> online dating might be more fun than for men

Actually, online dating is a hassle for me :) I have a boyfriend now, but I'm pretty flexible about who I go out with and my relationship with him is open...I've looked around on Craigslist and similar for other women to meet. Did you know that even in the w4w areas, all the women looking for other women are men (not transmen/transwomen, which I would be fine with, but straight up men who pretend to be women because apparently m4w isn't good enough for them or they want to sleep with a bi/lesbian woman?), women with boyfriends who want a mff threesome, women who have husbands/boyfriends and are tired of them and want to just see if they'll have any fun with another woman...no women looking for women who know that they like women, be it for a one night stand or a long term relationship.

Not to mention that there are very little women in tech, and even less likely that they are also interested in other women...and many guys think it's okay to hit on me boyfriend or bi or not. :(

> If I was a manager I would probably give job applications by female programmers special consideration, because they are so rare.

I actually dislike this because it's reverse discrimination. Yes, women are rare. That doesn't mean they need to be treated specially. I for one just want to be treated like anyone else minus any extra discrimination and sexism arising from being of a different sex. I don't want to be hired just because I have boobs. I want to be hired because someone thought that my skills and experience were good for the job. Hiring women because they are women even though they don't necessarily have the skills for the job just ends up in more frustration - remember that xkcd about women and math? That.

> Also I have to say it would bother me, too, to work in a sexist environment (like having to listen to tasteless jokes about women at lunch or something).

It's all about when and why. Like this whole couchdb/rails mess in the first place. My joking around with some friends calling each other whore and slut and worse things and talking about some pretty explicit things while chilling out on IRC? That's fine with me and I don't even think twice about it - I know they are good people, it was in a casual context, these things wouldn't even be considered being said to any one of them to anyone else even half seriously, etc.

But the workplace isn't one where it's appropriate to do that, and public presentations at conferences with the implication that you are ...or at least were... a respected member of the Rails Activists team and that you are a professional in this field is also not the right place, especially when your subject matter has nothing to do with it. Not only that, but that this guy apparently didn't even think twice about the inclusion of porn. How many times have you actually seen anything close to scantily clad women in a conference presentation about something technical that isn't about running an adult entertainment website? couchdb isn't so boring that porn needs to be in there to interest people!

(As for my opinion on this: it was stupid and it is ALL about appropriateness - no need for censorship. Like, I'm not going to crucify the guy or want to crucify him, I just hope he and future presenters understand that porn is not necessarily something that belongs in a presentation. I mean, I would expect to see porn in a presentation about a porn site using Rails that was having problems scaling and meeting the unique demands of their customers. Not CouchDB! It didn't even do anything to help understand the concepts except via the fact that there are women in the slides dressed provocatively. Not that I hate porn, I love watching porn regularly. I still don't want to see it at a conference. Save it for another day please. Imagine what the talk would be like if the kind of porn in the presentation were changed? Something more artistic erotic art-like or softcore gay porn. And how many men would have walked out of the presentation if they saw gay porn. Heh.)

> Too bad you did not give many details about the unpleasant things that happened to you.

Offensive names, my boobs (or, more disturbingly, downstairs) being discussed in public, the assumption that I'm not even doing anything close to technical (by far the most common) - you know, if I were a good designer, I would consider that career, but I'm horrible at designing! And for that matter, caring at all about accessibility doesn't mean I'm a designer. - and being hit on with alarming frequency, people ignoring what I have to say about something, having double standards for the quality and style of code being written. That's about the most common complaints I have.

Some of that is general IT suckiness, but it's suckiness that tends to go away when people understand that you are not totally incompetent at your job. The problem I then have with some of that is that it lasts a lot longer and takes a lot longer for some people to realize that I don't actually totally suck at some things. And for the things that aren't general IT suckiness, it's someone being an asshat in ways that my friends working other jobs would work their ass off to get him fired if it happened to them. That's also sadly another side effect of this all, I've grown a way-thick skin in some areas and I can't believe it.

So far I've had the opportunity to compare with other women working on the same thing, and with other men who joined in at the same time, and I get a bit unhappy about the situation. But like I said: not all places are like this, and most men are good people.

All that being said, I don't think that discrimination or solving that is the ultimate thing to do to fix this imbalance. Sometimes for men and women alike, it's just the lack of a friendly and accessible mentor to help them.