I can’t even.

I’ve been tracking misogynistic ridiculousness on this blog for five years, but I’m not sure I ‘ve ever run across anything quite as ridiculous as this.

A prominent Open Source guru, Eric Raymond, is warning tech dudes to be extra super duper careful around their female colleagues, because any one of them could turn out to be a secret feminist “honey trap” aiming to frame men in tech with false allegations of harassment or rape.

In a blog post earlier this week, Raymond passed along what he called a “disturbing warning … from a source I trust.”

His anonymous source warned him that it was no longer safe for men in tech to mentor women, or even be in the same room with them. “I’m super careful about honey traps,” the source wrote.

For a while, that’s how the Ada Initiative was trying to pre-generate outrage and collect scalps.

That’s right; according to this mysterious source the now-defunct Ada Initiative wasn’t actually a non-profit trying to bring more women into the open source world; it was a secret army of false-accusing honey-trap sex commandos, or something.

“The MO was to get alone with the target, and then immediately after cry ‘attempted sexual assault,'” the source wrote, adding that these devious sex harpies disguised as female programmers had already “made multiple runs” at Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

Naturally, faced with a set of outlandish accusations offered with zero proof, Raymond did what any rational, skeptical, scientifically minded man would do: he posted them on his blog and warned men that even being in the general vicinity of a woman at a tech conference was like playing with a loaded false accusation gun, or something.

[I]f you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.

He expressed outrage at the alleged attempts to sully Torvalds’ name.

If my source is to be believed (and I have found him both well-informed and completely trustworthy in the past) this was not a series of misunderstandings, it was a deliberately planned and persistent campaign to frame Linus and feed him to an outrage mob. I have to see it as an an attempt to smear and de-legitimize the Linux community (and, by extension, the entire open-source community) in order to render it politically pliable.

Will those sexy feminazi sex hyenas stop at nothing?

Linus hasn’t spoken out about this; I can think of several plausible and good reasons for that.

Apparently “because it’s not true” isn’t one that Raymond thought of.

Even though “the Ada Initiative shut down earlier this year,” Raymond went on warn that the danger will likely persist as long as evil SJWs live and breathe.

[T]his report is consistent with reports of SJW dezinformatsiya tactics from elsewhere and I think it would be safest to assume that they are being replicated by other women-in-tech groups.

And any women who are unhappy that they are being lumped in with these devious honey traps can go fuck themselves, because you ladies brought all this on yourself with your talk of rape culture and all that. And yes, he uses the word “ladies.”

Don’t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!

Oh, and then Raymond says that in light of this irrefutable evidence of feminazi infiltration conspiracy theory utterly lacking in proof of any kind and frankly ludicrous to boot, he’s going to apply the skepticism he should have shown his mysterious source’s wild tale to actual accusations of sexual assault leveled at men in tech.

Naturally, the extended manosphere is abuzz with talk of this vast sexy conspiracy. Breitbart Tech breathlessly reported that “FEMINISTS ARE TRYING TO FRAME LINUS TORVALDS FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT, CLAIMS OPEN SOURCE INDUSTRY VETERAN.”

“If true,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari declared,

these claims will rock the world of software development, not to mention the wider tech community, which is suffering under the yoke of diversity campaigners levelling bogus charges of sexism at companies and individuals and pestering companies to improve their diversity credentials. Discontent at the behaviour of feminists in tech has already been spreading in the open source community thanks to the feminist-led introduction of controversial codes of conduct for developers on some open source projects. But these new claims elevate feminists in tech from the controversial to the potentially criminal.

“If true,” claims that monkeys are flying out of my butt would rock the world of monkeys, not to mention the wider butt community.

Concluding his article, Bokhari wonders why

other tech news outlets – normally champing at the bit to report on diversity issues – have so far been curiously silent on this story. Breitbart Tech is, thus far, the exception.

Maybe because these tech news outlets prefer to write about, you know, tech news and not the fever dreams of misogynistic conspiracy theorists?

On Reddit, meanwhile, the usual suspects are doing what they usually do. KotakuInAction, the main Gamergate hub on Reddit, the Breitbart story drew more than 2600 upvotes, last I checked; on the Men’s Rights subreddit it garnered nearly a thousand.

And people wonder why women don’t feel welcome in tech? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that tech bigwigs like Raymond literally think every woman in their general vicinity is a potential “honey trap” out to steal his “scalp” if not his precious bodily fluids.

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