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Re: Some Comments on Sexism in #debian



On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 09:18:48PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 02:44:31PM +0100, Amaya wrote:
> > - On a talk at Madrid, Miguel de Icaza who is a close friend of mine
> >   BTW, used female secretaries as examples of clueless users.
> 
> Well, that's probably because that's empirically proven to be
> correct.

IIRC, the point Susan brought up at Debconf2 after the numerous "so
easy your grandmother can use it" references was, "why always the
"grand*mother*?" Fact is, these little references paint the person as
stupid, or unskilled, or somehow "weaker" (pick the term that's right
if you don't like these but it's clearly not a good thing). In our
society, we tend to have an easier time making that kind of comparison
to women than men. Grandfathers are hardly more likely to be ubergeeks
but they're not the ones that end of as the poster child for
cluelessness.

If we instead try to imagine the power-developer as a grandmother we
stand a better a chance of creating an environment that will make this
possible and, more importantly, we have a better chance of keeping the
power-developers grandmother(s) in our midst active and interested. :)

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako@debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/

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