I've been sitting on this email for the best part of a week. It hasn't
been an easy decision to decide to send it, because I expect it will
ruffle some feathers, including someone who, last time I ruffled his
feathers, banned me from one of the other mailing lists.
But I am part of this community, and if I'm too scared to state my
opinions for fear of retaliation, then I'm not really part of the
community, the supposed community values of being open and welcoming is
a sham, and it's best if I find out now.
When I posted my reply to Rhodi, I wasn't intending to shine the
spotlight on his comment to Soni more than the simple statement I made.
But since Ethan disagreed with me, I should elaborate.
On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 05:09:39PM -0800, Ethan Furman wrote:
> On 02/18/2020 04:26 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 08:44:07PM +0000, Rhodri James wrote:
>
> >>Language, sunshine.
> >
> >What about it?
> >
> >Just for the record, I had no issues with Soni's language, but I do
> >object to attempts to shame him for it.
>
> Since when is simply drawing one's attention to something shaming?
Of course drawing attention to something can often be shaming and a
disguised attack:
"You're fat. He's filthy. She's promiscuous. Your language is
unacceptable and bad (and by implication, so are you)."
Having attention drawn to your social transgression is shaming. That's
why we do it: to stop people from transgressing again.
"Language" is short for "Watch your language", a command, not an
observation or even a suggestion. But I'm pretty sure that you, Ethan,
already knew that. Defending Rhodi on the basis that he's merely stating
a fact is disingenious.
In Commonwealth English, calling someone you don't know "sunshine" is a
mock-friendly but actually hostile act, rather like the way "pal" or
"buddy" can be used in American English. Even if you did not know this,
you surely knew that in the context of this email thread, calling
someone "sunshine" is condescending, like calling them "pumpkin" or
"sweety-pie".
What Rhodi did was not "simply drawing one's attention", it was a
rebuke. Ethan, I find it difficult to believe that you did not know
that, and that your question was made in good faith.
> >This isn't the Disney Chanel,
> >it's been over 100 years since Victoria was Queen of England, and we're
> >all adults here.
>
> Really? I didn't realize those under the legal age of majority were not
> allowed on this list.
Ethan, you've been involved with the Python community long enough to
know the meaning of "we're all adults here", and it doesn't mean
anything about legal age of majority.
The point is, this is not a child-friendly space, this is an space for
adults. We shouldn't be expected to dumb-down our conversation to that
suitable for six year olds.
If there are any underage people on this list, I expect them to (1)
behave like adults, and (2) not freak out when the rest of us behave
like adults. And that includes using "grown up words" (dear gods, why
are we even having this conversation?) that I am pretty sure most of us,
if not all of us, use off-list, hear our peers use, hear at the movies,
on television, and on radio.
Besides, I know what kids are like. I was one once, as we all were. The
idea that an unsupervised child on the Internet doesn't already know
this "bad word" by the time they're eight is at best laughably naive, if
not patronising and demeaning.
When the CoC was first debated, the PSF promised that the CoC would not
be used to ban "rude words". Have they reneged on that promise? If not,
Soni's language shouldn't even be an issue and Rhodi's rebuke was
unnecessary. If they have, then we have a much more serious problem with
this community.
> At any rate, we should be able to control what we say and how we say it,
> adult or not.
Indeed we should. And if that means we want to call a shitty piece of
software a shitty piece of software, especially when it's our own
software, we shouldn't need fear that somebody will tell us off for it.
--
Steven
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