Re: Should the weboob package stay in Debian?
Martin Steigerwald writes ("Re: Should the weboob package stay in Debian?"):
> It would be good if women involved in the Debian project would speak up
> here.
Many people have already explained why this is difficult.
But it is not necessary to have personal testimony for each question
of this kind. The kind of problem the web-oob package has is, sadly,
not that unusual in geekdom, or the world in general - although this
seems to be quite a bad case. Normally it's in conference or
marketing materials, and not so embedded in the software as well.
So we can read what women (and their allies) have written on this. A
good place to start is often the Geek Feminism Wiki. I looked there
and found this:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment
> Of course I understand any hesitance to do so. I felt hesitance
> myself often enough, even as what is usually called male.
I am reliably informed that things are *much* worse if your online
presence looks female. I haven't tried the experiment.
> What would be required to help women to feel more comfortable to post
> their opinion on this mailing list?
If we would send police to arrest the people who send "women with
opinions" death and rape threats, or doxx them, etc. ? This is not
within Debian's gift. But, we can stop making the problem worse by
perpetuating cultural practices which devalue women.
> So what concrete steps would help to start shifting that in the
> direction of more respect between the different genders?
I don't agree with this "bothsidesism". The problem here is the
oppression of women, by, mostly, men. There is not any significant
amount of oppression of men by women.
What concrete steps, you ask ? Well, we could start by removing
gratuitous sexual references from software which has nothing to do
with sex.[1]
We could also stop producing absurd (and readily and frequently
debunked) counterarguments to explain why this isn't a problem, or why
doing anything about it would lead inevitably to awful censorship,
etc. (FAOD I'm not really referring to your messages here, but there
have been some truly silly examples in this thread.)
Thanks for your attention.
Ian.
[1]
[content warning: sexual references]
The point "nothing to do with sex" is very important. I would love
for there to be software in Debian for driving sex toys, for example.
Most existing systems are quite proprietary and often creepy and full
of security holes. This is a very real software freedom problem
affecting a very intimate area of people's lives. Free sex toy
software would naturally talk about cocks and boobs and things - but
it would mean your actual or simulated cock or whatever. I also have
no problems with the purity tests, or fortunes-off (although the
latter ought to have its name changed to -offensive as per policy).
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
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