Seems to me that if you say something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc, then there are a couple possibilities. Either (a) you meant it or (b) you didn't mean it. If (b), a gentle nudge from a Hacker School pal is good, in the same sense of a friend telling me my fly is open. If (a), well, fuck you.
Or (c) what the other person claims to be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. isn't, at all, and this is simply the other person's way of "Well, actually."'ing you, except not even pedantically, but completely baselessly.
It's really hard to predict the effect of social rules like these, which is why Hacker School does their best to actually test them empirically and change them if they're negatively impacting the environment. A lot of people seem to be concerned about the chilling effects that these policies could have. This is a valid concern, as nobody wants to be in a place where they're constantly second-guessing everything they…
How is banning the right to defend yourself against a baseless accusation in any way "free for open discussion and transparency"?
"we've been trying to stop using "you guys" to refer to mixed-gender groups." Am I the only one that finds this over the top? "No 'subtle -isms' is about recognizing the ways we're unconciously [sic] making our friends' lives a little worse." I'm sorry, if your life is made worse by a completely benign (and friendly) statement like "ok guys, have a nice weekend" then you are naive and irrational. Creating an environm…
The "you guys" instance seems a bit silly at first but is a good example of the way our language promotes the idea of male as the default. Note that there are no feminine words which we gender-neutralize in a similar way--we refer to a collective as "guys" or humanity as "mankind," but never use "gals" or "womankind" to refer to a mixed-gender group. In this way we construct women as an other, in opposition to men: t…
Words may have multiple meanings. These can either be related, or totally unrelated (polysemy vs. homonymy). Does English take a stand about financial institutions and rivers by giving "bank" two meanings related to these concepts? Of course not, that would be absurd. Similarly, male pronouns fulfill an extra role in many languages, and this in no way implies any kind of value judgment or reflection of power structure. Please, there are so many more pressing and more serious issues to spend our energy on.
Good God, this is why I changed my OkCupid profile to omit the fact that I work at a tech startup. A bit dishonest, to be sure, but I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag that makes comments like the ones in this thread. Downvote away, guys, because hey, I'm engaging in some SHAMING here. Frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
> I just want to have a chance to demonstrate in person that I'm not the kind of insensitive, entitled dickbag
Accusation of sexism (etc.) is public and brings shame to the accused (whether or not the accused is guilty). It's also clearly a ritual. In conclusion, I think these social rules explained the blog article are indeed shaming rituals. You might not agree, which is not surprising since you're one of the founders.
Just like anything else, tactful people will do this privately and with discretion.