Women and TLUG - a personal rant

[Maureen]

I am a woman and I attend TLUG as often as I can but working in the
theatre oft times Tuesdays are out for me.  I was at TLUG last month and
will be again this Tuesday,tomorrow in actual fact, I have never had
anything but the same sort of courtesy I gave everyone there returned in
kind.  I am learning about Linux and everyone is most helpful. I even
love going out for beer and listening to the discussions.
I believe we reap what we sow.
Thanks guys for always being so kind and helpful.
Maureen

On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 12:19 -0500, Renata Rocha wrote:
> I like TLUG a lot, and used to attend the meetings. But you haven't
> seen me at the meetings in a while, and probably won't see me anytime
> soon.
> 
> Some men who attend TLUG and we know who they are have a
> predatory/harassing behaviour when in presence of women. If you attend
> TLUG, have seen this happen and have ignored this behaviour of your
> colleague, you are enabling violence against women to keep happening
> at the TLUG environment, and keeping women away from the group.
> 
> I have myself promised not to come back to the meetings while I see
> this kind of harassment in public being ignored, and the people who do
> it not held accountable for their actions.
> 
> What you can do: talk to these members and make them at least
> apologize for their actions and make women feel safe and comfortable
> again at the TLUG meetings. I'd love to learn and hang out with you,
> but your environment is not welcoming for me and for other women in IT
> I know. We're in this for the same reason as everyone else - learning
> and sharing.
> 
> (Yes yes I realize there's more than man/woman in the world, but for
> this case specifically I wanted to keep the universe limited. )
> 
> Renata Rocha
> http://renata.org
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The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists