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Add explicit definitions from Geek Feminsim #17

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Jul 29, 2015
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Add explicit definitions from Geek Feminsim #17

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b00eff5
We can have an exhaustive list
fat16 Jul 20, 2015
3a1c88c
added consequences section
fat16 Jul 20, 2015
7704a1d
remove duplicate statement
fat16 Jul 20, 2015
988de42
loosen anti abuse team
fat16 Jul 20, 2015
c95e6bf
add [COMMUNITY] place holder
fat16 Jul 23, 2015
473be93
:fire: remove loose terminology
fat16 Jul 23, 2015
8e255d3
Merge branch 'gh-pages' into add-back-explicit-definitions
fat16 Jul 23, 2015
a09e536
Word tweaks
fat16 Jul 24, 2015
a1038b0
:art:
fat16 Jul 24, 2015
fdcb29f
This is said upfront
fat16 Jul 24, 2015
7455009
update deadnaming section
fat16 Jul 28, 2015
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41 changes: 29 additions & 12 deletions index.md
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Expand Up @@ -11,18 +11,37 @@ Our open source community strives to:
* **Be welcoming**: We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, colour, immigration status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, family status, political belief, religion, and mental and physical ability.
* **Be considerate**: Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and colleagues, and you should take those consequences into account when making decisions. Remember that we're a world-wide community, so you might not be communicating in someone else's primary language.
* **Be respectful**: Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
* **Be careful in the words that you choose**: we are a community of professionals, and we conduct ourselves professionally. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable. This includes, but is not limited to:
* Violent threats or language directed against another person.
* Discriminatory jokes and language.
* Posting sexually explicit or violent material.
* Posting (or threatening to post) other people's personally identifying information ("doxing").
* Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms.
* Unwelcome sexual attention.
* Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.
* Repeated harassment of others. In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop.
* **Be careful in the words that you choose**: we are a community of professionals, and we conduct ourselves professionally. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable.
* **When we disagree, try to understand why**: Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. Remember that we’re different. The strength of our community comes from its diversity, people from a wide range of backgrounds. Different people have different perspectives on issues. Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. Don’t forget that it is human to err and blaming each other doesn’t get us anywhere. Instead, focus on helping to resolve issues and learning from mistakes.

This code is not exhaustive or complete. It serves to distill our common understanding of a collaborative, shared environment, and goals. We expect it to be followed in spirit as much as in the letter.
## Definitions

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
- Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names
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Rephrase or expand in a clearer language. What does this "dead or rejected names" even mean?

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As previously commented, this still should be elaborated.

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@stephbwills you are a word smith - could you please help me elaborate on this?

How about

Deliberate misgendering. This includes persistently using an incorrect pronoun to describe a person.

I'm worried about use of the word 'incorrect' here. I want it to be clear that the person being addressed get's to decide what is correct or not. Thoughts?

or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names. When addressing someone, you must use the name that they feel comfortable being addressed as.

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Or maybe "request to be addressed as", since it's impossible to read the minds of someone as to their comfort.

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Related to #29

And I do agree with @searls - people are generally no mind readers, hence, this should include some form of "on request".

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@ammeep I feel like the use of "deliberate" covers the cases in which people just get it wrong. I've seen "incorrect" or "wrong" pronoun before, but I made a suggestion below. I also think "on request" puts the onus entirely on the person who was misgendered to make the correction. What about:

Deliberate misgendering. This includes deadnaming or persistently using a pronoun that does not correctly reflect a person's gender identity. You must address people by the name they give you when not addressing them by their username or handle.

Also added the bit about handle/username to make it a bit more applicable to the context. Would be good to get some additional community feedback on these definitions, too.

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Sounds a lot better and clear. However, the term "‘dead’ or rejected names" is still not explained - the terminology used should be reasonably clear. After spending quite some time searching for definition to this term, I am yet to discover one, hence, this is not clear at all.

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More information on deadnaming is available by google search.

I sort of feel that if you see something you're unfamiliar with in a CoC, you should check it out, but that's just me. I updated my comment above with "deadnaming," which appears better indexed for search, even if it provides fewer context clues. That's about as far as I'm willing to go, though, without additional input.

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Problem with "checking it out" is ambiguity - if there is something to be stated, it must be stated clearly enough to provide reasonable understanding - in best case scenario, without spending hours googling for badly indexed terminology. :) Plus, I might end up finding definition which is not intended in the given reference.

Maybe we could include some sort of glossary with broader explanations for these terms? What do you think?

- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “*hug*” or “*backrub*”) without consent or after a request to stop
- Threats of violence, both physical and psychological
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I don't think this is to be deleted completely. The last sentence provides valuable guidance for the interpretation of the CoC.

- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
- Deliberate intimidation
- Stalking or following
- Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
- Sustained disruption of discussion
- Unwelcome sexual attention, including gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
- Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect others from intentional abuse
- Publication of non-harassing private communication

Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

- ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
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I am sorry, but I still have to object against including this. I believe racism is racism, sexism is sexism and phobias are phobias, and it does not matter who are they directed towards.

As an example, if someone would state that I should not participate in certain discussion about whatever topic because I am a male or white, I consider that sexist and racist but with this I would be dismissed simply because I happened to be born with particular skin color and type of genitalia, hence it leads me to conclude including this is in a CoC is biased towards rights of certain groups, and contradicts previous statement in CoC as quoted:

Although we will fail at times, we seek to treat everyone both as fairly and equally as possible.

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This is a critical part of this PR and I will not be removing it.

I will do my best to put into words why this is important, and beyond that I do urge you to do some research, free of an innate feeling of being attacked. Beyond that I do not wish debate this topic further.

As an example, if someone would state that I should not participate in certain discussion about whatever topic because I am a male or white

Everyone is invited to participate in the conversation, but when you come from a position of privilege (which as white people, both you and I do) we have a responsibility to realise the societal benefits we have been afforded. We have a responsibility to realise that minorities are not afforded these same benefits.

As members of a privileged demographic - it is very easy for us to not see inequality. To turn a blind eye. It is very easy to think the playing field is level. 'It doesn't happen to me, so it can't be real'. This is erasure.

When we claim that the playing field is equal, or level for all, we are erasing the pain and struggles of those who are not afforded the same societal benefits as us.

When we claim any reverse-sims, what we are really doing is derailing the conversation. Making it about the privileged again. This is erasure.

Life is hard, but some have it harder than others.

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Your last sentence is true, as is most of what you said. In fact so true, that it essentially proves my point - but having a hard life does not really justify being racist or sexist. Having said that, I have conducted some research, not limited to academic research or other peoples opinions, but also personal experiences from myself and people around me from wide variety of cultural backgrounds and communities all around the world. What you are essentially saying, instead of not having racism or sexism as such, let's just allow racism and sexist for a minority - because, what could possibly go wrong with privileging one part of society against another. Right?

This "reverse-ism" thing is based primarily on assumption that in all the communities across the globe it is, lets say, western white man who has the privilege and in general, a white man tends to live happy, full life while everyone else's is just struggle for survival. However, I believe large parts of Asia, Middle east, Africa and Latino-America will probably disagree with you - especially in some culturally established matriarchies. In some places privileged are those who have born in some particular place instead of another, in some places privilege is derived from your profession or many different other factors. Hence, this kind of exclusionism introduces not only ambiguity, but also certain level of discrimination.

Hence again, I believe this very statement excludes a large part of the community essentially saying "you can only complain if you are not a part of stereotypical minority". Do we want a statement like that in a code that should facilitate openness and fair treatment for everyone?

In addition, this is a review. Please, refrain yourself from making it personal in this or any other way, and instead of appealing the reviewer, argue against the argument. Everybody you meet here does not come from utopian patriarchal society ruled by a stereotypical white male having every white male essentially spending life drinking mojitos and getting a tan.

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Just wanted to quickly add that racism and sexism don't define discrimination against one particular race or gender. Privilege vs. non-privilege is really at the heart of the -isms we're discussing, and this is explicitly stated in the preceding paragraph that starts with "our open source community..." I've interpreted this paragraph as a call to administrators who adopt the CoC to protect people who experience institutionalized oppression in their communities.

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This "reverse-ism" thing is based primarily on assumption that in all the communities across the globe it is, lets say, western white man who has the privilege and in general, a white man tends to live happy, full life while everyone else's is just struggle for survival.

Reverse racism and reverse sexism don't exist because racism and sexism are institutional forms of oppression. Context is everything, and the open source community, which is what this Code of Conduct is for (please don't derail), is overwhelmingly white and male. Case in point: check out the list of contributors to this project.

However, I believe large parts of Asia, Middle east, Africa and Latino-America will probably disagree with you - especially in some culturally established matriarchies.

This is a cool story. Thank you. Again, context is everything, so discrimination against white men in these communities, if it happened, wouldn't be reverse racism or reverse sexism. It would be racism and sexism, because things like political boundaries and cultural power structures are institutions, and racism and sexism are institutional forms of oppression. However, appealing to examples of matriarchies is derailing this conversation. The open source community is overwhelmingly white and male, so cases of discrimination against women or persons of color (and all the other usual axes of oppression) are particularly prevalent.

In addition, this is a review. Please, refrain yourself from making it personal in this or any other way,

Derailing (using emotion)!

and instead of appealing the reviewer, argue against the argument. Everybody you meet here does not come from utopian patriarchal society ruled by a stereotypical white male having every white male essentially spending life drinking mojitos and getting a tan.

You're right, everyone doesn't come from the same place, but this isn't a code of conduct for where people come from, it's a code of conduct for this space, which is open source software, which is overwhelmingly white and male (and other things too). Context is everything!

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Okay, but if that is indeed the case, it should be stated clearly and unambiguously.

I do really like the sentence "[We] call to administrators who adopt the CoC to protect people who experience institutionalized oppression in their communities." - it is clear, with obvious positive intent and not exclusionist. I would very welcome including this statement in some form instead of statement that explicitly suggests no action will be taken in this particular regard on complaints from one group exclusively just because they happen to belong to one.

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@modality thank you for your opinion. I would like to refer you to visit communities like Alibaba OS, Taocode, then Rails Girls and similar to gain better insight to the status of open source community in the world, not only English speaking part of it.

Derailing (using emotion)!

I am simply stating ad hominem and ergo decedo. My statement involves no emotion whatsoever. As to my wording - I am not a native English speaker, if my statement was formulated in a way that you perceived it as anything different than pointing out the issue with argumentation, that was by no means intended.

- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.
- Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
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Concepts are to be explained and debated, that is why they are concepts, not facts. I don't believe this has anything to do with CoC.

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@Addvilz This is only saying that the refusal to debate is not a violation of the code of conduct. I feel like that is reasonable to include.

- Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions


### Diversity Statement

Expand All @@ -42,8 +61,6 @@ include them as well. Your account of what occurred, and if you believe the inci

After filing a report, a representative will contact you personally. If the person who is harassing you is part of the response team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. A representative will then review the incident, follow up with any additional questions, and make a decision as to how to respond. We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse.

Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately. If an individual engages in unacceptable behavior, the representative may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a permanent ban from our community without warning.

### Attribution & Acknowledgements

We all stand on the shoulders of giants across many open source communities. We'd like to thank the communities and projects that established code of conducts and diversity statements as our inspiration:
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