Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 6:37 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (subscriber, #45600)
In reply to: Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed? by Wol
Parent article: OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

"So, if [...] a FLOSS developer, treat[s] all the other developers [in my normal way], the male 80% will be quite happy with that, and the female 20% will be offended."

Well, unless you're Ulrich Drepper, who seems to annoy a large swathe of male developers too. He obviously thinks that being downright rude is the normal way to treat everyone else.

In other words, assuming that anyone will 'be quite happy with that' is really actually perpetuating the problem through ignorance. I hate blatant sexist rudeness, but there are still all sorts of social reasons why I can't give someone who offends me the arse-kicking they so richly deserve. My gender is irrelevant to the fact that I take offense.

People also keep on apologising for Ulrich, too, thus perpetuating the delusion in his mind that his behaviour is appropriate. Look at all the excuses people invent for tolerating his behaviour and you'll see the same process all over again.

As for the whole 'minorities always take offence' question, I'd like some hard facts there to back that assertion up. The "Well it's going to offend someone anyway so I might as well do it" is a tired argument.

Have fun,

Paul

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Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 28, 2009 12:06 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

As I heard it put once, "being brilliant does not give you a license to be nasty". (In fact, being brilliant should really lead to your being *more* humble than otherwise, to avoid scaring everyone else away.)

Active discrimination, or feeling oppressed?

Posted Jul 29, 2009 1:55 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

To extend the Aspie references a bit: people who have real clinically diagnosable Aspergers Sydrome and work on projects like ours *are not being nasty* in behaving in the ways that people are pointing to.

"Nasty" requires what criminal lawyers refer to as "scienter", the knowledge that you're committing a crime.

Aspergers is almost defined as *not having the circuits to detect that*.

So again, we're talking past one another here.

They're not *exercising* "a license to be nasty". They're just being them, and they don't have time for ... no, that's not the right way to put it, either, as it again implies choice. See how hard this stuff is to talk about?