On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 10:34:28PM +1100, Ben Burton wrote: > > But on balance I think even that was pretty mild. I very seldom see > > overt hostility towards women in Debian. I think I have seen more > > towards gays, and we appear to have more gay and bi male developers than > > women of any orientation. > > It's possible that it's all relative (tm). Given the amount of overt > anti-gay rhetoric that we still hear today, debian appeared to me as > having very little hostility towards lesbians/gays/etc. Certainly it > was a much less hostile environment than the place where I was living at > the time [1]. Hell, even in Australia where same-sex couples can get > immigration visas (with a large amount of red tape), we still have our > prime minister traipsing about arguing against same-sex marriage because > "it does nothing to support the survival of the species" [2]. If only the > world were ruled by the Dutch. :) > > Anyway, I have never though of debian as hostile towards gays/etc at > all, certainly compared with the world at large. I agree, and that's why I discarded that thesis. I was attempting to work through a number of hypotheses that could explain the scenario. The only one I have much confidence in was the final one I reached. > > Is it that we have subcultures within Debian, and the gay/bi male one has > > reached a critical mass that enables new ones to be assimilated into our > > group more easily? > > FWIW, I wasn't aware of such a subculture when I joined back in 2001, > and even now I'm finding it hard to think of more than a couple of other > lesbian/gay/bi DDs. If there is one, I don't know about it, and I haven't been invited to join. :) 900 people might not really be enough to sustain any proper "subcultures" in any event. It's below the treshhold where everyone in a community can no longer know everyone else, according to Jared Diamond's metric in the book _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, which has some interesting speculations on this subject. > I do think you have it right when you observe that there is seldom overt > hostility towards women in debian. I think the issues are more subtle > than that, which can in fact make the problems harder to address. Yes; it's harder to treat an ailment in the absence of a correct diagnosis. > As an example, I'd say that debian, as with several open source > projects, does have a bit of a "bullying" culture (certainly not > pushed by everyone, or even by a majority, but certainly not invisible > either). And for whatever reason, I think males often thrive better > in that culture (look at debates regarding single-sex vs co-education > schools). This may or may not deter some people from participating - > this is all just wild speculation. ...and when we're not bullying, we're territorial. :) Sure fits the male stereotype, doesn't it? :) -- G. Branden Robinson | There's something wrong if you're Debian GNU/Linux | always right. branden@debian.org | -- Glasow's Law http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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