[aur-general] "tower-girls", was Re: TU application for Sven-Hendrik Haase

[J. W. Birdsong]

On 06/27/10 at 03:04am, Sven-Hendrik Haase wrote:
>  On 26.06.2010 19:10, Xyne wrote:
> >>>>> I suspect of all the places a girl could stumble upon in the net,  
> >>>>> this
> >>>>> one is the least likely to be it.
> >>>> Well, when they do, they'll be able to confirm the stereotype of male
> >>>> computer geeks and their attitudes towards them.
> >> What stereotype? I'm a computer geek, and I'm fine with women, in  
> >> general and in computing. Stereotyping is bullshit generalization that  
> >> doesn't actually apply to anyone in particular.
> > [/snip]
> >
> >> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 6:13 AM, Peter Lewis <pete at muddygoat.org> wrote:
> >>> But please don't assume you know my motivation for mentioning these projects.
> >>> I'm not "trying to make myself feel better",
> >> I'm sorry; was I "stereotyping" you? Sucks, doesn't it? :)
> >> -- 
> >> Andrew
> >
> > I think you misunderstood my message. My point was that a conversation
> > among TUs, i.e. people officially associated with the distro, about
> > keeping women in towers etc. conforms to a stereotype that people have
> > of male geeks acting disparagingly towards women. A harmless comment
> > here or there isn't really an issue, but diverting a TU application
> > into a conversation that ostensibly objectifies women on a public
> > mailing list will be seen as inappropriate and possibly offensive by
> > others. If you don't see how that might be offensive then I would say
> > that you're part of the problem.
> >
> > This is relevant: http://xkcd.com/322/
> >
> > Stereotypes are indeed stupid and so is acting in accordance with them.
> >
> > I'm really not up in arms about this. I only made a fleeting remark
> > about it and had intended to avoid replying to your message when I saw
> > it, but that second remark to Peter above clearly shows that you
> > misunderstood my point so I felt the need to explain myself. Call me
> > "pseudo-politically correct" all you want, but somehow I don't think a
> > conversation about women locked up in secret tower belongs on this
> > list. At the very least it has nothing to do with the AUR.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Peter Lewis <pete at muddygoat.org> wrote:
> >> On Saturday 26 Jun 2010 at 01:42 Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> >>> On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 17:47 -0400, Andrew Antle wrote:
> >>>>> I've always been quite proud that the free / open source software
> >>>>> world has
> >>>>> projects like these:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> http://women.debian.org/home/
> >>>>> http://community.kde.org/KDE_Women
> >>>>> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I know the comments were just supposed to be a bit of fun, but
> >>>>> perhaps they
> >>>>> highlight that something like wouldn't be a bad idea in Arch too.
> >>>>>
> >>>> Patches welcome :) , preferably from women actually involved in Arch,
> >>>> not pseudo-politically-correct males trying to make themselves feel
> >>>> better.
> >> Absolutely, it would be rather odd and pointless if an Arch-women project were 
> >> to be started by men. In the absence of any women (really are there none?), of 
> >> course no patches will be forthcoming.
> > I think the best approach is to simply stop focusing on gender. What
> > difference do gender, ethnicity, age, etc make on the internet?
> > Obviously if you bring it up yourself and make it a part of the
> > interaction then it matters, but if not then it shouldn't even need to
> > be mentioned.
> >
> > As for project and groups targeted at women, I would expect them to run
> > the risk of leading to some level of seclusion within the community.
> > It's like saying "well, they don't seem to be integrating, so let's
> > provide them with a little niche over there".
> >
> > I could easily go on, but it would veer too far into politics and is,
> > once again, not appropriate for this list.
> >
> Woah, I did not suspect that the closing question of my application
> would spawn such a discussion. If anything, I was subconsciously
> expressing my resentment towards the lack of at least partly female
> people in my areas of interest, packaged in a humorous remark. That's
> about it. I wasn't trying to make this another heated discussion in the
> epic proportions of a cdrtools vs. cdrkit debate.

I imagine most ppl took your comments at face value with NO derogarory attitude toward 
 anyone at all. I think most of this (unneed) banter was brought on by subsiquent posts.
 As far as matching the epic cdrtools vs. cdrkit I don't you have much to worry about.

> 
> I don't know whether I was actually being criticized here for those
> closing words of mine and I hope nobody actually thinks that I objectify
> girls like that. Believe me, I'd *much* rather have a more balanced
> gender ratio in my areas of interest.

I CERTAINLY don't see anything here as a neg. criticism   of you.   

> 
> This uneven gender ratio likely is the result of the current
> expectations of society and the fact that boys and girls are genetically
> wired to like different things. It is certainly not something we can
> change by alienating women and putting them into a special place like
> Arch Women. I think that we are probably the ones *least* at fault, or
> would anybody here NOT encourage a girl to try to do technical stuff? At
> any rate, we are too few fix this and we are probably not experienced
> enough in genetic engineering either.
> 
> I apologize if anybody here was actually offended by my words.
> 
> We should probably stop this here and now. Can we get back to my awesome
> application?
> If any more people want to escalate this, it should probably at least go
> to arch-general in the next mail.
> 
> -- Sven-Hendrik

God that would be nice.  The no more or else where part.
Good luck on your Voting period.