Recently in a Q&A Mark Shuttleworth was asked the following questions:

12:31 <@akgraner> QUESTION how important is having a diverse group of contributors (women & minority folks) to solving Bug #1?
12:31 <+sabdfl> not especially, but it makes the project more interesting
12:31 <+sabdfl> next
….
12:57 <@jcastro> FOLLOW-UP QUESTION – did you just say that primarily white dudes are able to address the solving of Bug #1? Women & minorities just make it more interesting? Please clarify.
12:58 <+sabdfl> MarkDude, if you think i can’t see a baited trap from this close, you’re mistaken
12:59 <+sabdfl> i said that having diversity in the project is a wonderful goal. but it’s no more a requirement to fix bug #1 than it is a requirement to do most other things. fundamentalism is something i despise, and that goes for overdone activism too.

Mark has been in trouble for making anti-feminist remarks before. In this case he hasn't actually said anything wrong, and I believe the original question was designed to either get an attempt at an apology, or cause another scandal.

The trouble is Mark is right. Is diversity essential to the problem of breaking Microsoft's software monopoly? No. He does say that diversity makes things more interesting and that it's a wonderful goal, but it's not essential to success. If there's a logical fallacy there I don't see it, however he is being drawn back into the geek feminist spotlight because of it.

In the immortal words of Admiral Akbar: It's a trap!

The one offensive part for me in this exchange came from the person asking the question. He makes the assumption that "white dudes" are the majority. I can only assume he either referring to either the open source community, or the IT industry itself. Either way I think that view is a little outdated, and that's putting aside the whole issue about whether race and gender really matter.

The one thing we should all take away from this is Shuttleworth's closing remark, "fundamentalism is something i despise, and that goes for overdone activism too". Right on, Mark. Right on.

Mostly for the benefit of noisymime.

Exhibit A	Exhibit B

I've been arguing Atheism vs Religion enough over the past few years to fully come to a point where I understand the obvious: You are never going to convince someone that religion is wrong by arguing with them.

But I have noticed something rather interesting. In my experience the majority of fundamentalist Christians who convert to atheism do so along a specific path, that of apologetics. Essentially when you spend time trying to deconstruct the bible into logical sections in order to defend it, the entire things seems to unravel.

There's a little bit of irony in the fact that some of the most passionate atheists I know came to that path by trying to defend and understand their faith.

Last night I went to hear tcpip speak at the Atheist Foundation, where he gave a talk entitled "Atheist Support for Religious Freedom?" (Note the question mark). It was a great talk which stimulated some heated discussion on the trip home, and it has made me rethink some of my ideas about public funding for religious organisations. I do enjoy having to re-evaluate my world view.

Now this was my first time at the Atheist Foundation, so I'm not sure if this happens every month, but there were a group of people with obvious religious ties (Jesus badges!) that came along to "heckle". Admittedly they stayed relatively quiet during the main talk, limiting themselves to the occasional distort of disbelief and chuckle of incredulity. This all changed once question time began; they would not only rapid fire their own questions, they openly mocked the questions of others.

I would actually be okay with this if the questions were on topic. What did rub me the wrong way was how they tried to hijack the time for questions about the talk by asking generic 'What if?' style questions that are debated on the internet daily.

I did gain amusement during several moments last night, where I found myself:
(1) feeling like I was in a real live internet forum, with trolls and everything!
(2) sitting in a church, surrounded by Christians. At an Atheist meeting.

I'm told by saffireblue that we are going again next month. I'm inclined to agree.

I seem to spend a fair amount of my spare time debating religion. I used to think this kind of debate was important, however lately it's been feeling pointless. I've read all the arguments enough to know that I'm not changing my world view in a hurry, and I've argued with enough religious people to understand that nobody can change their minds but themselves. So I resolved to back off. I mean, Australia is not the US. It's not like religious fundamentalism affects us here. Right?

Then I wake to read that religious groups are allowed to discriminate, and in my home state no less! So now your local private school or hospital can refuse to hire someone based on the fact that they are a single mother or simply because they prefer their own gender.

My first reaction is to get back on my high horse, and complain that nobody should be allowed to discriminate against others for any reason. But if my current reasonings about feminism have taught me anything, it's that true equality and reality are a long way from each other.

The irony is that only religious institutions are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religious belief. Your local hospital can refuse to hire a Jew, but your business can't make the same choices. Essentially we have a law that says you're allowed to discriminate, but only if you're a hate-monger yourself.

I don't know about you, but I can feel the love.

About two months ago I was labeled misogynistic for a comment I made that did indeed have gender bias. I was taken aback at this, given that the comment was satirical and didn't in any way reflect my actual belief structures. I intended the comment to be framed in a way that made this obvious, so I was concerned and hurt that someone would react strongly to what I had written. Since this incident I've been throwing the issue of 'feminism' around in my head, and I'm not sure I am any the wiser now than when I began.

Some background. I personally find the term 'feminism' strange and anachronistic. I understand and appreciate that there was a feminist movement, that this movement was necessary and as a whole was successful. I put feminism in the same basket as racism, something that was an issue but has generally been solved in civilised society. I am not so naive to believe that sexism and racism don't occur, it's just that in my experience it generally happens on an individual basis and is no longer institutionalised¹. A common position where sexism or racism is considered an incorrect choice is what I call a 'solved' problem, as opposed to the eradication of these traits from society.

Given this stance I am generally disapproving of events that are aimed specifically at women. I find events that talk about "women in business" to be a backward step. The only "mens group" I've actually seen lately has been aimed at mens health, and I am completely in favour of gender bias when it comes to physical issues. I know of many women only that have nothing to do with physical characteristics, and to me this screams "GENDER BIAS!" louder than any off-handed humorous comment. I know I'm lumbering around this point, so I'll summarise it as this: I don't see any difference between the genders that can't be represented as a physical characteristic.

I begin to have issues with this philosophy when I examine the raw numbers. A recent list of the top 30 people in open source (as determined by hits in Google) had zero females, which is an obvious gender bias. In fact when I look around there are some very obvious examples of gender bias in various populations, with leanings towards both genders. I've been struggling to determine if this is due to some lingering elements of sexual discrimination, or if there is another cause that we don't understand.

Is the world still sexist, and I just don't see it?

Enter Skud/Kirrily, who recently did a presentation at OSCON, which you should watch, on Women in Open Source (that wasn't the title, but that is essentially what the talk was about). As part of this talk her first point on how to foster inclusiveness was "Don't stare", and it was implied that this was aimed directly at men metaphorically staring at women. The caused an interesting discussion between saffireblue and I, which ended with me trying to explain the levels of sexism one does see in the tech community that are somewhat heightened compared to everyday society. Lo and behold the thread about this very presentation comes to my rescue and provides a perfect example of what I was talking about^2,3.

I have seen instances of what I would readily call sexist behaviour in the tech community, and I have female friends who assure me it happens all the time. While I don't really understand the cause of it (autism/asbergers as an explaination will only get you so far), I'm willing to acknowledge it is there. I've pulled colleagues up on their gender bias many times, and when I drilled down into why they claimed it was a cultural thing, and this somehow made it okay.

All of this leaves me just as confused as when I started thinking about this many months ago. Is our society still heavily geared against women? Why does this appear to be so much worse within the various tech communities?

I guess the real question for me is: Was the comment I made really that offensive? And if so, to who? Why? If I could answer that, then the rest would hopefully fall into line.

I don't really have any answers yet.


1 - After having written this entry I realised that the gay marriage issue is in fact one of gender bias, so I'm not strictly speaking correct.

2 - The whole "booth babe/sex sells" phenomenon trips me out, mostly because I find it jarring when sex is used to sell something that has nothing to do with sex whatsoever. Situations such as this weird me out. In short: I have no problem with a scantily clad person using their body as a selling point in a strip club, but that same person trying to sell a product or service is pointless and ultimately insulting.

3- Edit: After this article was written this thread reached a relatively happy ending.