Re: Opening doors for women in computing
Hello all! A quick introduction before I respond: This is the first time I've posted to this group. I am not an OSS developer (yet; I really do want to see my name "in lights" in a patch note at some point, but I just haven't done it yet), but I was fairly active on debian-user for a while, trying to help out. I got a bit burned out on that and haven't been doing much in that world lately. I'm a software developer, currently working on flight software in the aerospace industry, using lots of yucky proprietary tools that I wish I could drop-kick right out of my life! Before that I worked on Java applications for a government contractor, and before that I was a comp sci student with a minor in philosophy. Phew! Anyway, on with the discussion ... On 2005-02-19, Helen Faulkner penned: > Amaya wrote: >> http://news.com.com/Opening+doors+for+women+in+computing/2100-1022_3-5557311.html > > That's a really interesting article Amaya. Thanks for posting it. > > I wonder how many other people here experienced a similar thing to what the > woman interviewed relates: namely that the apparent level of programming > expertise of the men in her course, before the course even started, was so > high that she felt incompetant by comparison and was discouraged from > pursuing it further. I never dropped comp sci, but I did feel that I was way out of my league sometimes. I actually went to college with the expectation of being an International Studies major, but that kind of fell flat and I started looking around for something else. Mom wanted me to take a business class, while my brother suggested a comp sci class; I figured working with computers would be more interesting and get my family off my back, so I took CS141, the intro comp sci class. Somewhere around there, I visited campus tech support with some questions, and the questions were astute enough that I was offered a job (yay for sub-minimum-wage college jobs with no training!). Anyway, I quickly fell in love with programming; it waS a real rush, like I was creating my own world with every program I wrote. And my grades were great. But I still felt like I was behind the curve. The other guys, and actually girls, in the class were far more experienced than I was. I remember one guy talked about falling asleep on his laptop screen in high school, logged onto IRC, something I'd never even heard of, and about hacking into systems when he was younger. I'll admit that I honestly thought I was screwed; there was no way, as an adult, that I could take the risk of learning to hack (I guess we'd say crack these days), and I figured I'd never learn enough about computers to be good without that kind of illicit experience. Another guy friend of mine wrote DOS assembly programs for fun. And one of my female friends had been taught to program (or something) as a small child, because her dad was a programmer! Hrm, I should point out, though, that as usual, I was comparing myself to the best students in the class. I know there were other kids there who were just as inexperienced as I was, and a lot of kids had more trouble than I did, but it would never occur to me to compare myself to people starting from scratch like I did. Maybe in the end my skewed perspective actually worked out well for me, though, because I worked my butt off to learn everything I could about all things computer. I learned at least as much, probably more, through my own exploration and my tech support job as/than I did through school. Oh, I started college in 1995. I was never discouraged from Comp Sci by any of my Comp Sci professors. The only disparaging remark I got was from a math professor, who used to teach some CS courses. He claimed that I was bad at math (bzzt, wrong!) and tried to point out to me which courses, like Finite Automata (one of my favorites, actually) I would supposedly find difficult because I was bad at logic (bzzat, wrong again, thanks for playing!). When I told my CS advisor about that experience, he just shook his head about that professor. Apparently it wasn't the first stupid remark he'd made. -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Opening doors for women in computing
On 2005-02-21, Mechtilde Stehmann penned: > > As a husband of a debian-women and a father of two daughters working and > playing with computers I have observed women and men have different kinds of > approaching the computer. Girls and women will think and read first - boys > and men are learning more by try and error. So girls are often pushed aside > - even if they have the better ideas to solve a problem. I don't think this is specific to computers, either. My husband and I have encountered in a variety of situations, but two specific ones are cooking and mountain biking. My husband will happily cook up a meal by just picking some stuff out of the fridge and pantry. He just grabs some stuff and goes. Me, I need a recipe, and if I can't find exactly the same ingredients, I won't make it. I've finally gotten to the point where I'll make soups on my own, but I'm concerned about screwing up. The same happens in mountain biking. My husband never took any mountain biking lessons, and yet he is a proficient mountain biker. He tells me to "just try" things that scare me, and that I think about them too much. But I've found that there are many women-only mountain biking clinics in the area, so apparently I'm not the only woman who would rather get some coaching and tips before trying something tricky. Of course, just because one man and one woman share this dynamic doesn't make it true for the rest of the universe. But I've certainly seen this played out, and I truly wish I were more willing to experiment and just try new things. The one area where I happily experiment is my own computer. I think this is because I know enough to know what types of experimentation are dangerous, and there's very little I could do from which I can't recover. I've been rolling my own kernel for years now, and sometimes it seems like the only way to do that is trial and error! I do look for documentation on the web, first, if I can. -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Article on women and mathematics
On 2005-03-06, Miriam Ruiz penned: > > The article is quite interesting, but this quote, afaik, is nonsense: > > Other studies establish a clear link between hormones and mathematical > abilities, says David C. Geary, a professor of psychology at the University > of Missouri at Columbia and author of Male, Female: The Evolution of Human > Sex Differences (American Psychological Association, 1998). "In > transsexuals, when you suppress male hormones, their spatial abilities go > down," he says. "When you give male hormones to women, their spatial > abilities go up." > > Miry My husband recently mentioned having heard this, also. It sounds really odd to me. I kind of want to know, and kind of don't. I mean, either way, it's not going to change my abilities. Except, wait, I'm taking hormones. So maybe it does? -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
NYTimes article: women more genetically complex ...
I thought this article might be of interest to the group. The article is rather flip, but beneath the surface I think I see some content. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/opinion/20dowd.html?ex=1112072400&en=898d3ff11f9b96a1&ei=5070 -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: NYTimes article: women more genetically complex ...
On 2005-03-21, David Nusinow penned: > > I'm not even going to begin to touch the NYT article directly, as it makes > my stomache churn. The findings have interesting implications for sexual > dimorphisms, and perhaps more importantly differences between individuals. > In no way though, does this imply that women are genetically superior to > men. I give the NYT article a big "Troll" rating. Thanks for the alternate point of view. The article "smelled" iffy to me, but I don't have the biology background to evaluate it myself. FWIW, I never read it as seriously suggesting that women are "better" -- just that they might exhibit a wider range of behaviors across the board. Is that plausible? My first thought, actually, was that these studies could possibly indicate that medical research for women should involve a wider sampling, or be taken with a bigger grain of salt, or something. I could imagine that these genetic differences might relate to differences in the risk for certain diseases or tolerance for certain drugs. -- monique Ask smart questions, get good answers: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: should these be reworded?
On 2008-07-24, Kevin Mark penned: > > "Our priority is our users" might have originally been "Our priority > is our male users", not that I think Dev's did it intentionally. So > any attempt to add a 'wishlist' feature in a way that makes our > software more inclusive of 'all' of our users, sounds like a great > suggestion. And anything that does not 'heat the coffee of the > cabal' aka invoke flamewars is a good approach. I did not mean to > single-out magicmaze, it was just something that crossed my view and > sparked the idea. So thanks for the great feedback. Warning -- rambling post without concrete answers to follow. This is a difficult issue. If games in general provided a greater variety of protagonists, we probably wouldn't be bothered by the few that didn't. One game having a male protagonist isn't a big deal; (almost) all of them having a male protagonist is more problematic. Then there is a question of how best to spend development time. If the game wasn't written to accomodate multiple protagonists, it may be a large (and potentially tedious) effort to add them. How many users, potential or current, will benefit from the effort? Can that even be measured? And what does it mean to have female protagonists? Are the behaviors exactly the same as the male protagonist, just with a different body? Or do they change, and if so, how? And if they change, will the resulting changes come across as realistic and correct, or patronizing and sexist? Different people might have different answers. > Could a suggestion to: "make your software more inclusive of > different users based upon gender, race, etc. when possible" sound > too forcefull? -Kev As a feature request for particular games, I think it's great to submit feedback that you'd like to have more options -- especially if you can frame it in terms of people who would actually change their behavior based on the change. In other words, it may be a bit empty to suggest that the developers should make changes to their game just in case some women would be more likely to play, or feel happier playing a game they already play, or because in a nebulous way having a female option would make all gamers more aware of gender issues. Something more concrete, like "my daughter is interested in your game, but is put off by the lack of a character with whom she can identify"? Or even better, "I'm a man, but I like to play female characters sometimes; I find that enhances the replayability of games for me." I think some number of men might be tempted to submit a feature request for an attractive female protagonist, in the case of a non-first person view. And of course, you have to be careful what you wish for =) A lot of female characters are portrayed in ways that make some women wince. Is the adjustable breast size in Age Of Conan a step forward or backward in society's perceptions of women? I'm not sure there's a simple answer. So ultimately, while I think the intention of having greater variety in gaming protagonists is a great idea, I wonder if it's not a more complicated request than it seems at first blush. And I don't think it belongs in any Debian developer guide ... But, I'm just a random Debian user, not anyone with authority =) -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: new member presentation
On 2008-11-04, Helen Faulkner penned: > > Ooh, can I play devil's advocate here? I'd like to play, too! And I hope I do not sound confrontational ... just trying to express some thoughts / starting points for discussion. I've snipped throughout ... if I've oversnipped, I apologize. It was all good stuff, but I didn't want to quote your entire post. > As far as I know, studies have tended to back this up, even studies that were > designed not to pick up on stereotyped differences but to look at the > different > ways our brains might solve different types of problems. There are also > countless anecdotes of kids who were brought up intentionally without gender > stereotypes (for example that boys play with guns, girls with dolls), who > ended > up wanting those gender-specific toys anyway. (me, I'm a woman and I liked > dinosaurs - I am not in any way suggesting that any of this goes for all or > any > particular individual). Why would skills not have an innate gender bias?* Good question. But I don't put much faith in these studies and anecdotes, because it's hard to control for known bias in our culture, let alone be able to recognize it in all of its possible forms. From inside our cultures, we may be able to see certain patterns, but others will elude us because they're as invisible as air. I am sure that there are cases of parents having the intention of raising children without gender bias, but that's not the same as bringing up children without gender bias. Guns and dolls are only the extreme tip of the iceberg. It's the subconscious things that will get you every time, and even if somehow parents managed to be miraculously completely free of any societal bias, they certainly can't ensure that everyone the child interacts with is free of these biases. There are grandparents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, teachers, random people on the street. Kids are good at picking up subtle signals; it's how they survive and learn to function in society. > I believe that many more women have the potential to be excellent at > technology > stuff than currently are. And that there are also areas where more men have > the > potential to be excellent than currently are. I believe that societal rules, > customs, programming and expectations are a problem for all of this. But I > don't for a moment think that in an "ideal" society where all those customs > and > expectations were not acting, that you'd end up with a 50:50 split between > men > and women in any field. I suspect you're right, but I don't think we can possibly verify that opinion with the data we currently have available (ie, people who exist within the current societal structures). * I changed the subject to my pet topic of innate differences -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On 2008-11-25, Meike Reichle penned: > Usually the interview will go somewhere along the lines that at some > point the talk turns to your kids and whatever cleverly composed > combination of day nursery, part time working husband, kindergarten and > what else you present, it will all be canceled out by the magic > question: "And who will stay home when it's ill?" That shocks me. Interviewers at my company, and every company for which I've worked, would never discuss such a topic. It's opening the door for a lawsuit. My team lead interviewed a clearly pregnant woman and never broached the topic -- and we did hire her. (And for that matter, it's not like children are the only reason one might have to stay home. What about broken pipes, appointments to fix the cable system or network or phones, meeting with prospective contract workers, deliveries, etc ... maybe interviewers should ask if prospective employees live alone or with others, as more people in the house might mean that any one person doesn't have to stay home as often.) -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On 2008-11-25, Anne Sorsa penned: > > That is so true. One friend of mine has told me that she has problems to find > CS work and she thinks that the biggest reason is her age. She is under 30 > years and maybe an employers are afraid that she might get pregnant. Maybe it's a matter of location? Since graduating with a CS degree, I've had three jobs, two with software companies and one with an aerospace company. Two of those have been in the Denver metro area of Colorado; one in the beltway area around Washington, DC. In all of these companies, women appear to be just as welcome as men. Granted, that's a tiny sample set over 10 years. But I imagine that other locations in the US could be much more sexist. (Side note: 10 years? Really? It doesn't feel that long ...) Is it at all possible that there would be another reason that other candidates would be chosen over her? -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On 2008-11-25, Lesley Binks penned: > > Well, when I was much younger the question asked at interviews was > 'what are you going to do when you have children?'. > That type of question is now illegal and could likewise open up the > doors for a lawsuit in the UK - if the interviewee really never wanted > to work in whatever area she was applying for again that is > and if it could be proved the interviewer wasn't asking male > interviewees the same question. While the capabilityy and potential > is there it can only be exercised at some cost. Sure, but you'd have to be pretty entrenched in your view of gender roles to put your company at even minimal risk of a lawsuit, wouldn't you? I mean, not that people don't do dumb things all the time ... If you really didn't want to hire women, I guess you could just never respond to their resume submissions. That seems much safer than asking such a stupid question at an interview. And less time consuming for everyone involved. Anyway, there are much more subtle ways of doing the same thing, like setting strict rules for notification of absence, extremely limited sick days, strong penalties for being late, etc, and making that clear to all employees during the interview. It's easy to make it clear that personal lives are not tolerated without targetting any particular group. > There has been a lot of debate about the fact that careers are > constructed and expected to be constructed in a male way - e.g. > eductaion up til 24 for a PhD and then years of short term research > contracts at various institutions before finally raising a family some > 10 - 15 years after graduation. Fine for men perhaps but not so easy > for women who also want to raise a family. I think people have to > think that strategy through very carefully. I don't see how this is fine for (all) men. What about men who want to raise a family while they are still younger? Men who want to be the primary taker for their children, or at least share equally in both the joy and the work? Maybe it's just that because of our accultured gender expectations, we perceive it as less of a sacrifice than it really is. > And Anne Sorsda has already pointed out the treacle one steps into > when moving away from societal norms - disregarding who is happier in > what role. Certainly we have a long way to go to see true freedom for both genders, not to mention all sorts of much more marginalized subgroups like the LGBT community. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On 2008-11-25, Brenda Wallace penned: > On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:09 PM, Helen Faulkner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> To get back on topic, does anyone think that CS-related careers are harder or >> easier, compared to other careers, to take a break from and actually get back >> into it? As in: is it a career that fits well or badly with the types of >> disruption that parenthood often presents, for men or for women? Maybe this >> is >> part of the reason why women are being turned off CS - the field changes so >> fast >> that you lose 6 months you might be in trouble... > > i've always thought that opensource, because of it's accessibility, > would be much easier to stay up with. Not needing to keep buying the > latest commercial/proprietary product + subscription to their > documentation means i could keep up with most of it given a spare > afternoon once a week. Not exactly the same thing, but ... A friend of mine recently quit her job and is going to start looking for a new one soon. She's recently been a technical manager and wants to go back to implementation. I suggested that she should work on open source projects to brush up her skills and to have something to show her prospective employers. She was surprised and delighted by this idea. Another female acquaintance of mine was looking for a job after a few years' break. She did find that she was very rusty, and said that with two children and a husband who works far more than full-time, she had not been able to find any time at all to keep up. I wonder, though, if this is a personality and priorities thing. It seems to me that it's vitally important for parents to take some time for themselves, even / especially when they're fulltime stay at home parents. If you're a person who lives and breathes software, you'll find a way to make that part of your personal time. If not, you will spend that time other ways. ... also, to be fair, she was somewhat suddenly thrust into the workforce because of the financial situation. I don't think she'd been planning to go back to work quite yet. Of course, I say all this with extreme naivete, not having ever had kids. I can't really picture how my husband and I would manage that; we're both extremely wrapped up in software jobs that don't follow nice eight hour workdays. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On 2008-11-22, Meike Reichle penned: > Hi Steph, all > > Apparently the root of women choosing these subjects does not so much > lie in their arts aspects but in their interdisciplinarity. I recently > talked to a gender researcher about this topic and her results showed > that girls/women feel especially attracted to interdisciplinary studies. > At least within Europe the women ration is much higher in > interdisciplinary CS studies like media informatics, bioinformatics, or > business informatics than in pure informatics. The same goes for > engineering. > > I guess this goes quite nicely with the general observation that men > tend(!) to prefer digging deep into one subject while women tend(!) to > prefer having a broad knowledge. At my current company, we have a variety of software positions. I see a greater percentage of women doing SQL work and web development than I do C++ applications. Our DBA team to my knowledge has never had a woman, but the team is so small that I'm not sure that's statistically significant. In all software teams, there are more men than women. The HR, administrative, and project management teams are primarily female. The executive team was half and half -- CEO and CTO male, COO and CFO female -- when I started, but since then we got a new COO who is male. The technical leadership positions have been primarily filled by men, but there have been enough female team leads that I don't think that's a barrier to entry, if one wanted to pursue that course. Whether or not a person would actually want that job -- well, that's a matter of whether that person enjoys a job with long and unpredictable hours and a high workload. So that certainly could factor into the distibution of men vs. women. The CTO has children and a wife, but I don't know if his wife works. My team lead is a single father who has made it work, but it requires a lot of daycare coordination + the expectation that when he leaves early, he will generally be working from home in the evening. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Problem with sound in Lenny installation
On 2008-11-28, Amaya penned: > Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote: >> 2008/11/27 Lisi Reisz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> > I thought the idea of Debian Women was, at least in part, to give a safe >> > space >> > where men wouldn't laugh at you?? ;-) >> >> I am never sure. The original purpose was to encourage female DDs, but >> I suppose it's nowadays used to discuss all matters enhanced by two X >> chromosomes. > > The original purpose of the list, or its ultimate purpose, is not yours > to decide, I am afraid. So do you know the original and/or current purpose? I tend to see it as a place to occasionally interact with women who use or develop Debian. I would post more if I thought that matched the actual purpose, but my posts would not be specifically about Debian or software or hardware, so I haven't done so. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: "Debian women may leave due to 'sexist' post"
On 2008-12-22, Elizabeth Krumbach penned: > I'm sure many of you on the list have already seen this: > > "Debian women may leave due to 'sexist' post": > http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22320/1090/1/0/ > > And much of the related discussion. I'm surprised there hasn't been > discussion about it on this list. How are others feeling about all of > this? Hi Elizabeth, I hadn't seen this article and don't read -devel, so thanks for the pointer. The article linked to the mail message, which baffled me. More than anything, isn't the message simply off topic? I don't know, maybe I live in a fantasy land, but given the response on other technical lists to off topic messages, I simply can't fathom why a developer would post a message like that. Beyond that, maybe it's an in-joke, but I don't get the message at all. Is it a serious advertisement / coupon for a real online store with a tongue in cheek name, or is it a joke poking fun at ... whom? Ah, on third skim, I finally see that it's a joke. I think. The "About" part at the bottom makes me think it's actually some sort of real store. Although I assume they don't really ship sex slaves. Okay. So after reading the message several time, I have to say, as a woman, I'm not offended. Maybe it's because he specifically accounted for the possibility that the client is female =) "If you are goth, transsexual, female or simply metrosexual, you also need to buy make-up at the same place." Or maybe it's because the message is just not very well written or cohesive. It doesn't even make sense enough for me to be annoyed! Mostly, I feel sorry for the guy who posted this joke, because I don't think it was meant to be offensive -- it seems more likely to me that the developer is perhaps a little socially inept and misguaged his audience. Of course, something can be offensive even when the author has no such intent. If anything, I think it's a poorly done joke, and a waste of time on -devel. But I don't know if the message needs to be taken in context with many other messages. Maybe this one message is weird and not so great, but taken in the context of other messages I don't know about, the whole of it comes across as unwelcoming? I'm much more offended by the somewhat-regular posts on thedailywtf.com and slashdot.org that strongly imply or overtly state that all women are awful at software, are stupid, are non-technical, and/or are only hired as eye candy. Those have set me into such a rage that I now and then stop reading them because they set my blood boiling, even though there are usual many men (especially in the last year or two) who post in response and point out the idiocy of these claims. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: "Debian women may leave due to 'sexist' post"
On 2008-12-23, Michael Banck penned: > On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:59:51PM -0700, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > > The message was sent to -devel-announce, not -devel. > >> But I don't know if the message needs to be taken in context >> with many other messages. > > It was a more or less direct parody at the previous message, > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg4.html > > I think most people believe that the sender of the message disapproved > with the previous message being on -devel-announce (a list only meant > for important announcements), and tried some parody on it. Thanks for the clarification. Now I think I have (most of) the context for the message at issue. With that context, I definitely think that the message was simply an attempt at humor. I don't find it offensive, derogatory, or exclusionary. I would have to think a bit to decide where my line is drawn, but it's somewhere past the joke email about SmellyWerewolf. (I can think of specific examples when, say, the guys in my guild have gone several football fields past my line, but I don't care to repeat them here =) ) >> Maybe this one message is weird and not so great, but taken in the >> context of other messages I don't know about, the whole of it comes >> across as unwelcoming? > > The problem is that -devel-announce is far more widely read and noticed > than -devel (and only Debian Developers can send messages or sponsor > message to be sent there), so inappropriate and off-topic messages on > there are much more of a problem to the outside appearance Debian than > inappropriate messages on -devel. Inappropriate messages on -devel are > a big problem for the internal working of Debian, though. I see your point. I think if I regularly read -devel-announce, I would have been far more annoyed at the initial hosting spam than at the followup joke spam. But I would definitely consider both to be unwanted spam. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: "Debian women may leave due to 'sexist' post"
On 2008-12-22, Peter Tuhársky penned: > Saying that, I'm glad there are women in Debian community, although I > don't fully understand their effort to maintain a special "Debian Women" > community. There is no "Debian Men" community I know of, and probably > noone find enough time or reasons worthy of the efforts to create it. > However, if the women feel better having such a community, that won't > hurt me anyhow. I think you answer your own (implied) question. Men don't have such a community because they don't need it -- because they are a strong and vocal, visible majority in both software development and open source communities. I don't think there are a whole lot of men who feel marginalized in the software development and open source communities just because they are male. You may never have walked into a linux users' group meeting and realized that you and one other person in a room of over 100 are the only members of your minority group. Despite the best of intentions by everyone involved, it is an awkward experience. In my personal case, I was the experienced Linux user, and my older brother, who hadn't yet installed Linux, asked me to join him at the meeting. But you can bet that's not the mental image that the strangers in the room had when they saw the two of us. Right or not, if I were to start becoming involved in the Debian development community, I might very well start here, and not in the more general fora. > As of the overwhelming reaction to the mail, I can partially understand > the reaction, when I look at Amayita website. > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist3.jpg > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist_00.jpg > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist_03.jpg > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist_01.jpg > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist_14.jpg > http://www.amayita.com/img/feminist_17.jpg > and so on. > > > I think that could tell something, and me personally, I found these > materials to be highly SEXISTIC and OFFENSIVE for me being a man. Cite: > "I'm castrating bitch" This is a spoof on some men's perceptions of powerful women. Think of it kind of like a black person using the word "n*gger." It may be unpleasant, but it is an attempt to take the sting out of a phrases that, yes, men have used to describe women who stand up for themselves and do what they want to do. > "the future is female" Again, when taken out of context, this seems harsh, but consider that the present is overwhelmingly male -- when you look at world leaders, CEOs, people in power. Sometimes overstatement helps to push toward equality. > "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" Perhaps you don't realize this, but that is a famous feminist quote. And while I personally don't love the quote, I also recognize that it comes from a time when women were in a far different position than they are now -- when husbands could do just about anything to their wives and there was no legal recourse; when women in the US couldn't get a credit card, or a loan of any kind, in their own name. Oh, wait. A lot of that is still the case in many places throughout the world. It comes from a context where women had almost no ability to support themselves without marrying a man. This is still the case in many places around the world. > "women make policy not coffee" How is this offensive? > "vote for woman" I wouldn't vote for a woman just because she is a woman, but you can be sure that I will consider a candidate's gender politics as part of my decision process. Again, I think this is an overstatement in the interests of pushing toward equality. And as some blogs I read point out, a lot of legislation "for women" turns out to be good for everyone. > "powerful woman!" In a world where traits associated with women are traits associated with weakness, it's sometimes necessary to push the point. No one questions that men are powerful. > "woman power" Same as above. > "man hatin', ball breakin', hairy legged feminist" Appropriating negative perceptions, again. I sincerely doubt she's actually man hating or ball breaking. She may be hairy legged =) You are free to call yourself hairy legged, and I'm sure no one will mind. > "sexism is social disease" -Yes! Exactly. > > Now, imagine I would put something similar on web, but in different > context: "vote for man", "the future is male", "powerful man", "men > make policy not coffee" etc. Wouldn't the feminists sue me instantly? I > think the society is just TOO tolerant to female shovinism. Or it > dosen't care enough about that. "Chauvinism" I get the feeling that maybe you're unaware of just how hard women have had to push to get where they are now, which is still some distance from where maybe we'd like to be. Do you really think that the social context is the same, that the *impact* on others is the same, when a woman says these things and when a man says these things? > Ladies, just please accept that the FREEDOM IS EQUAL f
Re: Problem with mice
On 2008-12-23, Karolina penned: > --=_Part_56591_9772139.1230054014056 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Disposition: inline > > Hi, > I have a huge problem. I bought Logitech RX1500 mice yesterday, and when I > pluged it in, it worked just fine. And today I can' t move the pointer. > Buttons are working, but the pointer isn' t moving at all. Here is my > xorg.conf in attachment. I tried everything I could think of, and nothing > happend. I' m ussing Debian sid, and some packages are from experimental > (gnome*, nvidia driver). Please help me, I' m desperate. Hi Karolina, Between when it was working and when it wasn't, did you reboot your computer or restart your xserver? It seems unlikely to me that your system configuration is at fault if you did neither of these things. The thing that first occured to me is that sometimes cordless mice need to be resynched to their receivers, but the RX1500 is corded as far as I can tell online. -- monique Help us help you: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-women-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
