[IndiChix] A message for LC-IN

[Vid Ayer]

On Feb 2, 2008 9:54 PM, Runa Bhattacharjee <runa.misc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aneesha Govil wrote:
> > I, for
> > one, have been staying quiet to not add to the flames as it just makes
> > the fire bigger. As it is getting extinguished by itself, please don't
> > come and pour petrol. I would be personally grateful.

ofcourse not, please do speak up and when you do please also mention
why you send off-list mails asking why I didnt get "list admin". I had
told you in my reply to ask on the list so save me the "I was silent"
routine.  Btw, you forgot to ask who chose Barkha as server admin
(which i dont have a problem with) and what agenda are you talking
about ?


> I had indicated in my last mail which started
> this particular thread that it would be best to us to understand the local requirements and
> composition (read people) of the foss community in India to decide about how we want the group to
> take shape. It is a small community in India where men and women have been working together for
> quite sometime now and have their own equations.
> Vidya, I do not know whether you know about it or value the equations. We do. It is not "timidness"
> that called for us to remain silent so long, neither was it our "agreement" with you. Your ad-hoc
> decisions and messages on "behalf of the other members in this group" were the primary reason I had
> been calling for an infrastructure to be put in place. I do not know how many others agree/disagree

Excuse me, I certainly dont remember sending all those private
messages on keeping control among us because we (6 women)
revived/started working on the BoF and mails about group communication
or having elections/ committes and gazillion other hierarchy
creations. Or maybe the fact that if you create this <strike>corporate
structure</strike> infrastructure its easier to push newbies around.
Ok I missed that 'control via proxy' part completely.
Again IIRC, it was again your suggestion to keep an Indian name and
then register the URL and promote that instead of the existing URL. If
that is not splitting the community what is ?


> with you. I certainly do not agree with your aggressive, gender-biased messages that are threatening
> to destabilize a delicate and to some extent,  nascent initiative. The focus for this group ought to
> be to create a stable infrastructure that would provide a resource rich environment to support women
> in FOSS. And nothing better than the current infrastructure to provide the basic backbone to develop

And, it was your mail to this list (and CC'd to the Treschix) 6 days
ago that the server be moved (see the Jan archives), so do read what
you wrote earlier before contradicting yourself. Also it was your idea
to keep an Indian name, register new URLs and promote that and the
existing URL can redirect to the Indian name.... when asked why? you
gave some vague "chix is not suitable for Indian women" reasoning.
Duh... did it take 2 years to realise that.



> it. Most of us here are not power-deprived women who would need your voice to speak for us, rather

IIRC, that is what I have been saying so go ahead and speak for
yourself. But wait it was your idea to appoint a group spokesperson to
announce decisions. Now that is contradicting what you said earlier.


> this group go MIA (Missing In Action- fwiw) clearly indicate your lack of faith in us.

dont quote statements out of context, the MIA was with respect to
keeping 3 women on the domain and IIRC, my name does not feature
there, rather it was ankita, aneesha, you, barkha and archana. So if
you didnt want it, you could have said so but instead you kept popping
up with the "Indian name" idea which didnt make sense then, now it
does.


> about people holding power, disregard for the constructive ideas, publicizing private communications

Incase you never noticed, I never publicized any private
communications until I read this mail of yours and realized that its
not ok to be accused of things I have not done.... so my keeping
things private till this mail was not a good idea after all. If you
must misconstrue and misrepresent at least present the whole picture
and not parts, especially since the "keep a group spokeswoman" "keep a
press person" , "make committees", "Advisory boards", "elections",
were all your ideas. I dont need credit for them.  They may be
constructive ideas, no doubt. But frankly why will anyone want to take
permission from a committee because they want to have a meetup? or
want to have a program with LCIN?. Are we trying to make it easy for
women to participate and do something or create hoops to jump across.


> of confidence never build faith either. Kindly, please stop instigating suspicion and let the
> constructive ideas and work continue.

TBH, since its fashionable to accuse me of things I never said, if you
want to raise suspicion it would be better to ask this : Before
appointing core-members (or whatever you called it) did you discuss it
on the list?  IIRC, it was just your mail saying this decision was
reached (by whom? I didnt see the other 5 women say yay, yes). So isnt
it presumptive to assume that their silence is in agreement to your
decision.  Anyway so we have a self-appointed core-group for one year
...and I assume I was a part of this because I participated earlier
and also when you asked me to co-host the BoF, where that morning when
I showed you the slides I had prepared to keep the discussions on
track you rejected it and decided to have a free-for-all-to-speak BoF
even if the discussion goes off-topic which is what finally happened.
Again, it was your decision to have stickers, the T-shirts and keeping
a stall and I found some of them constructive and went along with
them. The keep advisory boards, election, pressperson, etc... I didnt
find necessary and said so.

When you talk of building faith, was anyone on the list informed that
Barkha is working on the planet and has ssh access to the server?
Infact, until a few days ago nobody bothered or knew about it.  At the
BoF while allocating tasks it was your decision on who would do what
task and when you gave me the wiki I had said that I dont have time
for this given the other similar work i already have. Later again you
had asked if I want to be the admin and I said no, give it to any
other chix.  When I had registered the IRC channel in April/May07 and
gave you and Aneesha the op status, Aneesha should have said no i dont
want this instead of complaining later that she prefers to be list
admin and not irc op.

Now if power/control is what I wanted, I actually distributed it to
women I had never even met before the BoF and lately by bringing new
admins, which does not remotely sound like controlling but maybe that
is the real reason behind this vitriol you choose to indulge in.

... and no you dont have to (dis)credit me for anything... It was a
mistake to have replied to the off-list messages and I should have
realised  that last year itself.

-- 
Vid
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