I have a sexist ex-girlfriend, you know, the mid-to-late-30′s type (more cliché!), with a strong opinion on what roles males and females have. Every time she did not agree with me (like most of the time in those six months, it was not because I was wrong, but either because I am a man or because I am almost a decade younger. I did not have a real chance at a person, I was reduced to the attributes “age” and “gender”, fulfilling a specific role in her life. The rest of my friends consist of a random variety of dudes and a and a not so random number of the strong woman type, born in the early to mid 80′s, growing up in an environment, where “equality”, “emancipation” and “independent woman” were not just the large goal of women rights movements, but – to a certain degree – reality. Short: They don’t take shit from us dudes. While this is nice to see, it is still irritating to hear, that it is because we are men, every time we do something wrong. I always opposed this, until one day I replied: “…and you do not understand this, because you are a woman.” Instead of more and more discussion, they seemed to be satisfied by the outcome of the situation, as if they only said such things to provoke male chauvinism.

Such things would never find entry into the public sexism debate, because…
a) …a man who says that he is “oppressed” by sexist women will automatically lose all credibility among his peers, because sexism is not only an inter-gender thing, but also used as a form of peer-control. You are no real man, if you do not do X, think Y and look like Z.
b) …the sexism debate (which used to be an equal-rights-debate) is now almost feuilleton-exclusive outside the US – at least in the so called western world. Yes, I just said, that there practically is no equal-rights movement any more, just a bunch of self-proclaimed intellectuals discussing the topic among the literate high society, a sheer number of spontaneous outbursts on blogs and twitter and the occasional radio news item about how women still do not have the same salary as men in certain positions (usually middle to upper class jobs).

I bought your book, and it was a good read, I’ve had nervous system and vestibular system troubles since the end of last year, and have found the content to be useful in this difficult period. Big thanks for writing it.

How does dwelling on political issues affect your mental health?

Another good post. I find your ability to be candid about yourself refreshing and something lacking by many in the modern world.

I read the articles by Ruth Burr and Ned Batchelder before posting this and confirmed just how far out of touch I am with the modern world. As an older female (62) I find the extreme sensitivity of the younger generation sad. As you did, I will state my bias upfront. I spent 30 years working in the service branch of the oil and natural gas exploration industry. I started in 1974 when there were few women and the rule for acceptance was “If you are going to work out here, you just have to be one of the boys”. I’ve come to believe I’ve heard and seen it all when it comes to gender bias, off color jokes, etc. A lot of the sexist behaviour still exists in the oil field today and the off color comments can be a lot worse than “hey good lookin”.

I’m not saying that outright nasty comments, sexist jokes, etc have a place in the work place (including conferences and such), but people today take seem to take every thing they think/believe as inappropriate has some form of harrassment. My roommate and I have chosen to live somewhere that if you can get called sweety or honey by the waitress in a restaurant. It’s not offensive, it’s just southern hospitality. Like you there are times I’m afraid to open my mouth for fear of ticking someone off with one of my culturally based idioms that can be offensive in nature (racial, gender, ethnic, or just plain nasty). I also hate to break the news to some of the females out there who think only men who do these types of things, I know some women who can make men blush and run for cover when they get cutesy with their comments. There are too many people today who need to get over themselves and figure out how to get along in the world. That’s my bias, a bias that comes from culture and conditioning. A bias that makes each of us an individual. IMHO if everyone were the same the world would be a boring place.

To illustrate my thought about the younger generations hypersensitivity, there was a dodo storm on http://www.perlmonks.org in response to a survey “How many man-hours would you say you’ve invested in learning perl?”. Someone actually took offense to “man-hours” and the dodo (please note use of dodo to represent what I really meant, don’t want to upset anyone with sensitive eyes/ears) was on.

I’ve had to work hard to learn to compensate for my cultural upbringing when I’m placed in a situation where it’s necessary. I got tired of pulling both feet out of my mouth. My biases are one of the reasons I don’t participate in the open source community, think big square peg in very tiny round hole.

Myra

PS: The running comment around our house is “Men have a couple of useful purposes in the world, mowing the lawn and washing dishes”.

Also interesting was your gender assignment of the conference as feminine. IIRC you referred to Pycon as “she” or other conferences as “her sister conferences.” It just struck me as funny, because in the Navy we always referred to ships that way traditionally.

All in all it sounds like you thought this through. I am not qualified to judge it one way or another. Peace. CBT

It would be hard to find out what’s good for stdlib and the language without real-world coding. Tulip was partly inspired by one of Guido’s last tasks in Google – async API for GAE.

So no, he should not retire. He’s great as he is. There’s no reason to speed up language and stdlib development. One release in a year with good graduate innovation is more than enough. How long ago did RHEL support only 2.5 and nothing newer?