Alex McLeanI've been thinking a lot about what a friend pointed out - that mixed gendered spaces often quickly become male-exclusive because men tend to have much higher tolerance for arsehole behaviour than women, so it only takes one dodgy person to destroy a community as all the women basically leave. Once such a community has heavy male bias it can hardly recover, and its lack of representation means it can hardly succeed in any social, cultural or technical aims. Rings true for the extraordinarily bad gender balance in free/open source software in the context of the Stallman report.
masukomi@yaxu also men are used to just getting their way by being the loudest and ignoring the needs or interests of the women near them. Even when they're not "dodgy" or intentionally being a dick, it's the default for our society.
@masukomi Absolutely, I have recent extreme experience of this in a senior academic context, everyone nice enough but by the end the men were basically taking turns point scoring. When it got called out things got _very_ defensive and then they carried on the same way (well this bit was 'dodgy'). Anecdotally though this seems to be getting better with younger generations?
@yaxu re younger gen. Who can say. left to their own devices they seem to be skewing more open minded and accepting, meanwhile, half of them are growing up in states that are becoming increasingly fascist, homophobic and disregarding of the idea that women should have any say over their lives or bodies .
people aren’t bigoted by default but if you grow up in an environment where that bigotry is “normal“ you don’t know that you’re being a bigot and the cycle continues
@masukomi Yes definitely a mixed picture here in the UK as well