He's right that everyone should be able to participate in a community, no matter what are their political ideas, as long as they don't preach these ideas to the community. All this argument of "feeling threatened by the mere presence", used by various minorities, has always been a trojan horse to expel the wrong-think.
Gnome specifically allows racist (well, against white people) and sexist remarks (against males or cisgendered folk), as long as you don't discriminate in action.
I know little about these matters but they do say later
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
Right. I discussed this in another thread. Acknowledged that they do not tolerate discriminatory actions. But if you "need" to be cisphobic in your words to "feel safe" in a community, that impugns on others, and when such behavior is endorsed as acceptable...
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"
I mean, in itself, that's just "wow" for a code of conduct... "You can be derogatory and attack people about their sexuality or race, as long as you're being derogatory to the right people..."
What's staggering to me is who exactly is unsafe in the FOSS community? Are minorities being attacked at conferences or something? I'm not rich enough to attend them.
Bullies are usually in minority numbers, you can't eliminate bullying, then the fallacy becomes that only literally minorities should be allowed to bully.
Well put, that's essentially what it ends up being: one group has permission to act poorer than another, due to perceived injustices outside that immediate context. And the defense being 'we're punching up, because...' is childish at best imo.
And if we say "hey maybe not have double standards?" We're bigots. Wat.
They will be shocked when they realize reverse-racism is still racism. If they allow this, they should allow racism against everyone. (Both should be banned)
That’s because people frequently use DIE as a pretense for socially unacceptable behaviors:
- 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.
I saw a bunch of people comment about the author on various Mastodon networks and in any other context they could be defined as cyber bulling or harassment.
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.
I know one person that's the kind this post is referring to. They will more or less unknowingly sabotage their friendships because they are not able to understand that not everyone is up to date or even caring about their strict and ever-changing system of beliefs and opinions. As a result, they suffer from chronic anxiety and feel constantly burned out, because it's not possible to cut off "impure" coworkers. I believe this is just a type that won't change, and it's better to just cut them off.
The Gnome Foundation's Code of Conduct explicitly condones racism (against white people), sexism (against men) and cisphobia. Lest you think I'm exaggerating:
> "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.
> Honestly, I actually am somewhat shocked that this one isn't more controversial.
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.
Very much so. I am very opening, welcoming, accepting. But when I've questioned some of the most egregious concerns, it's only a matter of time before you hear "perhaps you should look more closely at yourself".
First of all, the odds of "white cis men" as you put it being put to shame for free is... quite, quite smaller than people who don't share the social structure privilege.
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.
Privilege is fake and just used to bully white cis men. It's a justification for discrimination. It's the same as the n-word in principle, used to single out people of a particular race. The weird thing is that some people consider it acceptable... it's just anti-white racism, the opposite but equivalent to anti-black racism.
I’d argue the point of “Privileged” is to generalize people. “Privileged” is something all white people are, and it’s commonly presented as something they have in roughly equal proportion.
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.
See, this is the "two wrongs don't make a right" approach, which passes moral muster.
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.
> It's... not that people have a _need_ to do that. And let's be honest, you know it.
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.
Are you against making comments towards someone’s race/sexuality or not? “Well it depends on their race” is not one of the two options. Learn to be honest instead of responding to a yes or no question with an essay just because it would put your consistency into doubt.
I believe that people that advocate banning people with extreme and/or dangerous viewpoints from public forums and communities also don't want child rapists and murderers to be rehabilitated.
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.
This is a really good article but you aren't going to like it if you're on the pro-SJW side.
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...
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.
> I personally think we need to divide communities into pro-SJ and anti-SJ spaces
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.
He moderates a forum about growing tomatoes. Allowing a nazi to talk about tomatoes has nothing to do with Poppers Paradox. He literally said that if the guy brings his nazi ideology to the discord he will get banned. If anything allowing the nazi to interact with other people that grow tomatoes might help him grow out of his nonsense.
Mods have enough work to do to keep their discord in order. He has no time to police every single users individual beliefs.
> You can't use it as a cudgel to "win" any discussion.
Sure, one cannot in all cases, no.
But when the discussion is "must we extend freedom of expression of beliefs to those who wish to deny others their freedoms?" Then yes, it 100% does, and the answer is NO.
In other words, when the object is "but mah FREE SPEECH!" then the answer is "shut up, fascist."
It looks like the people the author complains about are pretty intolerant, and they promote hate speech by calling the people they disagree with Nazis. So following the paradox of tolerance, they are the ones who should be banned, right?
I think there's plenty worth talking about here. Like the opinion that the previous internet, where everyone could be rude and not worry about offending others, was arguably better.
I actually agree that the old internet was better. I'm not saying you shouldn't be banned from Twitter/X if you start using racist slurs online, but the way SJWs stalk people online is unacceptable, imo.
Why is it bad? It gets to the question of why we censor people on platforms to begin with. Is it to affect the discussion as a whole or keep the platform pleasant? I'd say trying to influence the societal discussion by censoring people is a form of evil. We censor people (which is evil) because it is the lesser evil when their posts are disruptive. When you go SJW and stalk people, it shows your motive is not to protect the platform but to silence the target, which is imo an evil motive. Silencing bad speech is still evil because you appoint yourself as the decider of good and evil. Neither should the collective majority be the decider, as history is rife with examples where the collective majority was wrong. Thus I believe engaging in censorship is inherently evil, and must be justified by some other good so that censorship is the lesser evil.
I also agree that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the values of open source and social justice.
Open source software must be usable for any purpose, good or evil. The goal of open source is not "justice" but rather "freedom". We must be able to use software "for any purpose" and a key there is self-determination and non-interference. SJW tendencies do not get the whole "leave me alone and let me decide" idea that is at the core of open source.
