Debian: transgender threats to transgender death, Lucy Wayland, RIP
Today is the anniversary of Ian Murdock's suicide. It is four years since the Debian Christmas lynchings of 2018. Two Debian Developers, Charles Plessy and I, observed the environment was so toxic that it could kill somebody else. One month later, Lucy Wayland passed away all too soon.
Wayland was transgender. Some people knew her by her original name, Jon Ward and her IRC nickname aardvark.
Transgender people don't spontaneously die. There are a range of interconnected problems involving their environment. Debian was clearly part of Wayland's environment.
Earlier this year, I contributed several blog posts to the debate about the Frans Pop Debian.Day suicide. Later, I looked at the way the burden of 14,000 messages on debian-private may have been a factor in the mistakes made by an underage developer in 1998.
There are significant similarities between the deaths of Ian Murdock, Frans Pop and Lucy Wayland. They were all male, in their mid-forties. They were all talented and hard-working people. Murdock and Wayland both consumed alcohol, there is no mention of whether alcohol was a factor or not for Pop. They were all single and complained about being alone. Of particular note, it looks like Murdock was alone at Christmas.
Now it is time to look at the hard evidence showing Debian progressed from transgender threats to a transgender death in the space of less than one year and demonstrate the plausible links between Debian harassment culture and the high mortality rate of transgender people in general.