Debian, debutsav, CoC and Debconf 2016 and different meanings to gender-diversity.
Dear all,
I would request people to read it in full, maybe take some time and
then respond.
Also please CC me if somebody responds as I'm not subscribed to the
list but did read the archives of this month and the last :)
Recently, Debutsav was organized in Kerala. You can read about the
event at debutsav.in and whatever I could recollect and share at [1]
Obviously I had to keep it short as it was supposed to be mostly about
the technical aspects of the 2-day mini-conf/meetup rather than also
the social side.
Having been 'singed' on couple of previous occasions by A-H, as part
of the team I advised the organisers to have both a CoC and have a
team with women to fully staff it and have some sort of button, badge
or something which people could call upon to sort out in either
situations of hostilities or any sort of abusive behavior happens.
While the latter could not be prepared due to shortness of time ( it
was hardly 2 weeks where everything was organized) but I do feel we
could have done better.
I along with others also opined that we should have two women on the
panel instead of just one just to keep the panel sort of
gender-neutral but only Shruti was on the panel. I simply do not know
the reasons to presume or assume why it happened but do care enough to
point it out and to ask what we could and should have been better. It
wasn't as if talent wasn't around. As far as people from LGBTQIA+ or
non-binary people are concerned, I am afraid though, the road is long
ahead as it wasn't even part of the discussions anywhere. Although I
do hope after de-criminalization of Sec 377 we would see these
conversations happen [2] [3]
One of the intersting conversations I had with quite a few
participants is how much they had looked at the website and the CoC.
Sadly, it seems many didn't, at least not in any detail.
Interestingly, it was both the genders who didn't take or have the
time.
I do remember some blog posts in the pasts, maybe in Pycon 2018 or in
some other international conference, they had a banner which had the
CoC written on it. Maybe that could be something that both Debconf and
the various miniconferences could emulate aside from agreeing to the
CoC ?
Coming to the debian side of things, there doesn't seem to much
documentation about gender diversity as far as documentation is
concerned. In fact, the wiki doesn't seem to have an article on gender
diversity and even the diversity statement is all to brief for
somebody new to the term 'gender diversity' . It doesn't tell the
person anything. Please put yourself in the shoes of 22 year old
person who may come across this page for the first time and see the
term for the first-time. It is a touch point so it would be nice if we
could either elaborate it either there or link it to some page which
better defines the terminology and the context. [4] [5]
Even in debconf the term diversity is only a single page which doesn't
explain what diversity is apart from sharing few examples . Could it
be defined more better, more coherently, I hope so From what little I
understand of the meaning and the terminology, it is a broad inclusive
term rather than an exclusive term but then I'm no expert. I hope we
can come up with some better wording or at least a somewhat better
structure than the current wiki page we have. [6]
Coming to Debconf 2016, few of the blog posts I wanted to write and
had partially written about were about Rhonda and my interaction with
them (using Sarah Sharp's pronouns [7] .) I wanted to share both
their celebrations, the interactions and questions raised and answered
about gender, my own uneasiness in how should I address them when
writing as a third-person in a blog post as both the terms he/she felt
wrong. I shared one of my blog posts with few DD's whom I respect and
hold in high-esteem so they may help me in this delicate situation but
none of them answered.
Eventually I junked the blog posts because I felt even excluding them
from few presentations where they made an interesting point or an
insight, wouldn't that be an erasure of identity?
I could have used 'somebody asked x or y question' which many a times
I do use simply because I don't remember a person's name but in this
situation it was different and I couldn't publish the blog posts with
that knowledge in good conscience. With no way out, I simply junked
the posts. In light of recent happenings it does seem that that the
DD's did me a favor. It is very much possible that they were pretty
much confused or indeterminate as I was. What would be a good way to
address this ?
Could there be a possibility of having of having a debian-diversity
mailing list on lists.debian.org where some of these touchy topics
could be untied or unknotted in a civil manner ?
Sorry for being too long and there is a strong possibility that I
shared or coupled too many things together but I do feel strongly that
they are all related to one another.
I would point out that I scanned the mail multiple times to see if I
intentionally or unintentionally hurt somebody. I do say sorry to
Rhonda whose name I have taken now and couldn't do right with them
then and have no excuses.
Apart from that if somebody feels hurt, I do apologize but only to the
extent that whatever I shared is so that we should and could do
better.
1. https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/debutsav-kochi-2018/
2. https://barandbench.com/arundhati-katju-interview-section-377-supreme-court/
(sorry, paywall)
3. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/after-377/article25908623.ece
4. https://wiki.debian.org/Gender
5. https://www.debian.org/intro/diversity
6. https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Diversity
7. https://sage.thesharps.us/2017/10/24/binaries-are-for-computers/
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
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