pre-post-mortem
When I put up my last post asking for a show of hands from women in python, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I’m not exactly well-known in python outside of some of the testing guys and the guys I work with, and I did a poor job of publicizing the post. In fact, all I did was link it on twitter and on my livejournal; other people took care of the rest for me. (Thanks, other people!)
It’s turned out rather well, though! I knew it was more than eight, and I know it’s more than have commented, but it’s really cool to see all these women showing up and talking a little bit about how they use python. It’s equally cool how diverse their experiences and projects are: everything from “sometimes I use it at home to get links into delicious” to “I use it as part of my high-energy physics research.” Comments continue to trickle in, and I smile every time.
… well, almost every time. There have been, unsurprisingly, a number of trollish comments that I’ve deleted (and mocked, of course). There was also the dude who came by to give me helpful advice on how to ask a question in order to get a more definitive answer. “Are you a woman in python,” he claimed, was too broad, too open to interpretation.
And that, I say, is part of the point: I want it to be open to interpretation. I think the ways in which we interpret questions can be telling. What right do I have to make a list of things you have to do to be “in python”? I wondered how many people would comment to say they use python, but they’re not a “real” programmer. Why do we say that? How common is it for a woman to say, “well, I write a few scripts in my spare time,” and have that be brushed off because, in some way, “it doesn’t count”? I don’t know, but I’m not going to do it. If you’re a woman, and you consider yourself to be “in python,” whatever that means to you, then that’s good enough for me.
More later. This has stirred up a lot of thinky thoughts for me.
[By the way, if you feel like asking, "why does this matter?" or "who cares about gender when we are so awesomely post-feminism?" (as a few people already have) then I will direct you to this site and delete your comment.]
JenniferP
Sunday, 16th August 2009 at 4:44 pm
You are, officially, a feminist on the internet.
I am not in Python, but I really like what you say about women automatically saying “I’m not a real [profession or activity-doer], I just [do the activity, sometimes as part of my job].” A sad but understandable deflection, and sometimes the only way to avoid lengthy arguments about minutiae with Aspie nerds
pam
Sunday, 16th August 2009 at 6:32 pm
Yeah, I say it myself pretty regularly. And sometimes I couch it a bit, like, I’ll say “I’m not a real developer,” because I’m not — I do not develop applications. But probably I am a real programmer, and it’s been unexpectedly difficult for me to embrace that as part of my identity.
Also: In the interests of Social Justice 2009, let us have a Socially Awkward Guy moment on the internet! I love you, but please refrain from using insults like “aspie nerds” on this blog. I have good friends with Asperger’s (and assume you do, too; I trust you to realize I’m not saying you are Evil), and seeing it made me pretty uncomfortable. I’ve been working on excising insults like “lame” from my vocabulary for a few months, and it’s definitely rough going sometimes, but I am also having a pretty great time coming up with increasingly cutting and precise insults. Fear my wrath scalpel!
[Wow, that was really really amazingly stressful. I'm going back to French now. Oh god.]
JenniferP
Friday, 11th September 2009 at 6:20 pm
Hey, I meant to drop by here before and apologize for my language about Aspergers’ – that was uncool and you were right and not awkward to call me out on it.
Lindsey Kuper
Sunday, 16th August 2009 at 9:26 pm
How common is it for a woman to say, “well, I write a few scripts in my spare time,” and have that be brushed off because, in some way, “it doesn’t count”?
I had to think pretty hard about whether I wanted to add my name to the list, because I didn’t want to make the mistake you’re describing. But I can’t bring myself to honestly say that I’m “in Python”. I’ve written maybe 300 lines of Python in my life, and that was in a fairly short burst that I couldn’t sustain — nothing against Python, I just had too much other stuff to work on.
I think the phrase “in Python” is problematic for some folks, because it sounds like shorthand for “member of the Python community”. What about folks who write a lot of Python but don’t participate in the community at all? They might feel the phrase doesn’t apply to them. But if we instead say “women who write Python”, we risk leaving out women who do awesome Python-community stuff but don’t necessarily write Python themselves. Or what about women who work on Jython or CPython or IronPython, none of which are, you know, actually written in Python?
Anyway, I’m glad the word is spreading about the list. I see a few names that I think ended up there because of me. Awesome!
pam
Sunday, 16th August 2009 at 9:59 pm
Yeah, these are totally valid questions. As one person who commented over there said, she uses python the way she uses Firefox or gmail or whatever, and isn’t part of the community (and, presumably, sees no reason to be). I was also talking to my roommate about it, who works in software and has a few women who work for him who mostly write python, but they’re not members of the community. And that’s totally fair and valid; being “a member of the python community” requires a lot of spoons and a certain degree of interest that many people just don’t have (including, at times, me). It’s just it comes up so often — “why aren’t there more women in python?” — and I don’t even know where to start. Is it that there aren’t a lot of women even using it in the first place? Or are they using it and just aren’t members of the community? Or they do consider themselves members of the community but just aren’t very active? And if they’re not members of the community, is it because the community is unwelcoming or because they just don’t feel like it? Etc etc. And I think it’s fairly relevant to those who want more female involvement in python, because it’s one thing if women just aren’t using python, and a totally different thing if they’re using it but feel the community isn’t open to them.
Catherine Devlin
Wednesday, 19th August 2009 at 10:03 am
Just wanted to make sure you’ve heard about the Diversity mailing list for Python:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/diversity
It’s, um, not a perfect list (kind of suffered a bout of Internet Flamefest just now) but it’s one obvious place for conversations on these lines.
(maybe you already are there, I just can’t map blog titles to email addresses)
Catherine Devlin
Wednesday, 19th August 2009 at 10:06 am
Oops, never mind, just figured out who you are and you’re already there.
Well, maybe the comment will be a useful link for other readers, anyway.
pam
Wednesday, 19th August 2009 at 10:07 am
Heh. I’m there! I’m not saying much, because I really, really dislike mailing lists, but I’m reading. (This is me.)