A lot of offensive or marginalising incidents in geek communities are, supposedly, intended as Humor. These jokes, aimed at a presumed-male audience, exclude women even when they do not explicitly insult them.
Women who complain about such jokes are usually accused of not having a sense of humor, or of being prudes.
Examples
The FLOSSPOLS survey on gender and Open Source Software provides several examples, such as:
- "At a large F/LOSS conference, for instance, somebody tried to motivate people to take part in a competition for a particular project by announcing the winning prize would be a date out with a beautiful, blonde girl. When a woman who attended the conference because she was interested in the topic of F/LOSS and wanted to get involved in it objected, she was misinterpreted. As a reply she only received: “Oh, this is just a joke.” However, it is this type of joke which make women feel uncomfortable in the community."
Responses
- emjaybee, a commenter on a MetaFilter about Geek Feminism, responded to another commenter who said "Things that were previously OK (sex jokes, e.g.) are suddenly offensive" with:
- Well, what kinda sex jokes are we talking? ones involving sex?! xDDDDDDDDDDDD
- However, if sex jokes=rape jokes, you have a problem. If sex jokes=dumb bitch gets humiliated jokes...same thing.
- Many men seem to assume that women find sex offensive. Absent religious hangups, we don't. Rape is offensive, women portrayed as targets/objects of violence/universally dumb or vicious is offensive. In the same way that racist jokes are offensive.
- It may be that most sex jokes are also misogynistic (I have no data on this one), but women didn't set it up that way, you know.