Honestly, is this list really what this is all about? I'm bored already...
Enough? On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:42 PM, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au>wrote: > Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> writes: > > > On Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:54:09 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > > > It objectifies women. > > > > So you claim. > > I'm sure you have a hundred ready rationalisations for why a joke that > has “girlfriend” as a fungible object, together with “car” and “house” > 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>. > > > 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 hundred times every day I remind myself that […] I must | > `\ exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have | > _o__) received and am still receiving” —Albert Einstein | > Ben Finney > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list >
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