Reasons not to create a mailing list

I get a surprising number of invitations to various women-in-CS groups. The newest one concerns forming a group for female Postgres hackers. Now, I don't feel particularly compelled to join such a group for the sake of any particular benefit to me -- I'm perfectly comfortable talking about database backends with men, women, hermaphrodites and Martians -- but I know there are women who prefer to combine girltime and geektime, and I'm happy to oblige.

In the discussion of whether this should be an official Postgres group or not, though, there have been several motivations bandied about for why such a thing should exist, and someone decided to trot out the tired old Women And Men Communicate Differently argument. ARGH. NO. BAD. WRONG. I'm agnostic about whether that statement is true or not; perhaps it's more accurate to say I don't care whether it's true or not in the general case, but in the specific case, which is to say, technical contributions to a software platform, it is a completely irrelevant argument.

Or, as I put it in email:

If "different communication style" is a criterion for creating a discussion group, then I should be arguing for a pgsql-aspergers list.

Learning how to talk to people is hard, but learning how to talk to people is also part of contributing to a large group project. You cannot contribute to a large group project if you are not willing to talk to the group, or if you are only willing to talk to a small part of the group. Differing communication styles may exist, but if you want to work with people, you can't ignore them and use that as an excuse.

I ignore people all the time ... but that's because I don't want to work with them. Funny how that works out.