I hope Skud's life improves with her new career. I'm horrified that she was treated this way by any human.
Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
21–30 of 345 posts
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#22And a third person kept phoning various people's workplaces and accusing them of being involved in child pornography. Seriously? I'm having a hard time believing that this was instigated purely because she's a female developer. Surely there was more to it than her gender for someone to stoop that low?
"Bayley wrote, in a blog entry for the Geek Feminist website, which she founded..."
"This kind of harassment and bullying is endemic in many circles, including towards women in technical communities, particularly if they _complain about community norms_."
So no, she wasn't harassed to this degree just because of her gender. She was harassed because she had spoken up about other, less disgustingly over the top issues.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#23No disagreement with the basic, point, but was a bit surprised by this quote: "So, here's our situation. We have a man (presumably; at any rate he appears to want to be identified as such) in the Australian Linux community, who targets women by sending them private abusive emails from a throwaway address and with a name that can't readily be connected to any publicly known member of the community. His ISP won't hand…
Unless he's swapping IP addresses on a regular basis, or hiding on a highly shared server, figuring out who this actually is without any help from an ISP or law enforcement shouldn't be that hard (this is the same way that "why the lucky stiff" was outed), assuming that the person is also an active contributor on other lists. I tend to view this as another example of how anonymity allows people to be jerks (with the…
MikeeUSA abuses open proxies and tor like mad. He also comes onto IRC channels with random nicks. Soon as he opens his mouth, though, he usually has outed himself.
I have referred to that same PA comic in the Darkplaces IRC channel (which hosts frequent games of "ban the MikeeUSA").
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#24It distresses me that "political correctness" has become a dirty "four letter" word rather than simply a shared understanding that people who address others in a hate-filled, bullying, disrepectful and demeaning way should be actively shunned and censured (i.e. not "censored").
That is not political correctness, that is basic respect for a fellow human being. Political correctness goes much farther.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#25That's a bummer. I thought we were making progress in that regard, but maybe we aren't.
I still think we are. The progress is that this kind of stuff is increasingly discussed in public like this, rather than being allowed to slide.
Sadly, I fear it's still going to take a lot more progress before people can speak up without a reasonable expectation of retaliation.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#26No disagreement with the basic, point, but was a bit surprised by this quote: "So, here's our situation. We have a man (presumably; at any rate he appears to want to be identified as such) in the Australian Linux community, who targets women by sending them private abusive emails from a throwaway address and with a name that can't readily be connected to any publicly known member of the community. His ISP won't hand…
MikeeUSA frequently states dumb shit like "oh, women deserve to be raped since the day they first bleed because this is what God created women for" and other shit. He does it purely for the sake of trolling, and people periodically bite the trollbait. Is this illegal? No. Should he be beaten with in an inch of his life? Yes. Is that going to happen outside of a prison? Probably not, no one is quite sure of his exact…
He's not the problem though. The problem is people being offended by it or taking the bait.
Ban, ignore, report, shun etc...
Setting up a geek feminist movement is pretty much the worst thing you could do if you wanted the abuse to stop.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#27There are lots of bad apples but I'm kind of surprised Skud would just give up on the "whole" industry.
I hope someone encourages Skud to continue developing. Even though the tech industry is still majority male I have to think there are many more industries (in particular certain horizontals like sales) that are even worse when it comes to sexual harassment.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#28I dunno. I'm sympathetic and all, but this seems to boil down to: "Nasty person A keeps harassing nice person B via email in ways which do not warrant the involvement of law enforcement." Which is terrible and all - especially for person getting the nasty emails - but this really doesn't seem to have any real relevance to anyone who isn't involved.
And is pretty solvable by setting up an email filter.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#29And a third person kept phoning various people's workplaces and accusing them of being involved in child pornography. Seriously? I'm having a hard time believing that this was instigated purely because she's a female developer. Surely there was more to it than her gender for someone to stoop that low?
It wasn't just that she was female, it was that she was female and spoke out against the disgusting behaviour she saw and experienced. Sadly this is not limited to the tech community; feminist bloggers in general have to deal with an unbelievable amount of shit.
Either way, it takes an absolute lowlife to be that over the top over something so trivial.
Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
#30It distresses me that "political correctness" has become a dirty "four letter" word rather than simply a shared understanding that people who address others in a hate-filled, bullying, disrepectful and demeaning way should be actively shunned and censured (i.e. not "censored").
That is not political correctness, that is basic respect for a fellow human being. Political correctness goes much farther.
Perhaps political correctness didn't used to mean that. But for a while now the term has mostly only been used as an ingredient of the defensive protestations of people who get called out for displays of bigotry. Consequently, its meaning has shifted.