Biella Coleman: On Confidence, Geekdom, and Desire
So a few folks left some interesting comments in response to my link to the article on the rise of the alpha-girl based on the research of Harvard psychologist, Dan Kindlon. My response to both Joe and Karl is that it is worthy to lower the barriers to entry not because girls will change the cultural ecology of geekdom in positive ways (though they may) or because geekdom is inherently “omg totally awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” but for a much more mundane reason: it may allow girls to follow interests and eventually discover a passion. I think it is a great idea if more women were involved in geekdom and open source development not because it is inherently great but because I am sure there a lot of women out there who would enjoy it (and by extension, I am sure a lot who would not). By highlighting this article I am not advocating some forced hacker-female-labor-migration-policy but pointing to the fact that social conditions outside of geekdom play a role in ensuring more participation among women. But let me explain a few things before I argue my position a little further.
First a little clarification, especially now that I have read the article. By alpha the author does not mean dominant, aggressive, and totally jerky, which is what might immediately come to mind when you read/hear alpha (especially if one knows any alpha-geeks or alpha-lawyers for that matter, who are much worse, imho). And I certainly don’t want any more alpha-anything (alpha-women, alpha-dogs, alpha-cats, alpha-hamsters ) given our world is already chock-full of alpha-jerks. By using the term, the author basically means confidence, which apparently is on the rise among girls, leaving them much more likely to be go-getters, undaunted by explicit and implicit barriers and obstacles and thus more likely then ever to enter arenas that have been thought of as traditionally male or in fact totally dominated by males. If this trend is indeed in place, I think it is great and I hope that this eventually translates into more girls/women populating traditionally male areas whether it is neurology, movie directing, hacking, or surfing.
What I appreciate about the article is that his research can help us question the idea that women are naturally averse to competition due to their estrogenic hormones while boys, brimming with testosterone, just love it and exude it. I never identified with that conventional well-worn script, in part because I guess I am fairly confident and somewhat competitive. Being in academia for the last 10 years, I have witnessed a lot of really confident women that have helped inspire me and keep me going, especially when times got rough.
What is fascinating about the article (and by extension probably his book) is that gender parity and equity and changes in the psychological makeup of women have not changed overnight but have taken a much longer time to settle in place. We are only now bearing the fruits of structural and educational changes first instituted decades ago and that tackled some serious forms of discrimination. As a result, we are seeing girls and women donning a deeper confidence that may help them participate with more success in the arenas they want to whether it be sports or in the workplaces (though there are certainly still major barriers and issues, which are addressed in the article).
So why would someone want to participate in the world of free software and hacking in particular? My first answer is there may be any number of reasons why anyone, female or male or transgender or whatever, may want to do so for the love of technology, to feel an intense belonging to a community who share your passions and who work together to create something with a lot of value, to enjoy the challenge of learning, to spread freedom to every corner of the earth, etc… It is not that geekdom is inherently fun and exciting but that it will be interesting to some slice of the population men or women (or other) and what is the harm in lowering the barriers to entry, especially if it brings enjoyment and frankly a lot of economic security too?
There are a number of girls/women who already find it worthwhile and I am sure many more who would. And the point is not to create some policy to make sure that we shuttle women into hackerdom but as a society we should equip them with the necessary psychological tools so that if they think this is worthwhile, and discover that they love it, etc, they will dare to venture in there and more importantly, stay if they want to.
In terms of Karls point that a lot of people are professional geeks in part because they d have trouble being anything else; like being gay, it s not a choice, I think that is far too narrow of an assessment, not to mention an outdated caricature of geeks. While there is certainly a class of socially awkward geeks (if that is what you mean??), I would say they are in the minority though they may certainly stand out precisely because they are the odd ducks and because the stereotype is so entrenched. Many geeks I have met, while they may pretty darn focused on geekdom, also have full and rich lives/personalities that cannot be easily collapsed into one immutable personality type. Yes they may be obsessed with tech but aren’t doctors, academics, musicians, lawyers sort of fanatical too? I spend like my whole week working on academic stuff (part of necessity, part out of love). And at least hacking has way better conferences and economic perks, which may help explain why people stay 
Finally, I think you assume a little to strongly that we do what we do because we have a pre-formed existing desired to do so. While I think this is the case for many things (and I knew the minute I learned about anthropology, I wanted to be one, which was odd but it proved to be correct), I think desire is also formed as much through experience and hence the importance of exposure to different worlds and experiences. I know that there are many things I could have never imagined I would have loved–karoake and sailing are two things that come to mind—until I tried them about both took some degree of courage. In the later case, it took a lot of guts to move onto some ship at the age of 18 instead of going to college and I am so glad I did. This is an instance where confidence and an initial curiosity led to discovering a love and passion I never knew I had. So if desire can be formed and not just expressed, I think it is key to make sure people have all sorts of opportunities to cultivate the passions they never knew they had.
Finally, I think you assume a little to strongly that we do what we do because we have a pre-formed existing desired to do so. While I think this is the case for many things (and I knew the minute I learned about anthropology, I wanted to be one, which was odd but it proved to be correct), I think desire is also formed as much through experience and hence the importance of exposure to different worlds and experiences. I know that there are many things I could have never imagined I would have loved–karoake and sailing are two things that come to mind—until I tried them about both took some degree of courage. In the later case, it took a lot of guts to move onto some ship at the age of 18 instead of going to college and I am so glad I did. This is an instance where confidence and an initial curiosity led to discovering a love and passion I never knew I had. So if desire can be formed and not just expressed, I think it is key to make sure people have all sorts of opportunities to cultivate the passions they never knew they had.
It’s incredible how one troll can split a channel up. It’s incredible how the sexist shit can be spread all over the place. It’s incredible, not wait, not incredible, it’s sad, sadder and sadder, to see what Debian has become. The Debian social life has become a center for dramas of all kinds, since sexist traumas, transgenders issues, people with too much free time, real good technical people leaving, freaking big farts in Debian thinking on leaving the project, elitist dolls clubs, small wannabes who think they can treat other people unrespectful. Debian itself is now its own slow killer. There has always been old people, new people, people leaving and people entering, but when you see other projects just as good as we were, some of us remain because of the social side of Debian. But is it really worthwhile? Perhaps not anymore.
And because of the non-sense shit from the debian-women mailing list thread, here are a few random greps on my old logs:
I am very saddened by the state of the IT industry. It seems like nearly
everyone who works in or around IT is, to put it bluntly, a cowboy. There
appears to be very little desire for actually helping people;
instead all I see is a very large number of people circling around looking
for the next person they can make a quick buck off. In short, most of the
IT industry is composed of people who are little better than shysters and
conmen.
As a case in point, I recently had contact with someone who is trying to
get an online store running. They've been trying, unsuccessfully so far,
for several months. They've been screwed over by basically every
IT-related person they've had contact with so far. Now, after all of
their suffering, they've finally gotten in contact with me. Most of their
money is gone, and they're deeply behind schedule. So I'm left trying to
pull a miracle job in little time and with little money. Yes, I could
shoo them away, because they're asking for more than they can afford, but
there's a little spark of helpfulness left in me, and I'll try to get them
going as best they can with what they've got.
If they'd found someone competent right at the beginning, they'd have been
fine. They started with sufficient cash and time to produce a good end
result. But chancing upon someone decent doesn't have good odds in IT;
it's a bit like winning the lottery.
This story isn't unique in my personal experience, by any stretch. There
seems to be a near-endless procession of non-technical people who come out
of their encounters with the IT industry battered and bruised, whether it
be on the web, in their business infrastructure, or their personal
computing needs.
While it's easy to blame the customer for not managing themselves and
their computing properly, I don't think it's fair to lay the blame on them
-- to me, that's like blaming the patient for dying on the operating
table, when the responsibility must lie, prima facie, with the surgeon.
It's the surgeon, after all, who is the (presumably) trained and
experienced professional in the relationship, and it is his
responsibility, primarily, to ensure that everything goes smoothly[
One says the eyes are the mirror of the soul. I made this experience back in easter for the first time. I was over at my brother's place for easter celebration when I got up in the morning, went into the bath and looked into the mirror for morning toilet. I washed my face like always with cold water to refresh myself, and when I removed my hands... I was sure I was looking into a female face. It quite a lot bewildered me; it was the first time this happened. And I wasn't even properly shaved...
Ein ‘grml-live -t /dev/shm -c GRMLBASE,I386 -s etch’ und keine 5(!) Minuten sp ter hab ich dann mein 135MB kleines grml:
Mit grml-live kann man sich somit seine pers nlich angepasste Linux Live-CD erstellen, ohne sich erst mit 
I spend a few hours today trying to get Scalix to work right...I managed to be able to loginto the admin console at the end, yay!Still: it seems that it's pretty much unusable except by Outlook (maybe,
I havn't tried that).The reason is simple: they don't let me log into the web mail. With none
of my browsers. Because they havn't understood what
'