Re: No goals, selective memory, be nice, red nose day

[Jenn Vesperman <jenn@anthill.echidna.id.au>]

On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 22:16, MJ Ray wrote:
> On 2004-08-23 06:37:00 +0100 Jenn Vesperman 
> <jenn@anthill.echidna.id.au> wrote:
> 
> > Women (in general) do not object to closed men's clubs where the club 
> > is
> > nothing to do with social and professional advancement. [...]
> 
> Then "Women (in general)" are accepting sexism.
> 
> > I accept a small charge of sexism in the mentoring opportunity
> > that grrls-only provides, but do not see that as significant [...]
> 
> I disagree on the significance. Finding good mentors is difficult. 
> debian is one of the few groups with an established way to do so, 
> which is part of the reason I got involved with it.

Given that I can only think, offhand, of two or three possible mentors
who are on grrls-only and not grrltalk, and that I know those mentors
are readily available on non-gender-closed spaces, I deem it
insignificant.
That, however, is data you did not have.

Given that some places are effectively closed to women who lack the
desire to wade through guff and nonsense, I feel that the risk that
there might, possibly, be a handful of mentors who are available only on
grrls-only is insignificant.
Until such time as the signal/noise ratio rises elsewhere or becomes
less gender-biased, I believe that Linuxchix will be a required
resource.

You are welcome to disagree. Respectful disagreement is healthy.

If you wish to dispute the presence of gender-biased noise, I can
provide an example of same simply by writing anything on slashdot with a
feminine-sounding nickname. But that would be throwing chum into
shark-infested water, and a pointless exercise. :(

> Nevertheless, I hope your clarification is enough to stop people 
> flaming me so much when I use linuxchix as an example of a sexist 
> group.

Given that you have declared that you are using an extreme definition of
sexism? Quite possibly. Your definition differs from the one in general
use in moderate feminist circles, though it seems to match that used by
those right up at the narrow end of the bell curve.

We probably should have done a definition of terms much sooner.


Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
   My book 'Essential CVS': published by O'Reilly in June 2003.
jenn@anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/