Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: Event: Manchester Girl Geek Dinner #2 - 7:00 PM Friday, July 25, 2008

[Paul Waring]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 11:12:24AM +0100, Paul Robinson wrote:
> It no more "evil, bad and wrong" than a get together around a single  
> point of discussion whether that be free software, programming in a  
> particular language or promotion of a particular industry. Would you  
> call it "discrimination" if I had a talk prepared on Ruby which was  
> rejected at a PHP conference? Or if people refused to listen to a talk  
> on how wonderful EULAs were at an FSUK meeting?

That's not the same thing. Hosting a talk based around a topic which
people are interested in and open to all is not discrimination -
limiting attendance to people based on a biological attribute is. Anyone
can go to a talk about Ruby if they want to (even PHP developers, though
they might not find the subject matter of interest), however I can't go
to a Geek Girls Dinner or WISET event - not because of my interest in
the subject being discussed (some of the talks given I would like to go
to) but purely because of my gender.

Paul

-- 
Paul Waring
http://www.pwaring.com