Women and TLUG - a personal rant

[Bill Duncan]

I think we're all in agreement that William's comments were totally
out of place.  I haven't met him, but I suspect that he meant no harm
and it was his misunderstanding of what is (and isn't) acceptable
behaviour.  I'm hoping that he'll come forward and apologize and that
we can all get beyond this.

The topic of free speech and censorship seems out of place here as it
is a private list and the elected executive have the power to do as the 
members want.

The issue might be a more practical one however; who would moderate such
a list?  How would that impact the timeliness of replies (and that some
members might be waiting for a timely reply to issues they have)?  So,
would some poor sole be required to moderate the list daily?  Several
times a day maybe?

I'm thinking that rather than putting the onus for filtering on one
person, that we're all grown up enough here to spread the pain and
do the filtering ourselves.  If we object to something that was said,
either skip it or say something and then skip it.  But let's move on..

While I find William's comments abhorent, distasteful and agree that
we all should be disgusted by them, I'm amazed at how much bandwidth
this has generated.


If he has misunderstood or misjudged what is appropriate conversation
then educate and expect an apology.  If that doesn't work, then send
him a note saying "thank you very much but you're not welcome here
anymore" and move on.  I don't think anyone actually wants the job
of moderating the list and the list would become less relevant if
we only received them in batches every so often.


On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 02:51:46PM -0500, Matt Seburn wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Randy Jonasz <rjonasz-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> > If someone incited hatred to a group or an individual by her actions then
> > we must act to prevent that from occurring because the behaviour is
> > injuring someone else's ability to pursue her life's goals.  In my opinion
> > William's comment does not come close to that.
> >
> 
> I disagree.  His comment basically amounts to "women are whores".  If
> that's not an example of inciting hatred, I'm not sure what is.
> 
> I worked on an assembly line in  a factory in Ontario while in university.
> >  The sensibilities there were completely different.  Women and men engaged
> > in sexual innuendo usually deriving from stereotypes zestfully.  There was
> > no consideration of it being harassment. Everyone smiled or rolled their
> > eyes and played along.
> >
> 
> You're delusional.  You're describing a textbook example of workplace
> sexual harassment.  Just because *you* didn't experience it as such doesn't
> mean the same was true of others.  I suspect some of those who "rolled
> their eyes and played along" felt like they had no choice if they wanted to
> keep their jobs.  This kind of thing is against the law for a reason.
> 
> The consequences of free speech  does involve tolerating distasteful speech
> > in the sense of allowing the perpetrator freedom to offend. The
> > consequences of giving offence can be manifold, not to mention being
> > ostracized from the group.  But to silence him or her in the name of social
> > justice is wrong in my opinion as it limits all our speech and gives
> > precedence for further reductions in the space we have for self expression.
> >  The nanny state of modern liberalism must be curtailed.
> >
> 
> As others have pointed out, "free speech", "censorship" and "the nanny
> state" are all irrelevant here.  William is not in danger of being arrested
> so his right to free speech is not being challenged.  Being a member of the
> TLUG mailing list is not a right.
> 
> It's telling that you think that his ability to denigrate an entire class
> of people is more important than the ability of that class of people to use
> this space.

-- 
Bill Duncan,
bduncan-m0FWaBiyNdxg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org
+1 416 697-9315
--
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