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I realize CoCs were introduced to make certain supposedly marginalized groups more at home at conferences. But my personal experience/feeling is the complete r

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 first CoC being used in a community I was interacting with, I started to feel uneasy. I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. I also stopped going to conferences. Gosh, I am even glad I didnt go to the DebConf where they invited Linus only to realize later that they are very unhappy with his speaking style. I would have felt too much shame for being a part of such a group of hyprocrits.

fennecfoxen 5y ago
The code of conduct is like HR. It’s there to protect the powerful, not to protect you.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  I was the original author of the Pycon Canada Articles of Association back when we were starting it, which included a section on conduct and inclusivity. A code of conduct is not there to protect powerful people. It's not there to browbeat people into being absolutely politically correct 100% of the time either. A code of conduct is something you put together so that everyone involved in the initial organization look at it once, and say "yep, I'm dealing with reasonable people here" and 99.999% of the time you don't have to look at it again because you've established from the start the type of people you're dealing with and they attract others that share the values. Then once in a blue moon someone does something awful and you pull it out and kick them out. Pete Forde was pretty "powerful" in the Ruby community and I don't exactly see him leading conferences or introducing people to Tobi anymore.
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    None of what you describe requires or is helped by having a code of conduct.
    - pc86 5y ago
      IMO (which I think is not a majority opinion, mind you) the biggest benefit of a code of conduct is to prevent the person being disciplined from saying "oh I'm sorry I didn't know" and getting a pass. There are (rarely) times a first offense warrants a harsh punishment.
  - taeric 5y ago
    The problem is your "once in a blue moon." This can easily read as, "arbitrary time where we don't have any other justification for kicking out someone we dislike." For the truly terrible people, you really shouldn't need a code of conduct to kick them out. An assumption of good behavior is a decent assumption. For abrasive people that you don't want to deal with, things get harder if they are just difficult in good faith. But, the difficult in good faith people are the most difficult to work with using a code of conduct. Being in good faith, they likely literally don't see the problems they cause. And the code does nothing to educate.
    - mLuby 5y ago
      > For the truly terrible people, you really shouldn't need a code of conduct to kick them out. Good point, often overlooked. Though I hear the creak of an opening door to "we just don't like you" culture-fitting exclusion. Written policies separate, by both time and person, rule creation from rule enforcement. That disconnect gives both the policymakers and enforcers CYA protection: The rule I wrote wasn't intended to be used this way. If it were up to me… but it's not, I just follow the rules.
      - taeric 5y ago
        Written policies are just another way to creak that door into a culture-fitting exclusion. Often done much more heavy handedly, as that second hypothetical line of yours is as often a lie. I get the desire to make things more objective, but as long as people are involved, it is going to be near impossible to separate that aspect from things without trouncing on people that are otherwise invisible to the ones writing the rules.
  - mlang23 5y ago
    It looks like you cant execute one of the common CoC rules. Assume good intentions. I dont need to look at a CoC of a conference, because, you know, I am living these ideas: I actually assume good intentions, so I dont need a CoC to assure myself.
  - klapman 5y ago
    The whole Python industrial complex (PSF, PyCon, python-dev) has always been extremely hierarchical. CoCs were introduced to protect the old boys and advance their careers at FAANG. The most egregious abuse of power occurred in the Python NumFocus space, where a couple of highly paid directors defamed a speaker for basically nothing: https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ I have never seen those directors do anything useful like writing software. The whole Python ecosystem is a swamp full of parasites who need a rule set to oppress the productive part of the population and justify their existence.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  How does it protect them? as far as I can tell they do absolutely nothing. If someone is misbehaving at a conference or online, you're already free to kick them out without a clause like this in your code of conduct.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Presumably it's not legal protection, but protection against the woke mob. CoC signals that to the mob that the community leadership is on their side so they'll be spared when any controversy arises.
  - ytxman 5y ago
    [This is not about Ruby.] In an open source project it works like this: Stage 1: Initial contributors and founders have a rough aggressive tone that is slowly adopted by new people (who are generally polite when they come). Stage 2: Old boy club realizes that their own impoliteness is being used back against them. They write a complex CoC with intersectionalism and all goodies that are hard to follow or understand for non-Americans. Stage 3: Old boy club now ostensibly follows the rule set, while being ice cold, authoritarian and contemptuous on the mailing lists. People not in the clique are undermined and contradicted regularly. Stage 4: People not in the clique explode when the pressure gets too much. We have a CoC "incident"! Stage 5: Here is when the CoC comes in handy. The Stealing Council now solicits reports of all past "microaggressions" of the target. People sift through the mailing lists and compile a dossier, ignoring any context that individual messages might have been written in. In short, the CoC allows for a pseudo "justice" system, where trials are held NKVD troika style, without hearing the target once. You have a document to point to! CoC complaints are also private, so complaints against the old boys can be brushed off and ignored. A public CoC complaint would be a CoC violation, so the old boys are fully protected! In most cases the Stealing Council operates like a FISA court. Punishments are handed out privately and the targets are afraid to go public.
    - gfosco 5y ago
      Are you sure about that? I see it going a lot more like this: Stage 1: Amazing new project lights the world on fire. Stage 2: Woke-scolds achieve 10% of contribution. Stage 3: Multiple woke-scold instigated controversies lead to the creators cowering in Twitter fear and implementing a CoC. Stage 4: CoC is used against everyone, but twice as hard against the creators. *(satire or future) Stage 5: CoC updated to require vaccine passport for contribution.
zivkovicp 5y ago
Yep, it's like participation trophies; in the end everyone's a loser.
sdfkljs 5y ago
I had similar experience. Went to an art installation run by group of young lefties, and upon entering they say: “if you see any racism or sexism, you should come to us and report it”. I was taken aback and immediately felt uncomfortable. Why did they need to say this? Do they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. The real question is does any of this stuff need to actually be said? My view is it just provides cover for powerful people to take out their enemies based on rule interpretations and technicalities.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > Do they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. Очень хорошо, товарищ
  - type0 5y ago
    > Очень хорошо, товарищ Прекрати писать на русском языке
- uselesscynicism 5y ago
  > they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. I'm sorry but the critical theories of gender are incredibly sexist, especially towards mothers, so I would personally expect a "lefty" place to be all about erasing biological womanhood, which personally I view as incredibly sexist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
api 5y ago
If people see a lot of cops in a neighborhood, they start to suspect there is a lot of crime. Seems like a variation of this. "If this community really needs a CoC, maybe it's actually full of bigots and assholes."
- pelasaco 5y ago
  The variation of your example would be: "If this community introduces a CoC, all participants start to suspect there were some incidents involving bigots and assholes in the community"
- eitland 5y ago
  Same with the sign on a certain airport I visited a number of times as a service engineer: There was a hand full of cash with a stop sign over, obviously it meant "we do not accept bribes". But for me it meant "this place have or have recently had a serious problems with bribery". Same with: "We do not spit on the floor in this building".
  - y_tho 5y ago
    Receiving bribes, soliciting bribes or declining bribes?
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. When I was younger, seeing a bouncer guarding the entrance to a pub was a pretty decent proxy for that pub not being the kind of place I’d like to have a drink in.
fritzx6 5y ago
It's definitely a difficult balance to strike, to provide guardrails for diverse groups of individuals, that ensure everyone can behave and be treated civilly. I applaud you for your ability to stand up for yourself in moments of discomfort or where you feel others are being mistreated. Unfortunately, not everyone is as confident or as self-advocating as you, and a CoC can help protect those who are more likely to weather abuse in silence. Codes of Conduct serve several critical roles in large community gatherings but specifically they are a method for an event organizer to set expectations for acceptable behavior, this serves to: 1. Signal to attendees the atmosphere of inclusivity and tolerance which they can expect to experience (as a marginalized group or not) 2. Provide clear examples of inappropriate behavior so that individuals who are less proactive and self-confident do not dismiss their feelings for fear of being 'over-sensitive' 3. Ensure that transgressors cannot plead ignorance when they are admonished or removed for abusive behavior.
- mlang23 5y ago
  And all the virtue signalling apparently leads to people like me, who are adults and can very well stand for themselves, not attending such conferences anymore. I truely think that people who are not willing or able to defend themselves in a social setting have bigger problems then FLOSS conferences. They have skipped a part of growing up. I feel sorry for them. But I dont agree that we should plaster everything with pseudo-laws to give them a false sense of security. So it is apparently ok if the mentally weak feel welcome, and those which have learnt to defend themselves no longer showing up because they dont feel at home? Great, reminds me of one of the last interactions I had in a conference setting. Small children in the conference room. As a blind individual, I really rely on hearing what the speaker says. I cant just look at the slides. I already knew it wouldnt go well, but I tried to discuss the issue. At first, I heard some sympathy for my point of view. And 2 hours later, the same person didnt want to stand up for the issue anymore. So I guess womens right to bring their 1 year olds everywhere they want was trumping the needs of a disabled person attending the same conference. Thanks, I am done with this hypocrity.
  - terracatta 5y ago
    It sounds like you attended a poorly run conference that was not able to accommodate your disability and still refused to accommodate you after you were forced to self-advocate All conferences I've been to are good about offering suggestions for near-by childcare or even on-site child care for all parents. If that wasn't offered, that's more evidence the conference wasn't run well. It's not appropriate to have a 1 year old babbling over a speaker giving a presentation and the organizers should have quietly spoke to the person caring for the child and removed them from the situation. I don't think that has anything to do with CoCs.
cirgue 5y ago
> But the day I saw the first CoC being used in a community I was interacting with, I started to feel uneasy. I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. It’s like being in a school with metal detectors. They don’t make you feel safer, they make you feel like they’re necessary because the people around you mean you harm, even when that’s not at all the case. It’s an implicit threat.
Chris2048 5y ago
One of the issues with how these things are handled: * good faith is assumed of the CoC writers * bad faith is assumed for people who oppose/criticise the CoC such that: * any opposition (or criticism) to the CoC is itself an offense a pretty chilling and despotic approach, worsened still by the fact that the individuals behaving in this way mightn't even have any real authority or approval in the first place, and very little in the way of response to feedback outside some small ideological group (very much talking about the covenant here). these actions are usually justified with the kind of arguments that fallaciously treat groups of people as homogeneous "identities", in effect a multi-generational rob[bing] Peter to pay Paul.
zzzeek 5y ago
> I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. that's good for you, but how can you then assume everyone else shares the identical circumstances as you? Different historically marginalized groups have different experiences, and different individuals within those groups have entirely different experiences as well. Heck, I'm from zero historically marginalized identities but i have a lot of social anxiety, I've had lots of uneasiness. You are lucky that you have had no bad experiences (I might even argue this is really a sub-category of "survivorship bias"). I run an open source project. Users come to me for help, I would never think to say, "this code is easy for me to do, therefore it should be easy for you too, go work harder". Would be pretty outrageously bad, in fact. For me to assume that just because something is easy / possible / reasonable for me, therefore it should be for everyone else, would indicate a profound lack of empathy. CoC's are there to indicate to the userbase that the comfort of all users is of the highest importance so they can get on with the job of working on code together, largely related to the fact that society is in a place of great change where all kinds of tacit, implicit, pervasive disapproval and marginalization of all kinds of people is suddenly not being tolerated. It's not unusual that this level of change would make people uncomfortable but the best thing you can do is to try to see the bigger picture rather than burrowing into becoming a reactionary.
bobthechef 5y ago
Right, this can misconstrue a difference in a way that becomes unnatural. Obviously, you will notice a person who is disabled in some way. It's there, so why would you deny the truth and its contextual relevance and objective significance? But the kind of artificial attention to disability these sorts of things enforce in the name of "sensitivity" can displace it into some weird category that causes people to view disabled people first and foremost as disabled, and whatever else second, even if the particular occasion has nothing to do with that disability. This can even dehumanize the person by making them "a disabled" and not a person. This also makes social interaction awkward (I know how to talk to a person, but I don't know how to talk to "a disabled") and I'm sure, as you seem to agree, this is no kindness to the disabled. You're robbed of certain social interactions as a person because your identity is now "a disabled" and not "human being I can talk to about this conference topic".
helen___keller 5y ago
> 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% still 99% of the time. Yes, it causes conflicts sometimes. You can agree or disagree on a particular CoC and that's fine by me. What I have difficulty understanding is some mentality that what's written in a CoC could directly lead to wanting to not interact with groups or go to conferences; the people in the conference are more real than the CoC itself is, and the people presumably are the same before and after the CoC is written!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- koschei 5y ago
  Some years ago a woman used peer pressure to get me drunk, she lied about how strong the alcohol was, she used her superior strength and health to force herself on me while being covered in the fluids of another person. 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.
chobytes 5y ago
Agreed. Im a member of certain popular to discuss categories, and Ive never really felt like this stuff was actually for people like me.

fennecfoxen 5y ago

The code of conduct is like HR. It’s there to protect the powerful, not to protect you.

3pt14159 5y ago
I was the original author of the Pycon Canada Articles of Association back when we were starting it, which included a section on conduct and inclusivity. A code of conduct is not there to protect powerful people. It's not there to browbeat people into being absolutely politically correct 100% of the time either. A code of conduct is something you put together so that everyone involved in the initial organization look at it once, and say "yep, I'm dealing with reasonable people here" and 99.999% of the time you don't have to look at it again because you've established from the start the type of people you're dealing with and they attract others that share the values. Then once in a blue moon someone does something awful and you pull it out and kick them out. Pete Forde was pretty "powerful" in the Ruby community and I don't exactly see him leading conferences or introducing people to Tobi anymore.
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  None of what you describe requires or is helped by having a code of conduct.
  - pc86 5y ago
    IMO (which I think is not a majority opinion, mind you) the biggest benefit of a code of conduct is to prevent the person being disciplined from saying "oh I'm sorry I didn't know" and getting a pass. There are (rarely) times a first offense warrants a harsh punishment.
- taeric 5y ago
  The problem is your "once in a blue moon." This can easily read as, "arbitrary time where we don't have any other justification for kicking out someone we dislike." For the truly terrible people, you really shouldn't need a code of conduct to kick them out. An assumption of good behavior is a decent assumption. For abrasive people that you don't want to deal with, things get harder if they are just difficult in good faith. But, the difficult in good faith people are the most difficult to work with using a code of conduct. Being in good faith, they likely literally don't see the problems they cause. And the code does nothing to educate.
  - mLuby 5y ago
    > For the truly terrible people, you really shouldn't need a code of conduct to kick them out. Good point, often overlooked. Though I hear the creak of an opening door to "we just don't like you" culture-fitting exclusion. Written policies separate, by both time and person, rule creation from rule enforcement. That disconnect gives both the policymakers and enforcers CYA protection: The rule I wrote wasn't intended to be used this way. If it were up to me… but it's not, I just follow the rules.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Written policies are just another way to creak that door into a culture-fitting exclusion. Often done much more heavy handedly, as that second hypothetical line of yours is as often a lie. I get the desire to make things more objective, but as long as people are involved, it is going to be near impossible to separate that aspect from things without trouncing on people that are otherwise invisible to the ones writing the rules.
- mlang23 5y ago
  It looks like you cant execute one of the common CoC rules. Assume good intentions. I dont need to look at a CoC of a conference, because, you know, I am living these ideas: I actually assume good intentions, so I dont need a CoC to assure myself.
- klapman 5y ago
  The whole Python industrial complex (PSF, PyCon, python-dev) has always been extremely hierarchical. CoCs were introduced to protect the old boys and advance their careers at FAANG. The most egregious abuse of power occurred in the Python NumFocus space, where a couple of highly paid directors defamed a speaker for basically nothing: https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ I have never seen those directors do anything useful like writing software. The whole Python ecosystem is a swamp full of parasites who need a rule set to oppress the productive part of the population and justify their existence.
vlunkr 5y ago
How does it protect them? as far as I can tell they do absolutely nothing. If someone is misbehaving at a conference or online, you're already free to kick them out without a clause like this in your code of conduct.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Presumably it's not legal protection, but protection against the woke mob. CoC signals that to the mob that the community leadership is on their side so they'll be spared when any controversy arises.
- ytxman 5y ago
  [This is not about Ruby.] In an open source project it works like this: Stage 1: Initial contributors and founders have a rough aggressive tone that is slowly adopted by new people (who are generally polite when they come). Stage 2: Old boy club realizes that their own impoliteness is being used back against them. They write a complex CoC with intersectionalism and all goodies that are hard to follow or understand for non-Americans. Stage 3: Old boy club now ostensibly follows the rule set, while being ice cold, authoritarian and contemptuous on the mailing lists. People not in the clique are undermined and contradicted regularly. Stage 4: People not in the clique explode when the pressure gets too much. We have a CoC "incident"! Stage 5: Here is when the CoC comes in handy. The Stealing Council now solicits reports of all past "microaggressions" of the target. People sift through the mailing lists and compile a dossier, ignoring any context that individual messages might have been written in. In short, the CoC allows for a pseudo "justice" system, where trials are held NKVD troika style, without hearing the target once. You have a document to point to! CoC complaints are also private, so complaints against the old boys can be brushed off and ignored. A public CoC complaint would be a CoC violation, so the old boys are fully protected! In most cases the Stealing Council operates like a FISA court. Punishments are handed out privately and the targets are afraid to go public.
  - gfosco 5y ago
    Are you sure about that? I see it going a lot more like this: Stage 1: Amazing new project lights the world on fire. Stage 2: Woke-scolds achieve 10% of contribution. Stage 3: Multiple woke-scold instigated controversies lead to the creators cowering in Twitter fear and implementing a CoC. Stage 4: CoC is used against everyone, but twice as hard against the creators. *(satire or future) Stage 5: CoC updated to require vaccine passport for contribution.

zivkovicp 5y ago

Yep, it's like participation trophies; in the end everyone's a loser.

sdfkljs 5y ago

I had similar experience. Went to an art installation run by group of young lefties, and upon entering they say: “if you see any racism or sexism, you should come to us and report it”. I was taken aback and immediately felt uncomfortable. Why did they need to say this? Do they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. The real question is does any of this stuff need to actually be said? My view is it just provides cover for powerful people to take out their enemies based on rule interpretations and technicalities.

torstenvl 5y ago
> Do they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. Очень хорошо, товарищ
- type0 5y ago
  > Очень хорошо, товарищ Прекрати писать на русском языке
uselesscynicism 5y ago
> they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. I'm sorry but the critical theories of gender are incredibly sexist, especially towards mothers, so I would personally expect a "lefty" place to be all about erasing biological womanhood, which personally I view as incredibly sexist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

api 5y ago

If people see a lot of cops in a neighborhood, they start to suspect there is a lot of crime. Seems like a variation of this. "If this community really needs a CoC, maybe it's actually full of bigots and assholes."

pelasaco 5y ago
The variation of your example would be: "If this community introduces a CoC, all participants start to suspect there were some incidents involving bigots and assholes in the community"
eitland 5y ago
Same with the sign on a certain airport I visited a number of times as a service engineer: There was a hand full of cash with a stop sign over, obviously it meant "we do not accept bribes". But for me it meant "this place have or have recently had a serious problems with bribery". Same with: "We do not spit on the floor in this building".
- y_tho 5y ago
  Receiving bribes, soliciting bribes or declining bribes?
Anthony-G 5y ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. When I was younger, seeing a bouncer guarding the entrance to a pub was a pretty decent proxy for that pub not being the kind of place I’d like to have a drink in.

fritzx6 5y ago

It's definitely a difficult balance to strike, to provide guardrails for diverse groups of individuals, that ensure everyone can behave and be treated civilly. I applaud you for your ability to stand up for yourself in moments of discomfort or where you feel others are being mistreated. Unfortunately, not everyone is as confident or as self-advocating as you, and a CoC can help protect those who are more likely to weather abuse in silence. Codes of Conduct serve several critical roles in large community gatherings but specifically they are a method for an event organizer to set expectations for acceptable behavior, this serves to: 1. Signal to attendees the atmosphere of inclusivity and tolerance which they can expect to experience (as a marginalized group or not) 2. Provide clear examples of inappropriate behavior so that individuals who are less proactive and self-confident do not dismiss their feelings for fear of being 'over-sensitive' 3. Ensure that transgressors cannot plead ignorance when they are admonished or removed for abusive behavior.

mlang23 5y ago
And all the virtue signalling apparently leads to people like me, who are adults and can very well stand for themselves, not attending such conferences anymore. I truely think that people who are not willing or able to defend themselves in a social setting have bigger problems then FLOSS conferences. They have skipped a part of growing up. I feel sorry for them. But I dont agree that we should plaster everything with pseudo-laws to give them a false sense of security. So it is apparently ok if the mentally weak feel welcome, and those which have learnt to defend themselves no longer showing up because they dont feel at home? Great, reminds me of one of the last interactions I had in a conference setting. Small children in the conference room. As a blind individual, I really rely on hearing what the speaker says. I cant just look at the slides. I already knew it wouldnt go well, but I tried to discuss the issue. At first, I heard some sympathy for my point of view. And 2 hours later, the same person didnt want to stand up for the issue anymore. So I guess womens right to bring their 1 year olds everywhere they want was trumping the needs of a disabled person attending the same conference. Thanks, I am done with this hypocrity.
- terracatta 5y ago
  It sounds like you attended a poorly run conference that was not able to accommodate your disability and still refused to accommodate you after you were forced to self-advocate All conferences I've been to are good about offering suggestions for near-by childcare or even on-site child care for all parents. If that wasn't offered, that's more evidence the conference wasn't run well. It's not appropriate to have a 1 year old babbling over a speaker giving a presentation and the organizers should have quietly spoke to the person caring for the child and removed them from the situation. I don't think that has anything to do with CoCs.

cirgue 5y ago

> But the day I saw the first CoC being used in a community I was interacting with, I started to feel uneasy. I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. It’s like being in a school with metal detectors. They don’t make you feel safer, they make you feel like they’re necessary because the people around you mean you harm, even when that’s not at all the case. It’s an implicit threat.

Chris2048 5y ago

One of the issues with how these things are handled: * good faith is assumed of the CoC writers * bad faith is assumed for people who oppose/criticise the CoC such that: * any opposition (or criticism) to the CoC is itself an offense a pretty chilling and despotic approach, worsened still by the fact that the individuals behaving in this way mightn't even have any real authority or approval in the first place, and very little in the way of response to feedback outside some small ideological group (very much talking about the covenant here). these actions are usually justified with the kind of arguments that fallaciously treat groups of people as homogeneous "identities", in effect a multi-generational rob[bing] Peter to pay Paul.

zzzeek 5y ago

> I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. that's good for you, but how can you then assume everyone else shares the identical circumstances as you? Different historically marginalized groups have different experiences, and different individuals within those groups have entirely different experiences as well. Heck, I'm from zero historically marginalized identities but i have a lot of social anxiety, I've had lots of uneasiness. You are lucky that you have had no bad experiences (I might even argue this is really a sub-category of "survivorship bias"). I run an open source project. Users come to me for help, I would never think to say, "this code is easy for me to do, therefore it should be easy for you too, go work harder". Would be pretty outrageously bad, in fact. For me to assume that just because something is easy / possible / reasonable for me, therefore it should be for everyone else, would indicate a profound lack of empathy. CoC's are there to indicate to the userbase that the comfort of all users is of the highest importance so they can get on with the job of working on code together, largely related to the fact that society is in a place of great change where all kinds of tacit, implicit, pervasive disapproval and marginalization of all kinds of people is suddenly not being tolerated. It's not unusual that this level of change would make people uncomfortable but the best thing you can do is to try to see the bigger picture rather than burrowing into becoming a reactionary.

bobthechef 5y ago

Right, this can misconstrue a difference in a way that becomes unnatural. Obviously, you will notice a person who is disabled in some way. It's there, so why would you deny the truth and its contextual relevance and objective significance? But the kind of artificial attention to disability these sorts of things enforce in the name of "sensitivity" can displace it into some weird category that causes people to view disabled people first and foremost as disabled, and whatever else second, even if the particular occasion has nothing to do with that disability. This can even dehumanize the person by making them "a disabled" and not a person. This also makes social interaction awkward (I know how to talk to a person, but I don't know how to talk to "a disabled") and I'm sure, as you seem to agree, this is no kindness to the disabled. You're robbed of certain social interactions as a person because your identity is now "a disabled" and not "human being I can talk to about this conference topic".

helen___keller 5y ago

> 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% still 99% of the time. Yes, it causes conflicts sometimes. You can agree or disagree on a particular CoC and that's fine by me. What I have difficulty understanding is some mentality that what's written in a CoC could directly lead to wanting to not interact with groups or go to conferences; the people in the conference are more real than the CoC itself is, and the people presumably are the same before and after the CoC is written!

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koschei 5y ago
Some years ago a woman used peer pressure to get me drunk, she lied about how strong the alcohol was, she used her superior strength and health to force herself on me while being covered in the fluids of another person. 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.

chobytes 5y ago

Agreed. Im a member of certain popular to discuss categories, and Ive never really felt like this stuff was actually for people like me.