Debian's diversity statement

Posted Apr 10, 2012 8:53 UTC (Tue) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
In reply to: Debian's diversity statement by roskegg
Parent article: Debian's diversity statement

"and hold feminism as a core value."

Though if you don't hold feminism as a pretty core value, then those beliefs surely conflict with any sort of diversity and inclusiveness policy, yes? Which surely you're for, right?

Lets not be to quick to exclude non-feminists.

Posted Apr 10, 2012 12:23 UTC (Tue) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link] (2 responses)

The stats I see show that between 30-60% of women consider themselves feminists (in the US, I imagine). This means that over 40% percent of women don't consider themselves feminists. There are many reasons why someone might not choose to identify as feminist. I don't know much about roskegg and won't criticize Debian's decision to exclude roskegg, but on the other hand it would be unfortunate if Debian somehow managed to exclude everyone who chose not to identify as feminist.

Lets not be to quick to exclude non-feminists.

Posted Apr 10, 2012 15:07 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (1 responses)

You're going to run into definitional problems in trying to tie this up I imagine. "Feminist" is a label shared by disparate movements, some of whose core beliefs are contradictory (notably the AP and SP feminists have very different ideas about the role of sex and erotica in our society). As a result you will see a big difference between the rate at which people surveyed self-identify as "feminist" compared to the alignment of their beliefs with various beliefs characterised as "feminist". You get the same problem to a different degree if you ask whether survey participants are atheists, whether they're gay or straight, or indeed even if they are human.

I don't see any indication from this statement, at least, that Debian has a problem with people who choose not to identify as feminist or even those who, (more strongly) choose explicitly to identify as not being feminist.

On the other hand, for a very inclusive definition of feminism as just the belief that men and women deserve equal rights it's easy to imagine potential conflicts for someone who rejects that claim trying to work within Debian. Such a person might feel, for example, that women shouldn't be permitted to vote, or that their votes should count for less when Debian selects a new leader. It's pretty clear that Debian isn't about to change policy on that, and if they can't live with it then probably Debian isn't for them.

Debian can be relatively apolitical.

Posted Apr 16, 2012 7:32 UTC (Mon) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link]

I agree that we can't tie this up quickly. The thing about diversity is that by its very nature you have to include people from many different walks of life, and to actively include them, you need to understand their point of view. You can't do that quickly.

I also agree that the Debian diversity statement did not exclude non-feminist persons. In my experience, when someone says that they are not a feminist they are no more likely to believe that men are fundamentally better than women (or visa versa), than some who says they are not a Republican means they believe in the divine right of kings. In each case, I have primarily seen the word used to indicate belonging, at least in a broad sense, to some political faction. As such, when used in the negative, it means not being included.

Again, in my experience, the feminist movement is not as inclusive as it may at first appear. While all my acquaintances would have agreed with the statement that men are women are equal, they would be frequently be excluded by various rules about who "true" feminists are. While at a micro level this exclusion could be explained by prejudices in feminists and/or non-feminists, in general political movements need enemies to move against.

Debian is not primarily a political movement so could be more inclusive than Feminism. GW Bush was pretty much considered Feminist public enemy number one for a while, but I can't imagine him opposing Debian giving women the vote. Nor for that matter could I imagine him sitting on Debian IRC harassing women with sexual innuendo. It seems to me that Ms Clinton, Presidents Bush and Obama couldn't all meaningfully join the same political faction, but they should all be able to "contribute constructively" to Debian if they so wished. In general, I imagine personality is more important than politics.