4 ms·

It's so hard to know what to say in response to stuff like this. I want to believe that there's a consensus amongst the enlightened hacker community that the ty

It's so hard to know what to say in response to stuff like this. I want to believe that there's a consensus amongst the enlightened hacker community that the type of sexist behavior described is Not Acceptable, but it seems hardly a week goes by without another major incident in which a long-standing female contributor is finally pushed out of a project by stuff like this. I agree with Ms. Wolf that community and convention anti-harassment rules, policies, and introductions are a good place to start, but I can't help but wonder what the real answer is. My introduction to this entire world came through a female hacker, one that I still hold in highest esteem, and I can't help but feel a sense of immense confusion and sadness that she and all those beyond the straight/white/male class are still made to feel like outsiders.

krakensden 14y ago
Prominent male members of the community burn out all the time (_why, Mark Pilgrim) too. I think sexism isn't really the culprit, so much as being exposed to the howling nether of the internet. There are a billion people online, and some percentage of them are in a shit mood, and the more prominent you are the more likely it is that someone will try to shit all over you for no visible reason. If you get famous enough, you'll get it every day. A lot of the other stuff sounds like the mundane bullshit that happens to every open project- people promising to build stuff that then don't, bikeshedding, flakiness, poor communication and clashing goals. The eternal heartbreak of people preferring talk to action. This sounds like her first rodeo. It sounds like that made everything worse. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the gender stuff is basically incidental to the people making her life miserable, even if it feels central to her. Being internet famous and trying to organize internet volunteers is a recipe for awfulness.

krakensden 14y ago

Prominent male members of the community burn out all the time (_why, Mark Pilgrim) too. I think sexism isn't really the culprit, so much as being exposed to the howling nether of the internet. There are a billion people online, and some percentage of them are in a shit mood, and the more prominent you are the more likely it is that someone will try to shit all over you for no visible reason. If you get famous enough, you'll get it every day. A lot of the other stuff sounds like the mundane bullshit that happens to every open project- people promising to build stuff that then don't, bikeshedding, flakiness, poor communication and clashing goals. The eternal heartbreak of people preferring talk to action. This sounds like her first rodeo. It sounds like that made everything worse. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the gender stuff is basically incidental to the people making her life miserable, even if it feels central to her. Being internet famous and trying to organize internet volunteers is a recipe for awfulness.