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

[beuc]

Let's stop wasting time on this right now and discuss it on Sunday,
as expressed a couple times already.

Thanks,
Sylvain

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 07:09:58AM -0400, Deb Nicholson wrote:
> 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.