Martin Steigerwald writes ("Re: Should the weboob package stay in Debian?"): > It would be good if women involved in the Debian project would speak up > here.
Many people have already explained why this is difficult. But it is not necessary to have personal testimony for each question of this kind. The kind of problem the web-oob package has is, sadly, not that unusual in geekdom, or the world in general - although this seems to be quite a bad case. Normally it's in conference or marketing materials, and not so embedded in the software as well. So we can read what women (and their allies) have written on this. A good place to start is often the Geek Feminism Wiki. I looked there and found this: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment > Of course I understand any hesitance to do so. I felt hesitance > myself often enough, even as what is usually called male. I am reliably informed that things are *much* worse if your online presence looks female. I haven't tried the experiment. > What would be required to help women to feel more comfortable to post > their opinion on this mailing list? If we would send police to arrest the people who send "women with opinions" death and rape threats, or doxx them, etc. ? This is not within Debian's gift. But, we can stop making the problem worse by perpetuating cultural practices which devalue women. > So what concrete steps would help to start shifting that in the > direction of more respect between the different genders? I don't agree with this "bothsidesism". The problem here is the oppression of women, by, mostly, men. There is not any significant amount of oppression of men by women. What concrete steps, you ask ? Well, we could start by removing gratuitous sexual references from software which has nothing to do with sex.[1] We could also stop producing absurd (and readily and frequently debunked) counterarguments to explain why this isn't a problem, or why doing anything about it would lead inevitably to awful censorship, etc. (FAOD I'm not really referring to your messages here, but there have been some truly silly examples in this thread.) Thanks for your attention. Ian. [1] [content warning: sexual references] The point "nothing to do with sex" is very important. I would love for there to be software in Debian for driving sex toys, for example. Most existing systems are quite proprietary and often creepy and full of security holes. This is a very real software freedom problem affecting a very intimate area of people's lives. Free sex toy software would naturally talk about cocks and boobs and things - but it would mean your actual or simulated cock or whatever. I also have no problems with the purity tests, or fortunes-off (although the latter ought to have its name changed to -offensive as per policy). -- Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own. If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.