Re: An appeal to empathy on actual hurt caused by this thread

[Morgan Lemmer Webber <morganlemmerwebber@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 9745 bytes --]

Hello! I am Morgan Lemmer-Webber, a cis-gendered woman who is a guix user
(though not a developer). I have been an active member of the FOSS world,
am co-host of a FOSS podcast, and overall have had delightful interactions
with the guix community. As Christine said, I do also have a PhD in Art
History with a focus on the social history of women, and therefore am well
versed in feminist theory.

That being said, I have zero interest in being the tolken cis-woman in any
group of people. In fact, this type of gender-essentialist conversation
being raised by men in an attempt to speak for women (who may or may not
want to join a community) without actually consulting women (who may or may
not already be in that community) is exactly the type of interaction that
would make me take pause before joining a community.

On Fri, Feb 25, 2022 at 6:34 PM Christine Lemmer-Webber <
cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:

> Taylan, I respect you and your work.  I don't think you realize how much
> hurt you've caused here, and I want to take your contributions at good
> faith.  But this has continued for days and it has definitely hurt a
> lot.
>
> I just got out of a presentation that I've been in crunchmode preparing
> for all week.  It was a technically intense presentation with a demo
> that required a lot of engineering effort to get there.  I was stressed
> enough.  But the demo went well.  Everyone was excited, including me.
>
> I got off the call, and normally what I would feel after something ended
> like that was relief.  But I didn't feel relieved.  I felt... tired.
>
> And then I started crying uncontrollably for over an hour.  Because the
> pressure of the presentation was so great that I had to push down and
> push down all the feelings I had about what was happening on this
> thread, but when it was over, they overflowed.
>
> And I don't believe, I don't want to believe, you meant to cause harm or
> hurt.  You have several messages recently clearly indicating that you
> feel you have been accused of things.  This is not an accusation.  This
> is an appeal to empathy.
>
> Normally I would have left this be quiet, or send an email one-on-one,
> when things reached this stage.  But I tried to help this conversation
> end in quiet, and it hasn't happened, and it's been days.  So I'm
> relaying my experiences here.
>
> Taylan Kammer <taylan.kammer@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On 24.02.2022 14:21, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote:
> >>
> >>> I suspect you haven't properly read any of my mails and jumped to
> conclusions
> >>> based on a quick skim, or something like that.
> >>
> >> Well, I've been reading them and some people told you to stop and you
> still
> >> continue. People already told you were bothering them.
> >
> > I haven't posted anything after Andy and Oliver asked to take it
> off-list,
> > other than responding to Blake's accusation of course.
> >
> > Before that, nobody told me to stop or that I was bothering them, unless
> I
> > missed it?
>
> I did...
>
> And maybe you missed it, but I definitely did.  I *definitely* did.
> This was on Monday, it is now Friday.  Here's what I said across my
> two emails:
>
>  - I had already expressed that my very first reaction was wanting to
>    support broader language but NOT to have a debate about trans
> experiences:
>
>    > My first thought when looking at the top of this thread was,
>    > 'well I would be okay with adding a word if it isn't an *entry point*
>    > for debating trans experiences on list' but it looks like it's likely
>    > to be so
>
>  - And then I said that, as a person affected, I didn't feel comfortable
>    debating these topics on a technical mailing list:
>
>    > I'm a transwoman with intersex characteristics.  I've certainly
>    > read a ton about sexual and gender therory, have read plenty of
>    > books on it and I can say without a doubt that I really just don't
>    > feel comfortable debating these topics on a technical mailing list.
>
>  - And then, when I saw your email where you had pulled back, I tried
>    to help everything close in a way that was friendly:
>
>    > Ah okay, hadn't seen this post before I replied.
>    >
>    > It seems the issue is closed then.  Look forward to everyone getting
>    > back to hacking. :)
>
> Shortly thereafter I stepped away from my computer and went downstairs
> and went downstairs to prepare lunch.  Morgan, my wife (who is also a
> Guix user, btw) said, "Are you okay?  You look stressed."
>
> And I relayed what happened on this thread.
>
> "Is *that* what's being debated on this list?  I'm not a Guix
> *developer*, but I am a Guix *user*.  That kind of gender essentialism
> makes me both really want to join the mailing list so I can weigh in
> and really *not* want to have to weigh in because I don't want to have
> to deal with all that.  That's not the kind of community I want to
> participate in."
>
> We co-presented at the FOSDEM room together in the "Lisp but Beautiful,
> Lisp for Everyone" talk.  A major portion of the talk was about Guix.
> Another major portion of the talk (since "who's representing feminism"
> keeps coming up) was about Morgan's experiences *writing her
> dissertation using a markup language which is secretly a lisp dialect*
> on "Women and Wool Working in Ancient Rome".  Her PhD, Masters, Major,
> and Minor were all embedded in gender and sexual analysis through the
> lived experiences of women, primarily cisgender, throughout history.
> No matter how many books you and I have read on gender and sexuality,
> I can guarantee you Morgan has read more.
>
> Anyway if there are any other cisgender women who have presented about
> Guix in a video presentation I would be pleased, but as far as I know,
> she's the only one I've seen do so.  Corrections extremely welcome.
> Active steps to pull more women into our community, strongly encouraged.
>
> But at the time I said, "Oh, I think it wrapped up.  The person who
> raised it backpedaled and I tried to be friendly in softening the
> closing by saying 'cool let's all get back to hacking!' so I don't think
> we have to worry about it anymore.
>
> And then we had lunch, and I thought it was over.
>
> Imagine my surprise went I sent what I had thought were three very
> clear, but polite, signals asking to not debate over the the experiences
> of transgender people on this list, one of which was a friendly
> acknowledgement that it was over from the person who raised it.  But the
> most uncomfortable thing for me was that the reply first thanked me for
> being polite about things, but used it as an *opening* for *another*
> entry point about that.
>
> Can you imagine how that feels?  How that looks?
>
> And then it continued for an entire week.
>
> Here I'll say something I haven't said previously: I did not come out as
> transgender for a long time because I was *afraid* to come out as
> transgender.  Maybe you know, it's a popular past-time on the internet
> right now to bully prominent trans technologists into suicide as a kind
> of game.  Here are two examples:
>
>
> https://www.destructoid.com/transgender-dolphin-emulator-developer-dead-age-23/
>
> https://kotaku.com/the-brilliant-snes-emulator-creator-known-as-near-has-d-1847182851
>
> I currently consider suicide by online bullying to be my highest
> mortality risk factor.  Having a community where I feel safe, it's not a
> small thing.  The Guix community has felt like one of the nicest, safest
> places in FOSS.
>
> This week it felt a lot less so.  The first immediate gut drop I felt
> when I thought "I hope this doesn't turn out to be a hidden entrypoint
> for someone to begin debating my lived experiences" turned out to
> absolutely be true, as far as I can tell.  That's how it felt to me.
>
> On that note, just earlier today, you said:
>
> > The inclusion of 'sex' in the CoC would be to recognize the issues
> > faced by female-born people.  As far as I'm aware, no female-born
> > person has taken part in the discussion at all, because none seem
> > to exist in the community.  (What a coincidence.)
>
> Well as said previously, there's at least one.  She's not on the
> guix-devel list, so she's cc'ed, because I don't want anyone to think
> I'm misrepresenting her.  She's not on the list but she read everything
> I wrote on here before I sent it.  And that's one cisgender woman (with,
> again, no small background in women and gender studies), who *is* a part
> of this community and has even presented at a conference in a heavily
> Guix-related talk, who has expressed that she wouldn't want to be taking
> part or associating herself in this community if it takes a gender
> essentialist turn.
>
> At any rate, here's the thing.  Taylan, I really like your work, I would
> like to think that you didn't mean to bring harm or hurt like this.  But
> you asked for someone to point to it, and I decided to speak here
> because, since this went on for a week, it must not have been known or
> understood.
>
> At any rate, the updated upstream CoC, seems great.  +1 from me.  As I
> said, if it wasn't as an entry point for a debate of experiences, as
> just talking about protecting *also* sexual characteristics, great.  But
> if it's an entry point for a debate, and it *has been*, about
> qutestioning the lived experiences of trans folk on the internet,
> consider that it already sucks being a trans person on the internet and
> for the most part we just want people to be nice to us so we can do our
> damn work and live in peace.
>
> And I would like for this thread to not, ironically, fork into exactly
> the same thing I am asking to end.  Acknowledge maybe, and move on.
> Or just move on.  Thank you.
>
> Your hacker Guix friend,
>  - Christine
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 11455 bytes --]