One observation about diversity discussions: improved outcomes from diversity are credited to diversity. But worsened outcomes from diversity aren't blamed on diversity.

If you're going to tout problems in stereotypical male/male interactions as evidence in favor of more gender parity, I think you should be prepared to accept problems in stereotypical male/female interactions as evidence against more gender parity.

You didn't say anything about problems in stereotypical male/female interactions at all, so this objection technically doesn't apply to you. But I don't imagine that, had the interaction been a bad one between a male and a female in some stereotypical way, you would count it as an example of the drawbacks of more gender parity.

I am glad that tech is becoming a more welcoming place for women, and everyone benefits when men (or anyone) improve their communication and conflict resolution skills. But I find most discussions about the benefits of diversity to be disingenuous, because diversity is praised for desirable outcomes but escapes blame for undesirable outcomes.

2.

> What a waste of time.

Among the criticisms you could level here (and I agree this exchange warrants plenty of criticism) "waste of time" doesn't ring true to me. The participants resolved the dispute rapidly.

From my experience. Being an asshole is not a gendered trait

When considering a sufficiently zoomed-out view of all the different ways to be an asshole, I think you're right. But the particular form of asshole-ishness in this thread– swaggering in and immediately starting with demands ("You will revise your mozconfig..."), responding with passive-aggressive logical handwaving about how the person will never be listened to again ("you are dismissed from all further conversation on this matter...")– is strongly gendered, in my experience, and it's all too common in the open-source world.

The Atwood/Gruber Markdown spat, the Debian/XScreenSaver version warning, and the Bootstrap/JSMin semicolon debacle are all good previous examples of the same dynamic here. In all cases, there were no or very minor actual technical disagreements; all the sound and fury was just men digging in and refusing to give an inch of ground to another person who had very good points, while being as aggressive as possible to guarantee a real resolution couldn't be reached. We could use a lot less of that.

For the sake of better fitting your examples. I'll say ego isn't a gendered trait. Versus describing someone as an asshole

Having a massive ego is just a thing that some people have. It's human, and humans are flawed individuals.

Yes. There's a lot more men in computing. So there's a lot more examples of ego clashing from "men". But I'd suspect the dynamic not to change much if it was a true 50/50 split. Or even a complete reversal of the current gender bias (something like 90% men I'm told? it's hard to get accurate statistics)

For a specific citation against this theory (though I try to avoid mailing list fights). I'd point to the Libreboot project. Where the lead (and possibly only?) developer went on a personal crusade against the Free Software Foundation. Using the project as a spearhead to personally demean them for a perceived attack against someone else