At the recently concluded pycon2010 at Atlanta, there were some
discussions about diversity, women etc... I suppose, much of my energy would
have been saved if I had published this mail earlier or even blogged about some
individual sexist behaviors. Nah, its not fear, rather I try to avoid talking
about evil creepy stuff on my blog but during various discussions realised that
many folks dont know what you experience on an individual level in the floss
community, unless you talk about it. That is the first step.

Hi $PersonsName,

As i write this mail the words "Out the creeps publicly" uttered by a devel
(who shall go nameless) comes to my mind and hence i'd prefer to not be anon
and back my words under the pseudonym 'svaksha'. $PersonsName, do feel free to
suitably trim my long train of thoughts and I wont be offended if it does'nt
make it to your article as /self is too late in all
probability -- my mental resources are wound up around a lexical parser
atm.

Initially when i used to hear all the women speak about their experiences i
took comfort in the fact that i am not alone
in hoping for change. But i had not factored
in the possibility that change is tougher when
"clueless new idiots" follow in the steps of "sexist
old timers". Over the years the attitudes towards diversity still remains
sexist, especially within the Indian community where cronyism is normal.

My observations are largely India-centric salted with some experiences on
international lists and sans a timeline ...

The usual personal mails asking for personal details under the guise of "i want
to volunteer" or guised as a personal interview (since when did marital status
become relevant to floss contribution?). Another
peculiar one was a guy writing emails in different
scripts despite my requests that i didnt understand them. It was when i
requested a friend to translate them that i realised why -- personal questions
in a non-english script meant fewer people would know
he was asking personal questions.

Then there was this instance of a jerk trying to crack into my server when he
became aware of my gender.  I was happy with the anonymity --- Very very
few folks (i trusted) knew my location and real name but that changed when I
founded the Ubuntu-Women project, was termed a "militant feminist" (a
pejorative term for Feminazi).  This pejorative was echoed in the Indichix (LC-India) mailing lists in
2008 to avoid answering the question of 'controlling a woman's group by proxy'
- cronyism and elitism is gender-neutral The personal attacks descended
into personal life queries (hint:: the coffee, splenda thread) by one Indian
male who subscribed to grrls-only mailing list by pretending to be a woman.
Gah, so much for the "cultural_Indian" !!

Other experiences include an smtp header spoof of my mail id to send a
sex-related email ; an indian devel in his interview
wanted to be stuck in a lift with me even while he
admits to never having met me. Another was the death threats from "mikeeeeusa"
on DW which went off-list ~~ IIRC around 5 women were the initial targets but
Clytie (an AU contributor) had threats sent to her teenage daughter too.

http://eaves.ca/2009/07/06/structurelessness-feminism-and-open/
has a point I could relate to viz.elites and cronyism -- both of which are true
as far as the local Indian floss community is
concerned. I've heard past incidents of getting cronies to use social
engineering (a bully's crony will pretend to be your friend and find out where
you work, etc..) and use pressure tactics (complaining to your
superiors/boss@work --the easiest way to bully an individual who fears losing
his/her livelihood) to silence disagreeing voices -- This may probably not be
sexist as it happened to an indian male (who shall remain anonymous)
floss volunteer, but i'm writing this to highlight a
deeper and more serious problem within the fragmented Indian floss community.

Pretending to support women racks up the positive Publicity Karma (hence
commercially lucrative) while one can continue to be being elitist and deny
decision making power via "cronyism" (the elites will use red herrings and
out-shout the newbies who disagree under the cries of "show me the code") on
the side. A very subtle game that is hard to decipher on a superficial
level.

However, when subtle aggressiveness is reserved for the local community members
only very few folks outside that circle are aware of it. This small subset of
highly aggressive Indian men will never exhibit this negative attitude on the
international project lists and irc channels where they do participate, because
it will permanently damage their reputation which is never good for business or
landing a job in future. Also, international
lists/irc/etc... have lesser bystanders[0] taking care of SEP[1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem]

If readers are thinking its a malaise with the whole Indian community or a
cultural baggage --its not. There is a lot of positive stuff happening thanks
to many individuals who are polite and respectful and dont feel threatened by
(wo)men. There are many men and women who continue their good work on an
individual basis but unfortunately they are relegated to the  back-burner
by pompous self-promoting jerks. I'm personally hoping to see a truly open
community initiative like LCA or debconf (and others like it) happen
in India.

Regarding including links and threads, i am undecided -- the marketing gimmick
"bad publicity is still free publicity" is another reason why I prefer to avoid
blogging too much about negative behavior as it can acquire a cult-like halo
and an easy way to fame for other men or newbies, especially when they see
peers getting away with it. While technical (like a ddos attack,...)
misdemeanors are punished quickly i've not yet heard an a$$hat being ostracized
or boycotted from the community and this despite there being discussion and
more discussion and protests about the said negative behavior.

Besides, the online world is so small that there is the danger of forming a
mental picture of an individual and getting over-familiar via blogs, twitter,
irc, lists, etc... Its possible that judging folks during real life meetings
based on these preconceived assumptions is another cause of social behaviour
problems.

I dont have any magic answers and have always believed that community action
is the best way to solve the problem. Yet, getting women to speak-up openly
against the negative attitude is a lot harder, especially when they feel they
will not get any support as the lone voice, statistically speaking.  Few
folks will want to waste their time tackling a regular barrage of red-herrings
and logical fallacies. Ex. using the term "we" is (sometimes purposefully)
misunderstood as taking over control and using "I" is interpreted as "the
problem is singular in nature" and _one_ person is
statistically too small to figure in change -- hence
the status quo remains. This tactic works very well in
situations when no change is desired.

Y'all probably are aware of all this so i'll stop as i've got to leave
now.

ciao,
-vid

As you've probably guessed, the above was my mail sent to an unarchived women's
list. I'm also reproducing (with permission) an exchange with another floss
contributors who wrote after he read the above e-mail:

Devel: And you cant have a community of human beings and donkeys
right? That's why I refuse to believe most of the Indian FLOSS communities are
communities at all. I dont care and I dont bother.

Me: That is the scary bit...everybody stops caring. When I stop
caring its just downhill then. Somewhere we have to make an effort to build the
community, sustain it and grow.

Devel: You have to make sure the community is worth it.

One should not expect women to say *Stop harassing/stalking*. Given the low
female participation, women are an even smaller number in the existing scheme
of things and the lack of space to speak up within projects is another crucial
point that gets overlooked.  Instead of telling women how to adjust to
sexist bullying, men within a project must learn to speak up if they wish to
see change. Most times that action is taken against those who manage to offend
those in power, else in floss communities sometimes one can get away with any
negative behaviour with zero repercussions.

In my years within most Libre software projects, the common thread that
surfaces is the expectation that "change is slow" because positive results with
respect to reducing sexist behaviour takes time. I disagree.  Is it that
women have to be offended with negative attitudes or sexism for action to be
taken? Why cant a lone individual (irrespective of gender, nationality or any
other criteria) say "stop being a jerk" and get tons of community support. If
there is a lack of community support, its due to apathy and a lack of firmness
and strong action with low tolerance to negative behaviour by every person
involved in the floss community. 

This is not easy as easy as typing this blog entry was, since it needs
impartial and strong leadership qualities.  We need an attitudinal change
on an individual level if we dont want a gesellschaft
instead of a community where people care for others. FLOSS Communities are
still made up of individual people who use the same technology they create.
Women (add foo-group of choice) should not be the diversity tokenism for spin
doctors trying to prevent a PR disaster.