I thought we were beyond this?
This all pretty much started when someone (Mark Shuttleworth) made a remark, and it offended some women in the open source community.
...Seriously, I don't care if you're male, female, black, white, orange, purple, religious, atheist, rich, poor, etc. (I'm a Chinese male in Australia, by the way.)
What I do care is that if you make a contribution to FOSS; make it a genuine one to the community.
The thing that concerns me is that women have yet to understand that in a male dominated area, you must prove your worth. That's how you get respect from men. (Its how men earn respect of other men.)...And its how you'll stop the sexist remarks, comments, or jokes.
You don't get any respect from using the victim tone, or try to introduce laws/rules in order to control behaviour. (So that no one gets offended to anything)...They may obey the rules you've put up; but they won't respect you. In fact, they'll resent it...And you'll never feel like you fit in. (Gee, doesn't this sound familiar?)
Life does have an occassional a-hole, prick, bully, etc. Think of it as a test of character and development. If someone annoys/offends you, ignore them. If they attack, you defend yourself.
Have women not learned from films like GI Jane (Demi Moore), Aliens (Sigourney Weaver and Jenette Goldstein), etc? You have to prove that you can do things as well as men can. Heck, if you want a real life examples: Hiliary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO).
The simple fact is: Respect must be earned, and it must be based on merit of hard work. You can't get by with victim mentality or sheltering behind rules in some artificially created utopia.
If an all-women's open source project built an application that meets most people's needs; it would certainly earn respect from everyone...As it tells people, these chicks have the kick butt confidence of not caring of what people say; because they know what is more important in the long term scheme of things. => FOSS for everyone.
This is where I believe feminism fails in today's world. There's no realisation that respect must be earned with good old fashion hard work. Its about being pro-active. Right now, its reactive responses like "Boycott Ubuntu". (I personally don't give a damn about Ubuntu, as I've moved to Arch Linux!)
LOL...I can't wait until Microsoft picks up on this, and uses it in their propaganda machine. => Tech News: Open Source is SEXIST! We at Microsoft welcome women! See?! *insert picture of all their female employees*
Side note:
What I suggested above applies to any minority group. While I won't face sexism, I did face racism. I quashed it by proving my worth. From that, I got respect.
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beyond this
Most of the world is. The real world, I think. The point I was making in my post is that the small things encountered in real life were really good clean fun. The war of the sexes was fodder for breaking ice and enjoying a laugh. Women do it to men too. Women in daily life are usually given an equal opportunity to prove themselves and usually rise to the occasion. Most men in the real world don't really think women are inferior. But Mark does.
When someone whose every fart and breath is reported across the internet like it was important, they have a higher responsibility. How many attitudes might he influence? He made a blanket statement insulting all women everywhere without regard to actual fact. He didn't say Susan was dumber than him based on my work he observed. He said all women everywhere can't understand Linux unless it's broken down into a Romper Room ABC kind of manner.
My intelligence is not limited by my gender and neither is Carla's or my granddaughter's or any other women out there. It can not be assumed we are dumber just because we're female. I can not be written off just because I'm a girl before even being given a chance. That's what he did.
Yes sir, I sure thought all this crap was settled 30 or 40 years ago too. Apparently Mark missed the news.