Mike Gunderloy is quitting the Rails Activism team
Mike’s blog post: “…suffice it to say that a significant number of Rails core contributors - with leadership (if that’s the right word) from DHH - apparently feel that being unwelcoming and “edgy” is not just acceptable, but laudable.”
Comments
Very sad! No-one’s indispensable but I’m having a hard time thinking how his role will be filled. Bravo to Mike for his work so far.
I didn’t find the content of the original slides offensive and wouldn’t have made a fuss had I seen them, but something about the response from DHH and the Rails Core team really disturbs me. I truly enjoy the Ruby community and Ruby as a language, but the immaturity and lack of respect being shown by Matt, DHH and other Rails members makes me feel rather dirty.
I used to be proud to say I was a Rails programmer - now I feel rather embarrassed to be connected with these guys.
It’s embarressing that DHH and friends are making a joke of this. The slides didn’t offend me but they were in poor taste and just not funny.
I can see why people were annoyed by them, a mistake is a mistake and if it ended there well we can all move forward.
But to see community core team leaders encourage this kind of activity is pathetic.
Kudos to Mr. Gunderloy for following his conscience. It is indeed a loss for the community.
Anonymous: We all know where DHH stands (this is one of his greatest traits, you definitely know what he stands for, even if you don’t like it) but who are these other “Rails members”? I’ve seen a lot of people referring to some sort of vague, supposedly offensive group of “Rails members” but I can’t determine who they are despite having been an onlooker since 2004. I looked at the Twitter feeds of all the core members and haven’t really seen anything contentious from any of them except DHH.
Perhaps there is something worth questioning, but I personally haven’t seen a giant groundswell of issues from the Rails core team as a whole. Maybe others have and I’m being blind to it :)
I’ve always been proud of being a Rails coded – but now I don’t know – DHH is making all of us look like a bunch of retards! It’s in no way OK to behave as a sexist asshole no matter how much of a “Ruby rock-star” one think he is.
I feel so sad to day.
@Peter Unfortunately I believe it’s convenient for people to lump as all together, even though we’re probably one of the most concentratedly diverse programming communities on the planet from a cultural standpoint. We’re small but we embody a large slice of the population. Of course, this diversity is awesome, but it’s also a lot of the reason we have such culture clash (like this) at times.
I applaud Mike for following his conscience; it’s an incredibly mature thing to do step down from such an important post to keep one’s conscience clean. I can’t say that most would do that (I know I’d struggle with it).
But back to my point. People like to say “the Rails community (x)” or “the Rails community (y)” when they really mean “a few popular bloggers who do Rails think (x)” or “a few Rails people I follow on Twitter said (y).” When you cast your eye across the whole spectrum, there are some rather messed up people who have a loud voice, and easily mute the collective mewing of the rest of the community. From the outside (and to an extent the inside), people are blinded by volume rather than relevance, leading to these sort of seeming cultural norms that are really just quirks from really loud people.
But unfortunately in this case, I think it’s a larger issue because there are more people who are on both “sides” rather than a few people squawking about it. It’s unfortunate it’s become such a huge issue, but I guess it’s probably better dealt with now than later?
Peter, Jeremy has it about right. As I posted in Mike’s blog post:
“Those of us in the Rails community know who the guilty parties are.
The problem is, those parties are also the ones who are the figurehead of the Rails community - so when they come off as disrespectful and misogynistic, we all do - and personally this isn’t something I want to be seen as part of.”
I haven’t officially heard of anyone else defending the slideshow, either, but I guess I’d heard enough references that I figured there was some truth there - perhaps I’m jumping to conclusions, but either way there are still very vocal figureheads who are casting shadows on the rest of the Rails community.
Oh come on guys…get over yourselves. It wasn’t that big of a deal. People should stop being so sensitive.
While I think people are over-reacting to this issue, there appear to be enough female members of the community to warrant an apology. Almost all of the female coders i personally spoke with had no problem with the presentation, but reading some of the other female blog posts and comments makes me think that there is at least a substantial percentage of female coders who did find it disturbing.
So apologize and move on. I do not think this is representative of some larger pattern of gender discrimination though. Just an unfortunate selection of slide images and an intended joke that in the end wasn’t that funny or creative. I would be more concerned if this was a pattern and if the female coding community as a whole was outraged about it. This does not appear to be the case.
Those of us in the Rails community know who the guilty parties are.
To be fair, I haven’t been “in the Rails community” for a while now, and I still have no idea whose opinions are so contentious, beyond perhaps DHH and MA. I thought DHH was the only “figurehead” of the Rails community nowadays :)
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