From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Subject: Re: Being excellent to one another Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 16:54:25 -0700 Message-ID: <20170320165425.6e3a6e04@khaalida> References: <20170316204527.lnkgc2vot4uqk633@abyayala> <20170317053620.GA16076@jocasta.intra> <20170317162131.GA4354@jasmine> <20170317175802.GB30584@jocasta.intra> <20170318110952.xhhobwl5ep4mlbpj@abyayala> <878to27laf.fsf_-_@gnu.org> <87inn499gk.fsf@dustycloud.org> <20170319195707.175eb056@khaalida> <20170320063619.GA20517@jocasta.intra> <878to0fhr3.fsf@gmail.com> <20170320095447.GA22437@jocasta.intra> <871stsfe13.fsf@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36745) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cq78L-0006pH-Oi for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Mar 2017 19:54:43 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cq78G-0004OJ-RS for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Mar 2017 19:54:41 -0400 Received: from sender-pp-092.zoho.com ([135.84.80.237]:25324) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1cq78G-0004N6-Kp for guix-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 20 Mar 2017 19:54:36 -0400 In-Reply-To: <871stsfe13.fsf@gmail.com> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: guix-devel@gnu.org First of all, I have no clue why my email was explicitly listed in the CC:; I'll assume that was in error. Second, it is not my intention to insult or offend anyone here, but some people seem to be rather thin-skinned about (possibly pretend) slights. However, I feel I should toss my hat into the ring here for my own reasons. I should also make it known I have no clue who anyone in these emails are apart from ng0 and Ludo', the rest of you could be a very advanced Eliza for all I'm concerned, so it's pretty much impossible for me to support anyone here. Also feel free to ignore it if you so wish, though I'd appreciate everyone at least read the first footnote for what will be obvious reasons. On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 11:17:28 +0100 Alex Sassmannshausen wrote: > John Darrington writes: > > Regarding your other comments, as we have discussed before, we > > will have to agree to disagree about singular they. I have not > > the benefit of ever having learned English as a foreign language. > > But I do remember in my elementary school being taught NOT to use > > it *especially* not in written text. And - perhaps because of this > > early tuition - it still sounds clumsy and confusing to me. > > Perhaps we have to agree to disagree on singular they, I just want to mention that most, if not all, my English teachers thought the use of "they" and related was entirely incorrect, so John isn't alone here. English, simply put, lacks any "correct" gender-neutral pronouns, despite what common usage suggest. However, as I'd hope John is aware, common usage these days was considered the height of vulgarity a century before, at the very least. For anyone who reads older books, mankind as a whole used to be refered to as "he", and while one can certainly make an issue out of that (and I'm sure plenty of people have), it does also set a precedent for using the male gender as a gender-neutral option, which happens to have a rather long history. > but I hope we > can still agree on the following statements from my earlier email: > > ----------------- > [...] it's super easy: > - if you're not sure (or have forgotten), use "singular they", or ask > - if you know someone has a preference for pronouns, use those > - don't use pronouns when *you know* the other person does not > identify with them. I'm just going to point out that this whole 'gendering' issue is, at least as far as I am concerned, a rather recent developement, and one that I can't understand in the least [1]. I don't know about anyone else, but gender == sex, and that is more-or-less that. Certainly some people don't follow the traditional sex/gender roles (tomboys and metrosexuals (I think that was the proper term for an effiminent male used during the 90's, anyways) being the best examples I can come up with), but this feels very much like hairsplitting to me, and especially in the case of older generations use of English can very easily work against decades of normal, /correct/, and proper usage. > If you make a mistake, no-one will tear your head off I haven't kept up with this thread for very long, but I will say the tone, to me, an uninvolved (up until now) individual, sounds like a bit witch hunt. > In manuals we can just use "singular they", because it is a well > established convention and does not cause confusion. Another alternative that I just remembered running across was swapping pronoun gender between chapters/sections. This is done with some of the RPG books I have, so I thought I'd toss that option into the ring. > 1. Try not to offend. > 2. Try not to be offended. > 3. Recognise that diversity is an asset. > 4. Respect the integrity and right to self-definition of all > participants IMO, the 4th guideline there is entirely redundant and already covered by the 3rd. I don't know if it is a cultural thing, or how I was raised, or what, but as far as I am concerned part of basic social etiquette is roughly summed up by the first two guidelines in the above list. Call me old fasioned or a bigot or whatever, but calling a male "he" and a female "she" is and should be perfectly acceptable, especially in this day and age. If one takes offense to being called a "he" when they prefer "she", then as far as I am concerned they are either looking for a reason to be insulted (which is rather poor manners IMO) or rather thin-skinned and thus easily injured (which is a handicap in general social situations and also seems to assume that anyone 'misgendering' them is making an effort at being insulting, when there is probably no practical way for someone to identify their prefered pronoun unless they happen to be a rather capable cross-dresser). For people who are easily injured, I do feel sorry, and hopefully a capable psychologist could help with that (I'd make other suggestions, but I don't feel this is the place for such). As far as I am concerned, being insulted or injured because someone misgenders you is like giving pork to a Jew or Muslim; if there is no way for the person to know that one is unable to eat pork on religious grounds, then there is no insult nor injury and instead the receiver should be thankful that the giver was thinking of them and brought them a present; how one handles things after that is more a matter of custom, how well the two know each other, and the like. This whole issue feels like a general lack of reasonable manners[2] and interpersonal skills, and not something that really calls for long, drawn-out thread on the development mailing list. ng0 wrote (in another email I'm not going to quote): > I agree to an earlier point which was made, and extend it: I don't > want to be part of a project which looks and behaves like almost > every other project out there, an exclusive boysclub. One of the sad facts of life is that someone has to have the guts to do what isn't normal and provide an example to others; whether we're talking racial issues, patri/matriachy issues, ect., /someone/ has to be willing to stick their neck out and be willing to take some of the abuse and deal with some of the problems trailblazing forces. As ng0 mentions, refering to some projects as "boysclub"s, is a bit of a systemic problem since most females don't seem to be willing to mention their sex/gender to anyone, and for (I'd imagine) obvious reasons. However, one of the nice parts about online communication is that we neither know nor do we have any need to know one's gender, sex, religion, orientation, or basically anything about a contributor other than what they can and can't do. It's only when one chooses to make these sorts of things an issue that they become one, when otherwise it really doesn't matter. A portion of the "The Hacker's Manifesto" that I feel is rather fitting: This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I think the obvious extentions could be made here (keep in mind this was originally written, according to my copy, on 1986-01-08), and if it were written today would likely have been included. The one thing that is really bugging me about this whole thing is why is anyone making this an issue? While I'm certainly not enlightened about this new-fangled "gendering" issue, it seems to be a nonissue for these kinds of projects; most of the women I've talked to online (most of whom were involved in computing, some of whom even sysadmin on Big Iron, fwiw) weren't insulted and seemed to accept that people would assume they are male, and IMO that is a good thing. Again, it isn't my goal to insult or offend anyone here, but I do feel the need to toss my hat into this flame-filled ring. Maybe it will do some good, maybe it won't. Maybe I'm not of the right mindset to discuss these kinds of things; I prefer to attempt to be courtious, insofar as I can be, and part of that means not taking offense to everything that crosses my path. All I really know is that I couldn't care less if the person I'm talking with via this mailing list is male, female, hermaphrodite (which I'd like to point out I have yet to see a single mention of in these threads, and which is a definable sex, albeit a genetic abnormality, which also lacks any real set of pronouns for themselves), transgender (pre or post op), male-idenfifying-as-female, female-idenfifying-as-male, gay, straight, bi, curious, a leper, a Muslim extremist, Satan, a hillbilly, an attack helicopter, a fish, or The Great Spaghetti Monster in the Sky. As far as I am concerned it doesn't matter. Unless I'm mistaken, we're here to do something worthwhile for our own reasons. All any of us here is is an email, a pubkey, and a mass of ASCII or UTF-8 encoded data. Now, if someone is being outright rude (which happens; computer geeks aren't known for their social skills in general), that is a problem, but it's easy to simply ask if they meant to be rude or not; they may have felt that what they were saying was entirely acceptable and they will know no different unless it is pointed out, but I don't think that sentiment should extend to "Hey, I know I'm an X, but I want you to call me a Y" because there are so many reasons one could make a mistake; if someone who is clearly male ask me to call them female, then they can expect to be 'misgendered' plenty; this isn't done as an attempt to offend, but because I'm most likely not going remember. To make a long email short, I'm just going to say this: This subject is too large in scope for us to effectivly discuss, and is so far out of the perview of guix development that, imo, it shouldn't be continued here. I'm all for gender-neutral documentation, though how to go about that isn't entirely clear. As far as person-to-person communication is concerned, a simple agreement to not be offended if you are misgendered while writers make a best effort to use the subject's prefered gender should suffice. A modicum of courtesy should, imo, be a simple answer to these issues and, if something comes up that is a big problem, then the injured party should make a best attempt to resolve the issue with the injurer and, assuming there was no malice involved, that should be plenty. If malice is involved, then that would be the time for someone else (or several people, which would likely be better) to get involved and either arbitrate, or, if that fails, deal with the matter in a harsher manner. [1] If someone wants to try and explain the issue to me, feel free to send me a private email, but unless you're actually dealing with this issue yourself, don't bother. I have no real tolerance for white knights playing at protecting other people with issues, especially when it comes to explaining said issues. I have no reason to believe a white knight has any grasp on the situation that would prove to be useful to me. Since this issue was apparently brought up by/because of ng0, I'd prefer they send me a private email so I'd have a chance to possibly enlighten myself to the issue at hand. [2] I'm fully aware that manners can be and are a cultural issue, but hopefully we are all aware of these differences and have learned to cope with them reasonably by now, and ideally respect each other's cultural diversity.