Comments on: National Coming Out Day: LGBTQ geeks

By: pete

pete — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:23:30 +0000

in open source, it never came up. all I do is code-related tho, so not much social interaction.. my patches don’t seem to show up in anyone’s gaydar :) my first name is also mostly female in the anglo-centric cultures, and mostly male in all the other cultures, so I’ve no idea what’s going on there.

in general geekdom, that’s how I meet most of the people I date :) I really hate labels tho, so I tend to avoid the classic interactions regarding coming out, etc.

By: koipond

koipond — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:24:03 +0000

@Skud

What I was aiming at. Only said better and more succinctly.

By: Skud

Skud — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:43:02 +0000

*nod* I would have guessed somewhere around the one-in-ten range, but since it’s less likely to come up or be apparent, and since we don’t ask about it (eg. in FLOSSPOLS) it’s pretty hard to tell.

By: Skud

Skud — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:37:00 +0000

Um, because in our society, men are the default and women are the “other”.

By: Bene

Bene — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:40:33 +0000

Great post, I agree with a lot of it, though I had thought of it more in terms of general geekdom and less in terms of the hacker sort.

Interestingly, a lot of the cis guys in LGBTQ at My British University are doing degrees in Comp Sci or some form of engineering, really different from my personal experiences with gay men in the US. Which is not to negate the active work of gay/bi/queer men in CS or Engineering–but either my experience is too narrow, or there’s something to be said about cultural expectations in a transatlantic sense, or possibly both.

By: spz

spz — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:32:55 +0000

Re gay men being even more of a minority than women, I seriously doubt that.
I know that my favourite project has at least three times more (male) gay or bi members than women, and that’s not an exhaustive survey: Since sexual orientation does not make your code better or worse or even different, we don’t do polls about that. :)

By: koipond

koipond — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:22:35 +0000

It’s there already. The term for men is used as a descriptor for the group where as there is a specific term so that you can understand that you’re talking about women.

By: JakiChan

JakiChan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 05:07:00 +0000

Which makes me wonder about something else: homosexual females can be either “gay women” or “lesbians”. Homosexual men are just gay men. Why don’t we get a cool name? *sniff*

By: M

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:22:23 +0000

So when is "Going Back In Day"? JakiChan said:

Of course straight women please do not assume that because I am gay I want to discuss fashion, your hair, your boyfriends, my boyfriends, the kind of men I like, the sexual acts I prefer, or any of those other cliches.

That part in bold? That is the reason I am (mostly) back in the closet, though not universally from straight women. I've been harassed by at least two queer men. Few people have heard of my orientation, and coming out always results in tons of awkward and invasive questions. To avoid those questions, please read the Asexuality Visibility and Eduction Network's "Asexuality Overview."

By: koipond

koipond — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:22:07 +0000

Hey Jaki,

LGBTQ is considered to in keeping with feminism because it’s inverting the standard cultural supposition that you put the masculine term first.