Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Coalition or a Coup of Sexism

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 15, 2025,
updated Apr 15, 2025

Sir, may I write some code? You are not tall enough; you didn't consent to the CoC? Get back in the kitchen

Gender equality isn't a new concept. It's as old as the notion of gender roles (and resistance to "traditional" roles). Women have long fought for parity, at least to the extent feasible (as many cannot, at least not on average, expect to be as physically strong as men).

Society is changing, and not for the better (revisit this message of Carole Cadwalladr). There are so-called 'influencers' who teach young men that it's "cool" to be sexist. So all sorts of loaded terms such as "toxic masculinity" came up. And no, that does not mean what most people assume it means...

There's a real issue. The issue isn't men being men. The issue is some men becoming horrible, not just "creepy". It's about actions, not mere perceptions.

In the Free software community it's hard to avoid this issue; those same elements know no boundaries and some of them think of women as sexual objects to be physically 'disciplined', constantly spied on like they're pets, and so much worse. There's a lot of gaslighting. Beware the projection tactics from the Linux Foundation, which is fronting for womanisers and misplaces culpability. They know exactly what they're doing and why.

We took a stand against this element several years ago. My mother and my wife were targeted for no reason other than me writing about Free software and the culprits had the audacity to pretend their victims were the real issue (there's a history to it*). The attack on women was consistent and it certainly seemed like women were specifically targeted for being perceived/believed to be more sensitive or thin-skinned.

If your community includes people who viciously attack women - or worse, traffic women - by all means speak out. Nothing in a Code of Conduct (CoC) protects the women. Worse yet, the CoCs often end up covering up and hiding the issue, desperately trying to protect powerful men from accountability. They're "washing their hands" with a CoC.

Decent communities survive and thrive (rather than perish and vanish) based on enforcement of ethics and shared standards, not corporate CoCs, often imposed on projects by people who themselves dislike women and want more control (by censorship and expulsion).

To quote Jeremy Sands, "unbelievably I was actually threatened in private at other events for this for not having a code of conduct that some people deemed acceptable. And not from random people the very first person to threaten me has been a speaker at SELF I think every year and because I accept talks blindly they keep getting talks because I'm not holding that against them because I don't know who they are when I select the talks. So if nothing else you can't accuse me of bias in selecting speakers given that I keep selecting a speaker who threatened me."

_____

* To quote this old story from Tim Bray: "Those with long memories might suggest a parallel between Rick’s position and mine when in 1997, I was sitting on the XML Working Group and co-editing the spec, on a pro bono basis as an indie consultant. Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t."

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