Form an orderly queue in Wolverhampton
Tony has done an amazing job of splicing together my 40 minute talk with my 123 slides from the Wolverhampton version of my talk Form an orderly queue, ladies. Thank you, Tony! This talk has changed a little bit on all three occasions that I've delivered it. First in San Francisco at LugRadioLive USA and a third time at OSCON. As far as I know the talk was not recorded at OSCON (which was the only time the talk had unicorns and slide transitions). I present you with the talk that inspired the rant (and later the blog entry rant) ...
Form an orderly queue, ladies - the Wolves edition
This video contains the use of coarse language and vaginas. Your employer may not approve. I am not responsible if you get fired.
A note about the language: I've had a few (men) tell me that they found the overuse of the "v" word unsettling. Yes. That was the point. I wanted a word that was technically correct but as jarring to the audience as I personally find "chix." Its use in this context is over the top and a bit ridiculous. And sometimes that's how I feel about "women in open source" discussions.
I don't want to spend more time than I need to discussing vaginas or the reasons why there aren't more of them in open source. If anything I want to get on with it--where "it" refers to getting more people involved in FOSS. Women are currently massively under represented in FOSS. And as approximately 50% of the world's population that makes "us" an excellent mark for increasing the use of FOSS world-wide. So let's change our language and our outlook and start focusing our efforts on the world domination of Free and Open Source Software. Form an orderly queue, ladies of all genders, we're going for a ride!
Comments
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Great presentation Ema! Hope we get a chance to talk more about gender politics in FOSS when you come down to Ottawa.
That was very good and enlightening. I certainly did not know the problem was so bad. Hopefully that will change as more people are thusly enlightened.
Rob's Two Community Building Guidelines
1. If you double the developer pool, you will more than double the female usage rating, so design easier to use build processes, test them on the major platforms, and document them, even if it means instead of doing a very big project you decide instead to do a very small one that showcases only a teeny part of what you are actually interested in.
2. You there with the filthy mouth spouting garbage about women, men, Americans, Europeans, etc. shut your mouth.
3. No one cares what you have decided is the right thing to do. Give people things to think about, and let them decide. Speak in your area of expertise. If someone asks to aggregate your feed, tell them to aggregate only the technology section. If they insist people want to hear about all of your life, tell them they are wrong, and that a link to your blog will suffice.
1. Doubling the developer pool while not looking at why the gender ratio is so skewed means you're leaving out a huge potential percentage (nearly 50!) of human beings who could be using and improving Linux and other open source software. So you miss the point.
2. Agreed entirely! Also, upskirt photos on Planet blogs: fucking creepy. This goes back to the whole "be excellent to each other" principle. That includes "don't be a jerk based on someone's $irrelevant_characteristic", and "don't be a fucking creep".
3. I care. And you can't count.
First things first: /usr is still there on Mac OS X. /Users replaces /home.
Anyway, I was one of those who complained about the vagina references, and I don't have a problem with women talking about vaginas in general, just about people referring to women as vaginas, even if they do so in a way that implies that's how other people, or at least men, see women, which is what you were getting at, I suspect. I can't imagine that many men would think of women that way, unless they saw them with legs spread in a top-shelf magazine. At a tech conference, they might see them as girls or even chicks, but vaginas certainly not.
You're still missing the point, unfortunately. The "women in open source" debate often relates to a question of gender (involvement of men vs. women; girls vs. boys). In an online environment, where individuals are able to construct their own identity, and indeed their gender, this ought to be especially irrelevant.
Talking about "women in open source" does not clarify the definition of gender, nor who we are trying to encourage. I have worked with more M2F trans individuals in FOSS than I have in any other industry. Does "women" include these individuals? Should a pre-op woman that still has a penis be barred from a women-only training session? The first is a rhetorical question; the second is an actual example from a course I was teaching. These are not questions that can, or should, be answered by an individual. They are for the community of people to think about and discuss. Every person will have a different set of experiences and come up with a different answer that is probably completely acceptable given the specific circumstances being discussed.
In my talk to distinguish between "women" and "vaginas" because I think that at its worst, this discussion focuses on separating people based on their biological identity. This is done by men AND women equally. I think that's wrong. You seem to be guessing that I am implying all men perceive all women as "vaginas." This is also wrong. I think the discussion needs to be about the creation of a tolerant community where all people feel equally important, included and heard. I believe you'll find that the use of the word switches to "women" for at least the last third of the talk, but also talks about the responsibilities of men and women. It's possible my use of language was more subtle than you may have realized.