This is the meme I needed. Thank you!
Not pictured: elitist chuds that are really angry about the trans and furry community, and think Linux and other open source communities were ruined by code of conducts.
They are unwelcome, and we troll and downvote them every time
Does Linux cause some amount of autism or is it the other way around? Nah, nevermind. It works and most other things in my life don’t.
As a dark-hooded sweater guy, I’m feeling personally insulted.
Yeah but are you also wearing stockings?
No sorry.
I think the abundance of trans women (≈ women who were raised as boys) is proof the social conditioning the only factor in why there aren’t more women in STEM fields. Women love this shit just as much as men, but they’re actively steered away from it.
(Yes, women face other challenges beyond lack of exposure, but I think all of them can be traced back to social factors as well, such as how men are conditioned to treat women.)
I have a different theory.
When you buy a desktop or laptop 99.9% of them will come with Windows preinstalled. Unless you get an Apple product, but than its 100% macOS.
So everyone running Linux has chosen to not go for the easy option, but spend some time and effort to install something they prefer.
So that immediately is a filter, where people that just go for the default easy option are filtered out.
So it makes total sense the Linux community has more people that are not afraid to choose a path they perfer instead of just doing what everyone else does, because doing something else is harder and for many people scary.
My experience (and this is purely anecdotal) is that the hacker/cybersecuruty community is also like this and has a lot of trans people compared to the total population.
Your theory doesn’t really hold up, because with that explanation you’d expect an abundance of trans woman in many other traditionally male dominated fields as well.
The more likely explanation is that both being trans and being heavily invested in Linux to the point you visit conferences correlate to being neurodivergent.
That said the other part is true: there are probably many women who’s talent and interest in STEM was never properly nurtured. From my personal experience in the field I can say that my female colleagues are just as competent as my good male colleagues, but I’m yet to encounter a grossly incompetent female colleague. My theory is that woman need higher dedication and talent to overcome the adversary that unfortunately still exists, resulting in a higher skill floor.
I think neurodivergence is only part of it. As someone different, but not trans, who often dealt with discrimination for seeming obviously gay, part of the reason is that when dealing with people you can be nice and do everything right and be treated horribly because of being different, but computers have no bias. So if you do things right with computers, you win. Even with other subjects like math or science, there is some level of interacting with people who may be prejudiced that just isn’t there when you spend 30 hours figuring out some new computer thing on your own. Also your interactions may be remote and involve more smart logical people. With math, usually some learning as to how to deal with hard problems needs to be done by interacting with people not via email or forums or lists. My point is I think some trans women could just as easily become great engineers or great mathematicians or grear car repair techs, but the nature of learning computers reducing disrespect.
Your conclusion is probably correct, but I don’t think your proof works. I’m going to play devil’s advocate now: The thing to consider here is that these women were not just raised as boys, they were also born as boys. They may be on HRT now, but what if there are differences between how the male and female brains work that come from the Y chromosome? Or your hormonal balance in your formative years? I would hope not because that gives sexists way too much ammo, but we do not know for sure.
There’s other potential reasons for all the trans women in software engineering too. Children who don’t feel comfortable in their own identities are probably way less social - I don’t have enough trans friends to confirm this is true, but I feel like it might be. Not being particularly popular in school drives you to gaming as a hobby because you don’t need friends for that, and at least in the 90s and 00s that would usually mean tinkering with your PC (because Windows never fucking worked properly, did it now). This would also explain all the furries IMO.
but what if there are differences between how the male brain and female brains work that come from the Y chromosome?
This assumes that trans women are born with a male brain. The consensus of the scientific community says that this is false - being born with a female brain in a male body is how someone is born trans which further supports the argument you are responding to.
I’m paraphrasing here but essentially the SRY gene (that stimulates production of androgens in a fetus) is released at a different time than the formation of the brain. So it is possible, but rare for someone to be born with a brain that doesn’t match their body and poof that’s where trans people come from.
EDIT:
That’s quite interesting and actually a very useful step in proving what the comment above mine was trying to prove.
Furry sysadmin and trans girl reporting here lol
I’ll never forget dialling into a work meeting with the corporate infosec team who we needed some guidance from.
Their rep shows up and it’s a fem-presenting person with pink cat-ear headphones.
I’m like oh fuck they sent the big guns, this is exactly who we needed to talk to. And I was right, we got exactly what we needed.
Was she wearing cargo pants? Did she have a subway map poster on her wall?
The old adage “The worst-dressed nerd in the meeting is the most important one” could use some updating for the modern era to include trans folks with really good fits…
I read that last word wrong a few times
We also appreciate those. But not actively, at least not while in a professional setting. That’d be rude.
A cat explains DNS…
I am contributing to the “trans girls everywhere for some reason”
Furry sysadmin here, also trans but not a girl =D
You don’t need the “like” on the end
I would argue that’s the cool part. You also have the average hyper racist neo-reactionary Suckless fossid user who thinks daring to write in anything other than C is “gay” or smth.
As a gay trans man, looking down on people who code in anything other than C is my toxic masculinity. Don’t let reactionaries take it away from me.
You’re not a real man if you use an IDE. Vim and gcc were good enough for the founding fathers (D & R), they’re good enough for me.
real men write their code one bit at a time with a laser pointer and a fiber optic network cable
Or you could just use zig which is better at compiling C than C (the second it supports the espressif chips I’m never touching C again)
Once you incorporate networking, you’ve lost me. I’d rather implement ed on a billion NAND chips. Soldering is enjoyable and physical; networking gives me aneurysms.
BGP isnt just Turing complete, It’s Cthulhu complete
I use an IDE… guess I’m not a real man anymore 🏳️⚧️
/s
I believe in your right to access gender affirming care (installing netbeans)
Psh, etch the code directly onto the HDD platters, SSDs are for losers.
I had a discussion with someone who was of the belief that anyone that doesn’t build their own packages and reads the documentation is a lazy retard that doesn’t know what they’re installing on their computer.
That was a fun conversation
I assume they were a Gentoo user?
Oi bruv don’t shoot strays at us
Gentoo have both sides, the cool community and the suckless community xD You can check it in the telegram groups about gentoo
Spot on, you have similar experiences?
Nope. Just that your description fits Gentoo XD
It was such a weird conversation. He couldn’t imagine people not being interested in how a computer works and wanting to configure everything.
What did Suckless ever do to you ??😅
What does suckless have to do with that?
Both pics are accurate at times
Every sentence also ends in a :3
:3
sudo rm -rf / no-preserve-root :3
mint: lisa frank edition (and i’m here for it)
It’s missing Libertarian idiots
🐎💩<- Libertarian idiots
It’s either “how it looks” or “what it looks like”. You can’t mix and match.
Thank you, came here to say this. It really feels like people are fighting over having the worst grammar, like there’s something to win from it. Even basic stuff like this is apparently too hard to comprehend.
That is hardly basic if you aren’t a native speaker.