This is a comment in reply to this open letter and this dent and the shenanigans that are claiming Mark Shuttleworth said “Explaining to girls what we actually do.” or something similar, which implies women don’t know technology. I hope Skud at http://geekfeminism.org approved my comment.
My Comment:
I’m not trying to start a flame fest. And really don’t feel like posting and tweeting to everyone that posts about this.
But the context you are assuming is not there. I watched the live stream. When Mark said try to explain to girls, he was not talking about women not understanding technology. He was talking about how hard the design work is to do, and that if things were designed poorly or had low usability, he would not know how to explain them to girls (my translation). The tone of his voice suggested sarcastic embarrassment, which implies he would prefer to impress girls. So he could have said the same thing about his father. Or better yet. If he was gay, he would have said “guys” not “girls”.
Also note that he was talking about design when he said it. So the argument that he thinks women are not hard core coders or programmers is moot. And yes he does say “guys” all the time. No one says “gals” by itself, because it sounds sexist. And saying “guys and gals” is as pain in the butt as saying gnu/linux. Everyone says “guys” when they mean “people”.
This incident really is like wild fire erupting before my eyes. All the tweets, re-tweets, and blog posts are echoing the same sentence fragment, and disintegrating into primal noises. Primates can also re-articulate the same sounds they heard someone else make, or wave a flag. Humans on the other hand can think critically, about what they heard.
Wouldn’t it make sense to see the video before claiming it is sexist? Or perhaps even know the context of what he was talking about? Or even the minimalist thing, of getting the actual quote?
Please for the love of reason. When the video or transcript is released, form your opinion. Don’t just re-quote rumors as yours. I respect the work feminists are doing. But this was a knee jerk reaction. Hear the guy in is own words.
I really hope Mark does not let rumors re-create the context of what he said.
4 Comments
s/girls/women/
I’m pretty sure that Mark isn’t a pedophile.
I agree with you that it was about impressing women, but you aren’t going to win everybody over with “everybody says guys when they mean people”. I don’t think it’s sexist, unless English as a language is just sexist (which, I’m willing to listen to that argument). English doesn’t have neuter pronouns like other languages…though in this case, unless Mark is bi-sexual, it wouldn’t have made sense.
As a male that has had many females close their ears when I start talking about technology, I might suggest to Mark just simple not to try. It’s not that they can’t understand, it’s that they don’t care…and obviously there are exceptions that prove the rule.
@ Douglas English is a very sexist language. They even cover “sexist language” in most english courses.
I think it is perfectly appropriate for him to say girl the way he did. And I do think people say guys as a shortcut or less formal form of people. What else are you going to say? Individuals? That has been a problem for a long time. No reason to point it out unless you have a solution, or are not going to use it as a reason to be critical of someone.
I thought this could turn into bike shedding or a sound byte when I heard it.
Unfortunately Mark has chosen not to apologize and has sent a private email to that effect to Ms. Roberts. I can hardly blame him responding to her in this way due to the condescending tone of her open letter. I doubt that an apology would end it.
However, he owes it to his base to apologize. He needs to clear the air and get on with the job. One of the things that he needs to do is set a goal of making Ubuntu more inclusive. This could be something such as looking at inclusive language in the community or in opening up opportunities for women.
I have heard his address and it is too bad that this has overshadowed his message which was quite good in terms of content.
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