The Rails community seems to be on the verge of imploding, not necessarily because of a [particular event](http://www.ultrasaurus.com/sarahblog/2009/04/gender-and-sex-at-gogaruco/) but because of the [response by Rails leadership](http://afreshcup.com/2009/04/28/a-painful-decision/) to the event and their lack of meaningful reflection on why this happened.
This event has been well commented on, so I won’t go in to all the details, but unsurprisingly the best comments I’ve read so far have come from women, in particular [Audrey Eschright](http://dyepot-teapot.com/2009/04/25/dear-fellow-rubyists/). It’s good to see meaningful discussion in that community but I think the proposed solution of increased “professionalism” is counterproductive and generating an even more hostile response from [Rails leadership](http://loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-individual).
Professionalism doesn’t have a good history of promoting equality. After segregation “professional” was one of many code words for “white male” and even after many years when non-white males began entering the work force the idea of professionalism served to strip people of their culture and identity to better fit in to a white male dominated environment. For those of us in open source, and especially those who have left traditional corporations, we identify “professionalism” as the way corporations turn people in to plastic dolls in suites that can talk to other plastic dolls from other corporations at trade shows without getting “off message”. Luckily, we aren’t talking about a corporation here, we’re talking about a community and community isn’t about professionals it’s about people.
I think people see professionalism as a solution to this problem because it provides a way for us to change people’s conduct that we disagree with without actually changing people or how they think they should conduct themselves in a community. The real problem here is that some **people** think it’s just fine to engage in public conduct that knowingly excludes people and doesn’t help include or encourage any new participation.
When news of this little outburst broke I have to say I wasn’t surprised that it happened in the Rails community. All tech communities have a low number of female participants, this is something nobody is great at yet, but for some time now Rails has been the worst offender. In the early days Rails was promoted by DHH in what, at the time, sounded like a great strategy: Attack dominant technologies (Java) and piss people off that use them long enough to check out your stuff. This strategy generated huge buzz and lead to one of the fastest adoptions of a new technology I’ve ever seen and it’s worth noting that the technology was actually so good that people could go from being a pissed off Java developer to a Rails developer in a relatively short amount of time.
But the biggest problem with DHH’s strategy was that it was hostile and it intentionally excluded a large number of people who were invested in the old technology and couldn’t get over being pissed off at DHH. The first thing DHH will say is “well, we don’t want or care about those people”, and he’s right, Rails doesn’t need those people. But when you, as the leader of a project, are hostile and partake in action that **intentionally excludes people**, regardless of who those people are, it creates an environment where others see no need to alter their behavior not to exclude people.
I’m really disheartened by [DHH's "I'm an R rated individual" post](http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/39-im-an-r-rated-individual), because it’s not that he’s wrong, he’s actually right, he should be able to be an individual in the community he’s built, but if he doesn’t intentionally curb some of his behavior he’s going to encourage exaggerations of the worst parts of his personality by the example he sets. It’s great that DHH loves Louis C.K and his dick jokes, but that doesn’t mean he would intentionally start a keynote with them, he knows better, and that’s what makes the difference and that’s what is so wrong with Matt’s talk, he knew before he went up there that this would make a lot of people uncomfortable and discourage participation from women and he did it anyway.
In order to lead an inclusive community you have to encourage participation and allow everyone to be individuals. If you treat everyone with respect, no matter who they are and no matter what they do, others will conduct themselves the same way. It’s always easier to respond to hostility with hostility but all you’re doing is creating an environment where hostility is the norm and it’s alright to exclude people.
The kind of communities we want are not impossible, in fact we get closer and closer every day. I’m lucky enough to be at [#moz09](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23moz09) this week, and I’m looking around at over 200 people from different cultures from around the world none of which seem to be trying to hide who they are or where they came from for some notion of “professionalism” and everyone treats each other with respect and every day we gather more participation from a broader set of individuals. We aren’t perfect, we’re never where we want to be, but we should be confident we’re going in the right direction.
It’s not about professionalism or about people. It’s about maturity.
The problem with the tech field in general and the Rails community in particular is that it is filled with stunted individuals who appear to believe that their programming skills relieve them of any responsibility to act maturely. Immature and even puerile behavior is not only rampant throughout the tech community (and many others, of course), it is often held up as a sort of badge of honor: proof that the bearer is a free individual.
This same emotional and psychological retardation is reflected in the high number of libertarians among the tech crowd. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that elevates the “rights of the individual” to the level of a fetish. DHH’s “I’m an R Rated Person” reflects exactly this attitude, namely, the idea that he has some sort of right to do whatever he pleases, and that everyone else can go to hell if they don’t like it. That this attitude is anti-social in the extreme should be obvious to everyone.
As for dick jokes, the question is not, When are they appropriate? The question is, Why would anyone find a dick joke funny in the first place? That which makes us laugh reveals our inner selves. Adults don’t find dick jokes funny, they find them sad and pathetic. Children like jokes about dicks and farting and other body parts and functions with which they are uncomfortable because they are frightened of those things. Joking about uncomfortable things makes them less frightening.
The earth is a small place and there are a lot of us on it. Like it or not, the overgrown children who pride themselves on their anti-social behavior are going to have to grow up, or things will continue to get uglier and uglier.
We do not need a world of professionals, or even a world of “people.” We need a world of adults, not overgrown children.
The good thing about the Rails leadership showing they’re not interested in an inclusive community is that they will, sooner or later, starve themselves of talent and die. No, really. Just as a nurtured community such as Mozilla’s will grow and sprout new, interesting things, a poorly managed one will not. And that’s a good thing in the end. There’s no downside if shoddily managed projects starve to death, regardless of the technical merit. Measuring success transcends just shipping code, either way you slice it.
As the commenter suggesting maturity means not liking dick jokes, wow. Just, wow. That’s a scarily narrow way of viewing things. Maturity is mostly about recognizing situations and adapting to them. It’s about taking responsibility for your actions. Louis CK tells dick jokes like there’s no tomorrow, but reading his USO tour diary it’s very difficult to argue he’s not mature in how he thinks or acts.
Professionalism is more than wearing a suit and tie. The sophomoric attitude that ignoring the needs of others makes one an ‘individual’ only demonstrates one thing: that some people have not developed, as individuals, past the age of 16. Maybe next DHH can start urinating on the side-walk, since it would make him a more unique and special snowflake?
Eh, I think you have this backwards. The issue isn’t that they have to include everyone. The issue is that they shouldn’t be offensive towards women. If you “intentionally exclude” people who love static typing, that’s fine. Excluding women, not fine.
Anyone caring to hear Mikeal’s vocal ramblings on this issue (less cogent than his post, but still interesting) can visit http://webdevgeekly.com to listen in.