26 Apr
2024
26 Apr
'24
7:35 a.m.
Hi JC,
On Freitag, 26. April 2024 13:01:12 CEST JC Brand wrote:
I disagree. There are two issues here.
Issue 1: From the outside, it is not possible to distinguish two kinds of
organisations/groups:
- The kind of organisation which has truly engrained that people are people
and that discrimination is not to be tolerated and thus does not see the
necessity of enumerating marginalized groups it cares for.
- The kind of organisation which does, in fact, not care for the well-being of
marginalized groups inside of its structures at all.
I would like the XSF to be clearly recognizable as an organisation which
*does* care, even though we still have a long way to go for that to truly be
in effect.
Issue 2: With my MUC moderator hat on, I *need* that list. I need it (mostly)
not for myself to know what's right and what's wrong, but I need it as a
backing for that, when such specific problematic behaviour occurs, I know that
I am within my mandate to act on it (and to point people at it, saving me a
lot of time and energy). I do not have that if the CoC is handwaivy about
equality (notes on that later).
However, there surely are different ways to express this. Maybe wording like
in the Contributor Covenant [1] are better suited? In fact, they have an
excellent FAQ which may give some insights on why all of this is a good idea
[2].
I'm not fixed on the specific phrasing; what's important to me is that the
message is clear: discrimination and harassment is not being tolerated any
number of attributes, and the attributes we're actually aware of need to be
written down somewhere.
Concretely, I
propose that we add to 2.4 Be respectful, the following
items on>
the list of things to avoid:
> - Use of racist, misogynistic, anti-trans, anti-gay, ableist slurs, or
> other>>
> derogatory pejoratives for oppressed identity groups against such
> groups.
>
> - Blatantly racist, casteist, ableist, sexist, anti-trans, or otherwise
>
> offensive and bigoted discourse.
FWIW, I don't think coming up with ever more fine-grained categorization
of what constitutes marginalized persons and putting that in the CoC is
the right way to go. One can always come up with more categories of
marginalized people, and
trying to enumerate all of them in a CoC is IMO impractical, while
mentioning only some of them can create the impression that some
categories of people are "more equal" than others.
They are though, or should be anyway. People from marginalized groups are just
that, marginalized. We as an organisation should do the extra effort to
support individuals from these groups in order to allow them to be safe in our
spaces, to live up to their potential and what they'd like to achieve and
contribute.
At the end of the day, the tiniest minority is the
individual, and
requiring that we treat each individual with respect and courtesy is
enough, without having to refer to specific (sometimes politically
charged) categories.
Could you clarify "sometimes politically charged"?
kind regards,
Jonas
[1]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/
[2]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq/