In the thread with topic: "Re: apt-get telefon (N900)" the following
statements was recently posted:
>> Yes, a life without Emacs and Perl is like a life without a girlfriend
>> (the other-one than Eliza).
> ...
> I get that this was a joke. IMHO it is a bad one, due to the heteronormative and
> male hacker norm parts of it.
I felt I had to respond, but created a new topic not to polute the
other - because this really has no relevance to the other topic and
perhaps there will be many more comments regarding the current topic.
How hard is it to replace girlfriend with boyfriend in the first
statement (works for both heterosexual females and homosexual males,
the original statement works fine for the inverse group), without
loosing the analogy of a life without purpose. For those who think
life without a parter is just as good (or even better), the analogy
falls short - but that does not mean it must be a heteronormative
statement (yes, I have looked it up just to be sure of its
implications).
> Please take a moment and think about how we become
> a more welcoming and friendly group, if we crave freedom and equality in
> software we need to crave freedom and equality in the rest of our group as well
> (even socially).
How is this deduced from the initial statement which to me is mostly
referring to the cult of Emacs and Perl than anything else. I like vim
better than emacs, someone else might prefer python over perl. You
don't see us complaining. Diversity, and exchanging experience from
different situations (in life, at work, using or writing software,
...), is what makes it fun and keeps us evolving.
How bad would it be if the initial statement had to be something like
this to make everyone happy:
"Yes, a life without <enter your favourite IDE/editor here> and <enter
your favourite script language or invaluable software tool here> is
like a life without a <enter your preferred gender of mate here, or
anything else you find brings purpose to the existence of life>."
I think we can give each other more credit than that, and assume
people will do the necessary substitutions without having to state it
explicitly (at least I did).
I get what Per was aiming at, we need to work on our people skills not
to exclude any part of the society because you never know where true
potential and ingenious can be found. But I fail to see how this was a
relevant comment in the original thread (as little as this reply would
have been). And sure, one could have substituted girlfriend with mate
in the first place and the entire post would have fallen short. I'm
pretty sure that had the original post been written by a female she
would have used the term boyfriend instead (or love, as my girlfriend
suggested) - or are you (i.e. Per) suggesting that she would not have
written it at all?
Just as one could easily read the original statement without finding
anything unusual about it, apparently it could be read in a way that
turned it into a heteronormative one. My only plea is for those who
advocate increased tolerance in this mailing list to be just a tiny
bit more open minded and try to consider if this actually _was_
politically incorrect or if it was just an "innocent remark" before
replying.
// Adde
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Received on 2010-08-29