Again it repeats and I still don’t like this circle.
After getting clee to add the RSS feed for the new blog to planetkde (you rock clee) I promised him I’d blog about something Real Soon Now. I was going to blog about the new crazy high resolution monitor I’d bought (2048×1536!) as well as some of the writing I’ve done over the last few weeks related to KDE promotion & marketing.
Then a friend pointed me to a comment on dot.kde.org. Now I’m going to rant about women in OSS again instead.
I really enjoy reading the ‘People Behind KDE’ series, particularly when the issue features contributers whom I’m not so familiar with. I was very interested to read about Celeste and her work in the most recent article, especially since we’ve only exchanged a few words. I did not enjoy reading the comments posted to the news story announcing the article.
This constant focus on the physical appearance of female contributers is absurd and more than a little offensive. Posting ‘zomg she is teh cutie’ on an article that focuses on a person’s technical contributions is always innapropriate, no matter how kindly it is meant. It demeans them when their technical acheivements and skill are ignored in favour of discussion about their attractiveness, as though that was the most important or interesting point about them. The gender of a contributer should be completely irrelevant in this context. Tom Chance, Sebastian Kugler, Kevin Ottens, and a multitude of other talented and forward thinking men have recently been interviewed and lifted up to community appreciation and commendation without being objectified in this way. Isn’t it reasonable for us girls to expect the same?