Inclusive community activists are harming FOSS
blog.vaxry.net
blog.vaxry.net
Source: https://wiki.gnome.org/Foundation/CodeOfConduct -
> "Reverse"-isms, including "reverse racism," "reverse sexism," and "cisphobia"
> The examples listed above are not against the Code of Conduct.
Basic expectations for conduct are not covered by the "reverse-ism clause" and would be enforced irrespective of the demographics of those involved. For example, racial discrimination will not be tolerated, irrespective of the race of those involved. Nor would unwanted sexual attention be tolerated, whatever someone's gender or sexual orientation. Members of our community have the right to expect that participants in the project will uphold these standards
As I understand CoC, calling someone derogatory terms and making them feel uncomfortable is okay in GNOME community if this person is in privileged category (white cis male etc), but it is not okay to discriminate them.
"The GNOME community prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort"
And if we say "hey maybe not have double standards?" We're bigots. Wat.
- political discrimination
- racism and sexism
That’s why institutions which are outspoken about DIE such as Harvard lose civil rights suits over their institutional racism. And why the party which has made DIE a central tenet supports antisemitism.
Believing that DIE advocates are about diversity, inclusion, or equality is like believing that DPRK is a democratic republic for the benefit of its people.
There's arseholes on all sides of the spectrums, left or right, progressive or conservative, but the ones on the progressive side (and I'm a progressive type myself) are the worst in that anyone who doesn't agree whole heartedly with their views is made out to be scum of the earth, dogpiled, cancelled etc.
They ultimately shoot their own cause in the foot by just fuelling the rise of populist and far-right parties.
> "Reverse"-isms, including "reverse racism," "reverse sexism," and "cisphobia" ... The examples listed above are not against the Code of Conduct.
To be clear, it does say that discriminatory actions are prohibited:
> Basic expectations for conduct are not covered by the "reverse-ism clause" and would be enforced irrespective of the demographics of those involved. For example, racial discrimination will not be tolerated, irrespective of the race of those involved.
"You're allowed to be racist/sexist, towards white people/males/cisgendered, just don't actually discriminate against them".
"Safety vs Comfort". Huh.
"It's more important that people be/feel safe than you feel comfortable" - I agree.
But ... if you need to be able to express "cisphobia" and "reverse racism" to feel safe, then this is hugely problematic, and perhaps a deeper issue that just perhaps, an OSS community should not need to navigate on your behalf ...
Honestly, I actually am somewhat shocked that this one isn't more controversial.
It was probably always meant to be a distraction
It's... not that people have a _need_ to do that. And let's be honest, you know it.
And second, there's a reason reverse racism and cisphobia aren't things, and that "they" (kinda we; I'm in the group too) are deemed privileged: by default they do happen to have it quite easier over the course of their lives. Both in opportunities and general quality of life. And things got so bad there was finally some critical mass to try and get people less scared of contributing to Free Software because they are in a group that is _quite_ disproportionally bashed by groups disproportionally more in power. One shouldn't compare the reaction of the oppressed with the violence of the oppressor, after all.
Bullies are trash, bullies in power doubly so.
If you think there's a _need_ to be able to hurt others, be it the group you are somehow against or think about them hurting you, I don't think the issue is in the CoC.
Maybe if a good number of people hadn't done bad things for decades, no one would need a CoC. But this is the world we are living, where people define themselves by their ability to mock and shame others. One group happened to do it a lot more.
Do you think it weird that it doesn't seem an issue at all? I just never thought of shaming others. Or feeling like the right to "need" it matters. I don't think this is the right mountain of freedom to die defending at all. What matters is code, helping a community grow, helping people get a modicum of privacy and freedom at least on their software. Not being free to harass.
No? People don't have a need to do things like change their forum handle to "Kill All Men" (expressly allowed by this CoC)? Post profile pictures drinking from mugs labeled "Male Tears" (expressly allowed by this CoC?), or "This is dumb and you are dumb for suggesting it. You fucking suck." (expressly allowed by this CoC if aimed at a man or white person). These are all things that have happened in the last few years around various tech communities.
> If you think there's a _need_ to be able to hurt others, be it the group you are somehow against or think about them hurting you, I don't think the issue is in the CoC.
It is if the CoC doesn't just tolerate it, but expressly condones it as acceptable behavior.
> Do you think it weird that it doesn't seem an issue at all?
On the contrary, it has been an issue many times. Randi Harper and Linux Foundation, Adria Richards at Pycon, Sarah Mei, Coraline Emhke. (Note that I am not saying any of those people or positions they hold are right or wrong, but "it's not an issue at all" is quite demonstrably incorrect).
> Maybe if a good number of people hadn't done bad things for decades, no one would need a CoC. But this is the world we are living, where people define themselves by their ability to mock and shame others. One group happened to do it a lot more.
"I am marginalized, therefore my opinion trumps yours". Hm.
When we start talking about the need of some people to feel safe and giving them very great latitude in how they accomplish this, you can easily end up with situations like one in Oregon, where a male student had a no contact order, and was banned from being on campus with a female student, or being in their classes (I say 'their' because they were both enrolled in said classes, not as a gender statement) and had to change dorms. Why?
Not because of anything he did wrong.
Because he resembled someone who had raped a female student. The rapist lived thousands of miles away, and was not a student, but because the "resemblance" was traumatizing, the administration at his university felt it was acceptable to impose restrictions on his behavior, location, employment. That, effectively, her safety (for whatever definitions of 'safety') trumped his comfort. Sound familiar? In fact, they didn't even tell him why he was subject to this no-contact situation, he found out completely by accident. (https://harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-128/trading-the-megap...)
I think that there are very real consequences when such things are mis-applied, no matter who the source, and who the subject. And I think that handwaving it away as "If you have a problem with any of this, maybe you need to look at yourself" is puerile and overly simplistic, if not insulting.
The people who don't care about reverse -isms are more concerned about punching up versus punching down, though they also tend to be careful to not define either of those things clearly, so they can be flexible in their social aggression. The biggest mistake they make as moral actors is failing to take economic and social standing as a separate axis of comparison. Not all white guys have privilege, not all minorities live in the ghetto.
The point of doing so is to allow the wealthiest richest white people to maintain their wealth and dominance over everybody by drawing negative attention to powerless people who look similar as a scapegoat. There is a reason why enacted measures to remove “privilege” do not include wealth redistribution but include many measures where the cost is put largely on lower and middle class people.
When is the last time you heard about a DIE seminar holder talking about the racial wealth gap (in 2019 whites held 87% of US wealth) and we instead mostly talk about relatively smaller income gaps? It’s because the concept of white privilege, conceptually back to the day of the invisible knapsack, rested in the idea that if most people of a racial group experienced something positive they had racial privilege. It focuses on the average and ignores the edge cases. All inequality is blamed on the average cases. The remedies disproportionately affect the average.
Similar to the Israel-Hamas conflict, in many LGBT[...] communities there is a culture of not opposing them in any material way, lest you're automatically assumed to be phobic or bigoted.
The underlying message being "there is no reason to disagree with or oppose us", which is dangerous thinking in social spaces and is not healthy.
In my experience this is a relatively strong percentage pf people, which affects everyone, irrespective of the viewpoint axis.
In this case, we have an example of a sjw/progressive viewpoint person which does not believe in 'those' people having any food left in them.
I think it's a very good rationalization of the rational side of anti-SJW reasoning particularly as applied to Free Software.
Dude is literally being slandered and called a Nazi and SJW people in the comments here are defending the slander and attacking the poster ad hominem while making straw man arguments. It is amusing but also makes me lose hope that rehabilitation of SJW types is possible.
I personally think we need to divide communities into pro-SJ and anti-SJ spaces. SJ is self destructive, least of which because they tend to lose lawsuits when courts get involved. Defending literal slander is yet another example of that...
Someone creates a highly artificial hypothetical scenario and then uses someone's answers on this non-issue as "proof" they're a Nazi with a bunch of semantic wank.
This is as much bad-faith toxic twattery as I've ever seen.
This isn't about "social justice" or "inclusivity", it's about someone abusing these concepts for their own narcissistic emotional gratification to settle their own personal scores.
I agree it's rather sad and disappointing people seem at least somewhat approving of this utter toxic behaviour, which seems to be a result of the black/white "us vs. them" type of pattern matching. Everyone would be better served if this type of thing was more strongly denounced.
I think we should put all Trump supporters in the South, and all Hillary supporters in the North. Then you could build a big wall, maybe get some guns, and then everything would be better for ever /s
However you may be right that people claiming to be progressive slander others with little or no fair cause and that is not so great.
Why don't we seperate black people and white people in different neighborhoods in the process as well? Oh, wait....