A lack of perspective

There are occasionally times in a man's life when he finds himself wondering if an unpleasant incident with a woman was intentional or not.  While there are certainly accidents, as a general rule, women tend to operate in a much more premeditated manner than most men do.  So, when in doubt, assume that the unpleasantries were planned.

Intel developer Sarah Sharp's challenge to Linux creator Linus Torvalds on the kernel mailing list, asking him to stop abusing and cursing at developers, appears to have been carefully planned.

In a post to the Linux kernel mailing list at 11:53:43am EST on July 15, Sharp replied to jocular comments by developers Steven Rostedt and Ingo Molnar, and also Torvalds, claiming "Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse."

The comments from the three male developers were made after senior kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman had complained about the late submission of patches for the stable branch of development.

Along with her post, Sharp had sent out a tweet at 10.26am, in which she sought support: "Stand with me against verbal abuse on #linux mailing lists. No one deserves to be shouted or cussed," she wrote, linking to a blog post on her personal blog. This post had to have been written shortly before she sent the tweet.

The tweet was sent to The Ada Initiative as well, an organisation that claims to be working to increase the participation of women in technology and culture. In recent times, it has become better known for trying to censor discussion at technical conferences on anything with which it disagrees.

Sharp's directing of this tweet to The Ada Initiative does not sit easily beside her claim in a later post to LKML that "I'm not some crazy feminist ranting about cooties on Google+." If she did not want to canvass the support of women, why send the tweet to an organisation of this nature?

Had Sharp wanted to raise this issue without making her gender a factor, she would not have sought the support of an organisation like The Ada Initiative at any time. She would have raised it on the mailing list. And she would not have made it a PR issue.

A few days after the discussion on the mailing list, Sharp issued what can only be described a gloating tweet. "I'm on to something. 199 retweets. Google plus: +333, 122 reshares. 9 major tech articles. 180 blog comments. People care".

And what was the point of this mini-campaign against Linus Torvalds?  Who knows, but what is worth noting is the way the woman is perfectly happy to burn down everything in order to get her way. This is something that men have difficulty understanding; many women won't even hesitate to destroy their marriages and their families if that is what their emotional imperative requires at the moment.

It is vitally important for men to understand that this is something of which women are capable, if not necessarily prone to doing, especially because it is a fairly identifiable trait.  If a woman has a history of blowing things up, whether it be her female friendships, her jobs, her projects, or her family relationships, you can be certain that she won't hesitate to blow up her marriage or her relationship with her children either.