I can’t even.
I’ve been tracking misogynistic ridiculousness on this blog for five years, but I’m not sure I ‘ve ever run across anything quite as ridiculous as this.
A prominent Open Source guru, Eric Raymond, is warning tech dudes to be extra super duper careful around their female colleagues, because any one of them could turn out to be a secret feminist “honey trap” aiming to frame men in tech with false allegations of harassment or rape.
In a blog post earlier this week, Raymond passed along what he called a “disturbing warning … from a source I trust.”
His anonymous source warned him that it was no longer safe for men in tech to mentor women, or even be in the same room with them. “I’m super careful about honey traps,” the source wrote.
For a while, that’s how the Ada Initiative was trying to pre-generate outrage and collect scalps.
That’s right; according to this mysterious source the now-defunct Ada Initiative wasn’t actually a non-profit trying to bring more women into the open source world; it was a secret army of false-accusing honey-trap sex commandos, or something.
“The MO was to get alone with the target, and then immediately after cry ‘attempted sexual assault,'” the source wrote, adding that these devious sex harpies disguised as female programmers had already “made multiple runs” at Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
Naturally, faced with a set of outlandish accusations offered with zero proof, Raymond did what any rational, skeptical, scientifically minded man would do: he posted them on his blog and warned men that even being in the general vicinity of a woman at a tech conference was like playing with a loaded false accusation gun, or something.
[I]f you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.
He expressed outrage at the alleged attempts to sully Torvalds’ name.
If my source is to be believed (and I have found him both well-informed and completely trustworthy in the past) this was not a series of misunderstandings, it was a deliberately planned and persistent campaign to frame Linus and feed him to an outrage mob.
I have to see it as an an attempt to smear and de-legitimize the Linux community (and, by extension, the entire open-source community) in order to render it politically pliable.
Will those sexy feminazi sex hyenas stop at nothing?
Linus hasn’t spoken out about this; I can think of several plausible and good reasons for that.
Apparently “because it’s not true” isn’t one that Raymond thought of.
Even though “the Ada Initiative shut down earlier this year,” Raymond went on warn that the danger will likely persist as long as evil SJWs live and breathe.
[T]his report is consistent with reports of SJW dezinformatsiya tactics from elsewhere and I think it would be safest to assume that they are being replicated by other women-in-tech groups.
And any women who are unhappy that they are being lumped in with these devious honey traps can go fuck themselves, because you ladies brought all this on yourself with your talk of rape culture and all that. And yes, he uses the word “ladies.”
Don’t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!
Oh, and then Raymond says that in light of this irrefutable evidence of feminazi infiltration conspiracy theory utterly lacking in proof of any kind and frankly ludicrous to boot, he’s going to apply the skepticism he should have shown his mysterious source’s wild tale to actual accusations of sexual assault leveled at men in tech.
Naturally, the extended manosphere is abuzz with talk of this vast sexy conspiracy. Breitbart Tech breathlessly reported that “FEMINISTS ARE TRYING TO FRAME LINUS TORVALDS FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT, CLAIMS OPEN SOURCE INDUSTRY VETERAN.”
“If true,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari declared,
these claims will rock the world of software development, not to mention the wider tech community, which is suffering under the yoke of diversity campaigners levelling bogus charges of sexism at companies and individuals and pestering companies to improve their diversity credentials.
Discontent at the behaviour of feminists in tech has already been spreading in the open source community thanks to the feminist-led introduction of controversial codes of conduct for developers on some open source projects. But these new claims elevate feminists in tech from the controversial to the potentially criminal.
“If true,” claims that monkeys are flying out of my butt would rock the world of monkeys, not to mention the wider butt community.
Concluding his article, Bokhari wonders why
other tech news outlets – normally champing at the bit to report on diversity issues – have so far been curiously silent on this story. Breitbart Tech is, thus far, the exception.
Maybe because these tech news outlets prefer to write about, you know, tech news and not the fever dreams of misogynistic conspiracy theorists?
On Reddit, meanwhile, the usual suspects are doing what they usually do. KotakuInAction, the main Gamergate hub on Reddit, the Breitbart story drew more than 2600 upvotes, last I checked; on the Men’s Rights subreddit it garnered nearly a thousand.
And people wonder why women don’t feel welcome in tech? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that tech bigwigs like Raymond literally think every woman in their general vicinity is a potential “honey trap” out to steal his “scalp” if not his precious bodily fluids.
“…from a source I trust.”
“Myself”.
ESR is a great man of immense knowledge and ability who’s done amazing and wide-ranging things to make the world a better place. He also went completely off the deep end after 9/11 and should be ignored as absolutely hard as possible on any subject that isn’t the details of computer programming. A case study in non-transferable expertise.
My bet is that Raymond is a rapist. You don’t spend your life worrying about false rape accusations unless you’re already a garbage human being. Sort of like how thieves are paranoid everyone wants to steal from them.
At best his identify is so fragile the idea of equality makes him question everything about himself and his privileges. And you’ve seen how well the privileged handle simple things like equality
Clearly, this is a joint operation between Microsoft, Apple, and social justice types to destroy free open source software, as they feel threatened by Linux’s %1.8 share in the desktop and laptop usage category.
When I was working in AV (admittedly probably the most blue-collar sphere of tech), about 1/3 of my colleagues treated me with automatic disdain (fun times: walking onto a showroom floor, walking around for a bit and getting shot down or dismissed by every rep, and then walking back to check-in to get another tag with my certs listed after my name), about 1/3 treated me with a slightly uncomfortable amount of fawning attention (…though these were sometimes the same people from the first group after I passed whatever gatekeeping criteria they’d mentally erected), and about 1/3 treated me as another human being (allowed my skills to speak for themselves, didn’t assume that a knowledge gap or a screw-up was indicative of general incompetence or a result of my congenitally deficient ladybrainz, etc).
To be fair, there may have been some protectiveness on the part of some of the latter, but I was relatively young and a few of them – including an absolutely wonderful boss – spent a good amount of time fuming over my treatment by the first subset.
Some might think that it was benign sexism (“I SHALL PROTECT HER!”), but it honestly just helped assure me that I wasn’t imagining things or being irrationally oversensitive.
If you are this occupied with ‘false rape accusations’ there has got to be some reason for that. And as a scientist he should have figured out that reason is not the rampant nature of false rape accusations.
It’s amazing how anyone can fool themselves so much. And scary how many are willing to believe anything without evidence, as long as it suits their personal issues.
Also, isn’t it telling that all threats from feminist they can come up with are IMAGINARY.
As a feeeemale programmer, I’ve been getting a vibe that this is exactly how the men in the industry view me, or at least a good chunk of them. Thankfully I haven’t gotten this vibe from anyone I work with, but I’m always worried I’ll end up getting harassed in some way and then be stuck trying to figure out whether it’s worth it to report. And even whether I’ll be taken seriously if I do. I’ve already ignored plenty of subtle sexism and racism because I know it wasn’t overt or intentional, and there wasn’t immediate harm to point to as a reason to report. I get serious anxiety over this. The one time I did report sexual harassment I was treated like I was just trying to make waves because it wasn’t intended that way by the other individual. Thankfully I don’t work there any more, but that kind of stuff really makes me feel like I’m not safe in this industry.
Not one week ago our brilliant but socially weak developer lead told a woman in our department (who was there to help him with a coding language he didn’t know but figured he could code in anyway) “Good girl!” before literally patting her on the head. All that for fixing what he screwed up. I admire that she didn’t tell him where to shove it. I was tempted to, and I wasn’t even involved in their conversation. And this is just the most recent in a veritable torrent of gross, sexist behavior I’ve witnessed in my years working in tech. Yet somehow almost every man I ever meet in tech is either clueless to it “I’ve never seen anything like that…” or more unfortunately, like the above.
Breitbart is rapidly turning into Infowars with a slightly less horrid layout. I strongly believe they’re going to regret hitching their wagon to Yianniopoulos and GamerGate in the long run.
I wonder if this is a pre-emptive strike, as he creeped on a close friend of mine’s partner recently at an event.
Yes, how strange. What possible earthly reason could Breitbart be the only outlet interested in sharing these completely uncorroborated reports of evil women using sex to destroy men? It’s probably a conspiracy of some kind!
@kupo – There was one time a male coworker apparently said something incredibly crass about me when I wasn’t in the room. Another male coworker filed a complaint against him for it.
As an indicator of how extreme his comment was: This was a pretty rough and tumble environment conversationally – mostly guys, mostly young (under 40), and either techie or bro-tech. There was *a lot* of shit talk, * a lot* of “commentary inappropriate to a workplace environment”, but that was the atmosphere. Everyone gave and got and it was fun overall, but this comment apparently silenced the room.
…and I made it die.
I needed the job to finish my degree (it paid for 12 credits a year) and I didn’t want to make waves. I figured that pursuing the matter would turn half of the guys against me.
Turned out I was sort of right – I was blamed for the fact that a complaint was filed at all by that half of the guys. It made moving on once I had my degree an easier decision.
I mean, how do you win in that circumstance?
You’re not standing up for yourself and are signalling that it’s acceptable if you ignore it or brush it off, but acting on it churns up a toxic mess.
I strongly believe they’re going to regret hitching their wagon to Yianniopoulos and GamerGate in the long run.
I admire your ability to believe that Breitbart has the ability to regret anything they’ve done in the years they’ve been around. I doubt the word “regret” is even in their dictionary. The pages with that and “shame” have been torn out and used as toilet paper in the office restrooms.
This smacks of “I’m a serial harasser and so in love with my own intelligence I’m incapable of accepting that not everything I think is true”.
mockingbird, kupo, that’s awful. Please accept hugs and feelings of solidarity (or kind thoughts and feelings of solidarity if touchphobic.)
He’s creeped on a friend of mine as well at at a local convention, that was many years ago. Eric’s a bright guy, it’s too bad he hasn’t embraced feminism instead of fearing imaginary women. Perhaps it’s really a fantasy?
I’m not terribly surprised — the open source community, and especially its leaders, seem to be made up of a significant number of libertarian cranks and misogynous whackadoodles.
I have to see it as an an attempt to smear and de-legitimize the Linux community (and, by extension, the entire open-source community) in order to render it politically pliable.
What? Why? To what end? Motive, people!
Discontent at the behaviour of feminists in tech has already been spreading in the open source community
Excuse me, what now? I suspect this is the crime of Existing While Female.
As a woman in tech I’m proud that my little niche community is generally very welcoming. The majority of men are excited to see a woman in a male dominated industry and eager to discuss our mutual profession. The sexism I have experienced has 100% of the time come from men who’ve demonstrated their skills to be inferior to mine. A pathetic attempt at levelling the playing field, they can always reassure themselves that men are always smarter!
Seconding the idea that Linus may be a serial sexual harasser/assaulter. Women don’t just make this stuff up out of thin air.
Sounds a bit like Richard Dawkins, as summed-up neatly in this handy flowchart:
But anyway, has Linus Torvalds actually been accused of something recently? Or is his point just that allegedly, people are angling to accuse him of something eventually?
Huh, my first comment vanished.
Anyway, this guy sounds like those dudes I know who are incredibly intelligent, so they have zero capacity for recognizing when their own thoughts turn to shit. Like, just cause you thought it doesn’t make it true.
Also, seconding (thirding?) the feeling this is some preemptive strike. Torvald is a scumbag, and one of my favorite tech writes once said something even slightly critical of him, and his fanboys damn near harassed her off the internet.
In short? Fuck that guy, how much you wanna bet he’s actually a serial harassser?
That is, Raymond’s point re: Torvalds (sorry for awkward phrasing).
Calling ESR an “open source guru” is stretching things. He’s been a laughingstock of the open source world for a over decade (seriously, 10 years ago there was a comic called “Everybody Loves Eric Raymond” which poked fun at some of the stupid things he’s said.) His only real contribution to open source culture is The Cathedral And The Bazaar, which is an essay on how open source represents free market ideals better than closed source software.
His most noteworthy accomplishment is that he’s frequently mistaken for Richard Stallman.
This is just him revealing his true self to a wider audience.
ESR went off the rails a while ago – no one with half a brain listens to him about anything other than coding. He snapped, and no longer experiences reality. Shame on Breitbart for exploiting a man who is not well.
Call me what you will, but what are the odds this is someone trying to get out ahead of a legitimate complaint?
Hmm, is making conclusions on the basis of ‘If true…’ a terribly scientific way to operate?