Re: [Ghm-discuss] The posh talk does not complain with the policy

[Deb Nicholson]

On Aug 13, 2014 5:14 AM, "Alfred M. Szmidt" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>    It takes a constitution of steel, or a principled rejection of
>    relentless input from outside, for a woman to survive and thrive in
>    yesterday's hacker culture.
>
> You are claiming that women are feeble persons with no means of
> standing up and saying their voice in `yesterdays culture' and need
> your help in todays, you are also assuming that women are some perfect
> beings that never make equally crude, and funny jokes.  How is that
> not offensive?

The women I know are not going home to have a good cry after hearing "jokes" about women as sex objects at hacker conferences. They are just deciding to spend their time with people who don't make them the butt of their jokes.

Just because a woman may make a crude joke with her own friends, doesn't mean it will feel comfortable to hear jokes about women as sex objects in a room that is 98% men that she doesn't know.  The two situations aren't the same at all. 
Cheers,
Deb

>
> The US, and Americans, in general, are overly sterialized when it
> comes to interaction with other people that have different values.
> And we can see this by this dicussion.  They have lived in a society
> where they way to "empower" someone is to diminish their value by
> becoming an over protective bully and assuming that because someone is
> a woman, or whatever, they cannot handle themselves and need help.
>
> The reality is that women can handle themselves just fine if everyone
> (women included!) behaves like normal people.  There are already legal
> instruments to reach for when someone is sexually molested, harassed,
> etc.
>
> But we are not talking about the extremes.  We are talking about basic
> crude humour, jokes, and pictures! It is NOT normal is to "protect"
> people from jokes that can be construed as tad offensive because
> someone has had humour sterilization at some point...
>
>    The mere fact that we are having this discussion means that the
>    policy is having an effect, and probably a positive one.
>
> It has a direct negative effect, people are afraid of giving speeches
> and attending the conference, or wasting time writing treaties about
> John Locke and freedom of form, US income tax, and the French
> Revolution.
>
>    PS: As this discussion has noted, perhaps the GNU project should
>    revise some of the sexist jokes on the website, too.
>
> No it shouldn't.  They are jokes are funny, nor offensive.
>