lwn.net discussion about the "Ubuntu-Girlfriend experiment"

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>]

http://lwn.net/Articles/279895/#Comments

This has probably been discussed already in various places, but I
thought I'd point it out here, for posterity. There's a blog entry about
doing some simple usability testing of Ubuntu, with the author using
their SO as the test person. As it happens, the SO is female, which led
to the title "The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment". LWN.net then
reported this enforcing the implication that girlfriends are always
tech-ignorant.

So far, garden-variety low-key sexism that happens everywhere, often
without intent. What's interesting, to me, is that the discussion on
lwn.net so quickly and strongly took stance against the sexism. Despite
a number of people insisting on there not being a problem, the general
consensus seems to be that the lwn.net net editor made an error, and he
apologized for it, as did the chief editor.

That discussion wouldn't have happened four years ago, I'm sure.