Re: Promoting the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines?

[HiPhish <hiphish@posteo.de>]

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

> 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?

> 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 
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.