The social lot of women might be treated with scientific linkspam (29 April 2014)

This linkspam is sadly a special edition; it’s all “terrible week in tech” links. We know there’s more to geekdom, look out for less-tech-still-geek linkspam tomorrow.

• Meagan Waller created Days Since Last Tech Incident (April 26): “The Tech Industry Has Gone 0 Days Without An Incident. Previous Record: 0 Days”
• Today in Tabs: Meet the Gentlemen of Technology | Rusty Foster at Newsweek (April 25): “Welcome to the technology industry! Did you think tech has a totally screwed up, savagely misogynist culture? You don’t even know the half of it.”
• Gurbaksh Chabal’s domestic violence conviction:
  • Warning for detailed description of domestic violence Gurbaksh Chahal and My Mom | Stephen Espinosa at Medium (April 25): “Please understand their our women like my mom, men like me, who have been affected by Domestic Violence that power the company you are about to take public. Please do the right thing.”
  • Exclusive: CEO Gurbaksh Chahal Fired by RadiumOne Board | Kara Swisher at Re/code (April 26): “According to sources, Gurbaksh Chahal has been fired by the board of RadiumOne, directly related to his conviction for battery and domestic violence.”
  • Geek Feminism wiki coverage, including links to Chahal’s apologia if you really want them.
• After finding Shanley’s What Can Men Do? | Medium (November 17, 2013) not to his tone-policing taste, Jeff Atwood wrote his own “What Can Men Do” post | Coding Horror via Do Not Link (April 25) initially not acknowledging or linking Shanley. Reactions:
  • Shanley | Twitter (April 26): “I took screenshots. here is @codinghorror insulting my post which he has since plagiarized pic.twitter.com/vNkoGsyUF3“
  • Sara Chipps | Twitter (April 26) wrote that Atwood providing approving quotes of her work, In which I answer all of the questions (October 7, 2012), didn’t mean she endorsed Atwood’s actions or post: “I don’t agree with it at all”
  • Re: What Can Men Do? | Jacob Kaplan-Moss (April 25): “TL;DR: Ignore Jeff; read Shanley.”
  • What (Else) Can Men Do? Grow The Fuck Up. | Matt LeMay at Medium (April 28): “Boys who like computers are taught that we DESERVE sexual attention from women. We need to get over it.”
• More GitHub responses:
  • I’m angry because I’m afraid | Ellen Chisa (April 22): “Let’s say I want to start a company (I do!)… What if something bad happened to me? Another venture partner did something wrong? Another executive from a portfolio company? Marc [Andreesen]’s statements make me wary that he wouldn’t have my back in that situation. He’d have the other, male, founders. Seems more that someone would try to discredit me, cover it up, and support the male founder instead.”
  • Harassment and openness | Chad Whitacre at Gittip blog (April 24): “But open companies, like open source, are not magic pixie dust. One lesson we’re taking away from GitHub is that a flat organizational structure has challenges. There may be no clear path or authority figure to go to for conflict resolution.”
  • An apology: I’m done being “acceptable.” | Liz Abinante (April 24): “Since I joined the tech community, I have worked very hard to be acceptable. I have tried to be the ‘acceptable feminist,’ and I’ve done this because I thought it would protect me from the problems present in tech. I really thought that if I was a nice, ‘reasonable’, friendly, middle-ground person, I’d be safe. Turns out that isn’t how it works.”

It seems more than justified to conclude with the opening of Model View Culture‘s Abuse issue (coming out over the next few days):

• Abuse as DDoS | Julie Pagano: “DDoS attacks are abuse of computer systems until they slow down, stop working, and often eventually fail. Abuse of human beings has a similar impact. People dealing with abuse stop being their best, stop working, and eventually fail.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs.  If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, Delicious or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.