> It's not like young men interested in Python have nowhere else to go.
It tells them that inclusivity is against their interests. Boys growing up where they are explicitly barred from opportunities due to their gender are probably not going to be very willing to accommodate women in the future. Also things like this has shown to not move the needle, so all you accomplish is drive the wedge between genders even further down.
> I think how Guido wants to spend his time is up to Guido.
This over-extrapolates though. Guido deciding to mentor women doesn't imply every Pythonista is or should be doing the same. And when the userbase is already mostly men, the existing pipelines are demonstrably working for men; making an effort to pull in women isn't shrinking anyone's pie.
Yes, it's pretty malicious, both against the targets of his sexist policy and the broader movement towards inclusion. If young men come to understand that "inclusivity" means blocking them from certain opportunities, they're not going to be on board with proposals to make hiring or promotions more inclusive.
The argument is that, when someone says "we're going to make this mentorship program more inclusive", people will have to wonder whether they mean normal inclusivity or Guido's sexist inclusivity. His actions alone won't radically shift the needle, but we'll eventually reach a point where inclusivity just means "there are a lot of women" and the original idea of fair opportunities for everyone is lost.
Note that this isn't a radical conspiracy - it's already happened in some areas. There are a lot of colleges with special inclusion resources for women, even though women are significantly overrepresented in the modern university system.
Because they indicate how, in general, men continue to have more educational opportunities. Whether universities are inclusive is a subset of the question of whether the idea of fair opportunities for everyone is lost.
Yes, words and symbolic acts alone can be malicious regardless if the practical effect is negligible. Since the parent post talked about running coding events, Guido public stance is an example of what to not do in such events.
I have participated in events for gifted children, including teaching python. One such child already had before they came to the event written up the whole game design, painted the different rooms and enemies, created most of the game logic and now needed help with hit detection in pygames. Hit detection is quite a bit beyond the tutorial part of pygames, but in the end we mostly accomplished the goal and they left quite happy. Did I care about their gender or even asked about it? Of course not. Here was a person who needed my help.
Maybe no immedient harm would have happened if I had rejected that child based on their gender or treated them as part of a homogenic group with unchangeable inherent traits. There is always other people, other resources, and they clearly demonstrated the ability to self learn. But what kind of person would I be if I did that?
> Did I care about their gender or even asked about it?
No. They were a boy though. I'll tell you why I'm saying that with confidence: because we know men are most of the Python userbase, and they're more comfortable approaching other Pythonistas for help because they're other men. Argument from statistical probability.
That's specifically the issue Guido is seeking to address, and he's not going to do it successfully by not caring about gender. Not caring about gender tends to get us more of the status quo, not something approaching more inclusiveness.
If the kid was a girl, good for her and I commend her forwardness and bravery. We know most women aren't interested in putting themselves in that position because it's uncomfortable for them (any more than most men are interested in stepping into a knitting circle to learn more from a group of women). And if Python as a community is to grow the pie, that situation needs to change. So that it's not just you who doesn't need to care about the gender of the student; it's the student who doesn't need to care about the gender of the teacher.
I think how Guido wants to spend his time is up to Guido.