[clug] Announcing: Canberra Google Girl Geek Dinner #3

[Jack Kelly]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Paul Wayper <paulway at mabula.net> wrote:
> On 11/09/09 21:41, Jack Kelly wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 9:28 PM, Paul Wayper<paulway at mabula.net>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 10/09/09 23:40, Jack Kelly wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thought Experiment: take the original post and pipe it through
>>>> sed -e 's/male/female/g' -e 's/Men/Women/g' -e 's/girl/guy/g' -e
>>>> 's/Girl/Guy/g'
>>>>
>>>> Consider the effect of such a post to the list. Would it make the
>>>> community feel more inclusive? I conjecture that it would not.
>>>
>>> Congratulations!  You've just failed the "positive discrimination is not
>>> negative discrimination" test!
>>
>> Congratulations! You've hit the dead horse and it's still not moving! :-)
>
> Weren't me that killed it... :-)

Glad to see that your responses are a bit lighter now. The subject
matter has a tendency to make a tinderbox of the list.

>> I'm assuming you either get the digest (and are working through it) or
>> you haven't checked your email at all today, because my above claim
>> was pretty quickly dismantled by about 5 different people in the posts
>> following.
>
> Still working through my email.  Down to only 269 unread.  I don't see any
> people replying to you in that thread.

Try the thread titled "Equality". I think it forked off in an attempt
to keep the GGD discussion clear.

>> Also, your analogy isn't accurate. Anyone can buy/hire a bike and go
>> on a ride. Anyone can download a compiler and get into programming. I
>> conjecture that generalising that approach to the GGDs won't work.
>> Your conclusion is still correct, but your reasoning is wrong.
>
> Ooooh, nice one - the old "missed by that much" analogy deflection.  Not
> _anyone_ can do those things - it's trivial to come up with classes of
> people that can't.  I'm also amused that 'downloading a compiler' is your
> way of 'getting into programming', but that's irrelevant.  Still, your
> conclusion is correct even if your reasoning is wrong.

To get into programming, you grab tools to start playing with code, be
that the compiler, the interpreter, the VM or whatever else, but
agreed on the irrelevance.

> But if you want an analogy:
> There's a CLUG bike ride scheduled.  You turn up on your mountain bike.  All
> the lycra lizards look at you in your daggy clothes and your big knobbly
> tires and low gears and look at their own, ultra-high-tech racing machines.
>  The look says "you're going to slow us down, and you obviously don't fit in
> here, but none of us are going to say so to your face".  As you're riding
> you hear laughter but it's never including you; they all talk about track
> times and titanium gears and carbon fiber and how you have to hand-tune the
> spokes if you're a 'serious' rider.  They either idle along as if they have
> to make a special allowance for such a slowpoke as you, or shoot off in
> sprints so that you *are* the slowpoke.
>
> Pretty quickly you get the feeling that the 'bike ride' is just actually a
> chance for one particular type of person to get together, and they're not
> really open to welcoming anyone else along.  After you quit coming because
> you can't stand feeling like the one that everyone's staring at, you hear
> that they're asking themselves why they never get any mountain bike
> riders...
>
> *That's* my analogy for what it must be like to be a women in FOSS.  I've
> been in enough socially awkward situations to know that feeling unpleasantly
> well now.

Ho ho, the old "add specifics to the analogy to make it fit" trick! ;-)

Actually, I really like that analogy. I have no idea if it's correct
but I can at least relate to it.

> Car analogies are so 2008, anyway ;-)

Electric car analogy, then? Flying car analogy? Weren't we meant to
have those by 2000?

> Have fun,

I am. I just hope it's not causing problems for anyone else.

-- Jack