On Tue, Dec 14, 2004 at 11:46:36PM -0800, Carla Schroder wrote: > On Tuesday 14 December 2004 10:42 pm, Helen Faulkner wrote: > > 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. > It wasn't the topic, and it wasn't sexism- it was reacting to someone who was > deliberately misconstruing what people were saying, and going out of his way > to take offense. Pretty much any topic goes on the channel, it's being > obnoxious that gets people riled up. <carla> and I would like to remind the channel this is Debian WOMEN, and if you can't deal with it, well so sorry [...] <Manoj> JuttaW: while I actually did not bring this up, I am amused to see that it is not ok to talk about problems men may face; and even a mention brings about strong emations and an effort to shut down such talk. [...] <carla> Manoj: so go advocate for the issues you care about <carla> this is Debian-women <Manoj> carla: and? <carla> not Debian-Men's-Rape-Crisis-clinic [...] <carla> patti_: it's the same old baloney we always get- as soon as women start advocating for themselves and taking meaningful action, some men get all whiny and go 'but what about us?' In a group nominally established in recognition of the fact that women are under-represented in Debian and with the goal of increasing the roles of women in Debian, I don't think it's the attitudes of long-time active Debian contributors that were causing problems in this case. :P -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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