Re: "Debian women may leave due to 'sexist' post"
2008/12/27 Всеволод Величко <torkvemada@nigma.ru>:
> Excuse me, you are against sexism, but what you mention is the same -
> from the opposite side. That's the same "women's" sexism. If we should
> respect women's rights, may be women should do the same? Otherwise it
> looks very childish, sorry.
Something a lot of people don't understand about feminism is that it
isn't symmetrical, because the situation of women and men has never
been symmetrical (and biologically, never fully will). The aim of
feminism is to give (at least) *political* symmetry to women with
regards to men.
Historically, in most parts of the world, women have been property.
The notion that women are actually independent agents and not cattle
is very new in western civilisation, and arguably still not firmly
established in many other parts of the world (and some may argue that
it's not even firmly established in certains parts of western
civilisation either). Women have been politically invisible for many
centuries. Whatever other oppression men may have felt, it pales in
comparison to the oppression women have felt, which has always been at
least as bad as what men suffer but is further compounded by many
other factors.
As for Amaya's website, sure, it looks like she favours pins of a
radical feminist variety, of the "I'm not going to shut up and take
it" kind of feminism, but I don't see her advocating violence towards
men, that men should be raped, that men should lose the right to vote,
that men should not own property, that men should be sexually
harrassed at all times in the streets, that men are naturally unable
to perform any intellectual or physical task, shouldn't be educated,
nor participate in the public sphere. These are all things that
historically happened to women everywhere all the time, and still
happen in many places, in many ways. You may not feel as a man that
you are perpetrating any of these things (and are you sure you are
not?), but bear in mind that these are the kinds of issues that
feminism is trying to fight against.
If she were to advocate any of those things, then I say that (her
brand of) feminism would be more symmetrical to patriarchy.
She does, however, say some things that may make some people
uncomfortable. I believe she's doing this because she's taking the
bottom right path in my handy online politeness decision flowchart:
http://platinum.linux.pl/~jordi/piccies/posting.png
Furthermore, I agree that it's her own personal website, and largely
irrelevant to the Debian project.
> I also hope, that this idiotic discussion will be closed soon.
Which idiotic discussion?
I think we have a bigger problem in that we *have* lost at least one
member of d-women, over other problems Debian has had.
I am preparing a response to this that I will soon share with the
other members of the Debian community. This isn't the first time
something of this sort happens within the project. I'm remembering a
post about something that happened in #debian-offtopic in Freenode not
so long ago:
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-women@lists.debian.org/msg03320.html
I think we do need a code of conduct, sanctioned by the leadership of
the community, else risk further loss of cohesion within the
community.
- Jordi G. H.
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