Richard Stallman's Possibly Sexist Remarks at GCDS
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 9th Jul 2009 12:09 UTC
Talk, Rumors, X Versus Y During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (and the Superfluous Introduction Award goes to...) gave a keynote speech. Said keynote speech raised a few eyebrows in the Free software community because of a number of questionable remarks regarding women in technology. David "Lefty" Schlesinger, member of the GNOME Advisory Board and active in the mobile open source community, took issue with RMS' remarks and decided to call him out on it. The response he got was... Less than satisfying.
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SReilly
Member since:
2006-12-28

Excuse me but the onus is on YOU to prove that the primary motivation of the person making the remark is of an offensive nature.

Not when s/he is a public speaker.

It is up to you to prove whether the source of the joke was meant to be hurtful - unless you can some how prove that it was his motivation, quite frankly, what it appears is a very bitter person trying to destroy what little fun there is left in the work place.

Again, see above. Also, WTF does public speaking have to do with the workplace?

...one has to remember that before you cry wolf that you find out what was the motivator behind it.

If a public speaker's statements offend me, for whatever reason, but are of an ambiguous nature, i.e. could be interpreted in a different way, then yes, I would await a reply before I cried wolf. On the other hand, the statements made by RMS leave very little to the imagination and frankly, to "jump" to the conclusion that he is being sexist is not an unreasonable conclusion. That is the bane of public speaking. RMS has stated that he did not mean his comments to be sexist, which is a great thing to hear, but my and other people's issue with this statement is RMS's inability to say sorry without making himself out to be some kind of victim.

What proof do you have? all you have is that there are less females than males and thus you jump to the conclusion that it means there is discrimination. You've provided no evidence to prove your conclusion - I assume you're another one of those people who believe that you can be anything you want with enough study.

Don't be a fool. This popped up after the first search for computer science gender stereotype: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/06/08/gender_gap_in_...

If you want to argue, I suggest you read up on what you are arguing about. Arguing for arguments sake just make you look like an idiot.

Some people have a natural inclination towards a certain field, others don't - and shock horror, males and females are different, just as individuals, we are all different. If it makes me sexist because god forbid I recognise the difference between the sexes than grade me 'sexist pig number one' of which you seem to be more than happy to do.

I too realize there are differences between the sexes, of that there is no doubt but that does not negate the social and gender stereotypes I was talking about. Plus, I never either called or implied you where a sexist so either stop putting words in my mouth or go rant somewhere else. Frankly, those kind of tactics are retarded and if you can't have a decent argument without resorting to BS like the above, you need to keep that chip on your shoulder in check.

I don't know about you - but I tend not to lock myself in my office all day; I have to work with colleagues, small talk arises, people talking about their weekends, what they did with their partner or family; so yes, it does come out eventually. Some of us are more obvious than others, so it is as 'obvious' as being a female.

No it's not. I can't tell if someone is gay by just looking at them. I can if they are female.

I never complained about colleagues talking about it - just demonstrating that there are things one doesn't like being talked about but we're adults, we can tune our brains out if one isn't interested.


And I pointed out that being alienated is not the same as tuning out. Frankly, I'm apolled by your hostile tone and your juvenile tactics. Now I know why people automatically vote your comments down. If you can't see it, you need to get your head out of your a**.

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