying) says you
agree all people should be treated fairly and equally, including specifically
women. Some kind of logo that represents treating people nice and not making
negative jokes, or considering all possible options instead of only helping
your friends. Maybe some slogans. I was never good with advertising and my
marketing skills are weak, so i'll leave all that up to the professionals. But
the idea is, get the companies to put this stuff up around the office and lead
by example so it's much less acceptable within a group to act out.

You could even get different events to officially endorse some effort to end
unfair treatment of all people in the tech industry. This is more important to
me as it would mean getting people to look past things like nationality/race
(don't just give the indians the cheap jobs), gender (the transsexual person
is just as good at being a manager as anybody), etc. I think everybody can get
behind this and it can specifically underscore the unfair treatment of women.

Going back to the sexist thing, i'd like to see some public humiliations by
the community at large of anyone who does something really stupid against
women. You get the whole community to speak out against specific cases of
sexism and I think it'll hit home more for the other sexists as a kind of
warning to keep those thoughts and feelings to themselves. It may not solve
anonymous hate e-mails but it should definitely help tone down sexism in the
workplace.

I'm sure there's lots of other aspects i'm not thinking of. I hope people
reply and add more ideas.

------
alttag
Unfortunately, this is not the first time this sort of reprehensible behavior
has cost the tech community good talent. Kathy Sierra comes to mind.

Other notables (male and female) have recently removed their presence from the
internet. Although it isn't always clear why, I'd speculate some sort of
harassment was at play there too.

~~~
uriel
Welcome to the Internet. As Paul Vixie pointed out ages ago: "The Internet is
not for sissies."

Trolls are almost as old as the net, and they are not going to disappear
without something short of a big-brother state that makes the Great Firewall
Of China look like kids play.

So better get used to it.

Also remember:

"Liberty resides in the rights of that person whose views you find most
odious." — John Stuart Mill

[Disclaimer: I have often been labeled a troll, and I'm not offended by this
label.]

~~~
andos
By the same reasoning, we could argue that thieves and murderers are almost as
old as civilization and we should just get used to it. Sorry, but no. They
will always exist, sure, but the only thing we should get used to is hunting
them fiercely. I will not surrender my right to be happy, productive, and
helpful because a minority of socially-dysfunctional people are trying hard to
ruin it for me and for others. Nobody should.

Moreover, to equate harassment of women to mere trolling is of complete
ignorance. The fact that you accept the label of "troll" just reinforces that
you should _not_ put the two in the same level. Would you be OK if people
often called you an abuser of women?

The women involved in this shitty situation have already written pages and
pages of how terrible it is—particularly for women—to be the target of
harassment. _If_ anyone cannot understand that, they must be really stupid.

Also remember:

"A witty saying proves nothing." — Voltaire

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Would you be OK if people often called you an abuser of women?_

MikeeUSA is not (as far as we know) an abuser of women. He is a person who
sends unpleasant nonthreatening emails while peacefully sitting in his home.

Your attempt to conflate people who initiate violence and people who express
unpleasant opinions is dishonest.

Further, you don't have any "right to be happy". No one does. You have the
right to pursue happiness in a manner which doesn't involve violence against
others, but you don't have the "right to be happy". If I have a "right to be
happy", then you are violating my rights by not buying me some whisky and
hookers.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
The problem with your assumption is that (as any abuse counselor will tell
you) abusive words are very often the precursor to violent physical action.

As someone whose wife repeatedly received abusive and threatening phone calls
and emails from a former co-worker who eventually showed up at her workplace
waving a gun (and luckily was restrained by a security guard in the lobby!), I
can assure you that Ms Bayley should not take this lightly.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The problem with the assumption that muslims are not terrorists is that (as
any terrorism investigator will tell you) fundamentalist islamic words are
very often a precursor to violent physical action.

See the problem with this logic? You can't paint all people holding certain
beliefs with the brush of the small subset who engage in violent acts.

~~~
wanorris
No, your logic actually implies that we shouldn't paint people who say "I will
come to your country and blow up your buildings" with the same brush as people
who come to our country and blow up our buildings. I don't think I'm out of
line to say that threats like that ought to be taken pretty seriously.

~~~
yummyfajitas
MikeeUSA has not been accused of saying "I will engage in violent acts against
you, woman."

------
GiraffeNecktie
It distresses me that "political correctness" has become a dirty "four letter"
word rather than simply a shared understanding that people who address others
in a hate-filled, bullying, disrepectful and demeaning way should be actively
shunned and censured (i.e. not "censored").

~~~
oconnore
That is not political correctness, that is basic respect for a fellow human
being. Political correctness goes much farther.

~~~
bunderbunder
Perhaps political correctness didn't used to mean that. But for a while now
the term has mostly only been used as an ingredient of the defensive
protestations of people who get called out for displays of bigotry.
Consequently, its meaning has shifted.

~~~
oconnore
No, because you can offend people without bigotry, and you can be entirely
respectful without being PC. The scope of things that can offend the people
around you is essentially limitless. Failure to tip toe around your audience's
sensitivities is not bigotry, but failure to respect your audience as an equal
human being is.

------
ck2
Having been stalked, I can assure you there are plenty of borderline mentally
ill out there.

I would never put even my first name or my city online anymore, anywhere.

Never underestimate the stupidity of people out there with nothing better to
do.

I'm sorry to see the brave ones out there are still going through this these
days.

------
zasz
I don't understand it when people think that someone should just suck it up
when they get harassed. Why is it so hard for them to give the woman the
benefit of the doubt that these are indeed extremely frightening, and
disturbing enough that a reasonable person would want to leave? Why can people
not give her the benefit of the doubt that she is a reasonable person
responding to deeply unreasonable emails? For a silly analogy, I don't
understand why the troll face is funny, but I don't call people retards for
thinking that it is.

------
Homunculiheaded
I've worked both in environments that are 10:1 women to men and 1:10 women to
men. All of the "oh women just don't understand a good joke/don't ball
bust/don't talk dirty" is pure BS, in female dominated environments I've
encountered plenty of that. The one thing I've never encountered was anyone
who made me feel even slightly out-of-place due to my gender (male). On the
other hand I've been in male dominated, tech environments that make me feel
uncomfortable even as a man. I've heard men discuss their wives education as a
merely something to do so that they could marry a programmer, seen numerous
times where women are put on the spot for their gender ("whoa there's a girl
in this class"), incredible amounts of misogyny, continual use of the
"men"/"girl" dichotomy and the cherry on top of all of this is the "oh women
are just being sensitive/can't take a joke/etc" whenever this is brought up.
With a background in the humanities I've actually spent a lot of time reading
up on gender studies and reading real (ie not the pop culture) feminist
writings, and it's frankly embarrassing how regressive even reasonably
intelligent tech teams can be (and disgusting how awful the less talented ones
are). To refuse to see this issue despite the incredible amount of evidence
that it exists if ignorance of the highest order, which of course is to be
expected anywhere this type of behavior is a problem.

------
tnicola
Being a female in a tech industry is legal. Having a public email address is
legal (and understandable if she is a keynote speaker at an open source
conferences).

Rockrolling is an acceptable form of trolling.

Sending someone an explicit email from an untraceable email address is not
only unacceptable behaviour, but all those trying to justify it by saying, 'he
didn't mean it' or 'she was asking for it (in so many words) are just as
sociopathic as the original sender.

On what planet is what he did acceptable, appropriate or even funny?

------
Aloisius
Can someone please tell me why quitting the tech community would stop someone
from harassing you because you are a woman?

If anything, you'd think bringing it up to the community and get help tracking
down the person would work better. That or public ridicule/shaming. Something
proactive. I mean, isn't feminism about fighting back against these
degenerates?

~~~
floatboth
She quit a tech job, not the geek femininsm community.

~~~
Aloisius
Yes, but why would that stop this person from targeting her? If anything, her
geek feministing makes her a much bigger target. I guess I don't follow the
logic unless she believes this person is someone she worked with and even
then, I don't see someone who is truly obsessed from stopping.

~~~
floatboth
Her job involved speaking at conferences, I guess that's a big reason.

She's not giving up.

------
phaer
Here is the direct link to the blog post referenced on itwire.com:
[http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-
littl...](http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-
history-and-some-current-events/)

------
dsr_
I hope Skud's life improves with her new career. I'm horrified that she was
treated this way by any human.

------
aphistic
This reminds me of back in University ~10 years ago. In one of my Java courses
we had a female professor and one female student. The female student ended up
dropping the course within the first month not from harassment by her fellow
male students but because the professor was embarrassing/harassing her in
almost every lecture by bringing up the fact that there was a female student
in the course.

As a side note, that same professor said at one point during the course that
males were keeping females out of tech by using terms and ideas such as Queues
and Sockets. It was an interesting year...

~~~
jff
Regarding Queues and Sockets: what? Can you give her explanation for that? Was
it just "those terms sound difficult and women don't like that kind of thing",
or something even sillier like "queues are phallic"?

~~~
aphistic
Well, at that point sockets were something that really interested me (still
do) but I didn't know much about them. I asked her if she could spend a
lecture going over them and her response was something like "See? This is why
there aren't many women in IT, you men make up terms like Queues and Sockets
to keep them out!" It's been awhile but that was the gist of it. I don't know
if it was meant in jest but she sounded serious.

------
Mizza
That's a bummer. I thought we were making progress in that regard, but maybe
we aren't.

~~~
bunderbunder
I still think we are. The progress is that this kind of stuff is increasingly
discussed in public like this, rather than being allowed to slide.

Sadly, I fear it's still going to take a lot more progress before people can
speak up without a reasonable expectation of retaliation.

------
someone13
After doing some reading about the issue, I'm wondering - what's stopping
people from posting the harassment they receive online? Some sort of
centralized registry of inappropriate emails - I don't see any reason to NOT
publicly shame the kind of people that send these disgusting messages. Even if
it's only a pseudonym, or a disposable email, it's better than silently taking
it, IMHO.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're onto something with this idea.

------
agentgt
There are lots of bad apples but I'm kind of surprised Skud would just give up
on the "whole" industry.

I hope someone encourages Skud to continue developing. Even though the tech
industry is still majority male I have to think there are many more industries
(in particular certain horizontals like sales) that are even worse when it
comes to sexual harassment.

~~~
anon1385
The problem is that some of the 'bad apples' are senior members of the
community who are or were respected and widely listened to. The fact that Eric
Raymond is/was taken seriously ought to be hugely embarrassing to the open
source community.

EDIT: since I got downvoted already I may as well add: ESR is a vile pathetic
excuse for a human being. I don't say that lightly, he really is obnoxious. I
know he has a big fanbase among the libertarians here but at some point people
are going to have to face up to how unacceptable his views are to most people.

~~~
gte910h
Can you bring cites to this claim? Not challenging you, just I've heard this
before, but never anything specific for us who don't know the details.

~~~
anthonyb
I know of at least one: he sent Bruce Perens a threatening email, enough that
Bruce contacted the police. Here's a link:

<http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00201.html>

Edit: his response to receiving _one_ threatening email is pretty revealing,
too:

<http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=290>

------
Peroni
_And a third person kept phoning various people's workplaces and accusing them
of being involved in child pornography._

Seriously? I'm having a hard time believing that this was instigated purely
because she's a female developer. Surely there was more to it than her gender
for someone to stoop that low?

~~~
anon1385
It wasn't just that she was female, it was that she was female and _spoke out_
against the disgusting behaviour she saw and experienced.

Sadly this is not limited to the tech community; feminist bloggers in general
have to deal with an unbelievable amount of shit.

~~~
Peroni
Either way, it takes an absolute lowlife to be that over the top over
something so trivial.

------
nadam
"quits tech industry" Quits tech industry because of one troll??? Does this
mean she will never hack or never program (for money)? Interesting. I have
seen lots of trolls and falemwars on the internet but I could not quit
programming for thousands of trolls. This is the only thing I am good at, this
is what I fell in love at 12, this is what I do to earn money to support my
family... Also trolls have nothing to do with my own projects and the projects
of my employer... Maybe she meant she will quit tech politics? (Then she will
probably enter another kind of politics, because she is seemingly a 'political
person'.)

~~~
floatboth
She will program. For music. <http://skud.dreamwidth.org/10449.html>

------
tekromancr
I love the tech field in general, and programming in particular. I only just
learned about how bad this problem was recently. It saddens me to know that a
large segment of the population is being pushed away from something I think is
amazing and beautiful by assholes who think... I don't even know what they
think.

------
EthanG
Hmm. I read the whole thing and was surprised and saddened to find it seems
genuine. There are some beastly women operating under the flag of feminism,
but if I'm any judge of character I don't think Bayley is one of them.

I am curious about the removal of code issue, but I'm sorry to say it's a
morbid curiosity. I would like to see if my opinion of ESR's judgement of
human issues can get any lower.

------
gaius
How do you "quit the tech industry"? Start again from scratch from the bottom
in... What?

~~~
rohit89
She mentions in her blog post that she is not completely quitting tech. From
her blog,

>>I’m particularly interested in using open tech to preserve and promote
independent music, so you’ll continue to see me around in many of my usual
tech haunts.

------
AdesR
stay classy australia. i'm surprised at the lewdness of images used in the
keynote.

~~~
maximusprime
There wasn't even any nudity I could find... People should stop being offended
at everything.

~~~
michael_dorfman
There's a lot of things besides nudity that can render an image inappropriate
for use in a conference presentation, and judging from the description in the
linked article ( _There was one image of a pig indulging in sexual activity
with a goose..._ ), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to be
offended.

~~~
maximusprime
Guess I just have a very high 'offended' threshold then.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Sure; but if you are presenting in public, it isn't your own 'offended'
threshold that should be operative, it is that of your audience. And, even
there, you probably don't want to shoot for the middle of the pack there--
offending, say, half of your audience wouldn't be much of a success in most
contexts. So, while you might not want to scrub down your presentation to a
point where _no one_ is offended, you still probably want to stay away from
sexual images involving farm animals. Just sayin'.

~~~
maximusprime
Guess so... most funny birthday cards etc feature "worse" images.

It depends what context the images were used in the talk, and if they made
sense being there IMHO.

------
Codayus
I dunno. I'm sympathetic and all, but this seems to boil down to:

"Nasty person A keeps harassing nice person B via email in ways which do not
warrant the involvement of law enforcement."

Which is terrible and all - especially for person getting the nasty emails -
but this really doesn't seem to have any real relevance to anyone who isn't
involved.

~~~
maximusprime
And is pretty solvable by setting up an email filter.

~~~
Codayus
Apparently the abuse in question included creation of throwaway email
accounts. That makes email filtering harder, at a minimum.

~~~
Tichy
If such a thing does not exist yet, and if standard spam filters can't do the
job for some reason, I would be interested in creating a filter that can
identify harassment mails (or trying to create one...). If the need really
exists, let me know.

------
rsanchez1
I was going to start a rant about how this behavior is encouraged by the macho
men online, but this was just one guy harassing her. "Due to harassment" reads
as due to harassment from the community, but she gave in to one idiot. She let
him win.

~~~
scott_s
I pointed this out to another poster:
[http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/11/online-harassment-as-a-
da...](http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/11/online-harassment-as-a-daily-hazard-
when-trolls-feed-themselves/)

------
mkramlich
I wish this kind of thing never appeared on HN. This kind of thing, involving
gender/harassment/PC-ness always tends to devolve into flamefests and
pedantry, and nothing tangible comes of it. Demonization, stereotypes, extreme
generalizations, cherry picking, etc. Over and over and over again.

My take: there are bad people in the world, yes. And we have no control over
them. Sometimes bad things happen. And we have no control over that.
Knowledge, education, maturity are not equally distributed, and not all people
share the same behavior or values as we'd like. News at 11. Let's move on.
Please. :)

~~~
i_c_b
I used to feel exactly the same way you do... but to be honest, over time, I'd
say these kinds of conversations have actually gradually affected my
viewpoint.

I agree that the conversations, _in the comments_, never seem to resolve, but
never underestimate the impact on people who aren't typing. Knowledge,
education, and maturity aren't equally distributed, but conversations like
this, even if they are exasperating, are one way to change that. It's affected
me, anyway.

------
funkah
That is too bad. It sounds like she was constantly harassed by some crazy
troll psycho. Unfortunately leaving tech may not make him stop if he's that
dedicated.

------
maximusprime
Men have to put up with such abuse harassment and dickery all the time online.
Welcome to the internet.

Unfortunately us men can't just play the "sexism" card.

~~~
ugh
Examples?

It’s rough on the internet, sure, but were I a woman I would think long and
hard about revealing my gender. Women are quite visibly treated differently
and everyone being oblivious to this sexism (or even belittling it) doesn’t
really help.

~~~
_delirium
Stacy Horn has some good examples applied to both genders, even in the 1990s,
in her book _Cyberville_ (<http://www.amazon.com/dp/044651909X>), an account
of her time running ECHO. Even if only a small percentage of your users are
insane, a large community seems to get a few.

I do agree women are visibly treated differently, especially in the sense of
pervasive weird harassment, like random sexual or hostile comments from
dozens/hundreds of users for no reason. The specific issue of crazy stalkers
trying to get you fired may also apply to women more frequently, but I'm less
sure of that--- 4chan has a history of doing that sort of stuff, mostly to
males, and bloggers and website admins who piss people off get it all the
time. Both Richard Kyanka of SomethingAwful and Rusty Foster of Kuro5hin have
writeups floating around somewhere of some of the harassment they and their
families have received due to running popular forums (in rusty's case it more
or less caused him to check out).

Not really sure what to do about the stalker problem, since that appears (in
this case, at least) to have been a single person, and problems that one-in-a-
million people can cause are difficult to stamp out. The pervasive harassment
problem, of course, could and should be fixed.

------
sdafssd
omg, this is bad add placement by Comcast on this article:
<http://www.4freeimagehost.com/show.php?i=32dd50b2da94.jpg>

The ad has an attractive woman in classes standing next to a laptop at a
hosting facility with the title "The Solution: Comcast Metro Ethernet."

------
mahyarm
Why aren't there many men in dance, ballet and elementary school education?

~~~
mahyarm
Don't downvote, it's an honest question.

------
jxcole
Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available
email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say
this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse.

Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to
seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be
publicly available anyway.

It's important for community leaders to stand up for this sort of thing and
publicly disown discrimination. But unless she gives them a chance, i.e.
unless the _community_ is anti-female, I can't see this as a good move on her
part.

~~~
jxcole
I am apparently not allowed to edit something that has been downvoted but here
is my edit:

Martin Luther King Jr stood up for his rights and was shot. As we all are, I
am very saddened by his loss. However I think that this brings up a very
important point. If you stand up for an unpopular belief, you can expect
abuse.

Should you expect abuse? Should you be forced to endure unpleasantries because
you expect the same rights as any one else? No, but you will receive it. And
if you are really committed to your cause you will stand up for yourself
anyway. Reading about the protests of the past. When people stood up against
the war in Vietnam and participated in legal protests they were beaten by
police. By police. I would like to let that sink in for a moment.

So forgive me for expressing my disappointment when an activist decides to
back down from their cause. And not because she was beaten by police or
because she was beaten by people with opposing viewpoints. Not because she was
shot. But because she was receiving emails, comments on a blog, and prank
phone calls.

Maybe I am a hypocrite because I have done nothing. I am. But I still look at
something like this and say to myself "I wish someone would stand up for those
rights." I mean really stand up for them. Not just run away because of a few
bad eggs. I don't think we can expect change otherwise.

~~~
zasz
Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't alone in his civil rights work. Unfortunately,
judging by your commentary, this poor woman is.

~~~
KilgoreTrout
I LIKE TURTLES...bitch

------
monochromatic
Trolls exist on the internet. Bayley is just supporting negative stereotypes
about how women can't handle the pressure when she lets a troll get the best
of her and _changes her whole life_ because of him.

~~~
scott_s
Excuse me? At what point do you stop calling someone a "troll" and start
calling them a "stalker"? Perhaps the harassment she received was so much that
changing her whole life greatly improves her quality of life. Is she still
"just supporting negative stereotypes" then?

~~~
maximusprime
I think the point is that men have to put up with such shit all the time
online.

~~~
scott_s
No, I don't think they do. And if you think they do, I don't think you
understand the scale of what she's talking about. It's linked several times in
this thread. Please read it.

~~~
maximusprime
I've read it. There are billions of disturbed weird people in the world. Lots
of them make it online. This is one of them.

It's a shame she let it bother her.

~~~
scott_s
So it's her fault that a continued campaign of harassment "bothered" her? Have
you ever experienced anything like that, or are you just guessing what it
would feel like?

~~~
monochromatic
> Have you ever experienced anything like that, or are you just guessing what
> it would feel like?

White-knighting aside, have _you_?

~~~
scott_s
No, but I'm also not telling someone who is experiencing it what they should
do.

------
DiabloD3
After reading this article, twice... huh? All I can tell is she is bitching
that she didn't get respect purely out of being a woman in tech and nothing
else actually substantial.

I personally encourage woman to enter various tech industry roles
(programming, IT, etc), and women like this push Woman's Rights 2.0 back a
decade every time they do this.

Also, MikeeUSA is a known troll, and anyone who is stupid enough to fall for
his shit rather deserves it. He tends to hang out (and by hang out, I mean
banned frequently) in the IRC channel for DarkPlaces, a Quake engine used by
many games including Nexuiz and Xonotic, and we can't stand him either.

tl;dr: Geek men support Women's Rights; one specific geek woman didn't and
suddenly its a new story and somehow its the men's fault.

~~~
DiabloD3
I'm being downvoted for supporting woman's rights and publicly stating so.

Welp, I have karma to burn, I'm not going anywhere.

~~~
michaels0620
Your public support for woman's rights is undermined by your implication that
she is "stupid" for "falling for his shit". It's not like she got duped into
giving her bank account information to a Nigerian Prince. She's become a
target for bigotry.

I also wouldn't call harassing emails, phoning people's work places, and
changing an employer's online database as "nothing substantial".

~~~
DiabloD3
I support equal rights. If a guy fell for troll bait, I say hes stupid for
falling for it. If a woman does it, should I not treat her the same way? If I
did, I myself would be undermining woman's rights.

There is also insufficient proof such things happened. If they did, why has
she not gone to the police and legally pursued it? I'm not seeing that she has
done so at all.

~~~
michaels0620
I guess I am stuck on what it is you mean by "falling for troll bait". In my
mind it means that you get sucked into an internet argument by someone who
clearly just wants to cause trouble, not have discussion.

The fault for this guy's escalation to the point of calling people's place of
business , etc.lies _entirely_ with him. So I'd agree that you treating men
and women equally, but I would argue that you would be equally wrong.

It is possible that things have never happened but there seems to be enough
evidence amongst others. From her original post, it appears she has gone to
the police but they did not do anything. There is a rather expansive area of
behavior that is clearly intimidating and inappropriate that is not
technically illegal.

~~~
DiabloD3
MikeeUSA is a troll. He has no means to actually harm anyone, and he does it
purely for the lulz.

Thus, MikeeUSA trolled a woman, and she took the bait. I just don't get why
this is news, I've been trolled before, I don't get a news story.

This isn't blaming the victim, this is blaming someone who allowed a troll to
win and just made it that much harder for every other woman on the Internet to
be taken seriously.

And yes, I have a problem with that. I would love to see more women involved
in FOSS, and Skud's actions have only served to scare more women away and make
them think and guys in FOSS are are trolls and/or potential rapists.

People need to grow a backbone and stand up for themselves. This advice is
equally as valid for both men and women.

~~~
Vorlon
> MikeeUSA is a troll.

No, no he is not. A troll is someone who advances an exaggerated position they
do not hold, for the entertainment value of watching the commotion it causes.

A troll is not someone who:

\- creates misogynistic game content glorifying the rape and oppression of
women

\- repeatedly creates throw-away email accounts with new names in order to
ensure his hateful message is heard in forums from which he has been banned

\- hosts his personal website in Canada because he knows it's more difficult
to shut him down across international borders

\- bounces all of his traffic through TOR to avoid prosecution for his
behavior

MikeeUSA has done all of these things. He is not a troll. He is a sad little
manchild with an inferiority complex and he is a boil on the butt of humanity,
but he is not a troll.

Nor are people who harrass their targets at their place of work "trolls".

It's very easy to dismiss inappropriate behavior as "trolling". When you
dismiss harrassment as "trolling" and suggest that it should be ignored, you
are part of the problem. When you blame Skud for "letting the trolls win," you
are part of the problem.

It's absurd and offensive for you to claim that Skud is "scaring more women
away" by talking about her experience or for deciding to leave the tech
industry. What scares women away from FOSS are _their actual personal
experiences of harrassment_. You don't want women to shy away from high
profile positions in the FOSS community? Worry instead about finding a
solution to the problem that women who do are subjected to the kind of abuse
that makes them decide it's not worth the pain to be involved in this
community.

