Entry tags:

omg i'm not like those *other* women, sure we don't need no feminism

calling out sexism. Just like they did in Salem, Mass.!
Open source, why must you be so fail?

This has shown up all over the Planet Gnome RSS feed lately. It started when Richard M. Stallman gave a tongue-in-cheek speech at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit about the text-editor-worshiping 'church of Emacs'. The epic command-line text editor wars between emacs and vi would normally be entertaining, but... not this time.

Matthew Garrett has a transcript of the talk and, if you must see it in all its glory, a YouTube link to an old take on the same speech. Excerpts:

I am Saint Ignucius of the church of emacs. I bless your computer, my child.

if you become a hacker you can celebrate that by having a foobar mitzvah, a ceremony in which the new hacker stands in front of the assembled congregation of hackers and chants through the lines of the system source code. And we also have the cult of the virgin of emacs. The virgin of emacs is any female who has not yet learned how to use emacs. And in the church of emacs we believe that taking her emacs virginity away is a blessed act.

'Lefty' Schlesinger blogs about the virgin-deflowering bit, while others are shocked, shocked that people can be offended, since RMS has given the same speech many times and no one has ever said anything. Which is totally inspiring confidence in the lack of sexism in the community. And just like everywhere on the Internet, comments get rage-inducing:

Blah blah blah. This kind of whiny bullshit about unimportant details is exactly why women should be left out in the cold. Not just in the open source movement but in every job where the semantic of how and when something was told to them becomes more important than just doing your fucking job. Real programmers male or female program. Whoever wrote this is not a programmer. They just here to collect attention. Nothing to see here.

Later he emails RMS asking for an apology for the sexism and gets practically ignored.

> I'm honestly a little surprised--amazed, really--that
> you managed to completely ignore the three central
> paragraphs which I identified as being the core of my
> concerns, choosing instead to focus on the side issue of
> the anti-religious bent of your "St. IGNUcius" routine.

I did respond to the other points, just more briefly.

The closest thing he said that might be called 'responding':

I do not believe I owe anyone an apology. I did not insult or attack them, but it is clear some people are attacking me. I think I am being criticized unjustly criticized, and I feel I have been wronged.

People in comments again tell Schlesinger he is Wrong but now add that he really, really shouldn't have published private emails on his blog without asking permission. (But he talked to an Internet Lawyer, so it's okay!)

There's also a few rebuttals like these:

Frankly I find it sexist that you think women are so fragile that you need to filter what they hear in case they are offended. He didn't mean anything by it and caused no material harm.

Evidently the irony of men running to the defense of women, Prince Charming-style, all in the name of combating alleged sexism (which has become rather like all the other -isms that we don't like, in that we begin seeing them where they probably don't exist), is completely lost on you.

An argument which shows up in other blogs:

We’re the ones who fight for freedom every day. Let’s try to give people the freedom of speech even if we think they are wrong.

You know what is sexist? Treating all the women among us as a weaker sex. As another species. Now that’s sexism. It sure makes one feel special. But special as in that cute retarded kid next door everyone says "hi" to.

But apparently the one true answer to this whole issue is irony.

Because Stallman is ironically portraying religion as sexist, he, in facts, critics sexism in religion, so accusing him of being sexist is a bit ridiculous...

Yes, it's entirely about the cult of the Virgin Mary. Garrett is sure convinced:

I'm entirely unconvinced by the argument that this is purely a reference to religion, given that he seems to be referring to Mary and it's certainly not catholic doctrine for people to relieve her of her virginity!

Chani has a thoughtful post about the offensiveness of the speech as well (and she's female, does that mean it's okay now?), and explains things very civilly to the head-desky comments she gets ("this is a witch hunt"! "You’re persecuting him"! Seriously.), while conspiracy theories about the real motivations of Schlesinger for speaking up about this abound. Many comments of course just choose to complain about him filling Planet Gnome with his anti-sexism posts instead of talking about widgets like God intended.

Bonus, someone links to a... special Phoronix article from June:

that is neither, not the last, sexist comment from someone in the community (i mean, except obvious lousy jokes). Look at that for instance http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzM4MQ

And another of the comments had a contextless reference to a past failure:

Is this just a rehash of the insensitivity to women mess from the 'code like a pornstar' Ruby conference some months back?

No idea what that one was about yet. But apparently someone made a Bingo card!

More blog links: A much better summary than mine, Monotonous is all for fighting sexism, rodrigo thinks it isn't there, and uraeus insists that sexism cannot be to blame for anything short of a trail of bloody footprints leading to sexism's front door.

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	notjo 2009-07-18 05:23 pm UTC (link)
	Some info on the "Code like a Pornstar" thing, where the following counterarguments were made: - He's done it before, no one complained - Folks who were offended are LOLsensitive - "I'm a woman, and I thought it was funny/okay" - It's not sexist - You can't take a joke Yeah. Bingo Cards should be out for this one, too. sigh (Reply to this)(Thread)

	galateus 2009-07-18 07:38 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, thanks. I just found another link to the Geek Feminism wiki somewhere else in all the non-fail blog posts, too. Looks like it's still a young, WIP wiki in need of editors? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fairestcat 2009-07-20 07:24 pm UTC (link)
	It is in fact a very young wiki and I believe Skud/damned_colonial is totally interested in getting some other new editors on board. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fairestcat 2009-07-20 07:35 pm UTC (link)
	It just occurred to me that I should add: I'm not connecting someone's real name to their fannish identity: damned_colonial explicitly connects her lj/dw username to her Skud handle and her real name, including links to her pro blog (http://infotrope.net/blog/) from her dreamwidth and links back to her dreamwidth from her pro blog. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kelmendi 2009-07-18 08:24 pm UTC (link)
	Don't forget "He can't be sexist/misogynist - he has a wife and two daughters!" headdesk (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Bingo Card... glossing2 2009-07-20 02:27 am UTC (link)
	...already exists. And it is a thing of BEAUTY. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	airawyn 2009-07-18 06:10 pm UTC (link)
	Now I feel dirty for using Emacs. (Reply to this)

	t_boy 2009-07-18 06:18 pm UTC (link)
	Sigh. And thus in the end we have the choice between RMS and ESR? Great. Just great. I might as well sell my soul to Steve Jobs. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	seasleepy 2009-07-18 08:13 pm UTC (link)
	Sigh indeed. I mean, on one hand, it's not entirely fair to boil down the entirety of OSS development to those two, but on the other hand, it's not hard to understand why OSS groups have a hard time getting women involved when the culture is such that those two can be such large part of its public face. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

watersword
2009-07-19 04:28 am UTC (link)

This is why I'm sticking to Dreamwidth and the Organization for Transformative Works. It's amazing what going to three all-female schools does to a girl; I have lost any ability to be patient and try to explain that my ovaries do not impair my thinking ability. I just go straight for oh fuck you rage.

....I'm spending ten hours a week this summer in a male-dominated/co-ed environment and it is freaking me out.

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issendai
2009-07-19 05:21 pm UTC (link)

I went to a women's college, and for years after that, watching women students in a coed environment was weird. It was like their brains dribbled out their ears when men were in the room--and the men expected it. Or, if the women resisted the effect, nine times out of ten they were ignored and marginalized--and no one noticed, sometimes not even them. It was maddening.

It's the kind of perspective you just don't get unless you've spent time watching women in a sustained female-majority environment. Some of this shit is not The Way Things Are, no really.

Annnnnd yeah. There are women programmers and engineers, but it's such a dickwaving culture. And it's not likely to change until it becomes an ineffective strategy for getting ahead.

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	issendai 2009-07-19 05:24 pm UTC (link)
	...Er. Not to put the blame solely on the women for how things work in coed environments. The men's reactions also infuriated me, but at that time, I was used to men acting like that. It was The Way Things Were. Women acting like ninnies and doormats? Not so much. (Reply to this)(Parent)

watersword
2009-07-19 05:29 pm UTC (link)

That. It makes me wonder what the hell men think of women, because they never see us as we are. Or rarely, anyway.

I mean, in that class I mentioned, which I think is roughly 50/50 gender-balance (I haven't done a headcount), I was really struck by one instance where a male student made a claim about...I don't even remember, the Middle Eastern economy, maybe?, and a few minutes later, a female student made a relatively small, abstract point about a related topic and was immediately jumped on for not being specific enough. Which I read as the old thing about how men are assumed to be right and Know Things while women have to be twice as good at a job to get half the credit. This is all kinds of jumbled, just — the standards are not the same, and I am troubled by that.

And no one but me noticed. I'm still furious with myself for not saying something at the time.

I am not even a particularly radical feminist, I swear. I do not go out looking for things to get riled up about. But the world is made up of misogyny soup! It is not my fault!

It's really hard deciding which battles to fight, you know? Like, do I want to be a female tech geek and spend my life throwing myself at that wall, or is that not actually the solution? *sigh*

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	sistercoyote 2009-07-21 02:17 am UTC (link)
	Speaking as someone who will happily accept being called a radical feminist, things to get riled up about do not need to be sought. They will walk right up and smack you right the hell in the face if you're paying even a little bit of attention. (Reply to this)(Parent)

rimrunner
2009-07-19 06:01 pm UTC (link)

To be fair...

I also went to a women's college, and I now work at a co-ed university.

It's not just women's brains that dribble out their ears. It's just less of a liability for men.

I've had some men point out that the population of undergraduates is now something like 65-35 women to men. Which, yes, is generally true. OTOH, it makes the drastic skew in the other direction in certain fields, particularly science and engineering, all the more evident.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	snarkhunter 2009-07-19 07:29 pm UTC (link)
	In defense of women who chose to attend co-ed schools, not all of us suffered brain-dribble. Some of us learn to speak up and fight back quite well, actually. And marvel at our fellow women who do suffer brain-dribble. I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that women who went to co-ed schools were bubble-brained morons, but...it is kind of what your post sounds like. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2009-07-20 02:22 am UTC (link)

Sorry, no. More like, the standard of behavior between college-aged men and women encourages women to act bubbleheaded and deferential, and this behavior is so pervasive that it's hard to notice just how deep it goes until you become used to seeing women living without those particular gender restrictions. Many women at my women's college also reverted to brain-dribble in the right circumstances. That was part of what made it so shocking--Weren't you an intelligent human being five minutes ago, woman? What in hell?

So it's not a personality trait, or even an intelligence level. It's a mode shift, one we're so used to seeing that sometimes we forget it's not a question of personality or intelligence.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	tree 2009-07-20 10:59 am UTC (link)
	I must point out that where coeds are the only option from age five and onwards, this tends not to happen. YMMV stands, of course. From what I've seen, heard, and read, the worst things happen when people study in same-sex environments for years and then go co-ed. Sticking with one or the other looks to be a much better option. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2009-07-20 04:23 pm UTC (link)

I agree that studying in same-sex environments and then going co-ed turns people of both sexes into ninnies because they're not used to dealing with the other sex, but what I'm describing here is different. Many of the women I've seen doing this have been co-ed their entire lives. Others were co-ed until college, and hadn't necessarily been at a women's college long enough to lose their familiarity with dealing with men. It had a lot more to do with culture (Texan upper-middle-class women vs. working-class northeastern women; non-geek vs. geek) than with where they got their education. It was just more shocking because I'd had a chance to see them when they were under less pressure to conform to gender norms.

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	trout 2009-07-18 09:26 pm UTC (link)
	JaneW's comments on the Backlash post were especially disappointing. But then I just can't understand why there are women who seem to see feminism as something bad while simultaneously enjoying its merits. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2009-07-19 01:09 am UTC (link)
	Getting something without having to work or share credit for it? It's not as uncommon as you'd think. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ecchaniz0r 2009-07-19 04:18 am UTC (link)
	ah, the good old validation-scrambling I'M NOT LIKE THEM WHORES LOOKIT LOOKIT!!1!! crowd. Keep jumping for that cookie, friends, but realise this: You're never gonna git it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

quartz
2009-07-18 10:28 pm UTC (link)

Geeze, that whole thing is a mess of fail and is only "You should take it as a compliment" away from Bingo (using the Pornstar bingo card).

That speech is more than a little creepy (I introduced and taught myself emacs, does that mean I get a special Take Your Own Virginity prize?) and definitely in bad taste, but the sheer amounts of bile being spewed simply over the fact that Lefty spoke up about it is astonishing. When did it become a bad thing to speak up about the reasons why there's not many women in that sphere, especially when there is an active effort to bring more women in?

Also: I have a craving for emacs/vi slash fic now. They're lovers seperated by warring families, but their mutual love of text editing brings them together in the end.

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	adevyish 2009-07-19 02:03 am UTC (link)
	emacs/vi slash fic - oh god, someone should write it. It would horrify those Manly Men (and possibly cause a lot of "DON'T DEGRADE [insert editor here] YOU FUCKER!"). (Reply to this)(Parent)

	t_boy 2009-07-19 06:07 am UTC (link)
	Do it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	somnambulicious 2009-07-19 05:00 am UTC (link)
	Sexism is just one of the multifaceted ways in which RMS fails. It's hard to be insulted when the person insulting you is known for picking his nose with chopsticks and biting mysterious gunk off of his toes in public. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	hallidae 2009-07-19 08:15 am UTC (link)
	...WHAT?! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	watersword 2009-07-19 12:23 pm UTC (link)
	Do you seriously want elaboration? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jat_sapphire 2009-07-19 05:22 pm UTC (link)
	I know I don't. shudders Really. Please. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sistercoyote 2009-07-21 02:20 am UTC (link)
	Not without two links between me and it, a spoiler box, and possibly .5 point type so I can't read it anyway. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kookaburra 2009-07-21 04:43 am UTC (link)
	... god help me, yes. I HAVE to know. O: (Reply to this)(Parent)

	_goblin_ 2009-07-19 11:39 pm UTC (link)
	[W]e also have the cult of the virgin of emacs. The virgin of emacs is any female who has not yet learned how to use emacs. We specify females, because so many computer-savvy males are embarrassed to discuss virginity otherwise. (Reply to this)

jedi_dwh
2009-07-21 06:29 am UTC (link)

How did I miss this? D:

First, I had a CS professor we called RMS, except the S was for Salter, and for a few seconds I was wondering how the hell he became involved in this trainwreck.

Second of all, I learned emacs at the Computer Science Majors' Committee Linux/Emacs night. I now feel really, really dirty and feel the need to take a shower.

I hate certain sections of my field. Really, really hate. The tragic thing is, I learned to program at a Women in Computer Science camp at Michigan Tech. All my profs were women, and I learned to program alongside 13 other teenage girls. We had such a fantastic time. We worked hard on our code, and then danced to NSync during our breaks. Those were the days...

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