I was requested to forward this. If Vid has been moderated for defending women's rights, it is a sad thing and a blow against freedom. ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: Everything is fine [was] threads [was] [OT] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn Date: Wednesday 18 February 2009 From: VidAyer <[email protected]> To: Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]>, Easwar Hariharan <[email protected]>, Harsh Busa <[email protected]> Hello, Request, could one of you please forward this "verbatim" to the ILUG-BOM list since I am on moderation. Thanks. On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Rajeev R. K. <[email protected]> wrote: > > Firstly, Dinesh, If you have to insult anyone ever, even if > provocation is provided, it's a sad thing. it's a really poor > communicator who cannot make his displeasure known without stooping to > insults. A witty and sarcastic barb is > much better, IMHO. And i wouldn't wish a virus on anyone. And VidAyer, > I guess you are bing a little belligerent... > This thread need not have gone on this long, should have died long > ago, and you know it. > > Well, at least it managed to wake me up :) Glad you did :) The thread and the responses is recurrent in most Indian LUG's and I can summarize them here : 1. Shutup and move on. I've heard that before Rajeev and its exactly what i did some years ago, went upstream to contribute and be more productive. It works just fine. 2. Local Lugs? Zilch. Nada. Nothing to see in your local LUG. (and this comes from men who contribute code, men who I've spoken to IRL, wrote to me off-list and what snippets from IRC). 3. Denial. "Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine here (read LUG)". Get labelled "belligerent", "militant feminist", etc .. (and i have logs collected over the years to prove this) because you called out a bully and said "stop bullying". Nice !! Women don't participate in LUG activities? Cant blame them, I would'nt either. 4. Crass humour. You said the same above with "A witty and sarcastic barb is much better, IMHO". Object and one gets a response : "It was a joke! Don't you have a sense of humour?". The gate-keepers are more intent on protecting "freedom of speech" for loud-mouths who have turned nastiness into an art form. 5. I'm a Geek. I'm first, you came in later. Remain in your place, woman !! This is a *our* space and you (women) have to be thick-skinned to tolerate bullying, name calling, intimidation, online stalking and personal attacks, usually indulged in by a very small subset of highly vocal individual(s). Never openly and always subtle. 6. Ignore. Another way to say #3.Everything is fine here. You are the problem. 7. Take it off-list. Another easy way to make it more difficult for her to prove she is being harassed since private conversations are just that. Private. Maintain the dense cloud of ambiguity. 8. Open. Our community already has <insert token number> women who are doing just great. The rest dont bother to show up, participate, make the effort. Something is wrong with the majority. 9. Celebrate boorish behaviour. Rinse. Repeat. Result : Why waste time jumping over loops. Easier to stay away. Libre software does *not* demand contribution from all. Those who do volunteer, do it because they care or want to. You dont need to recognise that but telling them to "shutup" and "ignore problems" is neither polite nor helpful. And this "staying away" is not restricted to women and has nothing to do with gender. Men stay away too. Folks can adopt an ostrich-like attitude, because Everything_IS_Fine, really !! Thanks for all the fish !! Vid, .. who un-subscribes, yet again. ------------------------------------------------------- -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
