Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[Jelle Licht <jlicht@fsfe.org>]

Hello!


HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de> writes:

> If you don't want to continue the discussion then so be it, but I cannot leave
> my points misrepresented. When I say "you" I don't necessarily mean you
> personally, but rather the larger discussion. You don't have to respond if you
> don't want to, I believe we have both made our points and it's up to the
> readers to draw their conclusions.
>
> On Wednesday, 31 October 2018 13:46:49 CET you wrote:
>> After this email I'm done with the conversation.  I have tried to
>> provide you with evidence.  You make it clear you have a bone to pick
>> with people concerned with gender equality.  This will go around in
>> circles.
> I have no issue with gender equality, but this is not what feminism is doing.

                       ^^^^^^
   Good to hear that! I think you can leave debates about the actual or
   intended goals of any feminism movements to mailing lists or other
   platforms devoted to that topic though.


> Let's do an analogy: strong nations are good, fascism promotes strong nations,

  Let's not, as the points that are being are discussed are specific,
  not abstract and quite real. Analogies have a time and place for being
  useful, but this is not one of them.

> therefore if you believe in a strong nation you are naturally a fascist. Oh,
> those death camps? Well, that's not *real* fascism, that was just Nazism. And
> now we have reached Godwin's law. You presuppose that feminism is acting for a
> good cause (gender equality), so therefore the actions of feminists must be
> good. There is your problem: never listen to what people say, always look at
> what they do (this is a rule for life in general, not just this issue). Of
> course comparing fascism and feminism is a hyperbole, the point is not to look
> at the labels of a group, but at their actions.
>
>> The TUC is the trade union congress.  They are not a feminist
>> organisation.  The Belgian government is not a feminist organization.
>> The Guardian is a newspaper and the EEOC is a US government office.
> You can have a strong political bias and still not be an activist group.
> Organizations cooperate, their members can be friends with one another.
> Happens all the time in all areas.

This confused me. You mean collectives of people are made up of people,
and therefore associate with other people?

>
>> My line of argument above was precisely that this does not only happen
>> in a field with "awkward nerds".  Also I find your assertion that
>> "nerds" are unable to behave decently to other people an insult to
>> myself and "nerds" as a whole.
> Anyone can behave, but anyone can also slip up. And some people slip up more
> often than others. Why? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, I just know
> that's they way it is. Again, this is not limited to the issue at hand.
> Everyone knows that hitting people is wrong, but some people are more prone to
> losing their tamper then others. Why? Again, I don't know, all I know is that
> you are less likely to be slapped on the head at a university than at a trade
> job.
>
>> I find it shocking you are basically telling people who are being
>> mis-treated by others to just suck it up.
>>
>> It's because of these attitudes I'm glad we have a code of conduct.
> Everyone has hardships to put up with. It's about the severity of hardships.
> This is like looking at workplace accidents and putting a papercut right next
> to a cut to the bone as if they were comparable. If you have a papercut you
> suck it up, put a band aid on it so you don't bleed over the papers and get
> back to work. But if you have a cut to the bone you need the wound to get
> disinfected and stitched up. It would be absurd to say that an office job is
> more hazardous than a construction site job because people in the office suffer
> paper cuts more often. I would rather suffer a hundred paper cuts than one cut
> to the bone.
>
>> Here's the problem with your argument.  These findings are reproduced
>> over and over: women are disproportionately affected by harassment,
>> especially of a gendered kind.  Even if you find an issue with a
>> specific study, the consensus of virtually all these studies find the
>> same thing.
>>
>> You might have better results if you actually pointed to studies that
>> overturned the consensus.  Good luck with that.
> I am not saying these studies cannot be reproduced, I am doubting the severity
> of the issue. If we suppose that certain people tend to slip up more often
> (which I did above) then of course you will find these patterns more often. But
> again, how severe of a problem is Steve making a stupid joke at coffee break?

The problem is not only Steve making a stupid joke; the problem is the
environment that led to Steve thinking it is okay to make statements
like these in the first place. The only way to 'fix' this problem is to
change the environment so that people are less likely to slip up, and to
keep each other honest about (tiny) mistakes that everyone inevitably
makes. To be honest, your recurring statement about people being more or
less likely to slip up is not really coherent; I think we can all agree
that every on slips up sometimes.

>
>> Come on.  Get out of here with your manufactured concern.  Whatever the
>> specific cases in this video were, the overall point, and the conclusion
>> of the overall debate is that street harassment is a widespread issue,
>> wherever you go.  It disproportinately affects women and is
>> disproportinately carried out by men.
> You just went on about reproducibility. OK, then why don't they reproduce that
> video in areas where the ethnic makeup is closer to the Belgian average? Or in

This seems like a question to ask the researchers, but because you have
a concern regarding methodology does not invalidate the by now seemingly
irrefutable clues that these issues do exist.

> areas with a higher standard of living? After all, this happens wherever you
> go, even though these street harassment video are always shot in the same kind
> of area for some reason. Doesn't that strike you as odd?
>
> This is the sort of data manipulation I mean, you go through the bad part of
> town, people do bad things. But you conveniently ignore all the other bad
> things that would happen in that area. I am sure no one gets mugged in the
> ghetto after dark. No, street harassment is the only issue here.

Your text seemingly goes from `ethnically diverse' -> `[lower] standard
of living' -> `bad part of town' -> `ghetto'. I will assume you acted,
and will continue acting in good faith, but I implore you to critically
have a look at your thought processes and see how incredibly rude this
might come across. If this was not your intention at all, then I
apologize and hope you can still take my comments as a constructive
critical note on parts of your writing style.