Originally posted by F i L
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Most people in this thread who have responded negatively to Xorg's program are for gender-neutrality not misogamy. They might not be stating it as eloquently as myself or F i L, but the message is pretty clear. While I can't speak for others I don't believe that discrimination is the answer to discrimination perceived or real. All that does is set up an Us vs Them situation which perpetuates the status quo, thus resulting in exactly the kind of behavior seen in this thread where those pushing for real equality are automatically labeled as misogamist pigs.
The reality is equality can only happen when we're not sorting people into boxes and instead dealing with them as the individuals they actually are at every level. This doesn't mean we shouldn't be examining how various subsections of the populace operate, but that we should be treating individuals based on who they actually are not what they are. This means we shouldn't be defending someone just because they're female, paying deference just because someone is old, or following other similar social constructs. Instead we should be examining the individual themselves and not kneejerking just because they belong to group A, but instead treating them as appropriate based upon our examination of them as the individual they are. This is also not to say labels don't apply to people. Someone can be a woman, a furry, an anime fan, a NEET, or whatever, but that only answers the what not the who.
Now let's think about the following question: Who codes? The answer is nerds and geeks, and pretty much nobody else. Why? Well to put it quite simply at least in American culture it's not cool to be interested in technology, or actually much of anything. Instead you have to be either a sports star, a shallow but famous actor/actress, or the latest boy band to be cool. As a society we're told we're not allowed to have interests in other things, and that instead we are to aspire to be cookie cutter people that nobody actually likes.
So how do we change this? At least for the IT sector we have to promote the general public actually being interested in technology and promoting things like coding and actually being interesting people as a result. How do we do this? We have to target the youth. How do we do that? Teach your kids (and anyone else willing to learn) to code, explore different operating systems, and put together their own computers, and support organizations like http://code.org that are trying to push IT into K-12 schools. You do that and you make IT interesting and cool and as a side effect achieve your goal of drawing women into the community.
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