[Linux-aus] [LCA2011-Chat] Some Anti-Harassment Policies considered harmful

[Sven Dowideit]

I _thought_ that we, the opensource community had decided that we were
dismayed that the presence and safeness of women in this community was
not as normal and unremarkable as their presence on buses.

I presumed that the existence of the anti-harassment policy was an
attempt to highlight one aspect of issues that are considered to impact
on that situation, with an implicit hope that it would also improve our
community for other disproportionately represented groups (and
redundancy of communication _is_ good).

Women in open source should be as common, empowered and safe, and as
unremarkable as women on a bus - and right now, they're not.

Sven

On Mon, 2011-01-31 at 23:13 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 21:45, Susanne Ruthven <susanne at lca2010.org.nz> wrote:
> > Russell, we agree with you.
> 
> (Personally, I disagree with Russell but agree with Susanne. Given the
> above, I presume that doesn't make sense, but hey...)
> 
> > I cannot speculate as to what LCA2011 did, but for LCA2010 we *asked*
> > speakers to keep their slide deck G-rated.
> 
> I'd prefer to see G-rated slides and talks at LCA, personally; I'm
> plenty happy at being shocked out of my complacency by ideas like
> "holy crap, Tridge's coffee roasting software can be repurposed for
> reflow soldering", or "not only does Microsoft's Kinect have linux
> drivers now, but it's actually interesting tech, is already being used
> for interesting and practical things, and is maybe going to have cheap
> chinese clones soon", rather than flesh tones and innuendo.
> 
> (For reference, I'm one of the bad examples on the Geek Feminism Wiki;
> cf http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Debconf_ftp-masters_talk -- so
> no, I don't prefer G ratings because I'm scared of reality; yes, my
> opinion's changed over time; and yes, I think that change is an
> improvement)
> 
> Cheers,
> aj
>