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Why oh why do women who complain about being alienated by men so often write articles that make me feel alienated? I refuse to believe that my revulsion at bein

Why oh why do women who complain about being alienated by men so often write articles that make me feel alienated? I refuse to believe that my revulsion at being called a "sexist boy" is somehow an illegitimate feeling.

rauljara 16y ago
I do not believe that anywhere in the article she calls you a "sexist boy"? She calls the tech industry "by and large a boy's club". And I'm not just being pedantic when I say that's not the same thing at all. Complaining about the state of an industry doesn't imply that every member of that industry is to blame, just as saying that there exists racism in the American South doesn't imply that every Southerner is a racist. Legitimate question: What leads you take the statement about the industry as a personal attack?
- Tichy 16y ago
  "There exists racism in the American South" is a different statement to "the American South is by and large racist", though. Maybe those IT-Feminists should just write about their good experiences once in a while, to make it clear that they don't blame everybody.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- vitovito 16y ago
  I'll be happy to call cousin_it a sexist boy. Statistically, he probably is. And worse, he probably thinks he's too smart to be sexist, and hangs out with mostly males who also feel that way, so their sexism goes uncorrected. To be clear, in my original post that Trapani was responding to, I called most open source projects "sexist boy's clubs with no facility for mentoring, no respect for design, and mailing lists that are 50% dick-measuring contests." I also call programmers abnormal, by definition of their being programmers. Thanks to cousin_it for his defensiveness, which happens all the time, and is an excellent illustration of the problem.
  - cousin_it 16y ago
    Wow. Thank you too! I even upvoted your comment because it's such a beautiful illustration of my original point. If rauljara still wonders what's there for me to be offended about, let him wonder no more. Seriously though. If your ultimate goal is to make others stop being offensive, I'm not sure offensiveness is the best tool for the job.
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    Why do you feel that it's okay to stereotype and demean the OP simply based on the fact that he's a man? You know nothing about him, but you're willing to draw conclusions about him based upon your own predisposition to misandry. I honestly wish I could downvote your comment more than once. I find your attitude uncannily ironic, given your blog post. So essentially, what you're saying is that sexism is only bad when it happens to women?
  - wtracy 16y ago
    Wow. As someone who has actively tried to make the Linux community more inclusive, it really hurts when someone who is on the same team makes a blanket attack that includes you. Just because it_boy and I are male and in software, we automatically aren't allowed to have opinions? You can throw out the word "statistically" and dismiss us just like that? Wait, remind me again what the definition of sexism is? I will happily agree with you that most FOSS projects "have no facility for mentoring or respect for design". (You're surprised that a community created by developers is going to value developers over designers? Really?) I really don't understand the "sexist boy's clubs" or "50% dick-measuring contests" comments. If I'm being unfairly defensive, then help me out here. Here's the archives for several FOSS mailing lists I'm on: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.t2.devel http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.t2.devel http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/ http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/ http://java.net/projects/lg3d/lists/interest/archive http://java.net/projects/lg3d/lists/interest/archive (Kind of dead now. Browsing by month on a list that only gets a message every other month is a pain, but blame Oracle.) http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/ http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/ You could probably argue that the BLFS mailer has a certain amount of dick-waving going on, but I truly fail to see how any of them are "sexist boy's clubs". If I'm wrong, can you point out where we are being unconsciously sexist? I can see lots of ways that the above mailers are intimidating to outsiders in of both sexes, but that's hardly sexism, is it? If and when I see sexism, I'm happy to call it out--I don't pretend that it doesn't exist, but I really don't see that it's as prevalent as you claim.
- chc 16y ago
  I think this is just a misreading. She says it's a "sexist boy's club." I think cousin_it is parsing this as (((sexist boy)'s) club), while it's meant as (sexist (boy's club)). The former implies that the club's members are sexist boys, while the latter implies that it's a group comprising mostly men due to some sexism inherent in the group's structure.

rauljara 16y ago

I do not believe that anywhere in the article she calls you a "sexist boy"? She calls the tech industry "by and large a boy's club". And I'm not just being pedantic when I say that's not the same thing at all. Complaining about the state of an industry doesn't imply that every member of that industry is to blame, just as saying that there exists racism in the American South doesn't imply that every Southerner is a racist. Legitimate question: What leads you take the statement about the industry as a personal attack?

Tichy 16y ago
"There exists racism in the American South" is a different statement to "the American South is by and large racist", though. Maybe those IT-Feminists should just write about their good experiences once in a while, to make it clear that they don't blame everybody.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
vitovito 16y ago
I'll be happy to call cousin_it a sexist boy. Statistically, he probably is. And worse, he probably thinks he's too smart to be sexist, and hangs out with mostly males who also feel that way, so their sexism goes uncorrected. To be clear, in my original post that Trapani was responding to, I called most open source projects "sexist boy's clubs with no facility for mentoring, no respect for design, and mailing lists that are 50% dick-measuring contests." I also call programmers abnormal, by definition of their being programmers. Thanks to cousin_it for his defensiveness, which happens all the time, and is an excellent illustration of the problem.
- cousin_it 16y ago
  Wow. Thank you too! I even upvoted your comment because it's such a beautiful illustration of my original point. If rauljara still wonders what's there for me to be offended about, let him wonder no more. Seriously though. If your ultimate goal is to make others stop being offensive, I'm not sure offensiveness is the best tool for the job.
- jedsmith 16y ago
  Why do you feel that it's okay to stereotype and demean the OP simply based on the fact that he's a man? You know nothing about him, but you're willing to draw conclusions about him based upon your own predisposition to misandry. I honestly wish I could downvote your comment more than once. I find your attitude uncannily ironic, given your blog post. So essentially, what you're saying is that sexism is only bad when it happens to women?
- wtracy 16y ago
  Wow. As someone who has actively tried to make the Linux community more inclusive, it really hurts when someone who is on the same team makes a blanket attack that includes you. Just because it_boy and I are male and in software, we automatically aren't allowed to have opinions? You can throw out the word "statistically" and dismiss us just like that? Wait, remind me again what the definition of sexism is? I will happily agree with you that most FOSS projects "have no facility for mentoring or respect for design". (You're surprised that a community created by developers is going to value developers over designers? Really?) I really don't understand the "sexist boy's clubs" or "50% dick-measuring contests" comments. If I'm being unfairly defensive, then help me out here. Here's the archives for several FOSS mailing lists I'm on: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.t2.devel http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.t2.devel http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/ http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-wget/ http://java.net/projects/lg3d/lists/interest/archive http://java.net/projects/lg3d/lists/interest/archive (Kind of dead now. Browsing by month on a list that only gets a message every other month is a pain, but blame Oracle.) http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/ http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermail/blfs-support/ You could probably argue that the BLFS mailer has a certain amount of dick-waving going on, but I truly fail to see how any of them are "sexist boy's clubs". If I'm wrong, can you point out where we are being unconsciously sexist? I can see lots of ways that the above mailers are intimidating to outsiders in of both sexes, but that's hardly sexism, is it? If and when I see sexism, I'm happy to call it out--I don't pretend that it doesn't exist, but I really don't see that it's as prevalent as you claim.
chc 16y ago
I think this is just a misreading. She says it's a "sexist boy's club." I think cousin_it is parsing this as (((sexist boy)'s) club), while it's meant as (sexist (boy's club)). The former implies that the club's members are sexist boys, while the latter implies that it's a group comprising mostly men due to some sexism inherent in the group's structure.