6 ms·

On GNU and on hackers

55 points by p4bl0 12y ago

stonogo 12y ago
I see in this thread, already, the blog author has succeeded in clouding the discussion by conflating "jokes about rape" with "topical references to a recent discussion of rape culture." The problem with stifling free speech is that the most effective tactics also involve stifling free thought. The proper course is a persuasive discussion, rather than browbeating everyone around you into submission. His goals are correct; his methods suck.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
From one of the author's linked tweets: i'm all about stifling the kind of free speech that makes people feel comfortable joking about rape. The author appears to be one of the many contemporaries enamored with postmodern factions dedicated to a simplistic and reductionist theory of social justice. But that's not even my main concern, but rather his misunderstanding of the use of comedy. Laughter is not necessarily a positive emotion. It can also originate from discomfort, anxiety, sadness, etc. The purpose of comedy is not just to be ephemerally funny. It's often used as a tool, by those skilled enough to pull it off, to shed light on the darker aspects of human existence and present them in such a fashion that it elicits a humored response. It is a coping mechanism, a way to come to terms with troubling things. Indeed, this is the point of black comedy. We joke about death and torture all the time. There is no reason why rape couldn't be joked about. In the hands of an excellent comedian, comedy has no boundaries. It starts to border on philosophy, musings of the human condition. Anyone who objects to this either misunderstands comedy, or has very unfortunate beliefs that free expression must be hindered. Otherwise, I read this article not so much as a reliable telling of internal issues in GNU (though they no doubt exist, as with any community), but as one man's personal frustrations with the community somehow being inadequate to his expectations.
- kvb 12y ago
  Do you feel that rape jokes are appropriate in every forum? Even if rape could be a fruitful topic "in the hands of an excellent comedian", that's hardly the situation being discussed is it?
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    Well, the article is rather haphazardly written, but from what I gathered there was no rape joke. Rather, the statement was, quoting the author's context: One of the presentations after lunch is by a GNU hacker. He starts his talk by stating his hope that he won't be seen as "offensive or part of rape culture or something". Which he deemed to be a trivialization of rape culture, but it was certainly not a "rape joke" by any conventional means.
    - zorpner 12y ago
      Of course it's a rape joke (and even if it weren't, it wouldn't matter, because it's so obviously what the author intended to mean by "rape joke"). The intended humor is derived from the speaker trivializing the concern by implying that it's not valid (for example, if I had prefaced this post with "not to suppress free speech or anything, but..."). It's fairly obvious that the author of this post and the aforementioned tweet is not objecting to the tiny percentage of rape jokes implemented by talented comedians as a means of social commentary. He's referring to the vast majority of rape jokes and comments that diminish or trivialize the act and derive humor from the idea of rape as punishment (jailhouse rape, et cetera).
      - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
        The joke is not a rape joke, because rape or rape culture is not the forefront of it. Rather, it's used as a background term, since it's well known and relevant to the main point. No, the keyword here is "offensive". The humor derives from the fact that the speaker is expressing concern that their words might be misconstrued to bear sinister connotations, when in fact they meant none. In that context, "rape culture" might be just about any negative social trend.
        zorpner 12y ago
        Geez man, the casual/background use of "rape" is almost the definition of rape culture. The use of rape rather than the use of a different negative social trend is the problem. I wish I understood your perspective on this a little better -- reading through your comment history, you obviously have a pretty nuanced view on a lot of things, but from my standpoint you frequently conflate the right to free speech with a right to consequence-free speech (note that even in the tweet you posted, where the author hyperbolically claims to want to "stifle free speech", he includes the caveat that he doesn't want people to be "comfortable" joking about rape. I think that's an entirely reasonable sentiment).
ekianjo 12y ago
The problem with anti-discrimination policies is that they discriminate against your own freedom to say what you want to say, the way you want to say it. Where I come from I could clearly the line forming against Free Speech because of anti-discrimination Laws being "the right thing to do" around the late 90s. Looking back, most of what was said on TV programs in the mid 90s would now be labeled as sexist, discriminative, and most people of the time would now be jailed for making the same very same comments in 2014. Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about what you can or cannot say, you have to tone down any joke you'd like to tell for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still think what they think but they are simply not allowed to say it in public anymore. At least before people felt some responsibility for what they were saying - instead of having to keep their mouths shut.
- cpach 12y ago
  Jailed? Really?
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Yep, jailed. At least in some countries I know of, it could go from a large fine to jail time depending on the level of discrimination.
  - streptomycin 12y ago
    http://www.cnet.com/news/british-man-jailed-for-racist-tweet/ http://www.cnet.com/news/british-man-jailed-for-racist-tweet...
  - groks 12y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwCYyoRskg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwCYyoRskg
- Karellen 12y ago
  The problem with anti-slavery policies is that they discriminate against your own freedom to own who you want to own, and treat them the way you want to treat them. Where I come from, I could clearly see the line forming against Slavery because of anti-Slavery laws being "the right thing to do" around the late 1790s. Looking back, most of what went on at Slave markets in the mid 1790s would now be labelled as discriminative, and most people of the time would now be jailed for making the very same economic trades in 2014. Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about who you can or cannot own, you have to tone down any violence against negroes you'd like to beat for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still arrange lynchings but they are simply not allowed to talk about it in public anymore. At least before people felt some responsibility for the slaves they owned, instead of having to set them free. OK, OK, I know, it's a bad analogy. Limits on speech are much less clear-cut than freeing slaves. But I hope I've made the point that you can't just point to the past, say "Is that progress? In my mind, society was better [then].", and claim that that's a substantive argument. It's not. Yes, there are great arguments for Free Speech. Make those arguments instead. On the other hand, there are good arguments to limit discriminatory speech. Speech can definitely harm people. One person saying "[Ethnic] immigrants are no-good, low-down, filthy, lazy, uneducated spongers, only interested in taking advantage of food stamp programs and great emergency medical treatment services while stealing jobs from real Americans by doing them for half the cost, cash-in-hand." probably isn't going to make much of a difference. But if it turns into a narrative or meme that's repeated again and again and again, it really can. Oft-repeated speech can harm discriminatred-against peoples ability to get good jobs, by turning the minds of employers against them. It can harm their ability to start their own companies, by turning the minds of lenders against them. It can harm their ability to get a good education for their kids, by making school boards indifferent to the problems of schools with large [ethnic] populations. It can harm their ability to petition school boards, or to join them, by having the people already there dismiss them, ignore their input, and quash their participation. Sure, despite this, if an [ethnic] kid with enough smarts and enough determination fights as hard as they can from the age of about 5 against all these barriers, and has a good amount of luck, they could still make a great life for themselves. But should they have to? Huge swathes of non-[ethnic] kids do at least as well for themselves without having to overcome these barriers at all; some of them, due to the privileges they enjoy, manage it while almost coasting. Meanwhile, masses of [ethnic] kids with only 90% of the drive of our special snowflake are beaten back into a life of poverty. Discriminatory narratives in our cultures materially harm whole populations of people. Even if you can point to individuals that are exceptions to this, that doesn't stop it being true. It's still possible to do well at the game of life when it's on "nightmare" difficulty setting, it's just that many fewer people playing on that setting will do as well as the people playing on "easy" difficulty. So the question is, is the freedom for us to create and spread discriminatory verbal narratives against minority ethnic (or other) groups in our society, more important than their freedom to truly be seen as equals and individuals, and to have the same advantages with the same lack of barriers that the majority enjoys? It's not a clear-cut answer. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and any limits, no matter how well-intentioned, should be regarded with utmost suspicion. But, there is a case to be made here, and it needs to be decided on its merits. Saying "we never used to do it that way" simply isn't good enough.
jgon 12y ago
Andy Wingo is a mensch and he does yeoman's work on a number of great open source projects, such as Guile and V8. I look forward to every one of his posts because I know they will be thought provoking, well written and aimed at making the world a better place in some way. He is a person who has looked at the world and his own personal moral compass and found a way to be true to it, working at Igalia, a software cooperative. This post is no different. GNU and the FSF behind it are social projects before they are coding projects. Attempts to avoid thinking in terms of society and instead myopically focusing on "the code" are wrong headed from the start, especially in the context of GNU. I think though, that for everything that I agree with in this post, it is focused too much outwards, without having a sufficient amount of introspection. The post opens with an example of a person withdrawing their talk as they feel it will conflict with the code of conduct. Later in the post, Andy writes that it turns out that the author withdrew their talk because they were worried that it would be considered offensive probably because of its content (I am inferring from the post that he intended to use curses in the talk) and not because it was misogynist. Even when it is revealed that the author misunderstood the meaning of the code of conduct, the post is still written almost as though this is on the author. I think this is the first place that people working to make a community more inclusive should take a step back and do some reflecting. If a code of conduct is simply put out there, without sufficient explanation of it, or sensitivity to the fact that it probably written in English with numerous assumptions based on your culture built in, then a certain amount of responsibility must be taken if someone misunderstands it. Obviously, attempts to exhaustively enumerate what a code of conduct covers would be futile, so I'll head off attempts to claim that is what I am saying here. No I am not calling for some strawman case statement, which will obviously immediately be found to have loopholes. But if you can't put in the work to list examples, help explain things that may rely on your own cultural assumptions and biases, and in general work to make understanding the code of conduct inclusive to everyone it will cover (obviously helping only those extending a good faith effort), well then how much better are you at being inclusive that the community with which you are finding fault? Another thing that I think needs to be established is that the code of conduct will be applied equally to everyone. I recently read a twitter message from an author expressing disdain for people complaining about their talk "Learn Functional Programming Without Growing a Neckbeard". This is an obviously gendered title, with negative connotations. In the same way that I would expect a conference to reject a talk entitled "Learn about Feminism Without Getting Hairy Armpits" I obviously expect the same standards to applied to the former talk. If you want people to buy into inclusivity (and yes everyone should just buy into it, but we do not live in a perfect world), then you need to include them. If people feel that the code of conduct will only apply to them in the "negative" sense, instead of also in the positive sense where they too can feel safe from mockery, offense, and bad conduct then it will be pretty hard to get buy in. I'll finish here by saying that I agree with most of the other things that Andy has written. I honestly never really understood the whole freedom of speech argument, especially in the context of a conference. If you can't give a talk without referring to rape, you should honestly rethink your approach. If you can't describe a system without comparing it in some gendered way with sexual overtones, again you should take a step back. I can't even fathom how this could be a problem but maybe I just haven't given enough talks to large groups of people. Maybe the urge to make a sexual reference in an explicitly technological conference is overwhelming. But I am guessing that is probably not the case. So I have little sympathy there. But for the sake of progressing to the better world that Andy is working towards I think a little introspection on the two points above from those working for it is in order as well.

55 points by p4bl0 12y ago

I see in this thread, already, the blog author has succeeded in clouding the discussion by conflating "jokes about rape" with "topical references to a recent discussion of rape culture." The problem with stifling free speech is that the most effective tactics also involve stifling free thought. The proper course is a persuasive discussion, rather than browbeating everyone around you into submission. His goals are correct; his methods suck.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

From one of the author's linked tweets: i'm all about stifling the kind of free speech that makes people feel comfortable joking about rape. The author appears to be one of the many contemporaries enamored with postmodern factions dedicated to a simplistic and reductionist theory of social justice. But that's not even my main concern, but rather his misunderstanding of the use of comedy. Laughter is not necessarily a positive emotion. It can also originate from discomfort, anxiety, sadness, etc. The purpose of comedy is not just to be ephemerally funny. It's often used as a tool, by those skilled enough to pull it off, to shed light on the darker aspects of human existence and present them in such a fashion that it elicits a humored response. It is a coping mechanism, a way to come to terms with troubling things. Indeed, this is the point of black comedy. We joke about death and torture all the time. There is no reason why rape couldn't be joked about. In the hands of an excellent comedian, comedy has no boundaries. It starts to border on philosophy, musings of the human condition. Anyone who objects to this either misunderstands comedy, or has very unfortunate beliefs that free expression must be hindered. Otherwise, I read this article not so much as a reliable telling of internal issues in GNU (though they no doubt exist, as with any community), but as one man's personal frustrations with the community somehow being inadequate to his expectations.

kvb 12y ago
Do you feel that rape jokes are appropriate in every forum? Even if rape could be a fruitful topic "in the hands of an excellent comedian", that's hardly the situation being discussed is it?
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Well, the article is rather haphazardly written, but from what I gathered there was no rape joke. Rather, the statement was, quoting the author's context: One of the presentations after lunch is by a GNU hacker. He starts his talk by stating his hope that he won't be seen as "offensive or part of rape culture or something". Which he deemed to be a trivialization of rape culture, but it was certainly not a "rape joke" by any conventional means.
  - zorpner 12y ago
    Of course it's a rape joke (and even if it weren't, it wouldn't matter, because it's so obviously what the author intended to mean by "rape joke"). The intended humor is derived from the speaker trivializing the concern by implying that it's not valid (for example, if I had prefaced this post with "not to suppress free speech or anything, but..."). It's fairly obvious that the author of this post and the aforementioned tweet is not objecting to the tiny percentage of rape jokes implemented by talented comedians as a means of social commentary. He's referring to the vast majority of rape jokes and comments that diminish or trivialize the act and derive humor from the idea of rape as punishment (jailhouse rape, et cetera).
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      The joke is not a rape joke, because rape or rape culture is not the forefront of it. Rather, it's used as a background term, since it's well known and relevant to the main point. No, the keyword here is "offensive". The humor derives from the fact that the speaker is expressing concern that their words might be misconstrued to bear sinister connotations, when in fact they meant none. In that context, "rape culture" might be just about any negative social trend.
      - zorpner 12y ago
        Geez man, the casual/background use of "rape" is almost the definition of rape culture. The use of rape rather than the use of a different negative social trend is the problem. I wish I understood your perspective on this a little better -- reading through your comment history, you obviously have a pretty nuanced view on a lot of things, but from my standpoint you frequently conflate the right to free speech with a right to consequence-free speech (note that even in the tweet you posted, where the author hyperbolically claims to want to "stifle free speech", he includes the caveat that he doesn't want people to be "comfortable" joking about rape. I think that's an entirely reasonable sentiment).

ekianjo 12y ago

The problem with anti-discrimination policies is that they discriminate against your own freedom to say what you want to say, the way you want to say it. Where I come from I could clearly the line forming against Free Speech because of anti-discrimination Laws being "the right thing to do" around the late 90s. Looking back, most of what was said on TV programs in the mid 90s would now be labeled as sexist, discriminative, and most people of the time would now be jailed for making the same very same comments in 2014. Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about what you can or cannot say, you have to tone down any joke you'd like to tell for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still think what they think but they are simply not allowed to say it in public anymore. At least before people felt some responsibility for what they were saying - instead of having to keep their mouths shut.

cpach 12y ago
Jailed? Really?
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Yep, jailed. At least in some countries I know of, it could go from a large fine to jail time depending on the level of discrimination.
- streptomycin 12y ago
  http://www.cnet.com/news/british-man-jailed-for-racist-tweet/ http://www.cnet.com/news/british-man-jailed-for-racist-tweet...
- groks 12y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwCYyoRskg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwCYyoRskg
Karellen 12y ago
The problem with anti-slavery policies is that they discriminate against your own freedom to own who you want to own, and treat them the way you want to treat them. Where I come from, I could clearly see the line forming against Slavery because of anti-Slavery laws being "the right thing to do" around the late 1790s. Looking back, most of what went on at Slave markets in the mid 1790s would now be labelled as discriminative, and most people of the time would now be jailed for making the very same economic trades in 2014. Is that progress? In my mind the society was better as a whole when there were less restrictions everywhere. Now you have to think twice about who you can or cannot own, you have to tone down any violence against negroes you'd like to beat for fear of it being discriminative in any way... it's just plain boring, and fake, because people anyway still arrange lynchings but they are simply not allowed to talk about it in public anymore. At least before people felt some responsibility for the slaves they owned, instead of having to set them free. OK, OK, I know, it's a bad analogy. Limits on speech are much less clear-cut than freeing slaves. But I hope I've made the point that you can't just point to the past, say "Is that progress? In my mind, society was better [then].", and claim that that's a substantive argument. It's not. Yes, there are great arguments for Free Speech. Make those arguments instead. On the other hand, there are good arguments to limit discriminatory speech. Speech can definitely harm people. One person saying "[Ethnic] immigrants are no-good, low-down, filthy, lazy, uneducated spongers, only interested in taking advantage of food stamp programs and great emergency medical treatment services while stealing jobs from real Americans by doing them for half the cost, cash-in-hand." probably isn't going to make much of a difference. But if it turns into a narrative or meme that's repeated again and again and again, it really can. Oft-repeated speech can harm discriminatred-against peoples ability to get good jobs, by turning the minds of employers against them. It can harm their ability to start their own companies, by turning the minds of lenders against them. It can harm their ability to get a good education for their kids, by making school boards indifferent to the problems of schools with large [ethnic] populations. It can harm their ability to petition school boards, or to join them, by having the people already there dismiss them, ignore their input, and quash their participation. Sure, despite this, if an [ethnic] kid with enough smarts and enough determination fights as hard as they can from the age of about 5 against all these barriers, and has a good amount of luck, they could still make a great life for themselves. But should they have to? Huge swathes of non-[ethnic] kids do at least as well for themselves without having to overcome these barriers at all; some of them, due to the privileges they enjoy, manage it while almost coasting. Meanwhile, masses of [ethnic] kids with only 90% of the drive of our special snowflake are beaten back into a life of poverty. Discriminatory narratives in our cultures materially harm whole populations of people. Even if you can point to individuals that are exceptions to this, that doesn't stop it being true. It's still possible to do well at the game of life when it's on "nightmare" difficulty setting, it's just that many fewer people playing on that setting will do as well as the people playing on "easy" difficulty. So the question is, is the freedom for us to create and spread discriminatory verbal narratives against minority ethnic (or other) groups in our society, more important than their freedom to truly be seen as equals and individuals, and to have the same advantages with the same lack of barriers that the majority enjoys? It's not a clear-cut answer. Freedom of speech is incredibly important, and any limits, no matter how well-intentioned, should be regarded with utmost suspicion. But, there is a case to be made here, and it needs to be decided on its merits. Saying "we never used to do it that way" simply isn't good enough.

jgon 12y ago

Andy Wingo is a mensch and he does yeoman's work on a number of great open source projects, such as Guile and V8. I look forward to every one of his posts because I know they will be thought provoking, well written and aimed at making the world a better place in some way. He is a person who has looked at the world and his own personal moral compass and found a way to be true to it, working at Igalia, a software cooperative. This post is no different. GNU and the FSF behind it are social projects before they are coding projects. Attempts to avoid thinking in terms of society and instead myopically focusing on "the code" are wrong headed from the start, especially in the context of GNU. I think though, that for everything that I agree with in this post, it is focused too much outwards, without having a sufficient amount of introspection. The post opens with an example of a person withdrawing their talk as they feel it will conflict with the code of conduct. Later in the post, Andy writes that it turns out that the author withdrew their talk because they were worried that it would be considered offensive probably because of its content (I am inferring from the post that he intended to use curses in the talk) and not because it was misogynist. Even when it is revealed that the author misunderstood the meaning of the code of conduct, the post is still written almost as though this is on the author. I think this is the first place that people working to make a community more inclusive should take a step back and do some reflecting. If a code of conduct is simply put out there, without sufficient explanation of it, or sensitivity to the fact that it probably written in English with numerous assumptions based on your culture built in, then a certain amount of responsibility must be taken if someone misunderstands it. Obviously, attempts to exhaustively enumerate what a code of conduct covers would be futile, so I'll head off attempts to claim that is what I am saying here. No I am not calling for some strawman case statement, which will obviously immediately be found to have loopholes. But if you can't put in the work to list examples, help explain things that may rely on your own cultural assumptions and biases, and in general work to make understanding the code of conduct inclusive to everyone it will cover (obviously helping only those extending a good faith effort), well then how much better are you at being inclusive that the community with which you are finding fault? Another thing that I think needs to be established is that the code of conduct will be applied equally to everyone. I recently read a twitter message from an author expressing disdain for people complaining about their talk "Learn Functional Programming Without Growing a Neckbeard". This is an obviously gendered title, with negative connotations. In the same way that I would expect a conference to reject a talk entitled "Learn about Feminism Without Getting Hairy Armpits" I obviously expect the same standards to applied to the former talk. If you want people to buy into inclusivity (and yes everyone should just buy into it, but we do not live in a perfect world), then you need to include them. If people feel that the code of conduct will only apply to them in the "negative" sense, instead of also in the positive sense where they too can feel safe from mockery, offense, and bad conduct then it will be pretty hard to get buy in. I'll finish here by saying that I agree with most of the other things that Andy has written. I honestly never really understood the whole freedom of speech argument, especially in the context of a conference. If you can't give a talk without referring to rape, you should honestly rethink your approach. If you can't describe a system without comparing it in some gendered way with sexual overtones, again you should take a step back. I can't even fathom how this could be a problem but maybe I just haven't given enough talks to large groups of people. Maybe the urge to make a sexual reference in an explicitly technological conference is overwhelming. But I am guessing that is probably not the case. So I have little sympathy there. But for the sake of progressing to the better world that Andy is working towards I think a little introspection on the two points above from those working for it is in order as well.