4 ms·
According to the article I read, which could be wrong, the phrase was "I'd fork that repo." In and of itself, harmless, but said in the proper tone (don't know
by mlent 14y ago
According to the article I read, which could be wrong, the phrase was "I'd fork that repo." In and of itself, harmless, but said in the proper tone (don't know if it was), it would remind me of things that have been said about me. I.e. People talking about how they would do 'x' to me. Totally creepy and disturbing, right?
A phrase like that is called a 'trigger'. The same reason you don't say the n-word around a person of color, because you don't know what kind of experiences that person has associated with that. Same for rape, because you could have a victim or a rapist nearby and you don't know how it will affect them (harming or reinforcing them, respectively).
Gender, race, sexuality, and many other topics make people feel very strongly, and sometimes can cause people to dwell on those bad experiences and have the same feelings of angry/inadequacy/self-loathing/whatever that they did at first. My perspective is: I don't know how this really charged term has affected the lives of the people around me, so...maybe I'll wait to make the joke? Or I won't make it?
The dongle thing is silly to me, and the "forking" thing was immature. But that's how I could take offense at that statement. Hope that clears it up? Just my perspective. I don't know if that's how Richards felt...if she didn't, I don't know what the sexist overtones could be either.
- cameronh90 14y agoBut how can you know what someone will find to be a trigger? Someone can find almost anything offensive for some reason, or have it remind them of a bad experience. If they were being particularly graphic, of course, that would be inappropriate, but even if this was a wiggley-eyebrows wink wink nudge nudge sexual innuendo, it still seems pretty harmless (other than going against PyCon's rules which is bad). I could get offended, as a vegetarian, by someone saying they're so hungry they could eat a horse - or if I were anorexic, maybe that would be a trigger? The alternative seems to be that we all become humourless drones, just in case any of our humour offends someone. Maybe I'm biased though, as a Brit: if we didn't have sexual innuendo, we couldn't get up in the morning (wink wink nudge nudge). It's as essential as our morning breakfast tea.
- mlent 14y agoNah, you can't know. It's just a consideration. Obviously some things are more blatant than others. I'm just offering one possible way what was said could've been taken offensively -- not saying that I personally agree.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ramblerman 14y agoI don't want to trivialize the power of such a trigger and the strong emotional states they may bring about. But you are arguing sensitivity and general discourse, for which I agree, these comments were misplaced. In the underlying argument "What makes it sexist", you seem to imply if the person set off by the trigger is a woman, then the initial statement was sexist. Which is a little broad for my liking. As for sensitivity, Imagine for a second a victim of prison rape (of which there are unfortunately many cases). I could imagine someone like that having an extremely sensitive reaction to any 'gay' word or image. Should we therefore limit the right of gays to express their affection, out of fear they might offend said people.
- mlent 14y agoYeah, I can see how my post could be interpreted that way, though I didn't mean it like that. Just because a woman was offended definitely doesn't mean the statement was necessarily sexist. I'm just trying to offer one possible way they could be construed as sexist -- not to say that I agree with the interpretation personally, though.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]