Miles Fidelman <[email protected]> writes: > At the risk of repeating myself: I'm a firm believer in applying > Postel's law to email discussions - "be conservative in what you do, > be liberal in what you accept from others." Personally, I try to > observe both parts of it, but I see more and more people doing just > the opposite, and, if anything, leaning toward taking so much offense, > at so much, as to be offensive for that.
The effect of this maxim is that if you're someone who isn't on the receiving end of a lot of bad language or behaviour (because, for example, you are a white male), then it's easy to say "Oh, I don't mind what people say about me, so no-one else should mind either". You're speaking from a position of relatively high social position. When you say that to someone who is often on the receiving end of abuse (because they're queer, or black, or trans, or a woman), you're saying in effect "if you want to stick around here, you'll have to accept the racist/sexist/homophobic things people say to you - otherwise you're not being liberal in what you accept". ...which is why, of course, the Debian project has said that we won't accept racist/sexist/homophobic/etc language in our spaces, because we want a broad range of people to feel welcome in our community. I don't get to decide what is offensive to women[0], I get to listen to women and believe them. And I should then help ensure that language that is offensive to women isn't used in Debian - it's not fair on women to have to justify Every. Single. Time. why particular language is offensive or offputting to women. Regards, Matthew [0] WLOG to other minorities -- "At least you know where you are with Microsoft." "True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle." http://www.debian.org
