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Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 12:49:55 +0000
Subject: Re: Spamming PyPI with stupid packages
From: Rami Chowdhury <rami.chowdhury@gmail.com>
To: Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au>
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On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 02:42, Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> wrote=
:
> I'm sure you have a hundred ready rationalisations for why a joke that
> has =E2=80=9Cgirlfriend=E2=80=9D as a fungible object, together with =E2=
=80=9Ccar=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Chouse=E2=80=9D
> as things to mechanically import into one's life, is somehow not
> objectifying women.
>
> But, while those rationalisations may satisfy you, I'm not interested in
> hearing them. If you don't see that the joke objectifies women, that
> tells me quite a lot about how blinkered you are to the problem.
>
> For what it's worth, I'm very familiar with such rationalisations,
> having employed them many times myself. Fortunately there are women who
> will speak up against it and encourage men to do the same
> <URL:http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x168.html>.
>
> Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> writes:
>> Since you can't or won't persuade me (and anyone else reading) that
>> this sort of joke is harmful, does that mean that you will stop
>> claiming that it is harmful?
>
> I have no idea what it would take to persuade you in particular. I do
> know that the combined privileges of being white, male, not-poor, and
> English-fluent (and many more privileges, I'm sure) grant both of us the
> luxury of barely even perceiving the harm done by a pervasive atmosphere
> of even low-level prejudice against any given group of people.
>
> Women (to return to the people in question), on the other hand, do not
> have that luxury. In this community they have no option but to be aware
> of the privileges we males have here.
>
> We have very effective cognitive blinders, merely because we have never
> needed to know what it's like being a woman in this prevalently-male
> field. The onus is on us to try hard to see, despite those blinders and
> easy rationalisations, that there is a lot we allow from our fellows
> which is perpetuating a hostile environment.
>
> I'm not making a fuss about one sexist joke, which has already been
> retracted by its author. I'm making a fuss about allowing and, worse,
> defending such jokes as a tacitly-accepted norm of our community. And I
> hope those of us who prefer to think of ourselves as not-sexist will act
> to clean up our house more.

A hearty +1 to this!

--=20
Rami Chowdhury
"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade - it makes the hand bleed
that uses it." -- Rabindranath Tagore
+44-7581-430-517 / +1-408-597-7068 / +88-0189-245544