Joe McMahon

I went back to Perlmonks for the first time in quite some time, and was greeted with by a poll titled "How many man-hours would you estimate you have invested in learning Perl?" - okay, could have been hours, not enough to make a big deal of, I'm trying not to make every interaction on the site about male privilege...aw, dammit:

None - I refuse to acknowledge the term man hours, you patriarchical pig. But I have many person-hours. And let me tell you...

Oh, COME ON.

This is going from microaggression ("man-hours") straight into pure jackassery. Straw feminists are just as much a stereotype as any other. Making jokes that require me to be complicit with a stereotyped view of the world really gets up my nose.

It sends the message that "we here at Perlmonks think this kind of thing is really funny and we don't care what you think. We especially don't care if you're the kind of person we're enjoying making fun of."

What happened to trying to be inclusive? Did you guys (and I specifically mean the men) not watch Schwern's keynote? (If you didn't watch it, there's the link - you have no excuse.)

Did I miss the memo where Perlmonks was officially declared a boys-only club, where he Internet equivalent of farting and catcalls is the dominant paradigm? Or is this just an attempt to claim of "we don't have to be civilized if we don't want to" to see if anyone will notice?

Yes, do let me tell you: I noticed. And I think it's ugly and disgusting.

Feminism does not require you to be female.

If you think "white knight" is a crap term, a convenient argument-by-dismissal tactic, then you probably already know all this, but there may be some useful ideas for the next time someone attempts to spring this on you.

On the other hand, if you're one of those who think it's the scored-the-touchdown-high-five-we're-done-here way out of any situation where you've said or done something crappy and then been called on it, you're probably not going to read this anyway, but I shall go ahead and write it so you will have to waste energy making up increasingly vituperative denials which …

First, a huge thank-you to all the folks who have commented on my post (whether they agree with it or not) and who have followed up on Perlmonks to say "well, I think this might be correct" - or not, as long as it's not about me, but about the topic. I think it's important to talk about what happened, even if no one's mind is directly changed.

I'm afraid that at least one of the participants feels singled out, which was not my intention. I am truly sorry that this person feels att…

A couple days ago, a comic strip was posted to Perlmonks that really got up my nose. For those of you who don’t want to bother linking through, the strip compares Perl with Moose to Perl having a “boob job”, then wanders off into creepy territory because sexualization and creepiness are really, really funny, right?

This bothers me, as it’s not friendly to the women in our community – and I said so. You can read the response I’ve gotten so far. They’re all pretty much ignoring the fact that sexualizing a computer program (with the added implication of large breasts being equivalent to personal value) is exactly the kind of thing that makes women feel unwelcome by focusing on “well, ‘boob job’ is a perfectly fine term” and “I bet you do feel uncomfortable imagining you’re female!”. (By the way, no, I don’t. This is that funny thing called “empathy”.)

I’ve mentioned the atmosphere of disrespect toward women previously in other threads and gotten solidly downvoted for it – and had to repeatedly defend the idea that maybe everyone ought to consider whether the boys’ club atmosphere isn’t something we ought to change.

I linked Schwern’s YAPC keynote – and I get the impression that the audience is mostly made up of the people who “thought it was a downer”. (It’s good to see that there are members of the Perl community who don’t think this.)

This depresses me. Perlmonks can be tremendously valuable, but it seems to me that the loudest voices are not listening to things they really need to hear. It’s not all about the tech; it’s about helping people, whoever they are, get more out of Perl.

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