discuss: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO
Subject:
Re: Review needed of 'Encourage Women in Linux' HOWTO
From:
Mary Gardiner ####@####.####
Date:
6 Dec 2003 23:25:59 -0000
Message-Id: <20031206232551.GC913@titus.home.puzzling.org>
My responses are getting well off-topic here, I'll wrap it up at the
end.
On Sat, Dec 06, 2003, s. keeling wrote:
> When Catie wrote her story (a good one, I thought) about replacing her
> power supply, some twit wrote back about "female stress." What to do?
> Well, get all defensive, of course.
>
> No! Write back and tell him that was a dumb thing to say! The story
> had nothing to do with the gender of the writer and it was ridiculous
> to suppose that it did. Slap! Twit! Go to the corner until you
> learn civilized behaviour!
Full disclosure: I was one of the other respondents in the thread to
which s. keeling is indirectly referring (it is linked from Val's
howto).
I think a fundamental problem here is the assumption that this will be
the response. Someone makes a stupid joke, everyone else goes "Slap!
Twit!" What's the problem? The stupid person is suitably humiliated.
Well, the problem is that they often aren't. Often the sequences goes
(threaded):
1. Stupid joke
2. "Hahaha that's the funniest thing I've read all week!"
3. "Hahaha that's the funniest thing I've read all week!"
4. "Hahaha that's the funniest thing I've read all week!"
5. Slap! Twit!
2. Hey what's the problem, don't you have any sense of humour?
6. Slap! Twit!
3. Hey what's the problem, don't you have any sense of humour?
2. I can't believe how much people are picking on #1, this is the
reason we make jokes about women in the first place, they don't
have any sense of reality.
2. I can't believe how much people are picking on #1.
1. I can't believe how much people are picking on me, it was a JOKE.
At least some people got it.
Often numbers #5 and #6 will do some more slapping, and so it goes.
As I recall, there were at least a couple of posters to the thread
referred to here who roughly played the roles of #2, #3, and #4.
Unfortunately, while a lot of people share your "just slap the idiots
down" response (and some people try, and good on them) it turns out that
it often isn't as clear cut as "1 idiot, 100 reasonably polite people,"
it works out as more like "5 idiots, 5 reasonably polite people," (and,
I believe, 100 reasonably polite lurkers rolling their eyes and hoping
the conversation gets back to Linux soon).
And this is part of why Val's HOWTO exists. Yes, everything it says is
obvious to reasonably polite people -- with a few exceptions like
pointing out that women are often wary of being in poorly lit places at
nighttime.
And yet, it seems to me sometimes that reasonable politeness, and the
natural assumptions that arise from reasonable politeness are, yes,
something that might need to be spelled out to people, because as it
works out in some groups you can't assume that "for every idiot there's
100 reasonably polite people to deliver slapdowns -- sensible behaviour
is the result!"
I've always been a bit ambivalent about the role of this HOWTO in the
LDP, but "what's the problem, it's just one bad apple!" responses make
me realise that this stuff needs explaining somewhere.
-Mary
