Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> writes:
On 1/10/19 5:28 PM, Matthew Vernon wrote:
...which is why, of course, the Debian project has said that we won't
accept racist/sexist/homophobic/etc language in our spaces, because we
want a broad range of people to feel welcome in our community. I don't
get to decide what is offensive to women[0], I get to listen to women
and believe them.
It's one thing to have some social norms, and jump on people who go
way over the top. It's quite another to have star-chamber like
censorship & banning. And even more for you (a male) to take action
on their behalf. It seems to be awfully arbitrary to listen to (some)
women's complaints about offensive language, while not listening to
other women's complaints about "white knight" behavior.
A couple of things (which might as well have come after the following
paragraph, but I'm trying to keep this concise):
i) you appear to be arguing that as a man I shouldn't speak out on
feminist topics, shouldn't take action on behalf of women. This line of
argument was run when we had the weboob argument, and Miry commented on
why she doesn't often join in such arguments[0] - from which it's clear
that "no woman has complained about this particular thing" doesn't mean
that thing is inoffensive. The geek feminism wiki has an article on this
subject:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Not_a_woman
ii) "White Knighting" has a specific meaning in this context, which I
don't think you mean to accuse me of?
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/White_knighting