There is an existing stereotype of ‘geeks & girls’ and how they relate to each other. I see nothing wrong with making jokes about this or writing entire sitcoms around it (Big Bang Theory or The IT Crowd) or even really bad reality shows (Beauty & the Geek).

It seems like people don’t understand how confusing / difficult this is for people like me; I can’t make any sense at all out of what Daniel says further up, for example. I don’t avoid social interaction (people who know me can attest that I’m a pretty intensely social person, despite the difficulties I have with social interaction), and I’m an ambivert; the problem is just that I don’t understand the forms of social interaction that are being discussed here at all.

Re your comments on social interaction. I’m on the other side of the fence – an extroverted guy in a leadership position. The typical workplace is definitely biased towards the confident extravert, unless you’re in a specialist position and keystone to a company.

I spend a lot of my time trying to enable introvert specialists (in this case research specialists and data analysts) to get their points across. It is quite insane that the confident extroverts in our company can talk rubbish confidently and get their ideas adopted, whereas sensible introverts struggle.

I’ve frequently wondered about what makes a socially competent extrovert. I’m beginning to think that it is simply trust of people and their agendas. The reason – all my introverted friends are extroverted amongst people they know and trust.

We do indeed often act out of selfish motivation, and our disabilities do often serve a covert purpose for our selfishness. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be as empathetic as possible to each individual’s lack of ability. But neither should we simply allow it to provide rationale for stagnation.

Many, including yourself, based upon your post, are forced to recognize this crucial piece of reality because it stares them in the face everyday. In the spiritual sense this is an ironic gift, albeit a challenging one that I will not pretend to truly understand. As for myself, I unfortunately forget about my imperfections too often and find myself far away from the reality you describe, left with a long journey back there.

In the end, however, there is no getting around this issue. We do have to face these unfortunate imperfections in ourselves, in this case, our own sexism, but there is simply no defense for it that is adequate.

I appreciate your comments. As someone that has had to watch the terrible treatment of persons with Asberger Syndrome, Autism, Bi-Polar Disorder and many other psychological, mental, and emotional conditions, I empathize greatly.

Perhaps in cases from your personal experience it is a result of pride, but I’ve known many others who suffer for a variety of reasons. Sometimes abuse has led to emotional difficulties, something chemical imbalances, sometimes persons are sensitive to certain frequencies (science is now beginning to examine these), and some simply have conditions for reasons we’re not able to pinpoint just yet.

While there are treatments, and sometimes medications, that can help in many circumstances, changes often take years. Growth that you speak of really requires patience of family, workmates, friends and of course medical professionals. For someone to be fired from their job for not saying Hi or not being at home in social situations is appalling.

Rather than taking the path that such conditions are the fault of the individual and believing that the rest of us should not be considerate, and firing such persons, and ruining their lives and livelihoods, at least those of us that are talking about being more diverse should be considerate.

A first step is to stop using these conditions as terminology for insulting language. In discussions that have come up recently about marginalization of women in the Free Software community, I watched with disgust as those opposed to women in free software (or those disagreeing with the belief that they were marginalized) were referenced by such marginalizing terms as retarded, crazy, insane, dumb and others.

Such terms do not marginalize the person that is they are attempting to answer or insult. Rather they marginalize differently abled persons. What they’re saying is, they are going to insult a person by referring them as these [so-called] “lesser” persons or [so-called] “other” persons. It’s othering language and marginalizing language at its worst.

So it’s not enough to say that society will never accept everyone. Rather, we have to stand up against ableism. And it’s honestly really disingenuous when someone is opposing one form of othering and marginalization by using another form of othering or marginalization, which seems to happen nearly every time these discussions occur. Yet those that practice ableism ostensibly in defense of any other ism (racism, sexism, classism, etc) will try desperately to sweep the discussion of their ableism under the rug, which is bad enough. But then *continue* to use ableist terms. This really shows their ableist privilege.

That is why I am glad Jonathan brought up the topic of Ableism (perhaps without intending to do so) because maybe FINALLY those that are suffering *intense* prejudice to the point of losing jobs, families, homes, and facing threats of physical aggression and violence, can begin to have their voices heard in the Free Software Community.

But as I said earlier, based on the extreme prejudice, othering and marginalization that Ive seen even from those that are themselves marginalized in some form or another (no matter how great or slight the marginalization) against differently abled persons, I’m not holding my breath for the change. All that we can do is keep exposing the terrible circumstances they find themselves in, and offer them a voice and comfort ourselves.

As someone has been exactly like this for most if not all of my life, having been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome since childhood and suffered a bit in the workplace because of it, I have this to say : no matter what you do in life, no matter who you associate with, where you work or whatever, you will always contend with these personal issues. And trying to ask people to be accommodative of these issues, if they are solely mental and not truly disabling, will ultimately fail because you must learn and grow. At the end of the day, no matter what we call these syndromes, they are personality defects, or egos. Dealing with these egos through self-observation of the negative effects they bring upon your being is part of the human experience. Real change must come from within, the world will not change for you and never will… because in reality, everyone is messed up in the head, not just the few we label with syndromes, and only a few people are truly selfless and have absolute mental clarity.

Those with Social Anxiety Disorder must ask themselves : why do they not want to socialize? Do they not want their feelings to be hurt through a hostile response or rejection? And what are these feelings really… their *pride*? Pride is something that should not be protected as a disorder or syndrome, it is selfishness rightly condemned. Us humans are not so great that we should think we’ll always have the right answers and responses ready, we need to get over and become free from the “myself”.

In a perfect, kind world, that quiet manager would have kept his job and people wouldn’t have weird hang-ups over things like e-mail fonts, or take every single thing personally. Guess what kind of world this isn’t?

Being the obviously sensitive guy you are it might help to realize that many Windows mail readers render plain text in Courier New by default. It’s one of the most horrible fonts to read when printed, the characters are too thin and the text comes out very light. If you photocopy the page it gets even worse.

It’s like getting a typewritten letter from someone who’s too cheap to replace their worn-out ribbon.