Ian Lance Taylor <i...@google.com>:
> Patronizing or infantilizing anybody doesn't come into this at all.
I am not even *remotely* persuaded of this. This whole attitude that if
a woman is ever exposed to a man with less than perfect American
upper-middle-class manners it's a calamity requiring intervention
and mass shunning, that *reeks* of infantilizing women.
> We want free software to succeed. Free software is more likely to
> succeed if more people work on it. If you are a volunteer, as many
> are, you can choose to spend your time on the project where you have
> to short-stop unwelcome advances, where you are required to deal with
> "men with poor social skills." Or you can choose to spend your time
> on the project where people treat you with respect. Which one do you
> choose?
The one where your expected satisfaction is higher, with boorishness
from autistic males factored in as one of the overheads. Don't try to
tell me that's a deal-killer, I've known too many women who would
laugh at you for that assumption.
> Or perhaps you have a job that requires you to work on free software.
> Now, if you work on a project where the people act like RMS, you are
> being forced by your employer to work in a space where you face
> unwelcome advances and men who have "trouble recognizing boundaries."
> That's textbook hostile environment, and a set up for you to sue your
> employer. So your employer will never ask anyone to work on a project
> where people act like that--at least, they won't do it more than once.
Here's what happens in the real world (and I'm not speculating, I was
a BoD member of a tech startup at one time, stuff like this came up).
You say "X is being a jerk - can I work on something else?" Your
employer, rightly terrified of the next step, is not going to "force"
you to do a damn thing. He's going to bend over backwards to
accommodate you.
> (Entirely separately, I don't get the slant of your whole e-mail. You
> can put up with RMS despite the boorish behavior you describe. Great.
> You're a saint. Why do you expect everyone else to be a saint?
I'm no saint, I'm merely an adult who takes responsibility for my own
choices when dealing with people who have minimal-brain-damage
syndromes. OK, I have probably acquired a bit more tolerance for
their quirks than average from long experience, but I don't believe I'm
an extreme outlier that way.
What I am pushing for is for everyone to recognize that *women are
adults* - they have their own agency and are in general perfectly
capable of treating an RMS-class jerk as at worst a minor annoyance.
Behaving as though he's some sort of icky monster who should be
shunned by all right-thinking people and taints everything he touches
is ... just unbelievably disconnected from reality. Bizarre
neo-Puritan virtue signaling of no help to anyone.
If I needed more evidence that many Americans lead pampered,
cossetted, hyper-insulated lives that require them to make up their
own drama, this whole flap would be it.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
