Women and TLUG - a personal rant

[William Witteman]

On 15 January 2014 22:12, Randy Jonasz <rjonasz-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I must admit William's comment took me by surprise and shocked me.  But in a
> free society where free speech is lauded and exported beyond our borders I
> must disagree with the condemnations.  Are we to censor ourselves so only
> anodine speech is acceptable?  Free speech involves the freedom to be
> offended.  If William wishes to represent himself as someone who objectifies
> women as sexual objects so be it.  Although he has my condolences.  Poor
> taste and a lack of judgement is no excuse for censorship.

I think you have confused two things here - freedom of speech, and
freedom from consequences.  I don't think that anyone is attacking
William's right to write what he wrote, what they are saying is that
it is against the social norms and codes of civility to write such
things, and they would prefer that he exercise his right to speak
freely in another forum.

In a mailing list, we can easily filter or ignore someone whose speech
offends us.  In a meeting it is disruptive.  I would advocate much
more tolerance on the list than I would at a meeting, but if we don't
want this list which many of us have participated in for years to
resemble the worst Youtube comment thread, then we must advise what
types and characteristics of language and tone are acceptable.

We would not censor him, we would ask him to stop, to reflect, to apologize.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists