A couple points.... Keep in mind that I may be different because I start to worry about the people I am with if I fit in too much. I actually prefer to be a liminal figure (look it up).
First, humor is a way of managing tensions. It can create, dissolve, and transform tension from one form into another.
One of the real problem trends in America today, IMO, is rewarding hypersensitivity to taking offense. The problem is that it is possible to deconstruct a sufficiently large corpus by anyone to find something arguably worth taking offense to by today's standards. Thin skin should not be rewarded, but that's what happens when we focus on the negative side and place all the onus for change there.
A better approach is focusing on the positive side. Welcome people to your team and empower them. Trust them. Where they have relevant differences (that MBA on your hacker team) take that into account perhaps making him a go-to-person for business questions relating to the software? Focus on being what you want to be, not avoiding bat things. That means that jokes, etc. are far more likely to be offered in good faith and taken in good faith than they are if tensions are already of a bad kind.
LedgerSMB under my leadership has done quite well with a very diverse group of contributors. Nearly a third of our committers and contributors over the history of the project are women (noteworthy because that approaches commercial software development gender gaps rather than the larger gaps of open source), and we have people contributing from at least 5 continents (none from Africa yet to my knowledge). In the process we've had contributors whose countries were talking about going to war with eachother a few years ago (Colombia and Venezuela).
Moreover one could take your approach to othering to the other extreme, welcoming a talented woman as "one of the guys." Even assuming this has a welcoming effect, would this really reduce the level of sexism in place if the environment is male-normal?
More good points, from a more practical, small-scale perspective than I can give. Thank you.
I find it interesting that you describe yourself as preferring to be a liminal figure, as do I (know that I know the word - which my spell-checker still does not), and we're both getting DV'd to oblivion on this one.
First, humor is a way of managing tensions. It can create, dissolve, and transform tension from one form into another.
One of the real problem trends in America today, IMO, is rewarding hypersensitivity to taking offense. The problem is that it is possible to deconstruct a sufficiently large corpus by anyone to find something arguably worth taking offense to by today's standards. Thin skin should not be rewarded, but that's what happens when we focus on the negative side and place all the onus for change there.
A better approach is focusing on the positive side. Welcome people to your team and empower them. Trust them. Where they have relevant differences (that MBA on your hacker team) take that into account perhaps making him a go-to-person for business questions relating to the software? Focus on being what you want to be, not avoiding bat things. That means that jokes, etc. are far more likely to be offered in good faith and taken in good faith than they are if tensions are already of a bad kind.
LedgerSMB under my leadership has done quite well with a very diverse group of contributors. Nearly a third of our committers and contributors over the history of the project are women (noteworthy because that approaches commercial software development gender gaps rather than the larger gaps of open source), and we have people contributing from at least 5 continents (none from Africa yet to my knowledge). In the process we've had contributors whose countries were talking about going to war with eachother a few years ago (Colombia and Venezuela).
Moreover one could take your approach to othering to the other extreme, welcoming a talented woman as "one of the guys." Even assuming this has a welcoming effect, would this really reduce the level of sexism in place if the environment is male-normal?