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.
And the second comment is from Tron Guy, agreeing with him.
Heck, I guess I’m being tribal when I say, “Geeks! What are you doing? You’re not The Baddies! Stop it!
Let’s go talk about Trek or Star Wars or whatever fanfic you’re writing or whatever you’ve been building or playing with lately.”
It goes against rational thought and assembled evidence, but I still feel like throwing a temper tantrum and slap-fighting while yelling, “YOU. ARE. THE. GOOD. GUYS. WE’RE. ALL. ON. THE. SAME. TEAM. FUCKING. STOP. BEING. ASSHATS.”
All I can say is that my transition from the musical world to the world of video game development has been quite awful.
Back in the junior college in the music programs, pretty much nobody cared about your gender. You were either a good performer/composer or not. Everyone wanted to collaborate more than compete.
Meanwhile, in this game art and design program I’ve gone to, it seems like the only “acceptable” people are neckbeards and assholes with no respect for anyone or anything else. Every freaking project, even group projects, is treated as some kind of dick-measuring contest rather than a collaborative effort. Expect the guys to underestimate all the women and less macho guys.
I’m not sure what it is about the tech industries that attracts so many grade-A ranking douchebags.
@mockingbird, I love to be around people excited about tech too, and I can’t say I’ve experienced sexism from those types. It’s always that guy who did his degree some years ago and hasn’t made any effort to keep up with changing technology, that I’m side eying how he even got this awesome job that I put so much effort into continually improving myself for.
On another note, Eric Raymond is putting a whole new spin on “false rape allegations”, isn’t he?
@fronicby
Ironically, one of the better ways to get programmer job security is to be a very specific level of bad. Good enough to write code that works, bad enough that no one else can update it.
@loquora – I think part of it is that some of these guys don’t even notice when they’re doing it.
My husband’s currently doing (mostly) front-end stuff in a dynamic (read: constant) dev environment and a few weeks ago he was talking about a conversation that he was having wth someone from another team who came in to discuss something that they were both going to have to touch. She was a a woman a bit older than him, middle-aged or so, and he said, “I was explaining my side of things and my ideas for approaching [author: whatever issue it was, I can’t remember] and I noticed that, while she was smiling and following along, she’d begun to look a little stiff. Then I realized that I’d been breaking things down entirely too simply and including way too much background information.
She’s worked in this field longer than I have and I know that. She’s worked on – developed, even – systems that I’ve never even set eyes on or have only the barest knowledge of. And here I’m a baby* in this field and I’m treating her like a neophyte. So I said, ‘I’m sorry – you already know this, don’t you?’ She nodded and looked relieved and we moved on to [author: something higher-level…I dunno, because it’s not my thing]. The funny thing: I’m sure she puts up with men talking down to her all day when she can code circles around most of them amd has forgotten more about IT infrastructure than they’ll ever know. I hate that I did that without even thinking about it.”
He’s a guy who’s done graduate-level work in women’s studies (as part of a Lit / Cultural Studies program) and could probably hold his own in a discussion about feminist and minority theory, critique, and thought with anyone here and it took him half of a conversation to notice that his assumptions had run away with him.
Guys who pat women on their heads and call a colleague a “good girl” – they probably need a (metaphorical) 2×4 to the head.
* re: his being a baby: He’s only been in the field for a few years, but he’s awesome. His superpowers are being astonishingly adept with systems and the ability to mentally cataloging an encyclopedic amount of raw data.
He doesn’t have a diagnosis, but he fits literally everything that I’ve read about those with higher-functioning autism / Asperger’s, including that he was non-verbal until he was almost 5 and engages in mild stimming activities. He pulls off social engagement very well, though, by placing people and situations into what he’s described as a set of stunningly complex personality/action matrices [that’s my short-form wording superimposed over his decidedly longer description] and basing interactions off of that.
—
I apologize if the conversation’s moved on. This was written on my phone in like 10 parts in between doing other things.
Ironically, one of the better ways to get programmer job security is to be a very specific level of bad. Good enough to write code that works, bad enough that no one else can update it.
This is the truest statement in this whole thread.
Who needs elegance, consistency, and well-placed comments when you can pull something out of ephemera (or your ass) and cobble together functional but otherwise unworkable Franken-code?
The paranoia is staggering.
@guy – dastardly! >:)
But now I fear I AM that programmer, and am madly googling “how to write elegant code”. It does bother me if I’ve been lazy and something isn’t written efficiently. 🙂
The way I see it.
A.) He is lying and will make a fool of himself
B.)He is telling the truth but has no evidence thus making a fool of himself again.
C.) He is telling the truth and will eventually follow up with evidence. Making all of you look like fools
You people are always going on about how #yesallmen are rapists and misogynists who want nothing more to rape women. If they are making sure they are never alone with a woman in a room at all times then I imagine the sexual assault rates will drop significantly. I recall a certain women crying because a guy asked her for coffee in a elevator. If he was making sure he was never alone with a woman in a elevator he would still be attacked
I never thought that Eric Raymond was one of those manosphere or MRA types.
I read similar ideas from priests in the medieval ages. This is paranoid fantasy by boys
I saw this article earlier, and thought, wow Brietbart has hit a new low, this is literally the stupidest thing I’ve read in a very long time.
I never had much respect for ESR, but this is low even for him. Is it possible to have negative respect, or does the scale bottom out at zero?
d.:
Good grief, is it the 1990s again already?
Fnolcby, I’m not sure that’s something google can teach you.
You people are always going on about how #yesallmen are rapists and misogynists who want nothing more to rape women.
Said no feminist, ever
@moggie, Google can teach you just about anything, not sure why elegant coding can’t be one of those things?
Found a few interesting sites on the topic.
Fnolcby, I guess I just think of good programming as as much art as technical skill. I could read a book called “How to Draw”, and doubtless it would give me some useful pointers and exercises to do. But it would still take months of hard practice with pencil and paper before I could turn out a drawing I was proud of – and I might never manage it.
Wow, way to eliminate all the pertinent details of the interaction!
I despair of the world where “guys don’t do that” = “woman crying ‘rape’ for no reason”.
Honestly, what the what??
EJ:
Linus can indeed be a colossal jerk, but I have a hard time thinking of esr as being the sort of guy to ride to his (pre-emptive) rescue. It seems more likely to me that he’s indifferent to the effect this will have on Linus. It’s even possible that he intends this story to cause problems for Linus. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
ESR has proclaimed himself a ‘natural’ at ‘game’. I would not be at all surprised if it turned out that he’d once creeped on someone and got a negative response and/or censure for harassment. Or more than once, in fact. If he’s convinced that what he did wasn’t wrong, then any accusation that he behaved inappropriately would be, to him, a false accusation. It’s short step from that to painting all women in tech as honey traps, to a certain sort of mind.
Actually, if his attitude is that almost every woman is just there to bring good men down for perfectly acceptable behaviour, that does rather imply that creeping like that would be the norm for him rather than the exception. Ugh.
@Moggie, you and I are of opposite opinions on this then. I believe most people can do most things, if they put in the necessary amount of practice. I think reading a “how to draw” book is a great start to learning how to draw, and there usually needs to be A LOT of practice after that. People who aren’t that interested won’t put in the work, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable.
Finding many definitions of “elegant code” but it seems it comes down to correctness, efficiency, readability and performance. Or as someone put it, if it makes other coders say “wow, why didn’t I think of that?!” I took only a couple of programming courses and the rest is self-taught so while I’d heard the term before, I didn’t really know what it meant. I think there’s a danger when saying things like drawing or coding are inborn talents in that it dissuades people from trying. I will never be a genius of a coder but I’ve learned enough that I have a well-paying job out of it.
Yeah, not so much IME. If nobody can maintain it but the original author, you move the original author onto tasks that nobody needs to maintain. So now they’re doing non-critical stuff, and thus become likely to draw a short straw at the first round of layoffs.
Job security from my experience is, like anywhere, that you’re a good team player: people respect your work, people like being with you, bosses see you as being valuable.
There is *one* way to really juice up your job security: if your work directly translates to money, you’re not likely to get dumped until the company is in really deep shit. Consulting, for example: if you don’t show up to work, the company can’t bill its client, so you’re going to be brought in to work almost no matter what (until the company hasn’t got any contracts in a while).
@Fnoicby –
The silver lining: One needs to continually learn and improve to stay relevant. In 10 years, you’ll probably have moved onwards and upwards and those guys who’re leaning on their degree will either be doing fuck all or babysitting systems chugging along on dying technology.