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Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

drupalconfessions.org

211–220 of 341 posts

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#211
post #15

Make no mistake, inclusion and diversity at all costs is the new "religious" standard. Your personal beliefs do not matter. You will conform or you will suffer. (Vote down, that's fine, but it's still true.)

Finally, someone willing to stand up for the majority. When will this discrimination end? When will the weak and marginalized release their stranglehold on our society and let the rest of us fly free? Not a day goes by when I don't imagine what it would be like to not be able to say or do whatever I want and the fear of that makes me absolutely terrified. We must be constantly vigilant to ensure that fantasy never be…

Cute, but your glib dismissal of this viewpoint is partly why Trump won.

Here's a little explanation of how people work: if a person holds a belief or fear, and one person demonizes then for it while another validates it, the person is going to be drawn to the validator. It's the same reason why gay pride has soared over the last few decades; as a gay person, would you rather listen to a person saying "you're perfect the way you are", or "you should be ashamed"?

Some people in the majority ethnic group are afraid that they will be attacked, in bad faith, for expressing a view in conflict with the current set of liberal views. By dismissing their fears and telling them to piss off, you're guiding them into the arms of Trump and his ilk (who genuinely hold extremist views). The right way to move people is through negotiation, not shaming and heckling. In this case, "negotiation" means understanding their goals and motivations, explaining your own, and finding a consensus agreeable to everyone.

And to preempt accusations: I voted for Sanders in the primary, Clinton in the general, and am constantly horrified by the Trump administration. I'm not defending genuinely hateful views. I am just aware enough of how people work to know that failing to listen because you're on the moral high ground is more likely to breed extremism than genuinely change minds.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artists aren't typically doing peer-review before merge.

Artists in many industries do tons of peer review, actually.

But not in the sense that programmers do it. Of course there is the 'hackers and painters' essay by PG but I don't see it that way. Artists are a lot freer in their expressions than programmers ever will be, syntax, coding styles, those pesky specifications and so on.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#213
post #33

sorry but how does that work to be for tolerance and anti discrimination in the first place ? anti discrimination means you Do NOT tolerate people who discriminate, so you cant be tolerant at the same time. I always see this kind of contradictions in principles.

The code of conduct just applies to behavior inside the community. It has nothing to do with stuff happening outside of it.

The community would not tolerate discriminating behavior against members of the community or while doing work for the community. But what you do in your private life is non of it's business.

I hope you understand what I mean.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying, that it'd be entirely illogical for the social justice community at large to be against the practice of kink, given that many of its members practice kink in a wide variety of ways. There's no reason to assume that the SJW community at large will be against the practice of any consensual sexuality, which many people in this thread are doing.

And I'm just saying, the ideal of "don't know, don't care" can't purport to be upheld when analyses like these enter into "people X and people Y do Z to what degree". You can't have it both ways.

I never said "don't know, don't care" - though I certainly don't care, even if I do know. I was only attacking the idea that it's a bunch of nebulous "SJWs" kicking Larry out of the community, and pointing out that this is a nonsensical idea from the very start. There is no better way to do that given that many people believe SJWs are literally the devil than to say "we do literally this, why the fuck would we attack someone for it?"

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#215
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are people who believe McCarthy was wrong only because he picked the wrong targets. "Actually doing damage" is a fairly good discriminator, imho.

C.S. Lewis: "One man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did -- if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him i…

Very interesting quote. That statement underlines an important point: Witch hunts are commited by people who are convinced that their reaction is justified. Then, it was because that evil witch had cursed your cousin, now it is perhaps because someone made a joke you didn't get[1].

And obviously, no single person holding the digital pitchforks would ever think of themselves doing the same thing as a superstitious peasant a couple hundred years ago.

Is there something productive anyone could do in this regard? I would guess in the most cases, the trenches are almost instantly dug way too deep for a sensible discussion...

[1]: To resort to an example Jon Ronson talked about in various talks. Well worth a Google query.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#216
post #7

Some context: Garfield's statement: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing Executive Director's statement: https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from-the...

> > So if and only if Larry did not violate the Code of Conduct, then apologize to Larry and rescind your request to remove himself from the community (if there was a violation, provide the details to Larry and confirm to the public) TL;DR : Please continue iff there was a violation we don't know about > We want to be clear that the decision to remove Larry's DrupalCon session and track chair role was not because of…

https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-3

TL;DR : The Drupal leadership hasn't accused Larry of a code of conduct violation publicly or privately but they're happy to imply that a secret violation exists so they can cover up the fact that they ousted him because his lifestyle is icky and bad for PR.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, why should a public official should be held to a lower standard than the director of a private company? I'm not seeing that. Most observers believe that the passage of Proposition 8 in California had far more to do with black churches turning out for Barack Obama than it did with contributions from people like Eich. Edit: updating with citation. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11... 7…

You're right that I didn't answer your question directly. To be explicit, yes, I think wishing to impose your personal religious beliefs on your constituents should disqualify you from holding public office. However, when presented with two options that both fail that test, I will vote for the lesser of the two evils presented to me. I don't think that Mozilla was faced with that dichotomy, and the fact that Eich was…

> I think wishing to impose your personal religious beliefs on your constituents should disqualify you from holding public office.

Should officials be cajoling or forcing people to "convert" (not every religion has conversion as such)? Nope.

Can we divorce all laws from any metaphysical worldview? No. That's not possible. We presume certain things matter, like human lives, freedom of conscience, truth, the health of the planet, etc. Banning murder assumes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist and/or does not require human sacrifice to get into heaven. I can't come up with the right adjective, but that's imposing an (a)theological position on constituents. It's obviously the right position, too.

Point being, even the idea of "inalienable rights" is an (a)theological position. Some people think rights are given by God or the nature of humanity. Others think laws are given by the people and groups that can enforce them.

The goal isn't to have agnostic laws. That's literally impossible. The goal is to find a just baseline worldview we can all compromise on and have tolerant laws that follow from that.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#218
post #7

Some context: Garfield's statement: https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing Executive Director's statement: https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from-the...

> > So if and only if Larry did not violate the Code of Conduct, then apologize to Larry and rescind your request to remove himself from the community (if there was a violation, provide the details to Larry and confirm to the public) TL;DR : Please continue iff there was a violation we don't know about > We want to be clear that the decision to remove Larry's DrupalCon session and track chair role was not because of…

Still, that's a bit ambiguous. They should clarify that the initial evidence of his beliefs was not what got him in trouble, but the evidence that they're keeping confidential. Otherwise, it just seems like Garfield is being ousted for his for all we know harmless lifestyle choices.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry also writes, > Dries, from what I understand, was first informed, without my knowledge, of the matter in early February, by the CWG. Curious that the CWG referred the matter to him as part of their documented process (i.e. when an issue exceeds the scope of their charter). You may not be inclined to believe a word they say, but at the very least Larry's timeline does not contradict this detail as provided by Me…

> we should at least consider that possibility That would require that someone provides some evidence that this had nothing to do with what the accused suggests it's about - as it is, all we have is a short jump from being harassed because Gor to being kicked out of the community. That sort of thing is, unfortunately, quite common - I have friends within the scene who've lost their jobs because someone sent a picture…

I believe Dries's words in his apology post were sincere, so I do submit that as evidence but understand you may find him untrustworthy. However, the willingness of people who practice BDSM who actually work for him to speak out on that post provides even more compelling evidence that Dries isn't known for discriminating on that basis:

http://buytaert.net/comment/132641#comment-132641

If Preston and other BDSM practitioners like him are fired from Acquia or removed from the Drupal community, I'll eat whatever crow you care to dish up.

Re: Drupal Confessions – An Open Letter

#220
post #170
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, a whole bunch of people here are missing the point: the Gorean stuff is primarily a consensual sexual fantasy, not a 24/7 philosophy. It doesn't say "this is the right way to live life for everyone", it says "we like this system for our personal lives and weekends and vacations". ISIS? Nazis? They want to destroy the world and make it over in their own image, not be left alone in quiet enjoyment of their kinks…

... ouch. That really would've been nice to see in the letter. Having a pervy philosophy during kinky sex with consenting adults is a very different thing from believing women are inherently inferior.

As I understood it, the driving evidence in this case (what's been publicized, at least) was roleplay on a private forum specifically for that purpose. Which wasn't clarified in the letter, but is a significant part of why people across the political spectrum are so upset about this one - it treats statements made in a fictional context as core beliefs.

(All made more complicated by the fact that Goreanism itself seems to operate on a bizarre multiple-levels-of-fiction basis, but still.)

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