Before I start on what will surely become a controversial post, let me prefix this with a giant disclaimer: I do think that all of these communities can be very useful and important to large numbers of women. I'm just struggling to see where they fit into my world.
Thinking back over the years that I've been involved in IT and geek communities, I've only been involved in the female support groups for maybe 3 of them. My first introduction to these was Debian Women, and while I'm not active in any way in the Debian community, I can remember being terrified of asking questions on mailing lists because I had seen how prickly that community could be, and Debian Women provided a helpful (and prickle-free) place to ask questions.
For some reason it was much later that I joined Linuxchix, and other than lurking on mailing lists, the occasional post and setting up their Moodle installation, I've never become particularly active there, either.
So perhaps I'm not the target audience. Or rather, a more accurate way to put that is: Perhaps I'm not the target audience anymore. I suspect that the time that these groups are the most helpful is for women who are trying to break into a geeky career (or hobby) and finding it a bit daunting. I used to get all torn up going to conferences and being mistaken for someone's girlfriend, but these days I have enough confidence in myself and in my standing as a giant nerdy-nerd, that it wouldn't affect me more than the passing annoyance of having to set someone in their place again. It doesn't affect my self esteem anymore.
This undoubtedly means that my place in these sorts of communities should now be of a more senior support role, helping younger women who are just starting to go through this, and I feel bad that I don't take that role on. I do mentoring in more official capacities (like GSOC), but not so much in the female oriented communities.
So why am I writing that I am disillusioned with it, rather than just saying, 'not for me' and moving on? The answer is that there are a few things about these communities that I find frustrating.
The first is the picking of battles thing. I watched recently a thread about the gender of the main character in a game, and what could be done about it. And to be honest, it kind of baffled me. Surely, there are bigger, more important battles to fight? I'm not a gamer, never have been. The closest I ever got was playing games like Kings Quest when I was little - and no, the fact that I was playing a male character trying to rescue a princess never deterred me in the slightest. I guess a predictable response to that is that the gender stereotypes had been so deeply ingrained into me, even at such an early age, that I didn't question it. But really - I just can't see how this is important in the grand scheme of things. Surely, surely there are worse problems to solve?
And the second reason is one that, more than just bewilders me, actively pisses me off: The most interpersonal difficulty I've had in recent years with peers in the geek community has been with women. I don't understand this (although I can make amateur psych-101 type guesses) and I find it really irritating. Maybe this is because I have a base expectation that we would be by-default supportive of eachother, being minority players together, rather than in competition, an assumption that is perhaps naïve of me, but I find it just flattens me everytime when I encounter it.
So this is not a linuxchix-ragequit or anything like that, I still read the mailing lists with interest and occasionally un-lurk and post something myself. It's more a reaching out to other geek women to remind me of the value these communities offer.
