Sexist Behaviour in Debian Women
Hello All,
The major aim of the Debian Women channel is to increase the participation
of women in Debian. I expect that all of you know about that, agree with
it, etc.
That being stated, I believe that it is conducive to that aim, and to what I
would call our basic feminist philosophy, to have as an aim for the group
that we will not tolerate sexist behaviour of any form. (We're also not
into racists, ageist, or any other nasty-ist behaviour you might think of).
I am certain that most of you would agree with that.
Given that, I am extremely disappointed to see that there was some very
sexist behaviour occuring on the #debian-women channel over the last few
hours. It was primarily directed by women at men. I see that
misunderstanding and heated comments occured on *both* sides of the
discussion, but the main thing I observe is that it was not accepted for a
man on the channel to make the observation that there exist contexts in
which men are disadvantaged as compared to women. This comment was no more
off-topic than many comments made on the channel, and infact I believe it
was a relevant one and could have formed the basis of an interesting
discussion, was it not for the sexist behaviour that it provoked.
Just because Debian Women is a feminist group, that does not mean that that
kind of thing is acceptable. Please remember this in future. We need to
respect one another, our different opinions and background. Negative
discriminatory behaviour of any sort is simply unacceptable.
The result of this behaviour appears to have been the loss to the group of a
valuable and contributing member. We did not have to do this to ourselves.
As I said above, I am gravely disappointed.
Helen.
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