Re: Some thoughts about Diversity and the CoC
On 12/12/2019 07:22, Gerardo Ballabio wrote:
> So this is also inevitably a political issue. It's not just about
> "being polite" (or "welcoming" or "excellent" or whatever). I believe
> that I absolutely have the right to "being impolite" if "being polite"
> means that I must use a language that conveys a political position
> that I oppose.
It is not about being polite, being an asshole to people is never a right.
> For example (forgive me if this might seem off-topic, but I think that
> working out the details of an actual example is necessary to make my
> point clear), I do not feel that I should acknowledge people's
> requests to refer to them by their "preferred pronouns". That is
> because I believe that people's sexual identities are determined by
> objective facts, such as which chromosomes are there in their DNA, and
> not by how they subjectively "perceive themselves".
Apart from being a ridiculously ignorant position, like anybody who
studied biology would tell you (Matthew already did), this is a good
example of not-polite-just-assholish discourse.
If I tell you that my pronouns are she/her, and that my name is Martina,
and you happen to insist on misgendering or deadnaming me, you would not
be defending an opinion, you would be acting like an asshole, and I
would be completely justified to tell you to fuck right off into the
sea, because you would be a ignorant bigoted jerk who enjoys making
people suffer so they can feel smug about their edginess.
>
So when I refuse
> to refer to a person with XY chromosomes as "she", or to abuse the
> English language by calling an individual "they", in fact I am
> defending my world view, and you must not deprive me of that right.
If your worldview is based on denying people of their identity and their
humanity, your worldview needs to be crushed by any means necessary
before it commits genocide. Wars have been fought and international
tribunals set up to deal with people defending similar kinds of world views.
> Anyway, thank you for clarifying that using people's preferred
> pronouns is a requisite for being welcome in Debian. As I read them,
> neither the CoC nor the Diversity Statement are explicit on that.
> Maybe it would be useful to make it explicit?
I think we don't need to add bullet points to say don't be a transphobe,
like we don't need to say don't be a nazi.
--
Martina Ferrari (Tina)
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