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Re: Censorship in Debian



Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> writes:

> No.  I may mind, but I sure don't want others minding on my behalf.  I
> find THAT offensive.

Then I won't do that for you.

But I'm sure you realize that your experience is not universal among all
of humanity, and some people *do* want other people minding on their
behalf in some situations, mostly because they're exhausted, sick to death
of having to fight this battle, and/or much more likely to get abuse and
harassment if they do speak up than I am.

I will continue to emphasize the voices of those people and push for
things that they care about in places where I'm fairly sure that's what
they want because that's what members of a community do for each other.
Hell, that's what *friends* do for each other.  They have each other's
backs.

If a friend of mine cares about something that impacts them personally,
that means that I probably should at least consider whether I should care
about it too.  For me, this is a core part of the *definition* of
friendship.  If I don't give a shit about things that hurt my friends, I'm
not much of a friend, am I?

Obviously, it's then on me to be *really* good at listening, and to not
jump into places where I'm *not* wanted.  And obviously it's not
completely blind; sometimes a friend is going to be hurt by something, and
on reflection I'm going to decide that whatever they were hurt by wasn't
out of line.  It's tricky.  I'm going to mess up occasionally and have to
readjust.  But that's okay; it's still a lot less tricky than having to
deal with constant harassment every time you express an opinion.  I'm
happy to do some of my part in supporting my friends.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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