
Dear Fellow Rubyists - mkn
http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/
======
SwellJoe
So, this is why Asimov never really included sex or adult language in his
novels. Not because he was a prude (he wasn't) or had any moral qualms about
such things (he didn't), or because he expected any significant portion of his
audience to be prudes or have such qualms (scifi, as a fanbase, is exceedingly
forgiving of sex, violence, and language). But, because some percentage of
people would use it as an excuse not to _think_ about what he had to say.

It's easier to write someone off as not worth listening to, if they say or do
something "offensive". So, if you have something you consider important to
say, it might behoove you to think about the ways people can write you off as
not worth listening to. Since the fellow with the naked ladies in his
presentation included the naked ladies in order to get attention, I'm going to
assume he felt like he had something important to say. And, since nobody is
talking about what he said, and only how he said it, I'm thinking he failed.

~~~
kingsley_20
I definitely remember sex in both, the foundation as well as the robot series.
However, I agree with the point of your second paragraph. You may be
illustrating your point better than you had planned to- your example of Asimov
doesn't quite hold up, but your general point does.

~~~
SwellJoe
_I definitely remember sex in both_

You have a vivid imagination. The sex scenes are perhaps the mildest of any
modern scifi I can think of...and they came in later novels, perhaps after he
was thoroughly confident no one took his writing lightly. He also practically
murdered the one actually sexually explicit story he wrote in his early career
( _The Portable Star_ ), by insuring it wasn't published again in any
collection during his life.

Compare Asimov to any of his contemporaries...Heinlein, Farmer, Dick, etc.
Clarke was also a bit more "polite", and I guess, also more inclined toward
people taking his work more seriously and thinking more about the serious
issues he was addressing.

Of course, he also felt that he just wasn't very good at writing female
characters or romantic subjects, so he avoided it for the sake of his readers.
So, if we're being entirely strict about using Asimov as an example, it also
falls apart because he had several reasons for not doing sex very often...not
just wanting to be taken seriously.

------
petercooper
Dear god, not again. Not a month can go by without another gender debate that
goes nowhere and has no resolution at all. I've seen these crop up in every
programming community I've monitored over the last ten years.

Instead of whining about other people's behavior, perhaps people should _do_
things to tackle the inequalities they perceive (such as the fine _Girl Geek
Dinners_ or "do a Amy Hoy" and put out some damn good blog posts and apps and
become well known and respected in the community).

I see the irony in that _I'm_ whining about someone else's behavior, but I
don't want anything to be "fixed" as such.. I just wish these smart, decent
people would get on with doing great work instead of losing time on a crazy
argument that always goes nowhere.

~~~
knowtheory
Peter you and i are going to have to sit down and catch a meal at railsconf,
so i can figure out why you've become so curmudgeonly over the past couple
months :p

Rubyists are -not- all that liberal, just like most programming communities
are not all that liberal. There are a lot of very outspoken liberals, however,
there are just as many conservatives (and i use this in the American
liberal/conservative distinction) out there to argue with.

=====================================

Frankly i find your sentiment dispiriting and unhelpful. Discussions like
these are indicative of a problem. I vociferously agree that we need action
more than words, but simply disregarding the discussion, and there by the
problem, sounds like willful denial to me.

Fundamentally it comes down to this. If ruby is supposedly more egalitarian
and accessible than other programming languages (which is something we tell
ourselves as Rubyists), why are there -fewer- women than in many other
technical fields? Why are we doing such an awful job of recruiting and
retaining people so that our gender ratio is at freaking least >5% women?

Pragmatically, the question that needs to be answered is what can you or i (or
any individual rubyist) do to alleviate this problem? What are the pitfalls
and impediments to attempting to help?

If nobody talks about the issue it's hard to see how we can make any progress.
If you don't like the tone the conversation has taken, try and spin it off
into something that is more constructive.

~~~
jamesbritt
"I vociferously agree that we need action more than words, but simply
disregarding the discussion, and there by the problem, sounds like willful
denial to me."

I _think_ Peter's point was that the action needed has to come from those who
want to play a larger role in their respective Ruby community. What's needed
are more code and talk proposals, not blog posts.

One poster referred to women being excluded, which is an interesting claim.
I've never heard another Rubyist make a comment to suggest that anyone should
be excluded from any Ruby activity. If anything, the people I know are on
active lookout for anyone interested in Ruby.

One way to have more women at Ruby events is for more women to write more
notable code and step up to give notable presentations.

If anyone thinks this is already going on, and women are being deliberately
put aside in favor of men, I would love to see some evidence for this.

I was part of the advisory group for the recent Mt. West RubyConf, and out of
the 50 or so talks proposed, I don't think a single one was from a woman. So,
who needs to step up to make things change?

~~~
earl
James: seriously, listen to yourself. Maybe nobody explicitly says, "Tits or
GTFO" but that presentation said the exact same thing in visual form. As did
the conference organizers and audience that apparently had no problem with it.

~~~
jamesbritt
That's _one_ presentation. It's is far from being representative of what is
seen or said at Ruby conferences generally.

It's bullshit to point at this one occurrence, ignore 99% of what else goes
on, and suggest there's a culture of deliberate exclusion in Rubyland. 8 years
of active Ruby involvement tells me otherwise. Maybe it's true for the NYC
crowd, I don't know. They'll be the ones to explain (or not) how this talk
came about. But to me it's an aberration.

Also, the discussion that's going tells me there are many Rubyists who have a
problem with this sort of presentation (though exactly what that problem is
seems to vary).

It seems more to be part of a virulent strain of annoying juvenility that pops
up in numerous tech corners.

~~~
knowtheory
GoGaRuCo is the Golden Gate Ruby Conference, not GoRuCo, which is the Gotham
Ruby Conference.

People are not claiming that this presentation is _representative_ of all
presentations in the Ruby community. This presentation and the reaction
afterward is being taken as _INDICATIVE_ of a problem that is neither
recognized nor addressed.

~~~
jamesbritt
Can't imagine how I could confuse those names. :)

More to the point:

"This presentation and the reaction afterward is being taken as INDICATIVE of
a problem that is neither recognized nor addressed."

I don't see a single presentation out of whatever total number of Ruby talks
as coming even close to being indicative of a problem.

Nine years of Ruby conferences. One comes along that demonstrates notable poor
taste. That's a good record.

------
hugothefrog
Wow.. what an incredibly offensive presentation that Matt Aimonetti gave. That
he needed to resort to such crass tactics speaks volumes about both him, the
audience, and what he thought about the audience.

I'm a little disappointed that there isn't a strong tone being taken against
this guy; perhaps I'm just missing it? Even the woman bloggers seem to be
apologizing for the offense they've taken.

Those slides were hugely sexist and misogynistic; the imagery was
stereotypical and gratuitous. I wasn't there, so didn't hear any accompanying
commentary, but he would have to be an amazing speaker to make those slides
appear not objectionable.

~~~
earl
Wow -- go read the presentation (available
[http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-
sex-...](http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-
gogaruco/) ). The kindest thing that can be said about Matt Aimonetti is he
simply has no class. Or, apparently, a grownup relationship with women.

I was going to criticize the blog hugothefrog linked to for indicting the
whole Ruby community because of one asshole, but then I thought about it a
little more and really? Nobody organizing the conference looked at his title
and said hold on a minute? Or asked to vet the slides beforehand? Or in the
audience stood up and said, "Matt, you're an asshole."

This might have been funny in 6th grade. Now it's incredibly tasteless and
probably actionable.

~~~
knowtheory
Guys, here's the thing. Matt isn't an asshole. He's just not, by any
definition (except maybe some right-wing nutjobs, given that he's French and
all, but then they'd probably call him a morally loose, cheese eating
surrender monkey, more than an asshole).

He promotes tech, he contributes to the community, i've never seen him be mean
or rude to anyone. If his wife and the others he keeps company with are any
indication, people like him and thinks he does well by others.

I saw the title and thought it was tasteless (i wasn't actually at GoGaRuCo),
and maybe i should have said that it would have been upsetting, but i
genuinely just thought it was going to be tasteless, not something that would
offend (There's a book called "How to make love like a porn star" with the
subtitle "A Cautionary Tale").

It's possible that Matt's presentation could have been executed in a manner
that didn't offend. Nor was his intent juvenile, as you have asserted. From
what he's said, he seems to have thought that people would be liberal (i don't
mean that politically speaking) enough to handle the subject matter, which i
think is a mistake he is not likely to make again.

So, there's the disconnect. Matt had one impression of how his presentation
would be received, and that assumption did not go challenged until after he
delivered the pesentation. The audience, not knowing Matt, have different
assumptions and boundaries on what is and isn't appropriate in a presentation.
I'm willing to go so far as to say Matt was wrong on this. He made the wrong
decision. But he didn't do it because he's callous, or mean, or misogynistic.

------
davidmathers
Giles Bowkett wins: [http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-
sex-...](http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-
gogaruco/#comment-555)

~~~
hugothefrog
Thanks for pointing out that specific comment. It wasn't there when I first
read that post.

The only correction I'd make to his post would be to state that people in
nearly all communities (perhaps not the members of the Professional
Association of Honest Apologists) are unable to apologize gracefully.

------
jrockway
I learned a lot from this article, namely that if you want people to talk
about your talks after you give them, add porn. It seems to be more effective
than technical content, which just puts the audience to sleep.

Here's another example: <http://use.perl.org/~Alias/journal/31986>

~~~
knowtheory
I think you'll note that everyone involved in this discussion would much
rather be discussing the content of the presentation, which, so far as i have
seen, has not been discussed.

So, sure, people are talking about the presentation. They're just not talking
about the technical content of the presentation.

I don't think that's a winning proposition.

~~~
jamesbritt
"So, sure, people are talking about the presentation. They're just not talking
about the technical content of the presentation."

A few times recently I've heard people remark on one or another presentation,
but they were captivated by the jokes or visual gimmickry.

When I was watching some of those talks, my thought was, you've only got 30
minutes, and you're wasting it with jokes?

It's nice to have a talk that's remembered, but it should be for the essential
content, not for the fluff (or, in some cases, the fluffer.)

------
marcusbooster
I saw this presentation when a friend (who's _not_ a programmer) posted a link
on Facebook to it.

I wouldn't be surprised if non-tech people thought this was a porn site thing.

------
mattetti
For those who still care, here is my statement:
[http://merbist.com/2009/04/28/on-engendering-strong-
reaction...](http://merbist.com/2009/04/28/on-engendering-strong-reactions/)

