Where do the feminist programmers hang out online (other than MeFi)?

November 25, 2013 11:49 PM

I read a lot of Hacker News. I'm a self-identified male feminist programmer. Comment threads like this one make me want to strangle my computer monitor. I loved this article. What else should I read? Who should I subscribe to? Where do the feminist programmers hang out online?
posted by azarbayejani to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Best answer: If you liked Ashe’s article on OSS, you should follow her on Twitter, she is a terrific person and shares a lot of stuff on diversity and feminism from her own research and from others. And is a lovely person in physical life.
posted by thebestsophist at 11:57 PM on November 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Geek Feminism is very programming/engineering oriented
posted by kagredon at 12:32 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I don't know, but as a starting point, the Python community seems, to take not being sexist assholes somewhat seriously (codes of conduct at conventions, for example). The Postgres community might also be worth a look.

I used to read a lot of hacker news. I finally had enough of their (stunted) adolescence that seemed to pervail.
posted by Good Brain at 12:54 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The online tech feminist conversation that I see mostly happens on Twitter and in blog posts that grow out of Twitter conversations. This list of contributors to the Geek Feminism blog is a good place to start for finding names of people to follow on Twitter (and also add shanley and juliepagano), and then follow anyone interesting that they talk to or retweet, and you can easily get hours of conversation to read every day. And jdunck maintains a Twitter list of male tech feminists, if you're curious what other people like you are talking about.
posted by dreamyshade at 1:27 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There is a Computer Anonymous near you.
posted by mkb at 4:34 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You can join the Tech Lady Mafia Auxiliary.
posted by olinerd at 5:49 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: To clarify olinerd's post, the Tech LadyMafia is all-ladies; the TLM Auxiliary is the informal group of male supporters.
posted by evoque at 6:46 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: http://women2.com


http://www.pyladies.com
posted by oceanjesse at 7:43 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: Check out the ADA Initiative--they spearheaded a big effort recently to get tech conferences to have harassment policies. If you wanna go hang with the feminist programmers in real life, Grace Hopper is a good place.

If you want to hang in IRC, check out #dreamwidth on freenode--Dreamwidth is an open source fork of the LiveJournal codebase with a business running the main website, and it has an absurdly high (over half) percentage of female programmers (like me) compared to most of FOSS (more around 3%). And the project also has a goodly amount of male feminist programmers, too!
posted by foxfirefey at 8:14 AM on November 26, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I was going to say that the community of programmers who work in libraries is a pretty feminist bunch, and lo and behold someone posted a link to Computer Anonymous Seattle, which was recently started by a librarian programmer, Mike Giarlo. Definitely go to their next meetup and get to know him.
posted by MsMolly at 8:59 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: I'm going to add a second for twitter. I'm a programmer and a feminist but there's no particular "feminist programmer" space I spend time online at. There are feminists I follow on twitter and organizations (eg Ada Initiative) I keep track of but no "place" similar to hacker news.

But the Computer Anon org looks intriguing (also in Seattle). I might go sometime next year if I remember.
posted by R343L at 9:42 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: Oh and since you're in Seattle you may consider getting involved with GeekGirlCon. Lots of geeks (if not all programmers) and plenty of feminists.
posted by R343L at 9:44 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: LinuxChix
posted by Tom-B at 10:25 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: Oh wait, you're in Seattle? Do I have the place for you then, if you'd like to take your hanging out to real life instead of online:

http://seattleattic.com/

Drop by tonight for the open house. (Or another Tuesday. Or whenever the other open house is.)
posted by foxfirefey at 11:09 AM on November 26, 2013

Response by poster: foxfirefey, this looks awesome! Can't come tonight, but will definitely stop by another open house.

Thanks everyone for the great answers so far!
posted by azarbayejani at 11:37 AM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: progressiveexchange.org is a mailing list for progressive tech folks and has a lot of feminist programmers.
posted by klangklangston at 8:32 PM on November 26, 2013

Best answer: Two communities I know of include Systers and LinuxChix.
posted by pwnguin at 12:42 AM on November 27, 2013