Discuss concerns about potential intolerance as a result of political correctness #19
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juliepagano
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Here is the video mentioned: I don't consider him a particular authority, he is just saying what I would have said, but in better terms. I don't have anything to add anymore, so make of it what you want. |
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Throwaway because I want to discuss difficult personal stuff pseudonymously. I'm a leader of a team of 30+ developers. Our employer continues to invest a lot of money in Node and encourages us to contribute bugs/fixes/testing resources upstream. I mention this solely to establish context that I self-identify as part of the Node engineering community. I also struggle with crippling social anxiety and an extremely punitive super ego. Long term therapy, psych meds, etc., etc. It's a freaking miracle I'm able to operate successfully as an engineer and sometimes I think it's my only viable skill in life. I mention this solely to establish context that I self-identify as a person who is mentally ill. I would like to participate in the Node engineering community socially (eg, in threads like this) but I'm terrified of the potential repercussions (hence the throwaway). Here's a specific example I found problematic: In nodejs/node#3721, @rennat made what seemed to be a joke about seppuku. As someone who has struggled with suicide this made me LOL and was much appreciated. Later in the thread @emilyrose, @ashleygwilliams, and @evilpacket seemed to bully @rennat with threats of banning in response. Similarly to Žižek's point in the video, it seems that policing language doesn't resolve the underlying concern and in fact seems to solidify it: I now have another example of not being able to talk about mental health issues in public for fear of recrimination. Most often in this kind of situation I opt out of the conversation, but for some reason couldn't sleep last night for worrying about this exchange. I would like to discuss. Please let me know if there's a more appropriate place to have this conversation. |
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Re. 3: Strong +1. Punning and joking makes it easier. A sense of humor is one of the healthiest defence mechanisms. Seems to run counter to "Node is fun!" too. |
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Sorry, my #3 was confusing and you will probably withdraw your +1. What I meant is: "how is discouraging punning going to prevent a serious discussion?". I truly do not get that point. |
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@nonnymaus Thanks for sharing your point of view. I can definitely appreciate that humor can lighten a heavy situation. However, adding levity can also come across as dismissive. Humor is all about context. When someone is asking for something, especially about something emotional or personal, they're in a position of vulnerability. Recall, that was not a "serious conversation about mental illness". It was a serious conversation about the word choice for API's in Node. The point being made was that "suicide" is a distracting term because it's connected to powerful emotions. Suggesting "seppuku" as an alternative, in that context, is dismissive and inappropriate. It's lovely that it made you laugh. But the fact that you enjoyed it doesn't change the fact that it was inappropriate. Inappropriate things are usually funny for at least one person. We could probably clarify a policy for how to call out inappropriate behavior in a way that's productive and doesn't feel like bullying or make anyone else feel unsafe participating. |
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As someone who is mentally ill (BorderlinePD, GeneralizedAD, Anorexia, AutismSD... is that enough name drops to gain me a merit badge? And no I am not kidding, I've been [professionally] diagnosed with all of these), has trans history, is perceived as female, has been sexually assaulted and abused, I am basically a trump in this conversation. I think people need to get their panties out of a wad. Is suicide a nice term? Of course not. Does it affect the quality of software? Fuck no. Rather than wringing (y)our hands over whether your code is PC enough (All of my whats), write more / better code. It is idiotic to worry about what variables are called and is an enormous waste of time and brain power. In terms of community, I think being accepting is a good idea but coddling and essentially worshiping neuro / gender / sexuality diverse people is fucked as well. It creates a climate where people have to walk on eggshells so not to offend people who enforce being PC (Who typically are offended on the "offensee"'s behalf). Seriously, people with mental diversity (including illness and 'disorders') can typically take a lot more 'punishment' than you people give us credit for. Stop acting like people with ASD are suddenly going to break down crying because you told us something we didn't want to hear. Stop acting like people with mental illness are infants who can't handle themselves. Creating a space where 'diverse' people can feel comfortable and accepted is great. Creating a climate where it is okay for someone to take a step back and disappear for a while is great. Basically: Create a climate where 'diverse' people can be themselves without creating a climate where they are seen as outcasts or someone to 'tip-toe' around. By codifying how diverse people should be treated and creating arbitrary and rash punishments, you are creating a hostile climate, just on the other side. Just stop. I'm a big kid and can handle being offended on my own behalf so stop being offended for me. |
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@nodeanon Your argument (and @nonnymaus's) amounts to: "I'm in the class you're claiming to protect. I'm not offended by this. Therefor, it shouldn't be against the rules." I'm not being offended "for" anyone. I'm offended plenty for myself, and that's where I'm coming from. The fact that you don't find it problematic doesn't change the fact that many others do. While you ask us to stop being offended for you, perhaps you should take your own advice and stop being un-offended for us. For example:
I personally find this offensive and disrespectful. Me. You have offended me, personally. It has reduced my willingness to extend you the benefit of the doubt and take you seriously. Was that your goal?
It does affect the quality of the software if it reduces our ability to take advantage of the skills and abilities of people in our community. That's one of the underlying goals of inclusion: to gain access to additional brains that we would otherwise not be able to put to use on making the project better. |
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If someone is triggered by reading the word 'suicide', they likely aren't going to be of sound mind and won't really be able to communicate their ideas clearly or interact with other contributors, both of which are important parts of OSS. At my worst, I couldn't even think straight let alone program. Making 'padded rooms' isn't going to suddenly unlock a trove of people. I understand wanting to create a better space (which I think is a fair thing to pursue) but I just don't see the purpose in wringing hands over making everything the most safest (and yes, I am butchering English on purpose) you can. Make rules, make and publicly publish rational and reasonable punishments and enforce the rules fairly (including against marginalized individuals). Don't nitpick over little things like "this variable is triggering". Worry about making rules like "Don't put rape jokes as comments" or something. Trying to sanitize code of any and all triggering references only obfuscates code more by making people write unclear statements rather than cutting to the point in the most succinct words possible. |
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This thread has had 3 mentions of the word 'punishment' so far, which is concerning, and makes me think we might not all be talking about the same issue: Punishment is completely irrelevant to the goal of moderation and inclusivity. It's not about the individual, it's about the sustained health of the community. I believe discussion of punishment (whether described as 'rash', 'arbitrary', or 'reasonable') to be out of scope for this repository. |
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I agree with @nodeanon to a degree, I understand the value in making the community more inclusive ,but word policing, especially when it's relatively benign words that are quite commonly used in software and are not clearly targeting a group, feels a bit like arbitrary exercise of force. There should be some wiggle room for contributers to have a little fun with naming conventions and not worry about offending someone, especially when it's just an innocent verb not targeting anyone in particular. I think once you start policing into that depth you're actively seeking offense to justify control over a community rather than trying to actually better it. Just take a step back, relax, reflect and think "is this really the problem, is this really a problem?", maybe we should just take a long breath and draw a less confrontational line defining what's reasonable conduct. |
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I feel that enforcing political hyper-correctness will only serve to make people afraid to contribute lest they subject themselves to project-endursed bullying for something as stupid as using an innocuous word in a comment, and the end result is being less inclusive. I for one don't feel that one should need a degree in social justice to be allowed to safely contribute. Just my two cents. |
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@emilyrose "This thread has had 3 mentions of the word 'punishment' so far, which is concerning, and makes me think we might not all be talking about the same issue".... IIRC, it was you that talked about sanctioning another user in a related thread, so I'm wondering why you're surprised that people are talking about punishment. Furthermore, there are more ways to be "punished" besides an official banning from contributing to node, such as people taking to twitter to harass and contacting someone's employer and making trumped claims of offense. |
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@malandrew I'm not at all surprised. I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page with regards to the issue at hand, and the scope of this repository. 😸 |
The purpose of code review is to subject new contributions to a certain level of scrutiny to ensure they enhance the project and to provide feedback to the contributor about what might improve this and their future contributions. I see this as relatively uniform for things like performance regressions, introducing dependencies with unfavorable licensing restrictions, code with logical errors, and naming or other text readable by humans which is unnecessarily harmful. This thread is about discussing potential negative effects of protecting the health of the project by screening out contributions with harmful language, but I don't see how this is any different than screening out contributions which could introduce serious performance regressions. In both cases, it's not about punishing the contributor, but catching the error before shipping it to production. |
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99 times out of 100 the determination of what is and is not "harmful language" is going to be highly subjective with little consensus. For those 99 times out of 100, you're inviting and promoting a strong culture of bikeshedding in a way that is also detrimental to the health of the project. |
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I don't think anyone ever was discussing documenting language or making any lists. The consensus in my opinion was to handle this on a case by case basis as part of the code review. |
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I'd like to address some other points being raised here by @nodeanon.
It wasn't a "nitpick" until the anti-PC arguments came. It was a suggestion for an improvement that was widely supported by a majority of contributors, and many community members. Dozens of people spoke up to publicly thank us for even caring about this. In fact, the originator of that term in the code was in favor of changing it, and didn't seem to feel chastised by the event at all. So are you all opposed to moderating language as such? Why? This is what I am genuinely curious about. We moderate language all the time for this reason, like every project does. The only threat of "punishment" that one faces if they are a well-meaning contributor who uses an offensive term accidentally is that their PR requires some revision prior to landing it. That's all. Someone might say to them "Hey, that word is kind of offensive, so let's pick another one to use instead." It's literally like the most gentle sort of thing imaginable. Actually getting banned from the project (or other sanctions) can only happen if you are actively trying to circumvent our process of shipping the project. For example, if you post a pull request full of aubergines and insults. Sorry, this isn't your free speech platform. But observe the argument here: someone who objects to offensive terminology is too sensitive, but someone who objects to being kindly told to use a different variable name is not "too sensitive", and is being "abused" by this. I remain unconvinced, and would still really love to see some kind of evidence that we are heading into a bad place by enforcing moderation. Experience on our IRC channel and mailing list seem to indicate that there is a very strong positive correlation between strict moderation and user success, not the opposite. @malandrew Can you actually provide 99 examples? Are any of them applicable to node? I think that you're trying to make a point with hyperbole, and that the threats you are imagining are not actually how node works. |
This is an investment of energy and requires justification, I am not saying some terms should not be removed, I am saying a lot of the terms I've seen discussed are just silly and seem to be enforced just for the sake of enforcement just so people enforcing this conduct could justify their role.
This relies on a proper definition of what constitutes an error, we're in disagreement and I think any excessive rejections of contributions based on arbitrary definitions of what an "error" is would alienate users and move a project from the realm of functional software development into an idealogical crusade. this is first and foremost a software project, it is good to help it be inclusive of different contributors, there should be low tolerate for hate speech and bullying, but allowing it to be hijacked to promote a political ideology is a real risk and people should be wary of how far they're taking it. |
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This looks like a list to me: #9 (comment) Some of those I'm shocked at are even being pointed out. It's like people are trying to get "offended" on behalf of things in the code base that no one has even raised offense to. If we want to talk about semantics of words and being hurt by them, how about we talk about the semantics of the npm "That no valuable node contributor objected to it" Actually, IMHO you have indirectly objected to such changes in several comments about the threshold necessary for making breaking changes to the API. It seems that the moment something in the interest of being PC pops up, all the other processes and considerations seem to go out the door. The use of the words we're debating IMHO falls into the category of "it's ugly" (your words), which you don't consider a good reason for changing a shipped API. I'm actually not opposed to moderating language at all. What I'm opposed to is the intolerance we increasingly welcome by entertaining all these PC conversations. This community is increasingly less tolerant than it used to be. FWIW, I have no idea what your eggplant reference is to. "someone who objects to being kindly told to use a different variable name is not "too sensitive"" I'm not objecting to being told to kindly being told to use a different variable name. What I'm objecting to is the number of people piling into these conversations and using political correctness as a stick for bullying people actually contributing to how NodeJS works via issues and pull requests. This has happened in the past, in very high profile ways, and I still haven't seen anything proposed that would have helped stopped those runaway changes. Was BN told nicely that he should have used slightly different language? Someone, who had never committed to libuv, comes in, submits a PR for a trivial changes (i.e. few characters changed, didn't affect code, reduced clarity), and everyone went apeshit. We increasingly welcome people who have shown themselves willing to bully those actually making significant contributions. Even the primary committer/maintainer to a project isn't safe from these intolerance shenanigans. This is what I'm objecting to. I'm all in favor of making the community inclusive to people (regardless of identity) who actually want to submit detailed issues and pull requests containing bug fixes and features, but when people who who have never contributed code (and probably don't intend to) feel welcome showing up and using this as their forum for their social cause that breeds intolerance. I'd much prefer a community that actively avoids being political and is exclusive of people trying to use to use open source projects as a soap box any agenda that isn't related to improvements to code. I'd also like to see a community that generally is supportive of those who have contributed (via detailed code issues and pull requests containing code) over those who have not. Maybe make a bot that whitelists users who have already filed detailed issues and pull requests and allows them to participate in any political discussion. If you haven't ever tried to contribute meaningfully to the code, a political discussion should not be something you're allowed to participate in. I'm honestly curious how many people objecting to some of these words have actually encountered them in practice because they are actually reading the NodeJS source code. |
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@malandrew ... that was the sample output of a one off test run of a tool that was being suggested for use. If anything, that comment you reference shows that the use of the tool in question is not necessary in any way because of all of the false positives shown in that comment. |
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Please stop using the term "PC" if you are at all interested in a rational debate. It is (a) question-begging, and (b) poorly defined and used and consequently ad hominem. I encourage @juliepagano to retitle this issue if she is really interested in a productive discussion. Even "language policing", loaded as it too is, is better defined and closer to the truth than "political correctness". |
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To be certain @malandrew: at no point in any of these discussions has anyone suggested that there was or should be a list of "banned words" to be avoided and any attempt to create such a list would, I quite certain, be rejected quite quickly. |
MylesBorins
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@juliepagano I took the liberty of changing the thread title based on @ravi's suggestion. Please feel free to replace it with anything you find appropriate |
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Not sure the new title captures the original concern. It's not intolerance from policy that I'm worried about, but intolerance promoted by people who use NodeJS as a venue for promoting personal agendas that are tangential to the purpose of NodeJS. I have nothing against some of those agendas, and I support many of them. I just want those agendas to stay out of space that is about software engineering, not politics. There are a million other forums out there for such discussions and agenda furthering. This should not be one of them. |
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@malandrew many people, myself included, believe that software is made of people. Making certain things such as language an important part of what makes good software. There was no attempt by anyone within this organization to promote any political agenda. As far as I can tell everyone just wants to improve node. |
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There is no reason to post links to bigoted racist content, @ravi. I think it's awesome that the author of that post has the freedom of speech to write that post and put it on the internet, but that post has absolutely no reason to be part of the discussion in a community with a Code of Conduct that doesn't tolerate racism. If you want to find a post that makes some of the same points without the overt racism, by all means please link to that instead. |
This isn't meant as any offense to anyone here but I use anon accounts to discuss social justice issues because I've been banned and harassed repeatedly on different platforms for voicing "anti-PC" opinions. And I really just don't want to sully my account with any kind of arguments or having to delete my account (especially considering my account specifically points to my real name). Although! I'd rather not have colleagues knowing about my medical history regardless of whether it is societally okay to disclose. But that is just my personal opinions about my medical history. |
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@malandrew Well I don't agree at all that is bigoted any more than Zizek is (in fact, if you think her calling out discrimination and prejudice that arises from privilege is itself an act of bigotry, then I think that meta issue, in itself, is highly relevant to this discussion -- discrimination is not about words, it's about systemic effects). However, I will add a trigger warning if/when I post future links. |
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@ravi Let me paraphrase that article for you:
That is simply wrong. You cannot prove a negative, it is the accuser (the writer of your article) who has to provide the proof that there is a problem. It is fashionable to hate on white man (unless they are gay), if that guy (assuming) had written this about black people he would have been branded a racist. If you want to see predominantly black people working in an industry you have to go to Africa. Europe and North America are continents with a majority white population, if would be weird if tech was not dominated by white people, just as much as it would be weird if tech in Asia was not dominated by Asians. Where are all those non-white people supposed to come from? The same applies to women. If women do not chose to go into tech, where is the industry supposed to get them from? The only way to get more women into tech is to lower the standards and let everyone in. And don't talk about privilege. Life is not a game of D&D where you look up your stats in a table and roll the dice accordingly. People are not hive minds that somehow sense other people of their own race/sex and automatically run to their help. You know who does have privilege? Rich people. You think when I go into a job interview anyone gives a crap what I look like? No, but if my father is scratching the CEOs back, then it doesn't matter what I look like either. Your concept of "privilege" is just something you use conveniently so you can hate on people without repercussion. "We don't need to listen to you because you are a white male, everything you say is invalid because privilege." |
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@ashleygwilliams There was literally nothing wrong with what @whyisthistheworld wrote; I have the email notification with his post. This is exactly what I am talking about. Someone joining the discussion now has no idea what he wrote. It could have been the most vile disgusting thing. It could have been a threat to the participants of this discussion. It could have been just spam. Or it could have been an inconvenient truth you don't want us to see. I know what it was, but an outside observer doesn't and will most likely conclude that it was one of the formers. We are not children anymore, we know how to be rational and cope with something we disagree with. One of the most important parts of being an adult is being able to take opposing viewpoints and asses them, challenge my own ideas. If there is a merit to that viewpoint I will be more knowledgable than before, and if there isn't I will be more certain of my viewpoint. Either way I win. PC is setting up a filter, it is treating people like children: This is the content you are allowed to consume, these are the viewpoints you are allowed to have. I see the post with the caricature has been deleted as well, and it's a shame because it was spot on. Was it provocative and disrespectful? Of course, that's the entire point and an adult should have no problem dealing with that. But what about the people who cannot deal with it? I say they lack a fundamental part of being a grown-up and do you really want people who are mentally still children working on a project that is used by businesses? If you cannot cope with having your viewpoints challenged, how could I possibly trust you to that your code is not the same? Imagine an engineer working on an airplane throwing a temper trantrum every time someone criticised his or her engineering. EDIT: Archive for people in case my post gets deleted https://archive.is/0yw3G |
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please delete my post if deemed appropriate
That doesn't sound off to you? The deleted message was offering zero to the conversation and only served to initiate emotional reactionary responses. Here are some quotes of your own that are questionable
I am going to choose to not engage with your rhetoric, but I will leave you with a thought. We made an issue to discuss a change. We made a thread on how to handle such things in the future. I'm sorry that it has upset you but I promise that everyone involved has the best intentions for node.js. Honestly examine the above quotes and see how your argument looks. If you genuinely want to be involved in node, and see it succeed, take a couple days to let thing die down and please take part in the open and honest discussions we will have |
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Hey, I just wanted to mention that I am the one that deleted the comment by @whyisthistheworld. |
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The entire idea of inclusivity improving the quality of a project is similar to the Infinite Monkey Theorem: given a monkey at a typewriter and infinite time eventually the works of Shakespeare will come out of it. Thanks to the internet we know that's not true, we have a very large amount of "monkeys" with a lot of time and the best work is still produced by small groups. Software projects are similar, you cannot manage a gigantic crowd where everyone and their dog think they can contribute. This has never worked. So what is the correct thing to do? Discriminate on skill alone. Discrimination is not a bad thing, it just means to differentiate, literally. This knowledge is considered dirty, but people discriminate all the time. Everyone in this thread has been discriminating against someone at some point. When you go grocery-shopping, don't you go out to buy the good food at the good shops instead of shopping everywhere? That is discrimination and it is a good thing. It is what the concept of the Free Market is based on. So with that out of the way, a software project should only accept people who can contribute quality content. It should not matter what that person's ethnicity of sex is. Ideally we would all just be avatars with made-up names, no identity, then everyone would have to go for the message instead of the messenger. So how does this conflict with "inclusivity"? Inclusivity is about letting as many people in hoping that something good will come out eventually. That is simply not going to happen for logistic reason. There will always be more people bad at something than there are people who are good at that thing, and the bad people will just produce noise that makes coordination among the good people harder. If you disagree with me just have an open day at the office where everyone can come in and then try to get any meaningful work done. You won't be able to. This is not due to who those people are, it is because how many they are. |
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@emilyrose OK, I just assumed it was the same person I live in a foreign country, my parents came over as foreign workers like many other people. The natives don't like us, they think we are taking away their jobs, even though we came over to do the jobs they were lacking in. But what am I supposed to say if a foreigner-quote gets introduced? The native will have no idea whether I got my job by merit or if I'm the [redacted] who literally took a native's job to meet a quota. And I cannot be upset at that person. Maybe his friend of family member got rejected and now he sees me in that position. The same goes for scholarships. If you are a working class white man I know the only way you got your diploma is because you earned it. But if you are not white or not a man how am I as an employer supposed to know that you didn't just get it to fill a quota? Case in point, when my home country was at the brink of war many people got their diploma just handed to them because the professors wanted their students to have at least something before the outbreak. But this cheapened the value of the real diplomas. My parents had to work with no pay and with the constant threat of becoming unemployed in the brink of an eye in order to prove their merit before they got a real contract. Is that what you want? And as for the quotes you picked, please tell me what is wrong? If say black people are 10% population and we just assume for the sake of simplicity that qualifications for any particular work are equally distributed as within the majority population, wouldn't it follow that only 10% of the workforce in every industry would be black? Again, where are more black people supposed to come from? In the same manner, one should expect that the majority of the workforce in Africa would be black, because where are the white people supposed to come from? The majority of the workforce in Asia will also be Asian and I have never seen anyone complain about that. But somehow it is White Man's Burden to make sure every race is equally represented in white-majority populated countries? The archive of this will be in the edit. |
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@HiPhish thank you for making sense. It gives me at least a fraction of hope.) |
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For context: I'm suffering from depression and have suffered from suicidal ideation and anxiety for a long time until I underwent therapy and learned to manage my mental disorders. I disagree with the previous comments on the question of whether the "suicide" rename was justified or not -- I think "suicide" was a bad name but not primarily because it could be considered offensive but because it is too whimsical. JavaScript is fun so Node is fun, indeed, but whimsy for whimsy's sake is out of place in APIs and open source software. For me this is not about being afraid of offending anyone or avoiding "triggering" language -- it's about being a responsible adult. Just look at the early Ruby/Rails community and the associated "brogrammer" culture for an example of immaturity that was mostly orthogonal to its offensiveness. I find the recent rise of victim culture in the US extremely disturbing and am very disappointed to see it influence otherwise reasonable thinkers in open source. If the use of words like "suicide" presents a serious mental health concern, you need professional psychiatric care because it's nowhere near the level of abuse you need to be able to withstand to function in an open society away from the computer. Offensiveness is a vague concept. There is no human right not to be offended. Everything is offensive to someone. The word "suicide" is not offensive. The concept of suicide is not offensive either. It's the whimsical use of the word that makes it offensive and (more importantly) inappropriate. In the discussion about the rename someone said that "selfDestruct" would be equally bad because it has connotations for some people with mental health issues. That's an example of going out of your way to be offended. Unlike "suicide", which is primarily used to describe humans intentionally inflicting their own death, self-destruction is primarily a mechanical description of something destroying itself. In contrast, consider the test framework "testacular" (an obvious pun on "testicular" -- intentional or not) which was renamed to "karma". The word "testacular" (or "testicular") is not offensive at all. Testicles are ordinary parts of the human reproductive anatomy (nearly one in two persons has them), "testicular" is a perfectly ordinary word in medical literature. It's only the use that makes it inappropriate: it's not used to describe an intimate body part but software that isn't even remotely related to the former. And it's not a "white cis-het male" phenomenon either. Sexual or otherwise inapropriate puns are the result of whimsy, not privilege. Judging terminology by whether it is "triggering" or "offensive" only fuels the euphemism treadmill (if "self-destruct" is triggering, how is "voluntary exit" guaranteed not to be triggering? it's not like it hasn't been used as a euphemism for suicide before). Instead terminology should be judged on whether it is apropriate, specific and descriptive enough for its purpose. |
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@HiPhish Honestly, your comments as as overtly and ignorantly racist as those views promoted in the blog post to which @ravi linked. The only thing that makes me want to extend some benefit of the doubt is the fact that it appears that English is not your first language. For you edification, the n-word is extremely offensive but black is not (which I know is the exact opposite of the acceptable usage in other languages like Portuguese where a term like "negro" is acceptable but the Portuguese word for black is not). I would like to ask you to voluntarily remove your comments above or at least heavily edit them to omit the content stemming from your prejudices because they have absolutely no place in this community. I'm sensitive to the fact that you grew up in a different country and have different experiences that most of the people here (I myself spent a few of my childhood years outside the US), but that doesn't justify the attitudes you expressed. This is not the place for any of that content. This thread is about the rise of intolerance. Your views express the exact same intolerance from the other side of the fence and only serves to make others justified in their intolerance. I'm not saying you should leave the community, but that all the platforming you just did have no place hear. Furthermore, they are completely off-topic. @ravi Do you not see a problem with the constant use of terms like "white male" and "white dudes" over an over again? First off, that is overtly sexist and racist language. I used to have a teammate at work that would constantly lament all the "white dudes", including out loud in meetings that had absolutely nothing to do with anything this person was talking about. It was disruptive and offended, but no one felt comfortable calling this person out on it. It is behavior that is absolutely no different than replacing the first word with a different race or the second word with a different gender identity. Both are unacceptable. That said, I'm not being dismissive of all the content in that post. There is some valid content in there completely shadowed by the author's racist verbiage. Yes, unconscious biases and structural disadvantages matter, but that does not excuse overt racism ever. Furthermore, that blog post is ignorant of the "hacker culture" it condemns. While women have been a minority in hacker culture, they haven't been absent from hacker culture. Such a viewpoint minimizes and is dismissive of women like Christine Peterson, Susan Sons, Susan Headley, Jude Milhon, Meredith Patterson, etc. Have they been underrepresented, yes, but characteristics of both masculinity and feminity have generally been absent from hacker culture. Classic hacker culture was generally unattractive for those that ascribed to either gender norm. Male hacker culture was far from being representative of masculinity in the sense jocks represent it. Similarly, female hacker culture was far from being representative of femininity. The main privilege that men had that made hacker culture less of a deterrent back in the day had more to due with society at large than hacker culture. Historically, in society at large, not ascribing to grooming and being masculine carried with it less of a social cost for men than not grooming and being feminine did for women. Classic hacker culture almost nothing in common with the tech bro culture you see today, which is something that blog post is confusing. Watch Cringely's "Revenge of the Nerds". You'll be hard pressed to find a single "tech bro" in the movie. These people were all the weird nerds in high school and they didn't have anywhere near the social status that software engineering today has. Hacker culture was never an aspirational culture like software engineering was today. The primary privileges was access to a computer and modem and being precocious. There were few if any parents pushing kids in that direction. Pretty much no realy known role models to aspire to be like until Bill Gates. People participated in that culture because it was attractive to them. I myself remember trying to acquire hardware by dumpster diving at my local highschool. |
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@jifsnifanon Interesting observation. I've always viewed the framework Testacular as a portmanteau of "test" and "spectacular". Upon seeing you're interpretation, it's possible that all three words influenced the name. Either way, it's a good example of how not everyone perceives the same thing and that we should strive to be more tolerant and extend the benefit of the doubt more often. |
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@thealphanerd "It is fashionable to hate on white man (unless they are gay)". This one isn't questionable at all. Spend some time reading articles on the Advocate by cis-gay men frustrated with being subject to this hate. That hate is generally lamented because the authors typically understand the frustration from which that hate stems stems first hand, but they are also victims of that hate. I don't see why this comment is controversial "If you want to see predominantly black people working in an industry you have to go to Africa". It's poorly worded because of the emphasis on "have to go to", but it's completely intuitive that industries anywhere in the World will generally be representative of the base rates of the society from which people are drawn. In the US, it would be entirely reasonable for approximately 73% of any industry in the US to be white, including tech (since 73% of the US population is white (non-hispanic/latino white and hispanic/latino white)). The actual percentage in tech is actually a lot lower at 41% (I'm not sure if this 41% includes white people of hispanic/latino descent or not like me). Black people, latino people and women are grossly underrepresented in tech. Approximately 50% of tech should be women, but that figure is unfortunately much lower around 12%. The figures for black and latino software engineers are even worse. |
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well.. this turned into.. whatever this is called |
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@HiPhish your comment has been deleted. Please find a less offensive example to make your point. |
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@HiPhish Do you not see the benefits for everyone involved if you took a civil tone than the one you're taking? Some of the points you're making might be better received and considered. What you're doing is neither welcome nor constructive and undermines the points you're trying to get across. You may think you're being like Linus, but Linus at least keeps his rants focused on appalling coding habits and stupid mistakes like breaking userspace in a project that a LOT of people rely on. |
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Here is an example of intolerance as a result of political correctness: https://archive.is/dgilk I think a code of conduct is necessary, but how prescriptive or strict it should be will never be clear cut. As long as the people responsible for authoring and enforcing it are able to really consider the feedback they get and adjust as necessary, we'll all be fine. That this thread was created is a good sign. What this thread has turned into is a really terrible sign, and I hope we don't let it bury the point. |
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@thealphanerd @malandrew See, you did it again, and now no participant knows what I said. You are manipulating the discussion to fit with your goals, that is simply put slanderous. I never insulted anyone, your objection is just because I used a word at all, regardless of context. This is precisely the reason why this issue has been created and you are just confirming it. Do I have to archive after every comment? How are we supposed to have a discussion when you keep deleting posts that are exactly about what we are discussing? What is wrong with Linus Torwalds? He has done more work than any of us, and if using rough language is needed to get the message through then so be it. It's not like he's swearing in front of kindergarten children, we are adults. |
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@HiPhish you and I both know the language you used was inappropriate. The removed comment was clearly marked and you were prompted to make your point again using different language. Speaking for myself, not the node.js project, if you feel a need to archive every post I encourage you to. Truthfully I have no problem with you writing whatever you want, wherever you want. This repo is not a place for it to live. |
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Hey @HiPhish, Thank you for sticking it out even though it seem clear you feel you're being treated unfairly. I just wanted to jump in to say that while I don't know the content of the comment that @thealphanerd deleted, I do believe that he's acting in a manner that he believes to be in the best interest of discussion because he genuinely cares. Given also that you've been participating in the discussion for several days now, it seems apparent that you also genuinely care. I think we all want to see the discussion continue to move forward, so perhaps we should momentarily focus on coming to an agreement on how we can resume productive discourse without causing a need for additional moderator action? |
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@thealphanerd Please educate me what was inapporopriate about my content? Because we are clearly talking past each other and deleting what people say leads to discussion participants being unable to make their own conclusions. @emilyrose See, you don't know what I said, you have to trust @thealphanerd that what I said was really inappropriate, but you cannot build a discussion on good faith. |
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This is a great read for those who haven't yet read it: "What you can't say" by Paul Graham @HiPhish Absolutely nothing is wrong with Linus. What I was saying is that you're behaving in ways that are superficially similar but don't really provide constructive value like Linus' rants. |
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Can we let people do what they do best, instead of competing in victim olympics? |
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I am going to try to answer various comments in terse form. Garann's post does not need a summary, especially not for me. Racism is not about thinking or saying impolite or rude things (which too should be avoided -- why not? -- unless there is productive value in it, such as in certain forms of comedy, or IMHO, Garann's post). It's about the effect that such thought and utterances have on a class of underprivileged people. If you think that proof is required that groups in question are underprivileged and underrepresented (no I do not need to look in Africa for black people!), then the opposing groups of the debate live in different universes. @malandrew I appreciate your measured response, and I too would prefer not to throw around terms like "white dudes" (or "dudes" in general) unless I am specifically making a point about them/me and their/my privilege. But so what? If we can tolerate the antics of a professional rabble-rouser like Zizek, we can take a few comments that are less polemical and arguably in aid of making an important point. Maybe not, it's your call on whether you want to tolerate it. I do not think there is a single hacker culture and not certainly one that you can find by watching movies. |
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But let us be clear about this: when anyone uses the term "political correctness" or, as in the previous comment to mine, "victim olympics", they are essentially attempting an age old technique, namely, using insult to win an argument. They are arguing in bad faith. |
I've seen the topic come up a few times on other issues. Creating this thread for interested parties to discuss, so that other threads can be kept on topic. Posters seemed to find Slavoj Žižek to be a particularly compelling authority on the topic.
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