If you want a laugh and you're in geek company with mixed genders, make a reference to how someone needs to tell ESR that he's not God's gift to women. After the laughing dies down you'll likely be shocked at how many of the women have personally been hit on by him.

OK, he's obviously not a Perl person. But you'll also find no shortage of women complaining that they don't want to hear about Randal's memorable visits to prostitutes.

Just consider that when the web took off, a lot of women got involved as graphic designers, and working with HTML. A lot of men did as well. Many of the men followed an upgrade path which went from HTML to mixing in some dynamic behavior to becoming Perl programmers. Virtually no women did that. Based on personal interactions, I am confident that plenty of women were interested in doing so then chose not to. So yes, our community definitely does deter women.

An incidental note that I need to make because it has caused confusion in the past in discussions like this. tilly is my last name, not my first. Like Abigail, I'm a man.