
Is this considered creepy in all cultures? - restofus
https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=78146
======
rjknight
I think the issue is the lack of consent. The data is freely available and
anyone who wants to use it to compile lists of Perl developers can do so, but
if you're going to put up a list of female developers without a) asking them
first and b) presenting it in a context that anticipates and avoids the
gender-politics objections to doing so, then you're going to get a negative
reaction. It's probably something that _shouldn't_ be creepy even without
consent and carefully-honed context, or at least no creepier than a list of
Russian Perl developers or Perl developers who use Windows or whatever, but
that's not the world we live in.

It looks like an honest enough mistake, but I guess we're going to have to
listen to another bunch of white male community guardians parading their
feminist credentials and belittling the original developer for his backwards
lack of understanding anyway.

~~~
calibraxis
So far, the only 3rd party blogpost on this linked here (Michael G Schwern's
[1]) didn't link to the module nor author, so as not to "embarrass the author
further". Many males serious about feminism (or "anti-patriarchy", whatever
you want to call it) take care to not provoke costs which females must bear,
and try to helpfully inform.

Now, if you don't want to listen, please don't feel you're forced to.
There's... exciting... frontpage articles here about PHP, something Steve Jobs
said, a boat which flips vertically...

[1] ([http://blogs.perl.org/users/michael_g_schwern/2012/07/how-
no...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/michael_g_schwern/2012/07/how-not-to-
highlight-women-in-perl.html))

~~~
ars
Wow. Couldn't disagree more with that blog.

"This Is What A Computer Scientist Looks Like" is exactly the wrong way to
"empower". It's a photo. Who cares what you look like? You are a programmer -
the only thing I should care about is what your code looks like.

> [from the blog] Maybe give them the reigns to make the big decisions and you
> handle the grunt work.

Are you kidding? I should do that _because_ they are female? That's terrible.
You should not care what gender, or anything else, they are - except their
ability.

If people need to see that there are others like them in a community (do they
though?), then this module list is exactly right.

~~~
anextio
> You should not care what gender, or anything else, they are - except their
> ability.

We don't live in that world. Neither do we live in a world where people of
color are afforded the same opportunities as white people even though they
have all the same rights.

Software (and tech in general) is a toxic and often extremely sexist community
towards women. It's easy to take your attitude of "not caring", but that
doesn't solve the problem, it simply shuts off the light so that nasty people
can do their bidding in the dark.

> I should do that because they are female?

Yes, if it's a freaking thing about women, then they should have the last
freaking word. :)

> If people need to see that there are others like them in a community (do
> they though?), then this module list is exactly right.

This is exactly the sort of blind, toxic attitude that some of us are trying
to help destroy. If women who are CPAN authors want to organize a community
amongst themselves, then it's up to them to decide how they want to go about
doing it. It is NOT up to men to do it for them without consulting or
considering the consequences given the continued problems with sexual
harassment in the tech community.

~~~
ars
> We don't live in that world.

Online we do. No one can even tell what gender you are unless you tell them.
And why tell them? Why should they care?

> If women who are CPAN authors want to organize a community amongst
> themselves, then it's up to them to decide how they want to go about doing
> it. It is NOT up to men to do it for them

To me you sound incredibly sexist. (Men do this, Women do that.) Women have
their club, Men have theirs.

Sorry, but I don't divide up the world like you do. Who cares who made the
list? Are you saying that if a Woman made that list all is well?

Why does the gender of who made the list matter? Shouldn't the only thing that
matters be if the person wants to be on the list?

~~~
anextio
> If people need to see that there are others like them in a community (do
> they though?), then this module list is exactly right.

We don't. Especially in the tech community, everyone is assumed to be male by
default. There was a post not two days ago by a woman programmer showing that
a common complaint among men is that women "don't contribute technical
articles". News flash: they do, but the commenters ignore the possibility that
an anonymous blogger might be a woman and refer to the author as "he" anyway.

We simply do not live in the world you describe.

> To me you sound incredibly sexist.

Funny how sexists always say that to people who call out sexism.

> Sorry, but I don't divide up the world like you do.

Right, you'd rather completely ignore the issues facing this community.

> Are you saying that if a Woman made that list all is well?

In short, yeah. It's creepy for men to compose a list of 'females' without
their consent and make it opt-out.

> Why does the gender of who made the list matter?

Because the tech community is utterly plagued with misogyny, sexual harassment
at conferences, and people like you who want to ignore the whole issue in the
name of not being told that they can't impose anything they want on a
marginalized group.

~~~
ars
> everyone is assumed to be male by default

Not by me. I make no assumptions on the matter at all, the entire topic never
even crosses my mind.

I don't get why gender even matters for these topics. You aren't dating them.

> a common complaint among men is that women "don't contribute technical
> articles"

This is a common complaint? I've never even noticed the gender of someone
contributing an article. Who are these people who tally these things up?

> In short, yeah

And you call me sexist? And how do you know if the author is male or female
anyway?

You sound very obsessed with knowing the gender of each person you interact
with online.

You are aware that discriminating for women on good things is just as sexist
as doing it for bad things, right?

> and refer to the author as "he" anyway

Because that's how English grammar works.

~~~
cloudier
> Not by me. I make no assumptions on the matter at all, the entire topic
> never even crosses my mind...This is a common complaint? I've never even
> noticed the gender of someone contributing an article. Who are these people
> who tally these things up?

Anextio was pointing out the the tech industry is sexist, not trying to call
_you_ in particular sexist. It's cool that you make no assumptions if that's
the case (although, to be honest I find that a bit unbelievable since you
think the tech industry doesn't suffer from sexism), but that doesn't change
the tech industry.

> And you call me sexist? And how do you know if the author is male or female
> anyway?

There are links (e.g. [http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-
appar...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-apparently-
this-is-creepy.html)) that show that the author is male.

> You are aware that discriminating for women on good things is just as sexist
> as doing it for bad things, right?

I don't see where you got the idea that anextio was doing anything other than
pointing out that women in the tech community don't get the credit they
deserve.

> Because that's how English grammar works.

So it's suddenly not sexist to assume that the author of an anonymous blog is
male? (Just to clarify: I don't mean sexist as in 'I'm out to systematically
repress all women!', I mean the follow-the-leader sexist as in 'it's okay to x
because everyone else does it.') 'He', unfortunately, isn't a gender-neutral
pronoun.

> I don't get why gender even matters for these topics. You aren't dating
> them.

So...the gender of another person only matters if you want to get into their
pants? It's really quite obvious that you don't respect whichever gender you
are not.

Edit: formatting

~~~
ars
> I find that a bit unbelievable

I find it unbelievable that you (or anyone) pays any attention to the gender
of a programmer you only met online.

> that show that the author is male

I searched and couldn't find it. The closest I came is the name on github.

> women in the tech community don't get the credit they deserve.

Why do they deserve credit _as women_? Who cares if they are women? Give them
credit for doing something as a human, not for their gender.

> 'He', unfortunately, isn't a gender-neutral pronoun.

Yes it is. The fact that you think it isn't is a discredit to your education.

> So...the gender of another person only matters if you want to get into their
> pants?

Or if you want to be close friends with them. Online it makes no difference.

> It's really quite obvious that you don't respect whichever gender you are
> not.

And yet you can't even tell which it is despite me writing about gender. (And
no, I'm not going to tell you.)

I ignore gender for things that have nothing to do with gender. There are
plenty of things (including online) where gender matters, but programming
isn't one of them.

~~~
cloudier
> I find it unbelievable that you (or anyone) pays any attention to the gender
> of a programmer you only met online.

I didn't mean paying _conscious attention_ to the gender - I was thinking of
automatic assumptions people make about others. It's natural to make
assumptions about people; it's immoral to pretend they don't exist or to
object to reducing their effects.

> I searched and couldn't find it. The closest I came is the name on github.

Steven is a masculine name.

> Why do they deserve credit as women? Who cares if they are women? Give them
> credit for doing something as a human, not for their gender.

I entirely agree, however that doesn't stop people from making incorrect and
broad generalisations about groups of people who share characteristics that
are entirely out of their control.

> Yes it is. The fact that you think it isn't is a discredit to your
> education.

'He' _is_ the unmarked pronoun but it's still gendered (i.e. masculine). 'It'
isn't gendered, but is also generally used for inanimate objects rather than
people.

> And yet you can't even tell which it is despite me writing about gender.
> (And no, I'm not going to tell you.)

Haha, only because I thought you would get angry if I made any assumptions
about who you are.

> I ignore gender for things that have nothing to do with gender. There are
> plenty of things (including online) where gender matters, but programming
> isn't one of them.

Like I said before, I think that's cool, even if I find it a bit unbelievable
that you don't make assumptions about people you meet online.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
> _'He' is the unmarked pronoun but it's still gendered (i.e. masculine). 'It'
> isn't gendered, but is also generally used for inanimate objects rather than
> people._

I think I will start referring to everyone as _(s?)he_ regardless of whether I
know their gender or not. Seems the safest.

~~~
darkestkhan
And what about "one"? Quite archaic but gender neutral :)

And there is name "Maria" in Polish which is feminine name but I personally
know guys bearing this name so maybe there is woman with name "Steven" - are
you sure?

~~~
cloudier
Nope, but seeing as he doesn't mention his gender on the subsequent blogpost I
think it's a reasonable assumption.

------
restofus
Additional discussion [http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-
appar...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-apparently-
this-is-creepy.html)

[http://blogs.perl.org/users/michael_g_schwern/2012/07/how-
no...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/michael_g_schwern/2012/07/how-not-to-
highlight-women-in-perl.html)

------
Tichy
What about Twitter lists? I have created all sorts of lists without asking
people first. No "women who do x" lists, but still - the idea was I think
people creating lists of people who fall into a common category of their
interest.

It doesn't seem so strange that people might be interested in female
developers. For all I know, that list could have been compiled by another
female developer who wants to feel less lonely.

In another context people will rush to present such lists to entice more women
into the field. Also, the argument "there are almost no female developers (in
OSS)" is common, so such lists might be handy to answer those arguments.

I was just considering how I would feel about a "black developers" list - sure
it is a double edged sword, but I think it could be interesting/valid for the
same reasons. People will gather those statistics anyway, and I believe public
data should be as accessible as possible.

------
Loic
It is not creepy in all fields. It is creepy in computer programming/science.

The problem is the culture in this special field with a lot of allusion to
pornography, sexual abuse, etc. When you have well known figures in the Ruby
community explicitly telling that it is good to use porn to sell software
technology, you have a problem.

In my field, process engineering and biotechnology, even if some groups are
extremely male dominated, I have never experienced such behavior in more than
a decade of going to workshop/conferences and working with 100's of people all
over the world.

~~~
anextio
In what field is it not creepy to have a man keep a documented list of all the
women contributors for purely 'curiosity' reasons?

~~~
Loic
The fact is, in no other fields you would have people thinking about doing
this. It is just that they do not care. It is not part of the culture to focus
on women from a sexual/stalking point of view.

They only care about lack of women in management and engineering positions and
the salary difference. Or how to better manage the maternity leaves in the
company to keep interesting jobs for the women while potentially working only
80% while have small kids.

~~~
peteretep
I will note purely that CPAN has quite a lot of similar modules categorizing
authors by several attributes, most notably country of origin. From that
perspective, it's very easy to believe the author acted entirely in good faith
and from a non-creepy perspective, without having to invoke the idea that it's
some kind of sexual/stalking thing.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
You are forgetting one thing: If any given situation can be seen two or more
ways, there are people that will naturally see it in the worst possible way.
It is no different when it comes to people really determined to find examples
of The Man crushing all women.

------
anextio
Wow. This thing is totally inappropriate and extremely creepy in all contexts.
Out of "sheer curiosity"? Jeepers.

I hope this gets removed.

Great message to send to the women in the tech industry: come join our
community and we'll single you out in a git repository like a museum exhibit.
Even better, the whole thing is a perl script, so anyone can programmatically
do whatever they want with your personal information! It's all for curiosity's
sake!

~~~
Tichy
If you are on GitHub (also as a male), you can be singled out in a lot of
ways. There is an app that ranks developers by city, depending on their
productivity, popularity, connectedness, whatever. Nobody complained - you
know that if you go on GitHub, your data is public.

------
hobin
I don't think it's necessarily creepy. There is a whole list of classes
depending on what 'type' of developer one is, found here:
[http://search.cpan.org/~ishigaki/Acme-
CPANAuthors-0.19/lib/A...](http://search.cpan.org/~ishigaki/Acme-
CPANAuthors-0.19/lib/Acme/CPANAuthors.pm)

But I know that I'm not known for my extreme sensitivity, so maybe I should
withold judgement on this one.

------
tomerv
Wikipedia has lots of lists of female X:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=list+of+f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=list+of+female)

Is that considered creepy too? In any case, I don't think "creepy" is the
right word. It implies a sense of stalking, which I don't think this is.

------
scotty79
I think that if you are female developer and you want to encourage other
female developers and support the transition to a world where gender of the
developer isn't important you should brag about your femaleness everywhere and
encourage others to do the same.

You have to see something a lot and often to get used to it, tolerate it and
finally accept it as norm.

~~~
cloudier
I think that the burden of this transition shouldn't be laid entirely on
females: there are plenty of examples of plain misogynistic behaviour in the
tech world - Loic linked one article on this in another thread
([http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-
brog...](http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brogrammer-
culture-sexist-sxsw)).

~~~
scotty79
Lot of that is just sheer stupidity carried straight out of american college.
I'm not sure how this culture came to be and why fraternities, sororities and
such things are even tolerated. Nevermind. I'm just saying that you can't get
acceptance by hiding. Gays weren't accepted at all till they became visible.
More visibility, more acceptance. It's positive feedback loop but there have
to be brave souls to start.

~~~
cloudier
Haha I see...thanks for replying.

------
richardv
I think it is only creepy when you consider that no benefit can be achieved
based on the sex of an author. For instance, your enjoyment levels of a piece
of software bares no correlation to the sex of the developer who created it.

This is in contrast to works where the sex of the author can have an impact on
the overall enjoyment.

For example, I have playlists with over 100 female artists... because
sometimes I do just want to listen to a female singer. My "database" of female
singers in the form of a playlist isn't creepy, but a database of female
developers could quite easily be considered so, since for the most part it's
hard to think why anyone would need this information. (Aside for research
purposes?).

------
kamaal
I have seen this in every culture. So as long this is for fun, its OK. But it
isn't uncommon to have and list 'y who do x'(y being a set of people who do
x). I've failed to understand the reasons for this. Is it because you feel a
particular field x is is dominated by non-y people and want fellow y's to get
motivated?

If that is so, I don't see anything wrong in it. But if this is to prove that
y's are strange and are atypical of regular y's and then stereotyping them
from there is on is creepy.

------
ars
You could look at it in a positive light if you want - as a list of
inspiration. (I can't actually see the list, so I'm going by the description
as a list of female developers.)

Personally I don't think the developers gender matters - who cares if a
developer is male or female? That's not the context in which you are
interacting with them.

------
duiker101
website doesn't seem to work for me. what was it?

~~~
andrewcooke
i never saw the page linked either, but i think these links are what people
are discussing:

this cpan module - <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Acme-CPANAuthors-Female/> \-
included this file - [https://github.com/sharyanto/perl-Acme-CPANAuthors-
Female/bl...](https://github.com/sharyanto/perl-Acme-CPANAuthors-
Female/blob/master/lib/Acme/CPANAuthors/Female.pm) (some data also visible in
cpan synopsis - [http://search.cpan.org/dist/Acme-CPANAuthors-
Female/lib/Acme...](http://search.cpan.org/dist/Acme-CPANAuthors-
Female/lib/Acme/CPANAuthors/Female.pm)) - which was later dropped by the
author, steven haryanto -
[http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-
appar...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-apparently-
this-is-creepy.html)

the file in question lists 10 (or 11) female contributors to cpan.

