I wanted to contribute and give something back to a movement that has given me a lot. And it's a movement that probably needs Telsa the writer or Telsa the bug-finder or even Telsa the approver-of-posts-held-for-moderation a lot more than Telsa the trying-to-write-code. And I understand that. But damn, the idea that all of this is completely and utterly subordinate to your "clever coders" galls me.
Thank you, Tessa, for making this point clear. I don't know how many (not only) women are lost for the Open Source movement this way, but it's exactly what you describe that prevented me from actually joining a project, and I know some other women who stopped their involvement due to this. The problem is that it simply doesn't help that _some_ members of the relevant project value your work and see your talents (even admit that you are better at doing certain things than they) when the overall feeling Tessa describes prevails.
Unfortunately the coder-rule!-mentality seems to be an inherent part of the definition of Open Source projects, and although many hackers of the "first generation" (like Ted T'so) have recently made it clear that this can't be the future, it's probably not to change soon since it seems that the majority of the "next generation" hasn't learned this lesson yet but joins projects because the coders-rule!-mentality attracts them, not despite of it.
Patricia