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Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT... You do know this kind of thing has zero to do with Python? Nobody is havi

Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT... You do know this kind of thing has zero to do with Python? Nobody is having sex at pycon? They can just do what everyone else does, and not make that the most important thing in the world while at the stupid convention. Like personally I think logging should end, so can I just make this position a requirement that everyone else has to agree with to attend Pycon? It makes no sense, as it isn't related to the topic of the convention. I think that is why it gets labeled as an ideology.

daedrdev 2y ago
Yeah the punishment in Tanzania for homosexuality is only life imprisonment, while only 10% of the population reports being tolerant of someone with a different orientation -one of the lowest in Africa- while the countries largest city tortured gay people in 2019 as part of its persecution of them, no big deal (sarcasm) At some point we should say they are deeply hostile to the large and well respected portion of the python community who are queer, if they want to exclude them for who they are then we can also decide not to run a pycon there.
kmeisthax 2y ago
The problem is that this stops being "ideology" when it starts interfering with the operation of Pycon. For example, if other people have to travel to the country the PyCon is in, and they are in any way gay (and yes, there are bound to be gay people in Python's development community), they're risking arrest just to go. Strip away the moralizing and it's still extremely problematic to put an African PyCon in a country with such authoritarian[0] laws. Going back to Rust for Linux (the actual thing we were talking about), you cannot cleanly separate the "religious" and "technical" sides of the argument. Rust doesn't provide safety advantages when calling into C code unless you inform the type system of what the memory safety requirements of that C code are. Otherwise you have to litter your code with unsafe blocks everywhere to manually call into C, which makes it a lot closer to C code. Safe Rust requires you to know and understand what the C code is doing, or have good documentation related to that code, and keep your bindings up to date when the C code changes. That's both technical and religious - insamuch as Rust demands good docs and some subset of the C people don't want to provide them. [0] Yes, banning homosexuality is inherently authoritarian. It's literally the first thing any authoritarian does, to check if society's liberal reflexes still work or not.
rollcat 2y ago
I don't have the broader context (like the exact situation for LGBTQIA+ people in Tanzania), but... > Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT... You're passing judgement on people you don't know, while you remain in a privileged and ignorant position. Many trans/NB/intersex people could be easily identified as such, based on their appearance/voice/etc. Even if the concern was sexuality alone (or other characteristics you could mask/hide), nobody wants to live out their life in a closet - that's also the entire point of a conference: to go there and talk to other people, to feel safe while doing so, to be able to remain yourself. The problem space is way more nuanced than "just don't have gay sex in public lol".
- TeeMassive 2y ago
  > while you remain in a privileged and ignorant position I think Python devs such as you and I are much more privileged than the average African.
  - rollcat 2y ago
    I don't see how it changes the situation. You can never know the exact life situation of any particular individual. I may be a member of one (or many) marginalised groups. I'm aware I'm ignorant of many issues, including even those that directly concern me. Still, TinkersW's comment amounts to "don't be gay". That's exactly the kind of thinking that enables this problem in the first place. Whether you're privileged or not, tolerance could be as simple as just letting people live their lives. Acts of discrimination, hate, aggression - whether mandated by law, by customs, or else - these are all wilful choices, made by people who commit them.
    - TeeMassive 2y ago
      > I don't see how it changes the situation. That's precisely my point. Mentionning someone else's "privilege" is a meaningless ad hominem.
      - rollcat 2y ago
sophacles 2y ago
First of all - people are having sex at pycon. People are having sex at every convention. You might not be - but when groups of humans assemble, some of them are going to up, it's what humans do. Do you think maybe a technical convention should be about the technical stuff? A place where technical things are the only focus and the other stuff doesn't mater - a place where technical merit rules and drives the discussion? If so, wouldn't it make sense to hold that convention somewhere that allows everyone to display their technical merit rather than in a country that will go as far as to look at visitors social media an potentially jail them over something that has nothing to do with python? Would you be ok with it if the convention for your technical expertise was held at a convention center owned by a logging company who didn't allow you entry to the building because of your comment here? The convention isn't going to engage in politics, and by not considering such things they've effectively banned you from participation for non-technical reasons. Wouldn't it be better if they held it across the street at the convention center that explicitly supported the right of disgusting ideals like anti-logging (but is otherwise no different)? It turns out that sometimes defending basic rights of your organization's membership is in fact a requirement for creating a situation where technical merit rules. By not doing so, you participate in a situation where non-technical considerations are part of what tech and what engineers are allowed to make it have a major influence on the technical direction of your thing.
- TeeMassive 2y ago
  > People are having sex at every convention. That's besides the point. People are not at a Python convention for sex. Having a convention in a different culture doesn't mean accepting all the moral tenets of that culture. You're effectively cancelling the entire African and Asian Continents. I'm failing to see in putting barriers to what is the best gateway for economical progress for a lot of people in our time.

daedrdev 2y ago

Yeah the punishment in Tanzania for homosexuality is only life imprisonment, while only 10% of the population reports being tolerant of someone with a different orientation -one of the lowest in Africa- while the countries largest city tortured gay people in 2019 as part of its persecution of them, no big deal (sarcasm) At some point we should say they are deeply hostile to the large and well respected portion of the python community who are queer, if they want to exclude them for who they are then we can also decide not to run a pycon there.

kmeisthax 2y ago

The problem is that this stops being "ideology" when it starts interfering with the operation of Pycon. For example, if other people have to travel to the country the PyCon is in, and they are in any way gay (and yes, there are bound to be gay people in Python's development community), they're risking arrest just to go. Strip away the moralizing and it's still extremely problematic to put an African PyCon in a country with such authoritarian[0] laws. Going back to Rust for Linux (the actual thing we were talking about), you cannot cleanly separate the "religious" and "technical" sides of the argument. Rust doesn't provide safety advantages when calling into C code unless you inform the type system of what the memory safety requirements of that C code are. Otherwise you have to litter your code with unsafe blocks everywhere to manually call into C, which makes it a lot closer to C code. Safe Rust requires you to know and understand what the C code is doing, or have good documentation related to that code, and keep your bindings up to date when the C code changes. That's both technical and religious - insamuch as Rust demands good docs and some subset of the C people don't want to provide them. [0] Yes, banning homosexuality is inherently authoritarian. It's literally the first thing any authoritarian does, to check if society's liberal reflexes still work or not.

rollcat 2y ago

I don't have the broader context (like the exact situation for LGBTQIA+ people in Tanzania), but... > Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT... You're passing judgement on people you don't know, while you remain in a privileged and ignorant position. Many trans/NB/intersex people could be easily identified as such, based on their appearance/voice/etc. Even if the concern was sexuality alone (or other characteristics you could mask/hide), nobody wants to live out their life in a closet - that's also the entire point of a conference: to go there and talk to other people, to feel safe while doing so, to be able to remain yourself. The problem space is way more nuanced than "just don't have gay sex in public lol".

TeeMassive 2y ago
> while you remain in a privileged and ignorant position I think Python devs such as you and I are much more privileged than the average African.
- rollcat 2y ago
  I don't see how it changes the situation. You can never know the exact life situation of any particular individual. I may be a member of one (or many) marginalised groups. I'm aware I'm ignorant of many issues, including even those that directly concern me. Still, TinkersW's comment amounts to "don't be gay". That's exactly the kind of thinking that enables this problem in the first place. Whether you're privileged or not, tolerance could be as simple as just letting people live their lives. Acts of discrimination, hate, aggression - whether mandated by law, by customs, or else - these are all wilful choices, made by people who commit them.
  - TeeMassive 2y ago
    > I don't see how it changes the situation. That's precisely my point. Mentionning someone else's "privilege" is a meaningless ad hominem.
    - rollcat 2y ago

sophacles 2y ago

First of all - people are having sex at pycon. People are having sex at every convention. You might not be - but when groups of humans assemble, some of them are going to up, it's what humans do. Do you think maybe a technical convention should be about the technical stuff? A place where technical things are the only focus and the other stuff doesn't mater - a place where technical merit rules and drives the discussion? If so, wouldn't it make sense to hold that convention somewhere that allows everyone to display their technical merit rather than in a country that will go as far as to look at visitors social media an potentially jail them over something that has nothing to do with python? Would you be ok with it if the convention for your technical expertise was held at a convention center owned by a logging company who didn't allow you entry to the building because of your comment here? The convention isn't going to engage in politics, and by not considering such things they've effectively banned you from participation for non-technical reasons. Wouldn't it be better if they held it across the street at the convention center that explicitly supported the right of disgusting ideals like anti-logging (but is otherwise no different)? It turns out that sometimes defending basic rights of your organization's membership is in fact a requirement for creating a situation where technical merit rules. By not doing so, you participate in a situation where non-technical considerations are part of what tech and what engineers are allowed to make it have a major influence on the technical direction of your thing.

TeeMassive 2y ago
> People are having sex at every convention. That's besides the point. People are not at a Python convention for sex. Having a convention in a different culture doesn't mean accepting all the moral tenets of that culture. You're effectively cancelling the entire African and Asian Continents. I'm failing to see in putting barriers to what is the best gateway for economical progress for a lot of people in our time.