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Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

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Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#31
"quits tech industry" Quits tech industry because of one troll??? Does this mean she will never hack or never program (for money)? Interesting. I have seen lots of trolls and falemwars on the internet but I could not quit programming for thousands of trolls. This is the only thing I am good at, this is what I fell in love at 12, this is what I do to earn money to support my family... Also trolls have nothing to do with my own projects and the projects of my employer... Maybe she meant she will quit tech politics? (Then she will probably enter another kind of politics, because she is seemingly a 'political person'.)

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When you start ban evading, you ARE a problem.

Not that I'm sticking up for those who take the bait, feeding the troll is always bad, but MikeeUSA and his ilk should just stay on /b/ where they belong.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#33
Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse.

Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway.

It's important for community leaders to stand up for this sort of thing and publicly disown discrimination. But unless she gives them a chance, i.e. unless the community is anti-female, I can't see this as a good move on her part.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#35
post #7

No 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…

I think from what I have followed of this, there have been some pretty lewd and targeted comments made, not only on blog comments but via direct email.

While I dont know Bayley at all, from what I can gather she is highlighting the fact that people have to put up with such harassment due to the fact that ISP's or Police will not act on it.

Being that the comments were made via direct email, I guess you could liken it to someone calling you at home and telling you to "F!?K off out of your house", I think anyone would be creeped out at that. But as there are no actual threats of harm made, the law is useless to do anything.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#36
post #18

I 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.

Apparently the abuse in question included creation of throwaway email accounts. That makes email filtering harder, at a minimum.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#37

After reading this article, twice... huh? All I can tell is she is bitching that she didn't get respect purely out of being a woman in tech and nothing else actually substantial. I personally encourage woman to enter various tech industry roles (programming, IT, etc), and women like this push Woman's Rights 2.0 back a decade every time they do this. Also, MikeeUSA is a known troll, and anyone who is stupid enough to…

I'm being downvoted for supporting woman's rights and publicly stating so.

Welp, I have karma to burn, I'm not going anywhere.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#38
post #27

There 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.

The problem is that some of the 'bad apples' are senior members of the community who are or were respected and widely listened to. The fact that Eric Raymond is/was taken seriously ought to be hugely embarrassing to the open source community.

EDIT: since I got downvoted already I may as well add: ESR is a vile pathetic excuse for a human being. I don't say that lightly, he really is obnoxious. I know he has a big fanbase among the libertarians here but at some point people are going to have to face up to how unacceptable his views are to most people.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#39
post #33

Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse. Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway. It's important for communit…

"I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway"

This is called "blaming the victim". It is bad, and you should consider researching it.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#40
post #33

Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse. Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway. It's important for communit…

You should read her blog post on the issue - http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-littl...

It's a lot more than one email. It's a pattern of harassment by multiple people that's gone on for years.

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