You said "Folks, if you want to help gender inclusion, then dissecting a joke and making up stuff to feel offended about is not the way forward". The obvious reading of that is that anyone offended by the virginity thing is making it up. If that's not the case then it'd be helpful to clarify what you did mean, because right now it sounds like you're claiming that it's fine for women to make these arguments but not for men. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, but still.
In any case, this isn't a situation that will magically get rectified by the existence of a summit. If there's a problem here then it doesn't get solved unless men (as well as women) are willing to do something about it. That includes calling people out on perceived poor or unhelpful behaviour, and it includes accepting that people might be offended for themselves rather than being offended on other people's behalf. RMS's behaviour offended me not because I think women are unable to stand up for themselves but because he managed to undo some quantity of the work many people have been doing to try to make the Linux community a welcoming and friendly place that doesn't marginalise anyone on the basis of biological differences they have no control over. I'm offended because he made us look bad. I'm offended because it was entirely unnecessary and could have been avoided with a straightforward apology, and the refusal to do so encourages the perception that our community leaders are all unwilling to accept that they may have made mistakes but we love them anyway.
By saying that people are merely being offended on behalf of women you imply that there's no rother reason for a man to have been offended by the case in question. You're writing off their concerns as an irrelevance. It'd be very easy for you to just put this down as another unfair accusation on my part, but at some level I'd hope that you'll put some time into considering why people feel this way about what you're writing instead of deflecting it without any obvious thought.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering
Posted Aug 25, 2009 23:55 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
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I was replying to someone who blatantly made stuff up. I thought I made the target of my "making stuff up" comment pretty clear, but you're putting it in a different context (it does apply to a wider context, but not as wide as where you put it).
Then you criticised me for "telling [women] that they're wrong to be offended", which I didn't say at all. Now, when I say the summit could be helpful, you complain that the issue won't "magically get rectified by the existence of a summit" - I never said it would!
Do you think misrepresenting people and making careless accusations is a way to make a gender inclusive forum? I don't think a vague joke by rms is the only problem here. Not by a long shot.
OK, I'll bite. Sides of this issue you might not be considering
Posted Aug 26, 2009 0:00 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
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It's pretty straightforward. You're accusing someone of making stuff up. Do you believe that other people who say exactly the same thing are making stuff up? Do you believe that the women who said they were offended by RMS's statement were justified in being offended?