
A Painful Decision - ph0rque
http://afreshcup.com/2009/04/28/a-painful-decision/
======
swombat
For some context, Mike Gunderloy (author of this article) is an extremely
prolific rails activist and community member. This is not some random unknown
making a fuss, it's a very well respected, very active, very productive member
of the rails community making a pretty pointed statement and putting his money
where his mouth is.

Some further background:

<http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/>

[http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-
individua...](http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-individual)

[http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-
programmers-...](http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-programmers-
arent-keeping-women-out)

And, the slides themslves (NSFW): [http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-
perform-like-a-pr...](http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-
a-pr0n-star?type=presentation)

~~~
russell
Unbelievable. What kind of idiot makes a soft porn presentation in an age when
nude calendars are banned from auto shops. I grew up when off color stories
were ok with professionals so long as ladies werent present. It was ok to call
women 'honey' and make suggestive remarks. I was glad to see that go, along
with racist jokes.

Women belong in every enterprise. If the screening process is passing women by
because they are not technical ninjas or dont want to work 80 hour weeks or
dont do so well in alpha male interviews, the group is going to suffer because
it is going to miss out on a diversity of skills and viewpoints.

~~~
jrockway
_Unbelievable. What kind of idiot makes a soft porn presentation in an age
when nude calendars are banned from auto shops?_

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man."

Seriously, not everyone is that hung-up about sex.

Anyway, it is amazing how much damage the community is doing to itself over a
20 minute presentation by one guy. If you resign your positions and spend
pages and pages talking about it, you're just going to encourage others to do
the same. This guy has _power_ now.

~~~
jimbokun
"Seriously, not everyone is that hung-up about sex."

Feeling a need to put porn in your presentation about CouchDB _is_ a hang-up
about sex. There are all kinds of activities that, while perhaps
unobjectionable in and of themselves, just do not go well together.

I do not understand how so many seem to have lost the idea that context
matters. What might be perfectly appropriate content or behavior at a party or
a club in mixed company can be totally inappropriate at a business meeting,
wedding, funeral, or conference presentation. Why does this idea even need
explaining?

DHH was commenting that doctors, lawyers, and other professional groups have
far raunchier conversations than programmers, and manage to attract women just
fine. So my question is: do doctors routinely slip porn into a presentation
about a clinical studies trial? Does a lawyer slip porn into his slides for
his closing remarks? Does anyone honestly think either of those would go over
well?

~~~
rimantas
How can you call images in that presentation porn?

~~~
plinkplonk
" So my question is: do doctors routinely slip porn into a presentation about
a clinical studies trial? Does a lawyer slip porn into his slides for his
closing remarks? Does anyone honestly think either of those would go over
well?"

The point is not everyone agrees those images are "porn". And if they were,
that it is inappropriate to do so.

People have a range of opinions from "utterly disgusting" to "wtf? It is just
a presentation at a conference."

That is the "problem".

~~~
ankhmoop
The inappropriateness of the images is their context -- whether classified as
porn or merely risque, their only purpose in this talk was to cloud a
technological discussion on the state non-relational distributed key/value
databases and their comparison to RDBMs systems, and in doing so unnecessarily
offended a significant subset of the audience.

For example, compare slides 15 (RDBMs):

[http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-
pr...](http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr0n-star/15)

and 52 (CouchDB):

[http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-
pr...](http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr0n-star/52)

------
hvs
I'm not a member of the Rails community, so I'm curious as to why this "Women
in Programming" issue seems to focused solely on that community. Women are
underrepresented in almost all development communities and it seems odd to
focus on one specific community. It would be strange to talk about "the lack
of female representation in the C++ community" rather than the development
community in general, so why is this different?

I'm not trying to stir the pot or anything, I'm legitimately curious.

~~~
decode
I'm not in the Ruby community, but here's what I've gathered:

There was a talk at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference called "CouchDB + Ruby:
Perform Like a Pr0n Star", which featured an extended porn-industry metaphor
and what some have described as softcore porn in the slides. This talk created
a lot of discussion in the Ruby community, in particular about the effect this
kind of talk has on the female attendees, and the general atmosphere of the
conference. It also caused the Ruby community to introspect on what kind of
environment they are creating and how it affects people who are not
heterosexual males who may wish to participate in that community.

See the links posted above by swombat for some of the discussion.

~~~
hvs
Huh. Yeah, I could see how that might generate discussion.

As a heterosexual male, _I_ would be uncomfortable being at a presentation
that used pornographic imagery throughout. Call me a prude, but certain things
simply don't belong in a professional environment.

~~~
batasrki
Not only that, but when the issue was brought into the spotlight, the
"leaders" of the Rails community dismissed as "edgy". Some have even applauded
it. This is a major reason for Mike leaving.

~~~
raganwald
_When the issue was brought into the spotlight, the "leaders" of the Rails
community dismissed as "edgy"._

Porn is _not_ edgy. Walking into Oracle's Head Office and shitting on their
conference table is edgy.

<http://twitter.com/raganwald/status/1641756320>

------
Zoe_Brain
There's a number of issues here.

First, men and women _tend_ to think differently, and have talents in
different areas, just as men _tend_ to be taller. This is a matter of biology,
and on that basis alone, a reasonable mix in IT would be biased towards a
greater proportion of males, depending on the exact developmental role. About
2:1.

Except it's more like 8:1 or even 12:1, rather than 2:1.In open source, 50:1.

It's no accident that there are more women in interface design, project
management and architecture within IT either. Remember though that this is all
statistical, just as there are short men and tall women, you should always
look at individuals as individuals, not as stereotypes. Talents between the
ears are what's important, and chromosomes are a poor guide to those.

Part of the problem is the discouragement talented girls experience at school
because IT is a "male field". Part of it is that businesses are set up with
men in mind, with stereotypically male aspects of bonding after work, of
stakhanovite hours with no concession for having a Life, with hierachies and
competition for "fastest gun in the west" rather than teamwork. The latter is
particularly important in Open Source development.

Part of it is straight old-fashioned misogyny and the glass ceiling, but I
think that's not as important as the other issues. It can get pretty bad
though as a consequence of the other causes, trust me on that one. I invite
all the straight guys to imagine what it would be like in a gay-only
environment, with gay porn posters and bitchy jokes about "breeders", plus the
occasional overt sexual harrassment and almost universal attempts to flirt.
That's what it's like for many women in IT, all the time.

It's not as bad as it was. I'm 51, and can remember when things were a lot
worse. Female medical students are no longer required to sign a pledge not to
get married if they enter med school, as they were when I was in grade school.
But Blacks don't have separate drinking fountains either, as they did then.
"Better" does not mean "Good" or even "minimally acceptable".

------
lucraft
Vote up if you're part of the silent majority that is not interested in this
discussion.

