Because feminism means different things to different people, one legitimate, one thwarted by the politically correct and oh-so-inclusive camp.

The first one, that I subscribe to, is that men and women are equals and that, if we accept that there are specific traits of behaviour that are specific to men and that have to be respected, the same goes for women. I don't really think there are specific traits of behaviour that are specific to either men or women -- not to this impressive level of detail, in any case. I.e. I don't think all men swear, and that if you can't properly phrase a go fuck yourself, you're a pitiful beta. I just think that, when a bunch of men and a bunch of women end up working together, their personal needs of expression should get the same treatment. It goes without saying that this involves people meeting each other halfway.

This is the view that I'm trying to keep going in my team and we're having good results so far. I think we're as inclusive as we can be without losing our team's identity. There is a lot of swearing, in which both ladies and gents indulge liberally and a few morbid jokes. No racist jokes though -- one of our relatively recent hires had a problem with that, so we put them on the "not OK" list (they weren't on the "not OK" list before that because our only colleague of non-Arian descent not only did not have a problem with racist jokes, but was a veritable reservoir of such jokes).

Does this mean that I won't hire someone who sternly demands that we keep a professional attitude at work, no strong language and so on?

Honestly, yeah. This team is happy. We're productive, our lady colleagues feel included and treated as equals; they are not harassed (partly because we don't hire jerks, partly because we only hire responsible adults so any issues about unclear boundaries get resolved amiably, partly because everyone knows I'll tear them a new butthole if I catch as much as a hint of crossing boundaries that aren't unclear at all). Bringing in someone around whom everyone would have to be on their toes would be anything but helpful -- and there are enough good programmers with tough enough egos that we don't have a hiring problem.

Things would certainly be different if my team were different, but it is the way it is and it works.

The second view is that there are specific traits of behaviour that are specific to women and that these should overweigh those that are specific to men, because it's the only way to resolve the gender gap.

This is shit. When confronted with how obviously this goes against equality, people will point out that privilege matters, and that without these concessions, there will never be balance, because equality in the presence of privilege is somehow not true equality. Regardless of whether this line of thought is valid or not, conflating it with "the gender gap" problem is very cheapening, and frankly, I've rarely seen this line of thought applied in a true case of sexist culture -- optimistically 80% of the cases I've seen were about people who wrote shit code trying to shift the blame onto others ("my code is good, you mysoginistic bastard!")

Is the gender gap a problem? YES, PEOPLE, IT IS! It's a problem in that it's a manifestation of the fact that a lot of people in our culture think girls shouldn't do things that aren't cutsey and fluffy and full of empathy. We don't see it just in computer science, we see it in parents not buying their girls monster truck toys even when they want it. We see its opposite, too -- young men getting bullied because they like to dance, and elementary schools being almost devoid of male teachers. Absolutely, it's a problem, it's a sign that our society isn't what we would like it to be. But trading privileges is not the way to solve this! History is full of cases when that didn't work. You'd think we'd have learned a lesson.

Shit like the Geek Feminism code is a prime example of this crap. Let me give you just one example:

At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of GF members or the general public.

This is dangerous beyond measure. We have a very strict policy of keeping any report of complaint a secret until we've conducted an investigation (including notifying the police and so on). We treat them seriously -- e.g. we'd never let a potential harassment victim and the perpetrator in the same room, we offer anyone who files such a complaint the option of taking a paid leave of absence until the matter is resolved, so that she doesn't have to face a bully or a potential sex offender (or rather, we would, we had no complaints so far; but this would be the procedure), we have a no questions asked policy of collaboration with law enforcement (i.e. if they don't feel safe about going to HR for this and prefer to notify the police instead, everyone is required to collaborate fully, and HR is allowed to forfeit their usual "we're here to protect the company" crap).

But we never out anyone until we have a clear confirmation, Jesus Christ, you think "unprivileged" individuals can't make fake complains? After everyone in your area refused to hire someone because their last employer said "this guy is a rapist", do you think a "oops, sorry, he's not a rapist" press release will solve anything? IT FRICKIN' WON'T!

I get why people would think this is a good deterrent. No one will even try it, since they know just trying something bad, once, can get them in the trouble of their lifetime. Yes, it's a good deterrent. You know what else it is? A great opportunity for psychopaths and egomaniacs to fuck up with someone, just because they can. Just to teach those men/rich people/white people/whatever a lesson. And you can't very well take these things back.

This is cargo cult feminism. Not only is it just fodder for the anti-equality camp, who can go all "feminism is bad, look what these jerks are trying to do" on our asses, it's dangerous and irresponsible. It can ruin careers and lives, all in the name of some make-believe image of equality.