Before I begin you must know that I do not mean any disrespect to any woman who are out there working in a field that is saturated by men. I too agree that women can do anything a man can and that there should be more female programmers. The following is not geared only towards phpwomen.org but at others as well. Ok time to start my rant.
When it comes to sexism and racism why must everything be segregated? Women have been programming for years, in fact I know a few (yes i know i used the few word and not many). We now need a site geared only towards women who are programming PHP? If you want to be equal to men, why not join them rather than segregate yourself from them.
Running into this site made me think of a conversation I had a long time ago about Black Entertainment Television (BET). Granted it did have it’s time and place, back when the arrogant white folk would not let a black man be in movies or on TV. Today however is it just as common to see a black person on TV as it is a white person so what is the need for a tv network like this, or an awards ceremony for this? What do you think the response would be if some white guy started White Entertainment Television (WET). Oh all the sudden we would be racist etc. Recently my roommate stumbled across a forum post where someone called a black person articulate and they were tagged as a racist. The explanation given was that because the black person was called articulate it implied that black people are stupid. This thread made me wonder where things are going, what can you call someone without being racist?
Back to women programmers. I understand the need to unite with each other and improve the female presence in the php community, I just do not understand why you feel the need to segregate yourself from the guys. I see what you are doing trying to "unite" the women together to form a group, but why not unite with the guys rather than separating the two?
As I said before this is not meant to be directed solely at phpwomen.org but rather at today’s society. Forget about race, gender, etc and unite as a whole.
