On GNU and on hackers
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This post is no different. GNU and the FSF behind it are social projects before they are coding projects. Attempts to avoid thinking in terms of society and instead myopically focusing on "the code" are wrong headed from the start, especially in the context of GNU.
I think though, that for everything that I agree with in this post, it is focused too much outwards, without having a sufficient amount of introspection. The post opens with an example of a person withdrawing their talk as they feel it will conflict with the code of conduct. Later in the post, Andy writes that it turns out that the author withdrew their talk because they were worried that it would be considered offensive probably because of its content (I am inferring from the post that he intended to use curses in the talk) and not because it was misogynist. Even when it is revealed that the author misunderstood the meaning of the code of conduct, the post is still written almost as though this is on the author. I think this is the first place that people working to make a community more inclusive should take a step back and do some reflecting.
If a code of conduct is simply put out there, without sufficient explanation of it, or sensitivity to the fact that it probably written in English with numerous assumptions based on your culture built in, then a certain amount of responsibility must be taken if someone misunderstands it. Obviously, attempts to exhaustively enumerate what a code of conduct covers would be futile, so I'll head off attempts to claim that is what I am saying here. No I am not calling for some strawman case statement, which will obviously immediately be found to have loopholes. But if you can't put in the work to list examples, help explain things that may rely on your own cultural assumptions and biases, and in general work to make understanding the code of conduct inclusive to everyone it will cover (obviously helping only those extending a good faith effort), well then how much better are you at being inclusive that the community with which you are finding fault?
Another thing that I think needs to be established is that the code of conduct will be applied equally to everyone. I recently read a twitter message from an author expressing disdain for people complaining about their talk "Learn Functional Programming Without Growing a Neckbeard". This is an obviously gendered title, with negative connotations. In the same way that I would expect a conference to reject a talk entitled "Learn about Feminism Without Getting Hairy Armpits" I obviously expect the same standards to applied to the former talk. If you want people to buy into inclusivity (and yes everyone should just buy into it, but we do not live in a perfect world), then you need to include them. If people feel that the code of conduct will only apply to them in the "negative" sense, instead of also in the positive sense where they too can feel safe from mockery, offense, and bad conduct then it will be pretty hard to get buy in.
I'll finish here by saying that I agree with most of the other things that Andy has written. I honestly never really understood the whole freedom of speech argument, especially in the context of a conference. If you can't give a talk without referring to rape, you should honestly rethink your approach. If you can't describe a system without comparing it in some gendered way with sexual overtones, again you should take a step back. I can't even fathom how this could be a problem but maybe I just haven't given enough talks to large groups of people. Maybe the urge to make a sexual reference in an explicitly technological conference is overwhelming. But I am guessing that is probably not the case. So I have little sympathy there. But for the sake of progressing to the better world that Andy is working towards I think a little introspection on the two points above from those working for it is in order as well.
At least in the US there'd be a reasonable chance the FSF would be involved. When I was at the FSF I organized a GHM at one of the FSF annual conferences and it was pretty decent. RMS came of course, which helped.
1. Working to be more inclusive is a worthy goal that should be pursued.
2. Looking exclusively outwards from failures to make progress on this goal is tempting because it can allow for the seductive feeling of moral superiority, but throwing one's hands up and saying that you don't want to bother is not a good thing, and neither is blaming everyone else while not thinking about your own actions.
That said, you have obviously put your money where your mouth is when it comes to contributing to the community, so maybe I am misreading you. I was more reacting to a trend I see that upsets me, wherein those working for inclusivity use the worthiness of their goal to avoid criticism of the way they work towards this goal while placing all blame for failures on external groups. I think that this will ultimately cultivate much greater pushback and much slower progress than could be achieved otherwise. And that would be a tragedy.
This feels like rebellion against the perceived 'political correctness' of the FSF from where I am. People were also uncomfortable with the graphic produced for the meeting -- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/ghm-discuss/2014-07/jpgtp1...
I'm unwilling to associate with that pushback against having an anti-harassment policy.
The problem with stifling free speech is that the most effective tactics also involve stifling free thought. The proper course is a persuasive discussion, rather than browbeating everyone around you into submission.
His goals are correct; his methods suck.
Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about what you can or cannot say, you have to tone down any joke you'd like to tell for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still think what they think but they are simply not allowed to say it in public anymore.
At least before people felt some responsibility for what they were saying - instead of having to keep their mouths shut.
Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about who you can or cannot own, you have to tone down any violence against negroes you'd like to beat for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still arrange lynchings but they are simply not allowed to talk about it in public anymore.
At least before people felt some responsibility for the slaves they owned, instead of having to set them free.
OK, OK, I know, it's a bad analogy. Limits on speech are much less clear-cut than freeing slaves. But I hope I've made the point that you can't just point to the past, say "Is that progress? In my mind, society was better [then].", and claim that that's a substantive argument. It's not.
Yes, there are great arguments for Free Speech. Make those arguments instead.
On the other hand, there are good arguments to limit discriminatory speech. Speech can definitely harm people. One person saying "[Ethnic] immigrants are no-good, low-down, filthy, lazy, uneducated spongers, only interested in taking advantage of food stamp programs and great emergency medical treatment services while stealing jobs from real Americans by doing them for half the cost, cash-in-hand." probably isn't going to make much of a difference. But if it turns into a narrative or meme that's repeated again and again and again, it really can.
Oft-repeated speech can harm discriminatred-against peoples ability to get good jobs, by turning the minds of employers against them. It can harm their ability to start their own companies, by turning the minds of lenders against them. It can harm their ability to get a good education for their kids, by making school boards indifferent to the problems of schools with large [ethnic] populations. It can harm their ability to petition school boards, or to join them, by having the people already there dismiss them, ignore their input, and quash their participation.
Sure, despite this, if an [ethnic] kid with enough smarts and enough determination fights as hard as they can from the age of about 5 against all these barriers, and has a good amount of luck, they could still make a great life for themselves. But should they have to? Huge swathes of non-[ethnic] kids do at least as well for themselves without having to overcome these barriers at all; some of them, due to the privileges they enjoy, manage it while almost coasting. Meanwhile, masses of [ethnic] kids with only 90% of the drive of our special snowflake are beaten back into a life of poverty.
Discriminatory narratives in our cultures materially harm whole populations of people. Even if you can point to individuals that are exceptions to this, that doesn't stop it being true. It's still possible to do well at the game of life when it's on "nightmare" difficulty setting, it's just that many fewer people playing on that setting will do as well as the people playing on "easy" difficulty.
So the question is, is the freedom for us to create and spread discriminatory verbal narratives against minority ethnic (or other) groups in our society, more important than their freedom to truly be seen as equals and individuals, and to have the same advantages with the same lack of barriers that the majority enjoys?
It's not a clear-cut answer. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and any limits, no matter how well-intentioned, should be regarded with utmost suspicion.
But, there is a case to be made here, and it needs to be decided on its merits. Saying "we never used to do it that way" simply isn't good enough.
Now, on your additions:
> Speech can definitely harm people.
It only harms people if the same people are only allowed to speak. Freedom of Speech goes in both ways. If someone or some group is publicly attacked, they have the right to defend themselves as well. So Free Speech can harm and defend. And if the ones who spread shit about certain minorities are being heard and become popular, well that's more of a general culture problem that you have than an issue of a few people abusing Free Speech, don't you think ?
> there are good arguments to limit discriminatory speech.
I am not convinced by yours. Just like there are probably good arguments for the war on terrorism, the war on drugs and so on. Never been convinced by any of them either. It's funny how the ones who are proponent of anti-discrimination laws and measures tend to be oppressive people. I wonder if there's a connection there...
> Discriminatory narratives in our cultures materially harm whole populations of people
Because you think not talking about what people really think without daring to say it is good for our culture ? Honestly I'd prefer to know exactly what one's stance is instead of trying to guess what they hide under their politically correct mask. That's just creating a lot of tension in the end.
> spread discriminatory verbal narratives against minority ethnic (or other) groups in our society
It's not just about discrimination, basically you remove the right from People from even having opinions about other people. Because having bad opinion about someone else, whoever they are, is being discriminative at its core. The way we're going, it will soon be impossible to say bad things about anyone. Sounds like Pangloss in Candid. Yeah, Everything Is Awesome.
> Saying "we never used to do it that way" simply isn't good enough.
I never said that, thanks for the additional Strawman, I guess your first three paragraphs were not enough. And you know what? We HAD lots of censorship throughout History, and we know what censorship brings. You cannot say shit about the Church, about your Lord, about the King, about the Nobility, etc... We know where this all led - violence, because you don't fix the real problems by hiding things under the mat. We are now recreating new systems of censorship with the pretext "we should all be nice to each other", and burning new people at the stake (at least burning their reputation and ruining their lives) by pointing out their "thought crime".
> But, there is a case to be made here, and it needs to be decided on its merits.
Are people happier now that we have all these anti-discrimination laws ? Nope, they are asking for more! Hey, censorship is never enough. Once you have it, you always want more.
> I don't even know why you did that, that's just a poor strawman at best.
I was trying to point out the flaw in the form of your argument, rather than its substance. Sorry if that didn't come through.
> Freedom of Speech goes in both ways. If someone or some group is publicly attacked, they have the right to defend themselves as well.
That is true, if both groups have access to the same sized soapbox. But, in many countries, there are some major media outlets who manage to get ratings by telling the majority that most of their existing problems are down to some minority or other (sucking up welfare, or "stealing" jobs), and that the people they should fear in terms of being assaulted, mugged, raped, killed, hit by an uninsured driver, etc... in the future are from the same minority. Meanwhile, the minority doesn't have much representation in mainstream media, much less control any of it. Further, while non-discriminatory majority-run media certainly exist, they tend not to rebut even a significant subset of the unsubstantiated biased fear-mongering dreck out there.
> Because you think not talking about what people really think without daring to say it is good for our culture ?
No, because a lot of what people "really think" about many minority groups is not based on facts, but on unsubstantiated misinformation spread by other bigots. I have relatives who are convinced that all the members of one minority group are basically scum. They simultaneously think they're all incredibly lazy, while also reviling them for stealing jobs by willing to work 14 hours/day for less than a living wage. They didn't come to these opinions through personal experience with this minority group or their culture. They certainly don't have any friends from this group, and it's highly unlikely they even know any of them in passing. Their opinions of this group are entirely based on what other people like them said when those people were "talking about what they really thought". And they spread the lies and misinformation further, to even more people who wouldn't have formed their own opinion either way without them.
I think that that's bad for our culture.
> basically you remove the right from People from even having opinions about other people.
I don't want that. I want to stop people forming prejudicial opinions of individuals, based purely on those individuals membership of a discriminated-against minority group. If you think Joseph is a thief because you lent him money, but he later denied that you did and refuses to pay you back, that's fine. But if you think he must be a thief because he's a member of [ethnic minority], and they're all theives, then no, that's not on and you're an asshole.
> I never said ["we never used to do it that way"], thanks for the additional Strawman,
Re-read your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th sentences. It might not be how you intended it, but in 5 out of the 7 sentences you originally wrote, as I read them, your main argument seems to be that 20 years ago we never had a problem with that sort of speech, so why should we now?
> You cannot say shit about the Church, about your Lord, about the King, about the Nobility, etc...
There is an important difference here, in that the focus on "censorship" (for want of a better word) is the intent to use it to protect the weak from the strong. We're now fine with "punching up", subjecting those with power to scrutiny, and dissent. In fact, we try to insist on it. We don't always do very well, because those with power have, well, a lot of power with which to protect and veil themselves. But that discussion is over, and we won it.
The fight now is to stop people "punching down", from shitting on the little guy, the guy with no friends, the guy without a voice. Heck, that's the basis of most of our judicial systems, to protect the weak from the bullies, and the naive from the unscrupulous.
> We are now recreating new systems of censorship with the pretext "we should all be nice to each other", and burning new people at the stake (at least burning their reputation and ruining their lives) by pointing out their "thought crime".
I agree, it sucks. Censorship is bad and causes a whole raft of problems. But I'm not convinced that in some cases it's not worse than the systemic discrimination we already have. If you can come up with another way to end that, to get people to let go of their irrational fear and hatred, or just find a way to get them to not pass it on to their kids so the next generation isn't quite so fucked - without making some thoughts taboo to express - I'd be over the moon.
i'm all about stifling the kind of free speech that
makes people feel comfortable joking about rape.
Laughter is not necessarily a positive emotion. It can also originate from discomfort, anxiety, sadness, etc. The purpose of comedy is not just to be ephemerally funny. It's often used as a tool, by those skilled enough to pull it off, to shed light on the darker aspects of human existence and present them in such a fashion that it elicits a humored response. It is a coping mechanism, a way to come to terms with troubling things. Indeed, this is the point of black comedy.
We joke about death and torture all the time. There is no reason why rape couldn't be joked about. In the hands of an excellent comedian, comedy has no boundaries. It starts to border on philosophy, musings of the human condition. Anyone who objects to this either misunderstands comedy, or has very unfortunate beliefs that free expression must be hindered.
Otherwise, I read this article not so much as a reliable telling of internal issues in GNU (though they no doubt exist, as with any community), but as one man's personal frustrations with the community somehow being inadequate to his expectations.
One of the presentations after lunch is by a GNU hacker. He starts his talk by stating his hope that he won't be seen as "offensive or part of rape culture or something".
Which he deemed to be a trivialization of rape culture, but it was certainly not a "rape joke" by any conventional means.
No, the keyword here is "offensive". The humor derives from the fact that the speaker is expressing concern that their words might be misconstrued to bear sinister connotations, when in fact they meant none. In that context, "rape culture" might be just about any negative social trend.
I wish I understood your perspective on this a little better -- reading through your comment history, you obviously have a pretty nuanced view on a lot of things, but from my standpoint you frequently conflate the right to free speech with a right to consequence-free speech (note that even in the tweet you posted, where the author hyperbolically claims to want to "stifle free speech", he includes the caveat that he doesn't want people to be "comfortable" joking about rape. I think that's an entirely reasonable sentiment).
Well, how come there is no murder-culture? (answer at the bottom of the post)
We (in the US) casualize murder through television. We glorify serial-murderers, which often have rock-star style attention, groupies, and fame. Kids often joke about killing one another. Kids are happy to tell you when "they killed the bad guy". "Killing it" is a positive phrase of accomplishment. Paintball is a somewhat popular sport, which is nothing but people acting as if they were on-duty soldiers ready for killing, we kill animals for sport, and we give medals to soldiers who have killed 'the best'.
There is definitely a huge problem with murder here..
Why there is no murder-culture: What rape-culture really is is the problem that we as a society have with placing the blame of a rape on the rape victim and not the perpetrator. Rape-culture is when a victim is criticized for their location and clothing; common due to the misconceptions behind how a rape occurs, and because of the tendency people have to be unable to place blame on an unknown quantity. A terrible tragedy that occurs too often. This, of course, cannot occur with a murder; both due to the social stigma of criticizing the dead, and simply for the fact that there isn't any longer a person to blame other than the perpetrator.
It has nothing to do with the background use or casualization of a phrase, and that's the (wrong) kind of thinking that actually will hinder free speech.
You, uh, might want to look at what's happening in Ferguson, MO right now.
There is murder culture, to an extent -- the main difference is that the while (as you yourself describe) there are some social context similarities with murder culture to rape culture, those social manifestations don't as frequently connect to a deeply entrenched power imbalance and license abuses across it the way rape culture does with sexism. So murder culture, while it exists, isn't quite the same kind of problem as rape culture.
OTOH, there are a number of what might be called murder culture does have a problematic interaction with various entrenched power imbalances (racism, most notably, but also sexism and some others), but while the association is very tight between sexism and rape culture by nature (that is, rape imagery inherently invokes the same divide at issue in sexism), murder culture only overlaps with rather than tightly maps to the divide at issue in racism or any other particular power imbalance.
To be fair, no matter what you think about feminist issues, it's simply factual that they're a hotbed of emotions, that many people will get worked up about them very very easily, as had been recently demonstrated in the mailing list thread. There's no shortage of similar pure tech issues - things like systemd vs. Upstart or BSD vs. Linux. In those cases, just about anyone would admit that the relevant flame wars tend to derail discussion and give off more heat than light, and similar jokes might be made causing little offense. But with the issues at hand, to which perceived trivialization in culture itself makes up a large part of the problem, there's a fine line between reacting to this phenomenon and making oneself an example. And as long as a joke can be reasonably interpreted as the latter, I think it would be far better to avoid it.
One of the reasons the fairly commonplace legal prohibitions against hate speech are not perceived as censorship is that it is perfectly legal to discuss those prohibitions in most countries that have them. This arrangement has been very serviceable as a compromise so far; I can't help but be very unsettled if large traditionally liberal segments of society are cannibalised by a prohibitory movement that deems it insufficient.
I think a lot of good would come if we stopped using the word "censorship", and just responded to what people actually had concerns with. Censorship is distinct from a dude stating his opinions, and encouraging others to agree with him.
(Edit): * defending nuanced discussion about the value of rape culture as a concept
* Women are underrepresented in organisations which matter, such as in particular open source software development conferences.
* This underrepresentation is [at least to a significant extent] due to these organisations maintaining a climate that is hostile or unpleasant to female contributors.
* One instance of such hostility are misogynistic statements being made freely [without punitive measures being taken by the organisers in response].
* The trivialisation of the concept of "rape culture" is one such misogynistic statement.
Since the leap from the first point being merely about a small free software conference to applying to every forum in which anything resembling a binding political decision is made is natural (if anything, most would argue that proportional representation of each gender in any such forum is much more significant than proportional representation in the free software movement), the complete argument does seem to imply that concept X should not be trivialised in any forum of nontrivial influence - and, as I stated in my original post, concept X is sufficiently recursive already that the upgrade to "concept X, and if F(Y)='trivialisation of concept Y is to be prohibited', F(X), F(F(X)), etc." seems fairly near. (I have used the implication that "misogynistic => to be prohibited in any influential forum" which I would like to believe I derived above in the definition of F.)
You are right in that the referenced "joke" is not a good example of a nuanced discussion of rape culture, but it at least feels to me like accepting the proposition that "jokes about (the concept that jokes and nitpicks about $concept are bad) are bad" here is like giving 0.9 miles and expecting the whole mile to not be taken. ("are bad" is to be understood as shorthand for "are misogynistic" and hence "to be prohibited(...)" as above.)
(Apologies for what you might perhaps perceive as an unnecessarily tedious writing style; given that this is a very politically and emotionally charged topic, I felt the need to tread more carefully to avoid being erroneously assumed to hold some wildly unpopular opinion.)
Organizations setting limits on what type of discussion is allowed is a good thing, and again, specifics matter. The statement, at its heart, stifles the speech of these groups by trivializing the concerns of those people who are affected by the systems termed "rape culture"( systems supporting violence against certain groups ). The fact that the transition to a more inclusive community involves prohibiting this type of speech is a given IMO, since that speech is precisely what makes for a hostile climate to non-white-guy contributors. Such statements are problematic if the community in question claims to be based on freedom and inclusivity.
[Edit]: In general, I think "freedom of speech"( and the implied "freedom to be offended" ), are less important than maintaining a community climate that feels safe for its members.
If "post-liberal" feminists think the patriarchy so powerful, I find it hard to understand why they are not more worried about the possibility of the machinery they happily advocate to be set up for their own protection being co-opted by the same and turned against them. The persecution complex of midwestern American Evangelicals demonstrates that even a group completely outgunning everyone else in terms of both numbers and sheer influence can successfully delude itself into believing that it is oppressed and in dire need of protection, and the damage they could do to the feminist cause if they got to seize the "safe space" policies in place at many university campuses and rewrite them to sanction statements that "make Christians feel unsafe" in the same way in which they currently sanction statements that "make women feel unsafe" is palpable.
> Organizations setting limits on what type of discussion is allowed is a good thing
In general? Now that's a statement I would really be inclined to apply the adjective "problematic" to...
Regarding your position following "[Edit]:", accepting it as true still allows for two possible consequences apart from "restrict freedom of speech until everyone feels safe", namely:
* trivially, to exclude the members who feel unsafe until everyone feels safe;
* less trivially, to educate/ease/pressure/brainwash (whichever verb you prefer) members who feel unsafe into feeling safe.
If neither of the two options is considered legitimate under any circumstance, any individual with a psychiatric disorder making them feel a constant feeling of dread would be sufficient to shut down any forum to which they manage to gain admission. Conversely, I have yet to see a comprehensive argument against even a stubborn approach along the lines of "People still feel unsafe? More brainwashing starting at an earlier age it is, then!" - something we would probably do without batting an eye if a different feeling of unsafety interfered with the social participation of a large portion of the demographic, like the hikikomori phenomenon.
You're right when you say that censorship is distinct from people stating their opinions, but you're wrong if you think we should stop using the word.
The word censorship is useful, because most movements seek to squelch the speech targeted against them, not necessarily re-educate the speaker. This is because of the power of group-think; if a radical idea gains momentum it could spell doom for an entire movement of people due to the tendency of people to believe group opinions rather than singular opinions. Censoring is exactly what they are doing, removing an opinion from the world that they value as obscene.
Nearly all posts on HN that i've read that have thrown around the phrase 'rape-culture' have been entirely about "X CEO of Y company said Z. Fire them!" or "Can you believe X said Y? Z groups demand resignation!"
Where, exactly, is the re-education of concerns happening? I've read the phrase 'rape-culture' at least a hundred times on this forum along with about 40 different definitions and nuanced characteristics , leaving me now clueless about what is or isn't funny.
This situation has effectively censored anyone who is too conflicted to talk about the subject for fear of retribution or loss of reputation/livelihood. It seems the only people who can talk about it are those involved with whatever movements are against the use of the phrase all-together.
I can't think of anything more effective than self-censorship due to fear.
Free speech is there to protect offensive speech. I personally find it repugnant to trivialize rape or a number of different things, but I don't have the right to prevent you from doing so outside of asking you to leave my home.