Nothing stops the conversation around here faster than some CMOTW [1]
(who obviously doesn't get it) posting a lot of things that create what
is basically noise. And then everything stops.
This is all too similar to what happened at our second Bay Area Linuxchix
meeting[2]. In the first meeting, I think we were awkward at first but had
a great amount of fun. But the first meeting WAS all female. We didn't
exclude men but none showed up.
In the second meeting, three guys showed up and stayed for the whole
meeting. A total of five other men passed through one phase of the meeting
or another (literally to walk through the room). The conversation was
railroaded by two men but one was orders of magnitude worse than the
other. I think anyone with any sense got disgusted about the time that one
guy started "deconstructing cool" -- if they hadn't already been.
As a result, I brought up the issue (rather regretfully) that we exclude
men altogether from the meeting as it changes the experience.
I don't want to diss all the men on the list; some of the ones who've
been around a while are VERY cool. I'm not going to mention names because
I know I'd forget someone. :)
And I'm not suggesting that we exclude them. But I think we ought to let
it stop us in our tracks less. For example, I thwapped curious pretty darn
hard over the last week. I got a LOT of mail privately, but there was
almost none on the list about it. I think a difficult issue was raised and
the group had a tendency -- which seems one among women at large -- to
avoid the confrontation and thus the list.
So, I'm trying to break the ice a bit.
I don't know a solution, but I do recognize the symptoms.
[1] Clueless male of the week. Some weeks there's more than one
[2] As Nick Moffitt said, "What would a Linuxchix meeting be without
leering, creepy guys?"
--
_Deirdre * http://www.linuxcabal.net * http://www.deirdre.net
"Mars has been a tough target" -- Peter G. Neumann, Risks Digest Moderator
"That's because the Martians keep shooting things down." -- Harlan Rosenthal
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, retorting in Risks Digest 20.60
************
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
