Just a couple of points:

This first one is actually quite relevant to the discussion at hand: If, as you say, seemingly female 'newbies' are treated with more 'leniency' by the monks, this is probably more insulting to the women - why on earth should it be accepted as more reasonable that a female should be more in need of understanding if she posts what is perceived to be a stupid question?

But that brings me to a second, longer, only very tenuously related point (which probably ought to have a node of its own and is my own personal hobby-horse), which is that despite its having been written by a linguist and having innumerable parallels to natural language, perl is awfully difficult to learn if you're not already a bit of a techie. I need a "Perl for Kids" book. For me, not for my kids (if I were to have any which I don't). Telling a true newbie to read the FAQ and other documentation can be incredibly frustrating for the newbie in question - it doesn't matter how many entries one reads on e.g. "rand", sometimes you just need a kind person to take you by the hand and explicitly show you what it is you need to know before you can understand what's going on (and even then sometimes you don't....) Sometimes you're such a newbie you need help just figuring out what questions to ask.

Anyway, this is an incredibly long-winded way of saying that as a true beginner, with little to no prior programming knowledge, I have not found perl to be terribly accessible for the newcomer, and as an (explicit) female, I have not found this site to be exceptionally 'gentle' or helpful. Quite the opposite on occasion, in fact. Not that I'm complaining, mind; my experience here has been quite positive on the whole, the few people to whom I've spoken have been very kind, and I do appreciate that the monastery will be a valuable resource for me one day once I get off my arse and figure out wtf I'm doing. And I thought that a female newbie ought to put her 2 cents in.

Cheers