… Thanks, Tim, but I think you underestimate me.

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

You’re free to disagree but I find this to be uncharitable and combative itself.

…you clearly have strong feelings on this matter which I don’t intend or expect to dissuade you of… failing to acknowledge how and why they are using language that way sets up a situation where people talk past each other instead of productively.

I might well take your side on this if I hadn’t spent, by my count, 17 years rehashing this argument all across the Internet, being offered all the same arguments that you offer here, without any proper recognition of why I (and many others) find them completely unconvincing.

(Seriously, every single time, the first person to challenge me approaches me as if it were my “first rodeo”. I genuinely never understood that.)

But there’s still the glaring double standard whereby language is supposedly descriptive and not prescriptive (therefore non-prestige accents and dialects are legitimate, grammatical errors ought not be criticized, opposition to singular-they is baseless etc. etc.), but we are nevertheless either expected to adopt these new definitions wholesale, or allow glaring motte-and-bailey conflations (i.e. treating someone who opposes affirmative action the same way as someone who uses racist slurs, because they’re supposedly both “perpetuating racism”).

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

One is reserving the use of “sexism” to mean what otherwise might be described as “systemic sexism”

The problem with this argument is that the systems don’t actually do anything like what they claim. (It’s clearer if we use the word institutional rather than systemic. The institutions may not have rules that discriminate against the people they believe are discriminated against. But they may have rules that discriminate against others.)

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

Another commonly used formulation to capture roughly the same meaning is that that sexism is discrimination plus power, where power is understood to mean systemic or societal power.

The problem with this argument is that societal power doesn’t lie where they believe it lies. (Look at what happens to basically any attempt to advocate for any rights of men publicly. Or look at, well, any of this but especially sections 5 through 8.)

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

The latter is understood to be significantly more impactful than the former

No, I disagree, fundamentally and as a core moral principle.

Discrimination (in the lay-political sense, not the “fancy synonym for choosing” sense) is bad because it excludes someone who should not be excluded. It’s bad deontologically (because I say it is - that’s what “deontologically” means); it’s bad consequentially (the excluded person is a priori as likely as anyone else to have offered something of value); it’s bad virtue-ethically (I don’t want to be discriminated against, so I shouldn’t do it to others).

Nothing else enters into it.

The CoC WG can “understand” whatever they like - but in the current case they are not using words that accurately communicate their understanding to people who don’t already accept this minority view; and furthermore they reasonably ought to understand that disparity; and furthermore they reasonably ought to accept, by their own stated principles, that others could disagree. (You know, the “being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences” bit.)

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

and that understanding forms the basis for things like Python’s code of conduct, or at least for how the working group interprets it.

It forms the basis for the WG’s interpretation, and it appears to form the basis for what several of the original sources intended. But it does not match what the words actually mean according to their most common understanding. And it does not match what I consider morally acceptable.

Stephen Morton (@tungol), in post 4:

In analyzing any subject, it’s common to create technical meanings which sometimes repurpose words with more general meanings in broader usage.

In analysis, in a context where analysis is expected, sure.

It is intellectually dishonest to conflate those meanings with the lay meanings, which is a necessary consequence of trying to use them with their technical meanings in a context where the lay meaning is naturally understood.

And it is especially intellectually dishonest to craft the terms so that such conflation would have greater effect. I cannot, of course, prove that anyone had such intent, and it would betray my own principles to accuse that directly. But when one hears that:

  • the acceptable framework for discussing gender issues is feminism, while that the name for the intangible hegemonic force behind gender inequality is patriarchy;

  • one can mansplain (and most of the object examples of this that I have been shown by feminists who seemed to believe sincerely that they were pointing out a real problem, appeared to me as nothing like the supposed definition), manspread (by sitting comfortably), manslam (yes, really), etc.;1

  • when women cause themselves harm by failing to live up to gender performance standards that they set for themselves2, this is “internalized misogyny” (i.e., women are victims), but when men do it, this is “toxic masculinity” (i.e. men harm themselves and each other)3;

  • bad things that happen to men “don’t real” (yes, that exact, literal phrasing was memetic in some circles I had to deal with), “aren’t a thing” etc., or else other men should be blamed for them;

… it does not exactly engender (pun intended) confidence in claims like “no, seriously, we don’t hate men”, “feminism is for everyone”, etc. It’s seriously condescending to be given the stock phrase, “patriarchy hurts men too”. It sounds like “why are you hitting yourself?”.

  1. By the way, that “mansplaining” thing IMX typically boils down to a woman getting upset that a man wouldn’t stop talking about something he considered highly interesting, not stopping to consider whether the woman might know those things. But that’s, ahem, two classic signs of autism right there. So actually it’s egregiously intolerant of neurodiversity. Oh, and the “he’s doing it because she’s a woman” part is always assumed, and no evidence is ever offered, nor deemed necessary. ↩

  2. No, society really does not require people to live up to gender roles. As part of teaching myself social skills, I’ve learned that neurotypical people really actually don’t care about nearly as much as they imagine each other to care about. So the blame should go where it belongs, on the individual. ↩

  3. By the way, isn’t it strange to deny the agency of women like this? ↩