It has come to my attention that, in the last few years, a new wave of tolerance and gender consciousness has swept across the geek community. Female attendance at conferences is rising, more women are running events, speaking at events, giving BarCamp sessions, feeling more confident and welcome in the geek community. We can't be doing with this kind of spirit of camaraderie and shared purpose.
The first thing you need to make absolutely sure of in putting together an event that excludes women is location. Location is of primary importance. Pick somewhere like Hooters or a strip club or somewhere where your food and drinks will be served by someone in teeny-weeny little shorts and who doesn't mind if you make a bit of dirty innuendo. Be sure the place is in a nice and seedy place in the city. You are big and burly men, remember (yes, even you there in the NHS prescription glasses). Make sure the venue smells of piss and serves nothing but lager - lemonade and cocktails are for pansies and girly men, remember. It's got to be badly lit, have nowhere to sit down and serve as unhealthy a menu as you can find.
What with the smoking ban and the fact that Hooters (etc.) is not everywhere, you cannot rely on the venue alone to make sure women don't turn up. The best way is to let them turn up and then act like a complete arse to make sure they don't come back. This takes some work. The first way to do it is to make sure you make some offensive assumptions. They are there to accompany their boyfriend or husband. They are new and inexperienced. They do not have 'passion' the same way that the men do. They probably work in some soft field like marketing or PR, maybe design at a push - but certainly not someone who spends their time making software. Be sure to always talk about how you are a "hardcore coder", as if it's only a few rungs down from being a hardcore porn star. You are the man, remember, and there is no way a woman can know more about anything technical than you do.
If you work hard at it, you can make geek events completely unwelcoming to women. Way to go!
Seriously now. We have come a long way. I remember that in the mid-nineties, computer magazine publishers would include adverts for premium-rate commercial porn BBSes, and there would be lots of adverts like this for servers and software. Thankfully, that age is over. Or is it? Molly Holzschlag put up a post about how there is a geek event taking place in Tucson, Arizona, at Hooters, a restaurant which is based on female sex appeal and the work environment is one in which joking and sexual innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace
(and that is company policy for chrissake).
It is possible to create a geek community where women feel welcome - or at least, a lot less unwelcome. I think the UK has been an example of how to do it right, with the London Girl Geeks getting everyone to raise their game, making events and communities more welcoming to women - the Girl Geeks aren't just planning events for women, but are making a valuable contribution by spreading the meme that geek communities need to listen to what women want. We need to constantly be working to stamp out the invisible sexism that is preventing women from being at home in our community, both online and offline.
