

Open Source Misogyny - kreneskyp
http://blogs.osuosl.org/gchaix/2010/11/07/open-source-misogyny/

======
tptacek
The problem here isn't misogyny. The problem is the impact that the unreality
of the Internet has on people's psychology, and what happens when Internet
psychology crashes into cold, hard reality.

There are two events being "discussed" here: the alleged incident of sexual
battery at ApacheCon, and the Internet's reaction to the report of the
incident. Both are, to my eyes, shot through with Internet-thinking.

I can give you a pie-eyed exegesis of how the rapid-fire 140-character "we're
all Interfriends" no-harm no-foul if - it's - easy - to - and - nobody -
catches - fire - it - must - be - ok mentality might have led to some idiot
allegedly assaulting a peer at a conference, but you can probably see those
arguments coming a mile away.

But this article isn't mostly about the actual incident; it's motivated more
by how the Internet responded to the incident. And the Internet handled this
incident the same way the Internet handles everything else: the same way it
handles an iPhone bug. So you've got people talking about "innocent until
proven guilty full stop" (note: you are not in the real world trustworthy
until proven untrustworthy), and other people saying "she wasn't actually
injured so what's the big deal" (note: of the places I would not want to be
locked up for sexual battery, Georgia tops the list).

But they're not _really_ talking about gender politics. They're nerds, trying
to fit a complicated event into their mental models, which models _demand_
consistency and transparency and rigidity. It's just difficult for the nerdal
cortex to process the idea that rather than laying out an irrefutable case in
front of a court of law, the victim of sexual aggression can use other tools
available to them to retaliate, deter future offenders, and reestablish a zone
of control over themselves.

You saw _exactly the same mentality_ over the Reiser trial. "How can you be
convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence?!" (answer: _very easily_ ).
"Juries just don't understand Aspergers!" "His best friend is a serial
killer!" The nerdal cortex tries to absorb these stimuli and turn it into a
graph structure that can be traversed for answers, but no matter what the
model is, at the end of the day, Reiser led the police to the body and
confessed to the crime. Reality is inescapable, even when the graph isn't
fully connected.

I wouldn't read this most recent story as an example of how geeks discriminate
against women (though: they do), but I would look at it as another cautionary
tale about how reliable the conventional wisdom of geekery is.

~~~
rue
> _The problem is the impact that the unreality of the Internet has on
> people's psychology, and what happens when Internet psychology crashes into
> cold, hard reality._

I am not sure you can call it unreality anymore, except maybe for people above
a certain age.

> _So you've got people talking about "innocent until proven guilty full stop"
> […], and other people saying "she wasn't actually injured so what's the big
> deal"_

I think you misrepresent the _ratios_ of "some people" (and omitting all the
e-hug responses). Unfortunately this played out as I thought. "Innocent until
proven guilty" is brought up because of the name and it will continue to be a
distraction.

Well, perhaps there shall be a trite apology come Monday.

------
TomOfTTB
This is just dumb. I'll go down his suggestions to point out why...

\- We need to have codes of conduct in our projects and conferences that
specifically ban abusive and sexist behavior: I don't see how a "Code of
Conduct" is going to be more compelling than the law. Nor do I believe the
type of person who would stick his hand down a girls pants or cheer someone
like that on is going to adhere to a code of conduct no matter what.

\- Trainings around diversity and sexual harassment: Sexual Harassment
trainings are done so employees will be able to recognize sexual harassment.
Does anyone think there's an employee out there who wouldn't consider sticking
your hand down a girl's pants sexual harassment? Moreover the two people
didn't work for the same company anyway so it wasn't sexual harassment as much
as it was a...y'know... felony.

\- Keep speaking out: As the post points out all "speaking out" did was cause
this woman to be further abused. What she should (and apparently did do) is
speak to the police.

People keep trying to make this into a macro issue and it's not. There might
very well be misogyny in the tech industry but this is no more a sign of it
than a rapist would be a sign of misogyny in a particular town.

~~~
gchaix
TomfTTB, I think you missed some of my points in the post. Let's see if I can
clarify:

1) Codes of conduct - I'm talking about community covenants that come from the
community and that have real teeth enforced by the community. This is not
about whether an action is illegal and enforceable in court, it's about a
community setting standards of behavior for its members and taking real action
against people who violate them. I can think of numerous unethical or abusive
actions that, while not illegal, could (and should) be included in a community
code of conduct as worthy of censure.

2) Training - I'm not talking about some quick and shallow two hour seminar
with a cheezy twenty minute "this is sexual harassment" video. Those are
nearly worthless. I'm talking about the much longer intensive trainings
offered for and by domestic violence/sexual assault service agencies.
Trainings where we learn to see the culture of oppression and violence through
the eyes of the people who have survived it. We're talking about changing a
culture and its underlying frame of reference, not simply pointing at
something and saying, "don't do that, it's bad."

3) Speaking out - my point was that we need to be better at speaking out for
exactly the reason you described. We need to do more than just shout
incoherently into the void. We need to be more deliberate regarding _how_ we
speak out. A quiet, one-on-one "dude, you can't say crap like that" to a peer
or an "I'm sorry, but our community does not allow its members to behave in
that manner. Please leave now," is more valuable and effective than a thousand
blog comments. It's not a question of _whether_ we speak out, but _how_ we
speak out.

Lastly, I'm not trying to make this into a "micro issue". I'm pointing out
that the tech community is particularly hostile to women. Compared with the
other communities I've worked with (primarily in the non-profit and education
sectors), the tech community is shockingly bad.

~~~
jdp23
Excellent points. It's disappointing to see the TomfTTB's comment ranked so
much higher than this response.

------
meelash
I have an honest question to ask, since the number of comments hasn't exploded
here, I hope some thoughtful people can see it and answer. Please don't attack
me for anything I may be implicitly saying; this is honestly something I'm
confused about regarding the culture in which this event took place, and from
which I am an outsider.

A number of people have taken great pains to emphasize that the behavior of
the lady involved was not justification for an unwanted advance and that men
should all understand this. Now I understand 100% that if she clearly and
explicitly rejected his kiss advance, it was obviously wrong to go further
(all of this is theoretical/alleged but ignore that for a moment).

Let's consider _just the kissing portion_ and nothing beyond that.

Now, isn't sitting on people's laps and flirting exactly inviting this kind of
advance? I mean isn't that exactly the point of those behaviors? To excite the
passion of people it's being done to and who are watching?

It's very strange for people to vehemently deny this. It's like if I was a
biologist of another race observing human kind, what would I identify through
observation as the beginning steps in the mating ritual? So why is an
impression being given that that kind of behavior is "having fun" and has
nothing to do with sex, and trying to attract the opposite sex?

Again, let me state- I don't drink, I don't go to parties like this, I've
never been to a bar or a club or a girl's hotel room. So please don't assume I
know the answer and I'm trying to imply the answer through these questions. I
really just don't understand how you can hold this idealistic view of mankind
that a member of one sex should enflame the passion of the opposite sex,
through activities and clothing with deliberate, intentional sexual overtones
and then expect people to overcome their natural, biological response to that
kind of show.

Comments, please?

~~~
dqh
In the absence of power imbalances (doctor/patient, teacher/student,
police/suspect etc), I think in general it's acceptable to make the first part
of a first move _if you have reason to believe that it is welcome_ \- it
becomes crystal clear whether it is or not very quickly. But obviously, the
instant that rejection occurs, anything other than a sincere apology for
misunderstanding the signals is unacceptable. It's a bit embarrassing, but you
get over it :)

As for this (theoretical/alleged/etc etc) story - it doesn't sound like the
guy even had reason to believe that his first move was welcome. She had
flirted with a couple of _other_ guys, and sat on a few laps due to the lack
of seating in the hotel room. As someone with a lot of female friends and who
has been at a lot of drunken parties, I can say that this sort of thing is
common, lots of fun, but NOT an invitation for any random guy within the group
to make a move. There's a big difference between general flirty fun across a
group and a girl specifically and exclusively flirting with a single guy. It
_can_ take a while and a few mistakes to learn to tell the difference.
Especially if you have spent more time on your computer than with friends as a
child/teen and you haven't yet realised that the way these things happen on TV
aren't how they happen in real life (yes, I am speaking from experience ;D ).

Pro tip for my fellow geek guys: Don't hit on the geek girl. Focus on being
awesome. If there's a chance, she'll hit on you. If not, you still get to be
awesome.

------
araneae
"when well-executed these trainings really do work"

There's absolutely no evidence that "sensitivity training" or "anger
management" or any number of these programs designed to protect companies from
liability have any sort of effect on anyone.

I actually expect that fear of being publicly named on someone's blog will be
more effective. Not saying I approve; just that it has more chance of
succeeding than any of those programs, well-done or not.

------
autarch
This is an interesting blog post, but I have to nitpick at a couple points.

First, the author says "Touching someone without their consent is assault." I
hope that's just a not-so-well-thought-out sentence. What was described in the
[original blog post <http://blog.nerdchic.net/archives/418>] that started this
firestorm went well beyond "touching".

I hope we don't end up in a place where just touching someone (like a hand on
someone's shoulder) is actually bad. That said, I really dislike even casual
touch from anyone but people I'm very close too, so I can sympathize with
people not liking that, but that's not the same as assault. I think there's
other ways to handle things that make us uncomfortable without criminalizing
them.

Second, I'm not sure if the author is implying in the final paragraph that
sexual assault is one of the main reasons the male-female ratio at most tech
conferences is so off. He just says it's "due to the behavior of us, the
straight white male majority in the open source community".

That problem behavior often falls far short of sexual assault, but the
behavior is still problematic ("how to X like a porn star" presentations,
anyone?).

I suspect that there are also many other reasons that women don't go to
conferences. I would love for someone to do some research on what is keeping
women away so that we could make these conferences more attractive to
everyone.

~~~
araneae
"I'm not sure if the author is implying in the final paragraph that sexual
assault is one of the main reasons the male-female ratio at most tech
conferences is so off."

I have a female friend that regularly attends tech conferences, and she said
that what surprised _her_ about the blog post is not only that it happened at
a tech conference, but that it had happened before. She said that she
generally feels pretty safe at tech conferences and that people have always
been very respectful of her. That said, she's a sample size of one.

But I'm not sure a sample size of two is enough to conclude it's a pervasive
problem at conferences that really needs to be dealt with on a population
level.

~~~
tptacek
Without offering any evidence to support this, I agree that it _feels_ like
this should be a rare event, if only because sexually assaulting someone
attending a conference with friends is a great way to get your teeth knocked
out, and _that's_ a story I haven't heard before.

------
iuguy
The situation was more a product of booze, partying and potentially socially
awkward people celebrating an event together as it was about an Open Source
issue. This type of stuff happens elsewhere outside of Open Source. To suggest
that somehow the Open Source community should rise above it more than say, the
accountancy industry is a bit silly at best.

The measures put forward by the author, such as codes of conduct and training
sound like the type of thing that might work in a company but are just not
going to work at a conference, let alone one with lots of people present, let
alone at a party peripheral to a conference.

Two people were very badly affected by the whole episode, the girl and the
guy. I'd like to see people let these two sort their issues out with the
authorities while we all move on, but something tells me that people are going
to try and milk this as long as they can. Maybe I'm just incredibly cynical,
but I get the impression that not all that I've read on this matter is as much
about the girl or the guy, but more about generating noise to get links. I'm
not suggesting that TFA has or hasn't done this, more that I'm an extremely
cynical person.

~~~
imajes
Perhaps it's because our community is more interested in self-improvement? The
argument that, "oh, this happens elsewhere, so we shouldn't give it any
special attention" is moot because we're supposed to be smarter, more open and
more enlightened than the average.

We should all be affected when women can't go to a conference now without
feeling that they can't act normally without fear of (at best) having to fend
off unwanted advances, or worse.

------
jacoblyles
The post conflates several issues and I think it is weaker for it. I doubt
misogyny is behind the extreme gender ratios in the tech world, and I doubt
public self-flagellation of males would encourage more females to participate
in tech.

------
rue
Formulating for terseness, I think the responsibilities fall as follows:

1\. The community to ensure that such things do not happen[1]; and

2\. The police to ensure that _a specific person_ does not do such things.

Dunno how useful the proposals are. At first glance, they strike me as things
that only involve the people who already are not a problem.

[1] Inasmuch we can. In the near-to-mid future, I think it must be expected
that some number of predators still exist.

------
Udo
No amount of "sensitivity training" and related measures will change the
behavior of psychopaths. The reason big companies have harassment seminars and
rules of conduct is not to prevent this from happening, they need this to
cover their asses legally when it does happen, and if at all possible to send
a message to their employees that they better not be covering this shit up
when the time comes.

Converting the open source community (or any community for that matter) into a
paranoid kindergarten isn't gonna do anything besides make people miserable.
Almost everyone already knows that this kind of behavior is not within the
normal range of human interaction, no training necessary. And I suspect those
who do not know this to begin with cannot be trained to reliably behave
acceptably and normally, no matter how much effort is put into this.

Psychopaths don't need to be educated, they need to stay at home and take
their meds.

If all that holds a guy back from acting like a retarded, violent asshole is a
bunch of rigid rules and the threat of public shame, his true self will come
out eventually no matter how much you invested in sensitivity training.
Personality disorders cannot be treated with awareness campaigns. It's not
like these people have somehow just missed the memo on how not to mistreat
others and are then magically socialized once that information has been
provided.

On a side note, I'm sick of (and kind of surprised by) this notion that all
men are supposed to be like this by default and just have to restrain
themselves all the time so as not to degenerate into drooling monkeys who rape
everything in sight. And it's not just women putting this theory out there,
I've seen quite a lot of male creeps on LifeJournal threads "confessing" to
this kind of personality over the last few days. PSA: if you're like this, it
isn't because you're a man. It's because you're sick and should consult
professional help.

------
Tichy
I don't think this has anything to do with the open source community at all.
Men will fancy women and be stupid about it in all sorts of groups and
environments.

------
featherface
Anywhere young people, booze, and partying mix, this sort of thing happens, so
I don't see why the author sees it as a sign the OSS community, in particular,
is "the epitome of a hostile misogynistic work environment".

Further, to publicly name the guy over this seems harsh. I don't really see
what he did as a big deal. I've probably done similar things many times, as
well as having similar done to me. If you're drinking with members of the
opposite sex, have some rapport, kidding around, etc., then slapping a butt,
putting a hand on a thigh, etc., is usually cool. Why the need to tell the
entire world, probably ruining the dude's career?

~~~
bigiain
Seriously? Are you reading the same blog post I am?

"He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off,
and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t
think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear
and fumbling."

If you've "done similar things many times" you _are_ part of the problem, and
are prabaly lucky not to be in jail for it.

~~~
featherface
I don't know what "jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling" even means
- did he penetrate her with three fingers right through her underwear (was she
not wearing pants/skirt?), or was he playing with an exposed thong T-bar, or
something else?

By something "similar" I mean I've been "rejected" by girls before, and not
immediately raised my hands in submission and backed off. E.g., talking to a
girl, tried to make out with her, and she said no, depending on what I
thought, I might, say, keep a hand on her thigh, or playing with her pantie
line. Not a perfect match, but I could definitely see someone wanting to make
a big deal twisting that into something along the lines described here.

I could be wrong, and this guy could have committed the very worst
interpretation of what the author described. But I doubt it, because the
article seems like it's written for maximum effect.

~~~
Anechoic
_I don't know what "jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling" even
means_

Is there _any_ context/interpretation/way of which some dude jamming his hand
into your underwear and fumbling after being told you weren't interested in
such a thing wouldn't be considered highly invasive?

Jesus H. Christ, only in the geek community can people be outraged at
backscatter machines and TSA patdowns, and then try in rationalize sticking
your hand down a woman's pants despite her protests.

Disgusting.

~~~
patrickaljord
> Disgusting. Go ahead, down mod me.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

says:

"Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. "

~~~
Anechoic
edited, thx

