You outline the worry that I have been developing with aspects of the debate, in which I feel many people feel uncomfortable to participate (myself included) due to accusations of latent sexism being thrown around.

As you outline, I also worry that due to this conflict, people will (a) not want to engage and (b) lose interest or concern in the topic.

As such, I am focusing my efforts on this positive message. There are plenty of other people welcome to engage in the more critical side of the debate, but I want to extend my efforts on the positive message.

It is these incidents and flamewars that hit the headlines as opposed to the positive work that women are doing in Open Source.”

I couldn’t agree more with Jono. The backlash you get sometimes these days makes even the most feministically brought up become very insecure in how to address women in the community. I’ve had this happen several times in the past few months. I have become very unsure how to formulate certain things I want to say in fear of sounding sexist. And believe me that I never, ever want to be sexist in any way. Nothing is farther away from the way I define myself.

Still, the constant accusations (in many cases over throw-away comments), if justified or not, aren’t helping at all in my view. They only serve to make some people (like me) very unsure in what to say and will probably make the rest of the male community stop caring, which would be very bad.

I think that making people aware of their comments if they make a mistake is good, just don’t overdo it. In my own experience, the line of what constitutes a sexist comment is much fuzzier than with many other sticky issues. Everybody pretty much knows what would constitute a fascist comment, for example. But all this gender stuff is much more of a grey area and even the people criticising often aren’t in agreement.

So in short: It’s better to educate in a nice tone than to shout for people to apologise. That will make it easier for everyone.

Yes, I agree with this.

Jono, your post would have come across quite across differently, and I think more positively, if it included some acknowledgement that sexist remarks in keynotes are a problem, or at least that posts like Kirrily Robert’s open letter are constructive criticism (even if you do not agree with the criticism, but I hope you do). As it is you seem to have slighted everyone that has commented on the topic as contributing to a “spat” or otherwise “lowering the tone” (as you say in a comment) equally, when that is not the case. Instead as James points out you seem dismissive of those women and the opinions they are voicing.

So, please do highlight positive contributions. But at the same time, please be careful not to do it at the expense of avoiding necessary conversations about unpleasant topics.

“Thats not cool in my opinion, there are hundreds of posts from men and women on planet ubuntu that do not interest me and the likelihood that I will find a posts from a woman that stands out to me is statistically lower because there are less women being aggregated.

“This creates an unbalance gender wise and then posts which surround negativity towards women seem to get more attention than posts surrounding the great things they accomplish.

“Out of a matter of interest why is it that the other 23 women on ubuntu women planet don’t blog on planet ubuntu. It only makes sense to me that having more women blog on planet ubuntu would increase the chance of someone finding another individual interesting and having what they say click in their heads and in turn help kill any subconscious stereotype someone might gain from only hearing interesting things from one particular gender all the time.”

You are exactly right, it would be great to get more women on the Planet Ubuntu.

The reason that only the minority of people on the Ubuntu Women planet are on the main planet is that only the minority are Ubuntu members, which is at least the criteria for putting yourself on the main planet, if not for being on there.

When a women that blogs on the Ubuntu Women planet becomes a member then she is usually encouraged by the other members of the group to also syndicate to the main planet.

Therefore what we need to do is invest some more time in helping those of the 23, those that would like to at least, to become Ubuntu members. Getting more female voices in the official channels involves getting more women to join. You have found a great pool to draw from to help with that.

“What I have to ask is when was the last time you looked up Ubuntu Men Planet?”

Please go ahead and set one up if you like (which may require CC approval, I’m not sure).

However, as your posts point out, we kind of already have one. With only a little selective blindness and willingness to miss out on some great posts, you can read the main planet as an Ubuntu Men planet.

If the numbers changed such that there was about equality on the main planet or more female voices then some may feel the need to set one up to help encourage more male voices.

You rarely need specialist institutions for the dominant group, as the main institutions of the project tend to do a great job of catering to the dominant group.

Jono, it’s great to highlight the contributions made by these important contributors to our community. I think the main issue with your post is with the title and the first paragraph. Even if it wasn’t intended, they can be read as requesting discussion around the negative aspects, and this particular discussion, to stop. That is something that many will be sensitive to, as if you deny them their voice they will feel marginalised and unable to change the status quo. This can lead to them being disenfranchised, and this is compounded when it is the leaders of the project that do it, as they can’t satisfy themselves with the thought that it is just “Internet trolls”.

We definitely need to do a better job of highlighting the contributions that women make to our community, but that isn’t a replacement for discussing the issues that discourage them as well.

Thanks,

James

I’m not attempting to get into an adversarial position with you or with anyone else, and I don’t really see this topic as “my cause.” I am a man, I have daughter and wife that aren’t men, but I don’t see it as my duty to protect them from sexism as a personal cause. I am simply trying to engage in what I believe is an important discussion and offer my perspective. If you think it’s rubbish, I’m not going to take offense at that and try to prove that I’m right and those that I disagree with are wrong. I’m not angry at Jono for his post, nor at Mark for his comments. I don’t even know them. But I do think that it’s important to be able to communicate about these things without it turning adversarial.

I didn’t intend to offend you, and I’m sorry that I did (see, that wasn’t too hard.) Furthermore, I would hope that if we had the proper medium, we could continue this conversation and find a place where we both feel empowered.

But I do think it’s important in situations like these to hold ourselves to the same level of accountability as we do others, and that is why I mentioned our sexism.

Cheers.

“But what I heard underneath this post is, “I can’t tolerate having to address this part of myself as well as this part of my community, so I’m going to try and divert the attention somewhere else.” What better way than to offer flattery?”

Nobody can read minds, don’t pretend you can.

Psychologically, when we start telling people that we know what they are thinking we are really sharing our own subconscious thoughts, not theirs.

But hey, if you can guess what number I am thinking right now then I will believe you are telepathic and agree that what Jono just posted is sexist.

I think not enough intelligent women are vocal about what they do on mediums like planet gnome, fedora, ubuntu etc.

It was pointed out they are on Ubuntu Women Planet and the fridge but I don’t read either as I am sure is the case for others.

To be honest I did not even know about Ubuntu Women Planet as I never found myself searching for a planet dedicated to one gender.

What Mark said was stupid and probably unintentional but what I find myself asking is how could he have said something stupid unintentionally.

Sexism in my view is not something which resides in every man from the moment he is born and I take offense to your stance with this regard, sometimes its thought and sometimes its spread though the media just like everything else(politics comes to mind).

In this particular case I think maybe its due to the unbalance on the planets.

It seems to draw unconscious assumptions which in the case of Mark came out vocally at a talk.

When I read the planets I tend to hear less about women in oss than men and the only memes I see invloving women are with regards to sexism.

I checked planet ubuntu women and out of the 31 blogs being aggregated only 8 are aggregated on planet ubuntu.

Thats not cool in my opinion, there are hundreds of posts from men and women on planet ubuntu that do not interest me and the likelihood that I will find a posts from a woman that stands out to me is statistically lower because there are less women being aggregated.

This creates an unbalance gender wise and then posts which surround negativity towards women seem to get more attention than posts surrounding the great things they accomplish.

Out of a matter of interest why is it that the other 23 women on ubuntu women planet don’t blog on planet ubuntu. It only makes sense to me that having more women blog on planet ubuntu would increase the chance of someone finding another individual interesting and having what they say click in their heads and in turn help kill any subconscious stereotype someone might gain from only hearing interesting things from one particular gender all the time.

Leigh posed Jono the question “Haven’t been paying much attention to, say, the Ubuntu Women planet, or perhaps the monthly profiles of women in Ubuntu in Full Circle Magazine I guess?”

The Fridge makes sense to me as it is a gender neutral medium, with regards to Ubuntu Women planet this question makes less sense.

What I have to ask is when was the last time you looked up Ubuntu Men Planet?

I am not saying to get rid of it, I am just saying that having only 8 of the 21 members aggregated on the gender neutral ubuntu planet is damaging your own cause.

To summarize, I think this post from Jono is great one and not in the least bit sexist and its ok for women in oss to feel as though they are not listened to or respected by the opposite sex as this is the case in allot of circumstances but if they are only broadcasting their views to other women then they are not actually attempting to fix the problem.

And this is a problem I would like fixed.