A Painful Decision
afreshcup.com
afreshcup.com
Some further background:
http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/
http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-individua...
http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-programmers-...
And, the slides themslves (NSFW): http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr...
Women belong in every enterprise. If the screening process is passing women by because they are not technical ninjas or dont want to work 80 hour weeks or dont do so well in alpha male interviews, the group is going to suffer because it is going to miss out on a diversity of skills and viewpoints.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Seriously, not everyone is that hung-up about sex.
Anyway, it is amazing how much damage the community is doing to itself over a 20 minute presentation by one guy. If you resign your positions and spend pages and pages talking about it, you're just going to encourage others to do the same. This guy has power now.
There are other social contexts in which I would fight for someone's right to display stuff like that (e.g., for an individual's right to have a personal off-hours blog with nudity and sexual content, or march in a gay pride parade wearing only a bullwhip, and not suffer workplace consequences if someone from HR happens to discover it)--but a coding presentation is one of the least important places, in my personal estimation, for me to be arguing for the right to show that stuff. By forcing it, I lose more than I gain: I get to see babes in the slides (big woop), and the people who aren't comfortable with it are told to go to hell if they don't like it, regardless of whatever other value they may have.
It's no particular skin off my male, porn-loving back, but I don't need to see stuff like that in a rails presentation (aside from the fact that it's distracting: as Alan Moore has commented about the difficult balance in writing intellectual porn, "too much blood to the dick means very little blood to the brain"). I can live without the slides, but I do need to be able to work with people who come from different (possibly conservative and religious) backgrounds. Having lived and worked around people like that for years, I may strongly disagree with them on some pretty basic social/political issues, but we can get along fine professionally without stepping into those waters, and they're often valuable colleagues. Much more valuable to me than porn in my presentations.
Feeling a need to put porn in your presentation about CouchDB is a hang-up about sex. There are all kinds of activities that, while perhaps unobjectionable in and of themselves, just do not go well together.
I do not understand how so many seem to have lost the idea that context matters. What might be perfectly appropriate content or behavior at a party or a club in mixed company can be totally inappropriate at a business meeting, wedding, funeral, or conference presentation. Why does this idea even need explaining?
DHH was commenting that doctors, lawyers, and other professional groups have far raunchier conversations than programmers, and manage to attract women just fine. So my question is: do doctors routinely slip porn into a presentation about a clinical studies trial? Does a lawyer slip porn into his slides for his closing remarks? Does anyone honestly think either of those would go over well?
I for one don't think there was actual porn in the presentation, only allusions to porn (none of the models were nude). Not saying it was the best joke ever, but not very shocking, either. There is worse on TV all the time.
I also think porn is becoming more and more mainstream. Maybe because of the internet most people are watching it anyway, so there is no use in denying it's existence anymore.
The point is not everyone agrees those images are "porn". And if they were, that it is inappropriate to do so.
People have a range of opinions from "utterly disgusting" to "wtf? It is just a presentation at a conference."
That is the "problem".
For example, compare slides 15 (RDBMs):
http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr...
and 52 (CouchDB):
http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr...
The issue here is that people who lead by example in the community have completely turned a blind eye to those who were offended. A sincere apology and a few words saying that some attention will be paid towards these things in the future would have sufficed.
The arrogance of the prominent members is what's spreading these flames. They have said publicly that there's no problem here and that those offended should have just left. As Mike pointed out, some more serious stuff was said privately.
So, everyone, please understand. It's not the slides themselves, it's the reaction after the controversy.
It is probably just me, but I hate these kind of group think coercion efforts.
Maybe (just as a thought experiment, bear with me before reaching for that downvote button) are there circumstances in which "turning a blind eye to those who were offended." is the right thing to do? Just think about it for a few seconds.
I am not sure anyone has a right not to be offended. Let me repeat that. No one has the right to insist that other people live in such a manner as not to give them the slightest offense..
If some of the people involved genuinely felt that "there is no problem" and other people say that "no there is a problem", and there is no consensus, then the best that can be done is to say, ok folks, each of you act according to what you think is right (and suffer any consequences therefrom) and we'll see who prevails.
"A sincere apology and a few words saying that some attention will be paid towards these things in the future would have sufficed."
This assumes that the apology needs to be made at all. For the apology to be "sincere" the person who is supposed to apologize has to feel he has done something wrong, and more importantly care that other people got offended.
DHH for one obviously doesn't care what other people think, and I respect the man for being consistent in his beliefs and not backing down before people trying to lay some pc guilt trip on him.
I am just a little wary of the "no one should be offended in any manner" idea.
In the end, this is open source software. "Shut up and write code" is probably more useful advice than all this political correctness laden hand wringing.
If people who didn't like the talk had just walked out, no one would know or care if some guy somewhere made some off kilter presentation. The "people who lead by example in the community" are as or more intelligent than the whiners and are just as free to make up their minds on whether to give any credence to the complaints or not. Some of the "leaders by example" seem to have concluded that they don't accept the validity of the complaints. So what? Don't they have the right to do so?
If someone doesn't like the way Rails framework or "community" is progressing, they can fork it. Stop submitting patches or features. Don't use it. Write an alternative framework, possibly in another language. Just don't whine for blog post after blog post on what other people should do to conform to your notions of what is right. You wouldn't like it if other people forced their notions of what was right on to you and forced you to apologize when you think there is no reason to do so.
Ok Thought Experiment over. Back to normal programming (pun intended).
I just thought examining both sides of the issue is important.
However, you cannot say that there should be no outrage had the presenter used offensive terms towards other races. You must understand that women feel the same way as people of colour, especially when it comes to professional conduct.
I'm not saying that no one should be offended and therefore the boundaries should never be pushed. However, there are right ways to do it and there are wrong ones. The reaction from DHH is in exact opposition to that of those who felt offended. Let me repeat that, exact opposition. He said on Twitter how there should be more porn in presentations and how images of semi-nude women are more acceptable than images of ninja cats. Would he have said the same if the presentation contained racially offensive terminology? Who knows? That's what is so disconcerting.
EDIT: > DHH for one obviously doesn't care what other people think, and I respect the man for being consistent in his beliefs and not backing down before people trying to lay some pc guilt trip on him.
Sorry, meant to say more here. His reaction, at least to me, wasn't one of "I don't care what people think" as much as it was a big "Fuck you and your beliefs" to those who didn't feel how he felt about the slides. And the people he said a virtual "Fuck you" are contributors to the community, be it knowledge contributors or, as in Mike's case, promoters of HIS framework. What reaction would you expect people to have?
That isn't what I said. Anyone can choose to be offended and base their actions on their outrage (including leaving Rails, forking Rails , whatever).. That doesn't mean (a) they are right and the "offender" is wrong (b) even if they are offended, the offender should "apologize sincerely".
"The reaction from DHH is in exact opposition to that of those who felt offended. Let me repeat that, exact opposition. "
Why is that wrong? It is just an opinion he (like all of us) has. If he genuinely feels that he is right it doesn't matter what the degree of opposition is. He should live by his notion of what is right and stick to his view point and suffer any consequences. He has done exactly that.
Of course that forces the rest of the rails "community" to decide what to do.
" Would he have said the same if the presentation contained racially offensive terminology?"
This is a hypothetical situation. When it happens we can deal with it. Till then let us react to what did happen and give everyone the freedom to think how he wants to think .
It is the blanket condemnation of an opinion for being politically incorrect that I oppose.
EDIT : to respond to batarski's edit
"His reaction, at least to me, wasn't one of "I don't care what people think" as much as it was a big "Fuck you and your beliefs" to those who didn't feel how he felt about the slides."
Sure, that s one way to interpret his reaction and probably valid.
My point is that DHH has always been like that. He does what he thinks is right and if a community forms around his code that is great but he couldn't care less if there weren't a community. He has always said that he writes Rails for himself.
In other words DHH is consistent. You may not agree with his opinions (I don't always) but I am surprised at why people find his reaction so surprising? He has never played the political correctness game and has revelled in thinking for himself and acting on his convictions. So? Way are people so surprised and horrified now? I predicted his reaction the moment I saw the original post. And I am not sure it is wrong.
As to what I expect other people to do, I listed those options above. Rails is Open Source code. MIT licensed I believe. you can do whatever you want with it, including forking it.
I like to play the piano, but I'm not going to bust out a keyboard in the middle of a team meeting. Not because it is inappropriate, but because it is completely off-topic, a distraction, and a waste of time.
It's irrelevant, so I have to conclude that it was used to provoke a reaction.
This is what makes forking such a ridiculous notion, if we are going to fork for every ideological disagreement, it will die the same death denominational churches are dying today. When you fork on something that doesn't matter to your common goal, everyone fails.
This is getting a bit philosophical, but there will always be differences of opinion, often strong ones, and if people are never willing to compromise for the sake of working together, at some point we'll all be forked down to one-person groups. (This applies to both sides of the debate, not just the one you or I agree with.)
My point is that impulsively splitting the group, without first expressing your discontent and trying to find acceptable common ground, is probably ill advised, though initially satisfying.
That isn't quite what I said.
The complete sentence was,
"If someone doesn't like the way Rails framework or "community" is progressing, they can fork it. Stop submitting patches or features. Don't use it. Write an alternative framework, possibly in another language. Just don't whine for blog post after blog post on what other people should do to conform to your notions of what is right."
You say,
"My point is that impulsively splitting the group, without first expressing your discontent and trying to find acceptable common ground, is probably ill advised, though initially satisfying."
I agree with the "first expressing your discontent and trying to find acceptable common ground" part. That has been done, and by Batarski's comment the "leaders by example" have a taken a stance "directly opposed" to the complainants view point. DHH in particular has clearly expressed his opinion.
I doubt that this kind of philosophical(dare I say "political"? ) question has any "right" or "wrong" answers. Depends too much on what your initial assumptions are.
"if people are never willing to compromise for the sake of working together"
Different people have different notions of what is compromisable and what is not. It seems that to DHH, putting "porn" into slides in a presentation at a Rails conf is not worth discussing or compromising on.
All I am saying is, the opinions are all on the table, and I don't see any movement to compromise. So get on with it. Life is too short.
I'll take your word for it; my point was only that forking is probably not a good first move (which was what your comment seemed to be suggesting, if only because I misread it). If the attempt to compromise is made and the agreement can't be reached, then sure, split the group. In this case it sounds like it might be appropriate.
I am just saying that "I don't see a problem" is not some kind of statement of ultimate evil. It is a valid pov, just as "I think this is a huge problem" is. People who hold one of those opinions don't need to "sincerely apologize" to people holding the other.
So yeah less demonization, more action. Please!
What it really does is try to move the discussion away from real people with real feelings and real problems in our society and turn it into a game of semantics.
Well, logically, what if you don't like the word "bread?" Well, logically, what if I decide to machine-gun the front row the next time I give a presentation? What right have they to life if I decide to be edgy with my art?
Reductio Ad Absurdum is an absurd line of argument.
I am all for solving real problems, not imaginary ones. I have seen quite a few women in IT, and it did not look like they had any problems with it (suffice to say one was the head of the whole IT organization I was working for, other three - heads of departments). All were judged by the competence, not their sex.
It is interesting to see that the mere idea that _maybe_, just _maybe_ women in general are not inclined for this type of work (hint: dealing with abstractions, not real people and relations) is instantly rubber-stamped as sexist. I am going to stretch it here, but why isn't anyone fighting to right the underrepresentation of males among persons giving birth?
And I don't buy the reality of some "feelings" that are so much on display in this case.
Quite a bit of it is offensive, and the offense was the point of his art, he was trying to make us take a hard look at ourselves.
The difference between "art" that is intended to make us uncomfortable and this presentation is that this presentation is not making some of us uncomfortable about our sexuality as a means of giving us insight into technology. It's simply making some of us uncomfortable.
If you care to show me a technology presentation that makes us uncomfortable but does so for the express purpose of provoking us to look at ourselves, I would be delighted to discuss whether it is or is not appropriate to deliver at a conference and whether apologising would or would not be in order.
Until then, I do not accept the parallel.
It's an effective means of chopping down very general arguments. For example, the bread argument would be relevant if someone had argued that every offended person should be appeased, always.
I will be specific: By "best," I mean most fruitful, most provocative, most stimulating, most interesting. I accept that it is often effective in a demagogic sense.
Plus his argument was actually better.
You can choose not to be offended, you can't choose not to die when someone kills you.
I have tried my whole life not to be offended, frightened, disturbed, or made uncomfortable by racism. I have failed for forty-six straight years.
Not claiming that there is no discrimination against women, but I also don't think it is obvious that there is. I highly doubt discrimination is the reason behind the low numbers of women in tech, for example.
>> I highly doubt discrimination is the reason behind the low numbers of women in tech, for example.
I'm guessing you're a young man. Are you sure you're really in a good position to claim that? She often thinks of leaving the field because over time, it wears at her. I can give dozens of other examples.
I am not "claiming", I just resent taking things at face value. Possibly people are not used to competent IT women, because they are rare. But does it really take the form of "no, we don't want this person on the team, she is a woman" (without knowing her)? I doubt that - and if there are companies like that, it is their loss (not all men get hired by all companies, either - and good IT staff is rare in general).
Also, bias against the tech skills is hardly the same as sexism of the "she only is good for porn" kind.
I'd have to be delusional to say that discrimination wasn't a problem. I've cried my tear ducts dry and screamed my lungs out before over the unbelievable things that have happened to me that I never saw happen to any of my male friends just in tech alone. My boyfriend gets tired of hearing my stories of my frustrations over these things - he doesn't deal with anything even close to them except when I'm with him at an event (and THAT is a whole 'nother world of discrimination right there). I had to learn to just deal with some inevitabilities of being female in such an imbalanced industry. I also have to admit that in the course of dealing with these inevitabilities I've pretended to be a guy online very frequently and still do because it's just so much easier. I've also learned this nasty habit of becoming a total jackass in the face of other jackassery usually in the form of sexual harassment by people who think it's okay to harass a girl because they're behind a layer of pseudoanonymity.
Most men are really nice. Most men will hold open doors for me and treat me as a colleague and help me out when I'm having a problem, and I've had male friends who've mentored and supported me and my decisions over the years and more. Most of them, I would not mind working with - in fact, I would be glad to work with. But there is always someone out there somewhere who thinks discrimination and harassment is okay, and eventually, you just get really, really, really, really, really tired of them. It all builds up.
Can't forget that all this is on top of the annoyances in the non-tech world that one deals with every day just by being female, which is enough to drive a lot of women crazy. Once I've fingered my knitting needles and my knife on my keychain to use as weapons because an annoying guy wouldn't stop following me around saying something about taking my clothes off. Just last week, I drove around in circles near my house because there was a creepy guy in an Audi who had been following me by foot from a mall and then in his car for a very random and unlikely 5+ mile drive (think 4 left turns in a row followed by going up and down the same street for half a mile), and I went as far as to call the cops with his license plate #. How many guys can tell you that they've had stuff like THAT happen to them? Pretty rare :(
On the other hand you will find that if you register with a dating web site, you will receive 200 messages without doing anything. If you are a guy (and not Brad Pitt), you would have to write 200 messages to get one or two replies.
So while driving home alone at night would be less fun for you than for men, online dating might be more fun than for men (not saying that is the way things should be, but they are like that, and I don't think discrimination is the right word for that).
If I was a manager I would probably give job applications by female programmers special consideration, because they are so rare. It might even be worth hiring some female programmers with not the greatest skills, just to make the work place more attractive (that would be the cynical point of view).
Also I have to say it would bother me, too, to work in a sexist environment (like having to listen to tasteless jokes about women at lunch or something). The thing to do then is to quit and look for another job.
Too bad you did not give many details about the unpleasant things that happened to you. I generally found a lot of things unpleasant in the IT jobs I had, so I wonder how many of the things you experienced were actual common to men and women, and not just to women. For example, I think most coders thing they are the best coders, you can hardly ever get two coders to agree on the best way to solve a problem. I could imagine that a woman could attribute such criticisms to her being a woman, when it is really just general IT suckiness. (I don't want to belittle your experiences, it would be very interesting to hear more details, because as I said, I have not actually experienced working with many women in IT).
Actually, online dating is a hassle for me :) I have a boyfriend now, but I'm pretty flexible about who I go out with and my relationship with him is open...I've looked around on Craigslist and similar for other women to meet. Did you know that even in the w4w areas, all the women looking for other women are men (not transmen/transwomen, which I would be fine with, but straight up men who pretend to be women because apparently m4w isn't good enough for them or they want to sleep with a bi/lesbian woman?), women with boyfriends who want a mff threesome, women who have husbands/boyfriends and are tired of them and want to just see if they'll have any fun with another woman...no women looking for women who know that they like women, be it for a one night stand or a long term relationship.
Not to mention that there are very little women in tech, and even less likely that they are also interested in other women...and many guys think it's okay to hit on me boyfriend or bi or not. :(
> If I was a manager I would probably give job applications by female programmers special consideration, because they are so rare.
I actually dislike this because it's reverse discrimination. Yes, women are rare. That doesn't mean they need to be treated specially. I for one just want to be treated like anyone else minus any extra discrimination and sexism arising from being of a different sex. I don't want to be hired just because I have boobs. I want to be hired because someone thought that my skills and experience were good for the job. Hiring women because they are women even though they don't necessarily have the skills for the job just ends up in more frustration - remember that xkcd about women and math? That.
> Also I have to say it would bother me, too, to work in a sexist environment (like having to listen to tasteless jokes about women at lunch or something).
It's all about when and why. Like this whole couchdb/rails mess in the first place. My joking around with some friends calling each other whore and slut and worse things and talking about some pretty explicit things while chilling out on IRC? That's fine with me and I don't even think twice about it - I know they are good people, it was in a casual context, these things wouldn't even be considered being said to any one of them to anyone else even half seriously, etc.
But the workplace isn't one where it's appropriate to do that, and public presentations at conferences with the implication that you are ...or at least were... a respected member of the Rails Activists team and that you are a professional in this field is also not the right place, especially when your subject matter has nothing to do with it. Not only that, but that this guy apparently didn't even think twice about the inclusion of porn. How many times have you actually seen anything close to scantily clad women in a conference presentation about something technical that isn't about running an adult entertainment website? couchdb isn't so boring that porn needs to be in there to interest people!
(As for my opinion on this: it was stupid and it is ALL about appropriateness - no need for censorship. Like, I'm not going to crucify the guy or want to crucify him, I just hope he and future presenters understand that porn is not necessarily something that belongs in a presentation. I mean, I would expect to see porn in a presentation about a porn site using Rails that was having problems scaling and meeting the unique demands of their customers. Not CouchDB! It didn't even do anything to help understand the concepts except via the fact that there are women in the slides dressed provocatively. Not that I hate porn, I love watching porn regularly. I still don't want to see it at a conference. Save it for another day please. Imagine what the talk would be like if the kind of porn in the presentation were changed? Something more artistic erotic art-like or softcore gay porn. And how many men would have walked out of the presentation if they saw gay porn. Heh.)
> Too bad you did not give many details about the unpleasant things that happened to you.
Offensive names, my boobs (or, more disturbingly, downstairs) being discussed in public, the assumption that I'm not even doing anything close to technical (by far the most common) - you know, if I were a good designer, I would consider that career, but I'm horrible at designing! And for that matter, caring at all about accessibility doesn't mean I'm a designer. - and being hit on with alarming frequency, people ignoring what I have to say about something, having double standards for the quality and style of code being written. That's about the most common complaints I have.
Some of that is general IT suckiness, but it's suckiness that tends to go away when people understand that you are not totally incompetent at your job. The problem I then have with some of that is that it lasts a lot longer and takes a lot longer for some people to realize that I don't actually totally suck at some things. And for the things that aren't general IT suckiness, it's someone being an asshat in ways that my friends working other jobs would work their ass off to get him fired if it happened to them. That's also sadly another side effect of this all, I've grown a way-thick skin in some areas and I can't believe it.
So far I've had the opportunity to compare with other women working on the same thing, and with other men who joined in at the same time, and I get a bit unhappy about the situation. But like I said: not all places are like this, and most men are good people.
All that being said, I don't think that discrimination or solving that is the ultimate thing to do to fix this imbalance. Sometimes for men and women alike, it's just the lack of a friendly and accessible mentor to help them.
That is very annoying, I can imagine ;-) Actually, when I was on a dating site a couple of years ago, a lot of the women also were men (they just used some pictures they found on the internet). I did not have it in me to play that trick, although I would have been curious about what kind of things other men would write. I guess not all of it is very nice (I have often heard stories about unpleasant photographs...).
"I actually dislike this because it's reverse discrimination."
I completely agree, just think it would be most likely what would happen. Maybe all CVs should be anonymized by default :-/ There was this experiment where they put random names on CVs, and the black sounding names got significantly less invitations, for example :-(
"Sexual jokes"
I can't even recall the kind of jokes I mean, like to forget them asap. I don't think referring to somebody's sexiness is all that bad (it's nature), but I don't like allusions to using somebody. I can only recall the joke from Buffy "what is the difference between a toilet seat and a first year student" - stuff along that lines is unbearable (in Buffy it was delivered by a mean guy, it was not an actual joke ;-)
"details about the unpleasant things that happened to you."
Ouch. Glad you met some nice men, too - it is tantalizing to hear about women's bad experiences at work, not having the chance to set a better example.
Yeah, it's weird - men are men, women are men and children are FBI agents? :p (oh dear, yet another common stereotype. some people i talk to online still refuse to believe i'm female...)
I'm not sure why anyone would pretend to be a member of a different sex like that, especially if they're not gay or transgender (and the latter tend to be upfront if they're pre-op, which is infinitely more courteous than lying outright). I did talk to one who had a random female pic included with the post looking for other women, and the reply back was from a guy who sent along a pic of him naked. I did not need to see that.
> Maybe all CVs should be anonymized by default
That would be an interesting experiment, but I bet there is more on a CV outside of the name that would be discriminated against.
> I don't think referring to somebody's sexiness is all that bad...
It's not. I like to talk about these things too, even more than some guys. But I don't do them in a professional setting, and that is what the whole issue over this presentation is. The porn would have been appropriate (but barely so) at an event like a BarCamp with full disclosure to attendees that you're including some risqué images. But the GoGaRuCo organizer brought up a good point in his apology about the presentation: had anyone from Google or Apple or Microsoft done the same, they would have been fired (if the presentation were allowed at all, which it wouldn't have), and the same standard of what is appropriate would apply here at this ruby conference as much as it would at, say, Google I/O or WWDC or PDC.
> it is tantalizing to hear about women's bad experiences...
No worries, usually the good guys deal with it. :) Unfortunately can't always say the same about things that go on on the internet.
That was the point. I know it's not cool to be snarky on HN but I can't resist: "WOOOOOSH!"
Except for your last point there the others are pretty bad stereotypes. For example women have no trouble finding employment as lawyers or doctors which comes with 80hr work weeks... yet they are still vastly underrepresented in IT.
I'm not trying to stir the pot or anything, I'm legitimately curious.
http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-...
who sounds dead-on correct to me:
I put huge slides with four-letter words on the screen when I give presentations, but it never makes anybody feel uncomfortable. But that’s because there’s an art to these things, and I know every time I do it that I might go too far and have to eat my pride and apologize. You did it wrong. The fact that anybody blogged about it means you did it wrong. So you have to just accept that and be a man about it instead of arguing with her. If a woman tells you that putting giant sexually suggestive images in front of her made her uncomfortable, you don’t get to bicker about that.
It's not so much that the Rails community has a particularly unusual problem with women. It's that, when one tone-deaf guy lights a match at a Rails conference, apparently nobody knows how to put out the fire before it burns down the community. It's a shame.
I don't want to recommend to use offensive pictures in presentations (some men might be offended, too), but I am pretty sure that such things are NOT the reason for "underrepresentedness" of women.
Isn't this a sexist viewpoint itself? As if a woman's reasoning doesn't matter, just that you have offended, oh my, a female?
After which you back carefully away and hope they don't come to your next talk.
You should not respond with a passionate defense of free expression unless the person who approaches you is a cop trying to arrest you. [1] In general, nobody is trying to deny you the right to advertise your beliefs out loud. When they complain, you should assume that they are merely inviting you to walk back what you said before they commence avoiding you like the plague.
Of course, if you really hate cats, you can always just respond with "good, I'm glad I offended you, you terrifying feline monstrosity!" Because very few Rails consulting customers are cats, that might not cost you much. Although, come to think of it, some Rails customers probably do employ cats, or people who love cats and care about their feelings. And there are many others who will feel mighty uncomfortable when the managers of the framework that lies beneath their million-dollar website become more concerned with aggressively asserting the universal freedom to hate cats than with keeping people like Mike Gunderloy on the team. What kind of priority is that? Enough with the sophomoric flamewar, already!
---
[1] In which case, of course, you still shouldn't respond with a passionate defense. You should call up your lawyer and let her respond.
Not at all. The apology -- which one should issue immediately and without hesitation -- is full of meaning. Very important meaning. Just not literal meaning.
What is the apology saying?
"I hear you and I understand that you were really offended."
"I am trying to listen to you."
"I am not trying to hurt you on purpose."
"I am not trying to deliberately start a giant flame war that tears our community apart."
"I am open to reconsidering what I said, and the way I said it, in light of your interpretation of my words."
"I have basic social skills and recognize the role of Apologizer when I see it." (See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240170 )
What the apology is not: An admission of guilt, an admission that you did something illegal or even something wrong. You do not have to break down in tears. You don't have to agree with the complainer. You don't have to change your mind.
What you have to do is signal some sympathy: That you're a civilized person who is open to "trying to understand" the offended person. That you want to de-escalate the situation rather than start a fight. That you're not a troll -- that is, someone who (a) deliberately introduces a topic that is likely to be offensive and then (b) continues to push the buttons of any offended people until a giant flame war breaks out.
Which method works better all depends on the circumstances, I guess.
I discovered this the hard way when I repeated a joke about Jews to a Jewish friend. As she put it, "Jokes are all in the delivery, and you have to be Jewish to deliver that joke."
In fact, there are cases where using that word in a presentation would be perfectly legitimate, i.e. in a presentation about racist epithets. If someone objected to that, I would bicker with them, regardless of their skin color.
By way of conversation, not argument, I will share that at the time, her explanation was unsatisfying. I felt that she was saying "You Can't Say That" arbitrarily. Why was it ok for one person to tell that joke and not another? I didn't feel she was explaining the reasoning behind the rule, just telling me the rule.
But time has passed, and now I understand that a joke about cultural stereotypes often means one thing when told by an outsider, another thing when told by an insider to an outsider, and a third thing when told by an insider to another insider.
And of course, outsiders are sometimes oblivious to the nuances.
There was a talk at the Golden Gate Ruby Conference called "CouchDB + Ruby: Perform Like a Pr0n Star", which featured an extended porn-industry metaphor and what some have described as softcore porn in the slides. This talk created a lot of discussion in the Ruby community, in particular about the effect this kind of talk has on the female attendees, and the general atmosphere of the conference. It also caused the Ruby community to introspect on what kind of environment they are creating and how it affects people who are not heterosexual males who may wish to participate in that community.
See the links posted above by swombat for some of the discussion.
1. Gratuitous transgression is easy.
2. Necessary transgression is art -- intrinsically critical and enlightening. It's hard to pull off.
3. Compulsive transgression with no regard to the difference between #1 and #2 is juvenile.
As a heterosexual male, I would be uncomfortable being at a presentation that used pornographic imagery throughout. Call me a prude, but certain things simply don't belong in a professional environment.
Porn is not edgy. Walking into Oracle's Head Office and shitting on their conference table is edgy.
I can ignore religion when I want to, and I can destroy an illogical belief system with the best of 'em, but, I'm much more likely to just find somewhere with less barriers to the subject at hand. It was unprofessional of them to disallow discussion of religion with wishy-washy rules, and it's unprofessional to plaster coding in porn, soft or otherwise.
So it was one guys idea of a joke - big deal (and no actual nudity).
More info here: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/04/23/just-a-girl-why-we-put-o...
One reason that Rails seems to be the loudest right now is because Rails attracts (and was begun) by very outspoken, opinionated, people.
While I would prefer to have more female colleagues, I don't believe men and women can be compared just like that.
First, men and women tend to think differently, and have talents in different areas, just as men tend to be taller. This is a matter of biology, and on that basis alone, a reasonable mix in IT would be biased towards a greater proportion of males, depending on the exact developmental role. About 2:1.
Except it's more like 8:1 or even 12:1, rather than 2:1.In open source, 50:1.
It's no accident that there are more women in interface design, project management and architecture within IT either. Remember though that this is all statistical, just as there are short men and tall women, you should always look at individuals as individuals, not as stereotypes. Talents between the ears are what's important, and chromosomes are a poor guide to those.
Part of the problem is the discouragement talented girls experience at school because IT is a "male field". Part of it is that businesses are set up with men in mind, with stereotypically male aspects of bonding after work, of stakhanovite hours with no concession for having a Life, with hierachies and competition for "fastest gun in the west" rather than teamwork. The latter is particularly important in Open Source development.
Part of it is straight old-fashioned misogyny and the glass ceiling, but I think that's not as important as the other issues. It can get pretty bad though as a consequence of the other causes, trust me on that one. I invite all the straight guys to imagine what it would be like in a gay-only environment, with gay porn posters and bitchy jokes about "breeders", plus the occasional overt sexual harrassment and almost universal attempts to flirt. That's what it's like for many women in IT, all the time.
It's not as bad as it was. I'm 51, and can remember when things were a lot worse. Female medical students are no longer required to sign a pledge not to get married if they enter med school, as they were when I was in grade school. But Blacks don't have separate drinking fountains either, as they did then. "Better" does not mean "Good" or even "minimally acceptable".