621–630 of 637 posts
I wish we responded to situations more proportionally. In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not. Does it warrant responses like…
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> That's what happens when a group of hyper-politicized people Well, maybe you work on undisciplined repositories or technical mailing lists, but most of us do not want to read people's jokes, funny, offensive, or not, when we are on a technical forum. It's really patronizing to say, "Oh, those primitive foreigners, we have to excuse them for posting offensive jokes on a technical forum."
> It's really patronizing to say, "Oh, those primitive foreigners, we have to excuse them for posting offensive jokes on a technical forum." That's patronizing because you're thinking of them as "primitive foreigners that posts offensive jokes", while you could think of them as "different people in a different culture that may not share every values with you". I don't understand why Americans are so afraid of swear w…
I can say that as a teen, the amount I swore ruffled feathers daily in the UK. In that same breath, I suppose foul-mouthed kids do tend to shock.
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Same, I find this joke to be inappropriate in professional settings. May be it doesn’t offend anyone or may be it does, you never know.
I'd rather that joke were not made. There is a difference though between a discreet 'not a great moment' and public 'absolutely inacceptable [and we should hound the poor sap out of all gainful employment opportunities for life]'. A classic management principle is 'praise in public, criticize in private'. While the joke was was indeed inappropriate, the public reaction was 10x worse.
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The argument you'd heard basically boils down to turning all power dynamics into moral categories: those who have power reinforce their own power by building systems that make sure there's no repercussions for their own actions if they harm someone under their power. The extension comes when people make it universal instead of specific: defining all human relationships in terms of power and its abuse. Those in power…
0. There's no singular leftist philosophy in a world where anarchists and socialists and moderates and centrists are all ostensibly on the same side, but there are points of agreement (nazis are bad, every human being deserves equal dignity, people should have agency over their own bodies except where that agency meaningfully harms others, etc). When I refer to leftist thought I'm trying to refer to my understanding…
It's also pushed strongly in academia, and is quite common to hear about among young progressives as compared to older ones. For concrete examples, look into the Mike Nayna documentary on the Evergreen State College's 'Equity Council'; it's an extreme example, but you can hear the same process happening to lesser degrees elsewhere.
I realize CoCs were introduced to make certain supposedly marginalized groups more at home at conferences. But my personal experience/feeling is the complete reverse. I am a member of a minority as a person with a disability. In all the years I was interacting with the community, I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. But the day I saw the firs…
> I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. Asking in good faith here: is it possible your political mindset (wrt your opinions on CoC) is affecting your ability to relate to others in a context completely unrelated to CoC? The way I see CoC is that, whatever might be in a CoC, does not affect 99% of people 100% of the time and does not affect the remaining 1%…
I didn't have the guts of contacting authorities because I live in a country that has laws tilted in favor of women. (Which I will not discuss but in general woke people have succeeded into bluffing everyone that this can't be real)
When I tell this story, woke people have said to me absolutely horrible things that align with the whole "men can't be abused". From "it was a good opportunity for you to learn" to "well, actually the reason you didn't come out is male fragility" completely erasing my voice.
If we are trying to be inclusive, it will never include me if woke people are allowed to use their language to shape rules. NEVER. I will not feel safe around them because the risk of being abused as a man and these people not doing anything, or enjoying it, or even supporting my aggressor in a misguided attempt to correct years of perceived injustices in the past is non negligible.
I don't see any scenario where a female contributor harasses me and the woke moderators eject the woman. In fact, I see all the roads pointing to the female contributor claiming I was the harasser after harassing me and moderators blindly believing her part claiming they looked at the evidence behind curtains to protect the victims.
This isn't conjecture on my part, you can see several CoC kerfuffles where the rules didn't apply to the woke tribe.
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Rational Wiki is one of the most unintentionally funny and ridiculous sites, given the name. It's probably one of the least reliable and credible sources of information on the internet due to the juxtaposition, a la DPRK's name. It's Pathos Wiki. [Something something Conservapedia, stare into abyss, etc.] For some reason, it seems there are basically no nominally-neutral websites, forums, or news outlets that exist.…
> I mean it seems no one is even attempting to be neutral or even attempting to portray themselves as neutral. There is no concept of an anti-agenda agenda. Wikipedia!
I realize CoCs were introduced to make certain supposedly marginalized groups more at home at conferences. But my personal experience/feeling is the complete reverse. I am a member of a minority as a person with a disability. In all the years I was interacting with the community, I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. But the day I saw the firs…
> I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. Asking in good faith here: is it possible your political mindset (wrt your opinions on CoC) is affecting your ability to relate to others in a context completely unrelated to CoC? The way I see CoC is that, whatever might be in a CoC, does not affect 99% of people 100% of the time and does not affect the remaining 1%…
My experience as a person with a disability is that whenever things were written down in rigid rules, humanity was lacking during execution of said rules. Whenever I was able to make things up on the spot with the people around me, I felt safe and OK.
Besides, I am wondering, does your choiceof screenname here imply something? Mockery perhaps? Or do you show up in this discussion with such a screenname totally by accident?
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0. There's no singular leftist philosophy in a world where anarchists and socialists and moderates and centrists are all ostensibly on the same side, but there are points of agreement (nazis are bad, every human being deserves equal dignity, people should have agency over their own bodies except where that agency meaningfully harms others, etc). When I refer to leftist thought I'm trying to refer to my understanding…
Certainly agreed the water is muddy, and that only the kooky fringe hold to all these, but that fringe is growing. The widely-hailed current sources for this kind of thinking are Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo; the latter, specifically, is being hired by companies nationwide to run seminars for employees to train them with this kind of worldview. It's also pushed strongly in academia, and is quite common to hear a…
I expect in 20 years some of what Kendi and DiAngelo will have held up, and some of it won't have. That's how doing anything new usually works.
I don't expect corporations to solve racism and sexism, or politicians or even people who run seminars.
I've actually given up any hope that my lifetime will see meaningful end of racism or sexism or even childhood hunger in America. Maybe some low hanging fruit or common cases will be better addressed.
When there is a real attempt to do something that actually makes a difference in the world, I expect it to be a bit clumsy, because they are so often trying to solve for the common case or the most costly case, not for every case. That's not illogical, I do the same thing when I code.
Sometimes they will certainly screw up or go to far; nobody said changing the status quo was easy.
Perhaps that's why conservatism has as much support as it does even when it's based on unscientific BS, or even outright lies.It's very easy to treat the status quo as the best of all possible worlds and try to defend it from the imagined horrors of change.
To me that seems such an empty hopeless way to live, and I hope more people in the world strive for something better, even if it's difficult and imperfect.
I assume the Evergreen State College doc is about Bret Weinstein, which I'm familiar with, but I'll watch the documentary. Have you heard or read about Harvard and Lorgia García Peña? https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/why-lorgi...
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> When we tell a sexist joke with a woman present, you will get a witty reply from them, not a call to HR. As a woman working in Europe, those sexist jokes sux. It sux to be in a team where you have to listen to it in the regular. It is tiring to have to be constantly prepared with "witty replies", just because collogues are dicks and need to pick on my gender. Yes, I tell them off or am witty depending on what I thi…
s/sux/sucks