[gchaix]

I didn't really intend the blog post to start a discussion about whether this specific incident at ApacheCon is legally-defined as "assault" or "battery" or "sexual abuse" or "harassment" or "insert legal term here". That's not really the point. You're right - it was a badly-worded sentence that I should have spent more time wordsmithing it. Mea culpa. My intent was to say, "things like what apparently occurred in Atlanta should never be allowed to happen. We all know it, so let's move on to looking at the greater societal issues incidents like this serve to highlight."

This is an example of a systemic problem within our community that goes beyond a single incident. I invite you to step back a bit and take a look at the attitudes reflected in the day-to-day interaction within our community. Sexist comments and jokes are common. I've been told by more than one woman that she's had to use a gender-neutral or male handle on community IRC channels and fora in order to be taken seriously and/or avoid lewd demands for topless pictures. I've never seen this sort of thing happen elsewhere. The open source community is especially bad when compared to other professional communities. As I saw someone post this weekend, "this isn't the 1960's, we aren't in a Mad Men episode." Things that haven't been acceptable in more than 50 years still occur without comment in our community. I'm trying to shine a light on the problem in an attempt to encourage us to do better.