On Mon, 29 May 2023 19:39:11 +0000, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
Hello,
The problem is that when it comes to marginalized groups (LGBTQ+ groups, racial groups, and so on) who have no control over the characteristics that cause them to be marginalized, they are made to feel unwelcome in the group.
Marginalized groups? Every major corporation, government agencies, banks, NGOs - everyone flies the rainbow flags these days. There's hiring quotas for any group with "diverse" attributes. NASDAQ requires at least one director with "diverse" credentials on a company's board for them to list the company. That is a very funny kind of marginalized.
And yet you only have to look at recent US laws enacted that prevent gender-affirming care and prohibit even showing movies that depict gay characters in public schools to see the marginalization that people in that community deal with on a daily basis. Or the fact that in Texas, the state can separate a trans child from their parents on a charge of *child abuse* because they support their child's discovery of their actual gender identity. The fact that rainbow flags are flown is to say to people who are in that community that it's OK to be who they are.
My experiences in life shaped me. Without going into detail, I didn't exactly have positive experiences with LGBT people - on multiple occasions. I did not chose to be a heterosexual white male either. Case in point, the more extreme members of the woke movement tell me to be attracted to trans women, even though I am not. Why the double standard in who you must change their sexual preferences and who can carry on as they wish?
Well, I'm sorry to hear that you've had bad experiences with LGBT people. I can't speak to those experiences, but in general, people in that community have had to deal with being repressed for their entire lives (due to religious upbringing or other factors) where their very lives were at risk. So the vast majority in that community know what it is to be told they can't be who they are, and generally do not behave in the way you experienced.
That is what led me to quote Karl Popper in the Factory thread. The idea that intolerance should be tolerated destroys the idea of tolerating anything.
There is quite the continuum between "enthusiastically embrace", "tolerate" and "be intolerant" about something.
"It's OK for you to exist" is not an "enthusiastic embrace" in my mind. But your interpretation is your interpretation, and I'm not going to try to change it.
Put another way, tolerance is a social contract; those who don't abide by it (by, for example, making people who are LGBTQ+ unwelcome, overtly or otherwise) are saying that they are more "important" to be tolerated than those who are part of that group.
It's a rather unilateral social contract. Merely tolerating LGBT people is not enough, you need to enthusiastically embrace them, fly their flag. In my book, the "tolerate" end of the spectrum can be "avoid LGBT people but take no active measures against them".
You can personally adopt that stance - but demanding that the rainbow flag not be flown would be seen by many, very likely, to be taking an active measure against them.
You know, there's flags I like myself. I'm not asking anybody to fly them. Why do I have to keep my politics hidden away on pain of getting excluded from a community while more equal kinds of animals get to force me to fly theirs without me ever being asked? I signed on to fix a couple of packages I discovered to be broken, you know. Not to take up somebody else's banner and battle cry. That was never part of the deal. I contributed to this opportunity for free and I get rewarded with having to fly a flag I do not want to fly. Or else.
And you aren't asked to take up their banner. You can just focus on the technology you want to focus on and ignore the rest. That's your right.
That is just wrong in my book.
I'm not looking to get anyone fired from their jobs. I agree that there are cases where a community goes too far. But with groups that have been marginalized because of their immutable characteristics, it's important to say "you are welcome here" pretty explicitly specifically because the group has been marginalized to the point where the default stance is "I won't be welcome in that group".
Times have very much changed. What you describe is the default in all communities nowadays. Including hiring quotas, promotion quotas and all that jazz. At the same time harsh prejudice against the reviled Old White Man is treated in a pretty laissez-faire manner. After all everyone knows he's an oppressive bastard who is constantly plotting and scheming to oppress women, minorities and LGBT people, right? It's entirely fine to make him feel unwelcome, at least a lot of people flying the rainbow flag appear to think to. That is one of the things that flag represents to me. I've been called that of-course-totally-not-an-insult moniker a couple of times myself, you know.
Times really haven't changed. We have more members of the LGBTQ+ community who are 'out', but just look at Florida, or Texas, or other places in the US that have passed laws denying gender-affirming care or other anti-LGBTQ legislation. Teachers getting fired for daring to show a Disney movie that had gay characters in it - and the relationship wasn't even fundamental to the story (from what I understand). We saw a similar thing during the Civil Rights movement here in the US - slavery was "ended", so racism was over, right? Well, no, not really.
Would that we all could just get along - that people didn't feel it necessary to engage in homophobic attitudes in public,
Can't help it. Bad experiences.
didn't feel it necessary to make sexually inappropriate comments to women who are part of the community (or worse, to decide to make unwanted physical advances).
It is absolutely ok if a homosexual male does these sorts of thing to a heterosexual male because it would be hate speech to notice or - god forbid - complain about it.
No, it isn't OK, and if it happens in this community, I'd expect you to report it to an appropriate authority.
Organizations like this project have been sued over that type of thing because it's not spelled out.
This sounds like FUD to me. Who got sued? By who? How about, you know trying to win such a case rather than give in to what might well be an attempt at concern trolling?
Google turns up a number of results, but I've heard about potential lawsuits against SFWA and DefCon for harassment happening at their events that wasn't dealt with. You used to hear about it more in sci-fi conventions as well until they started adopting codes of conduct as well.
I cannot tell you the number of times that I've had to deal with homophobic hate in the FB group. The banner goes up at the start of June as a sign of "you are welcome here", and invariably there are a dozen, two dozen, or more people who use the puking face emoji in response to it.
That is just unacceptable. We're supposed to tolerate that behavior, which makes members of that community feel unwelcome? That's just nuts.
Some of us are supposed to tolerate a flag that sticks in some of our craws, too. Not a nice feeling either and nobody ever asked us about it.
The goal is inclusion and tolerance, but "tolerate my intolerance" simply doesn't work.
Unfortunately that "inclusion" just shuffles the ingroups and outgroups around.
The difference is that one group is a group that formed by choice, and the other is one that didn't. Hate is a choice. Gender identity or sexual orientation is not.
How do you propose that we ensure that those marginalized groups are made to feel welcome without telling them "hey, you're welcome here" when for many of them for their entire lives, they've been either specifically told "you're not welcome here" to the point that that's the default assumption?
I have been told that same thing quite a few times because I live in one of these countries where there is a massive push to cast the majority population in quite the villain role. At the same time elevating various "marginalized" groups and putting them on a pedestal, granting them privileges I did not begin to have, never in my entire life.
Groups that have been marginalized because of who they are (not because of choices they've made) can appear to be 'elevated' or 'put on a pedestal' when they emerge from the shadows because we're not used to seeing them there. We don't think twice about heterosexual couples in popular film and media. We see it all the time, and it's just what we're used to. Now that we see an increase in storytelling that includes LGBTQ+ relationships, that's not "putting them on a pedestal". That's just telling stories that include people who look like/act like/are like people we're not used to seeing.
You get bit too many times, and you stop trying.
It took me a few decades, but yeah, I'm getting there. These days I often wonder whether I shouldn't just be a hermit somewhere deep in the woods. It's not like I feel very included in a society that is being told about the oppression perpetrated by old white men in every TV documentary, in tons of opinion pieces, in a flood of virtue signalling posts on Facebook, Twitter and tons of other channels. And yet here I sit in a medium sized, mediocre apartment - not a volcano lair - working a job I'm worried about losing, driving a rusty used car, scratching my graying head and wondering where exactly I took a wrong turn to end up where I am. After all I'm this fearsome oppressor who should be wallowing in luxury, cracking the whip over an army of slaves. Yet I'm not.
Hey, I get that feeling. I'm an old-ish white heterosexual cis guy as well. My take on it is to acknowledge that that gives me a 'leg up', even when things are not great (I'm currently taking time off from working - voluntarily - because of health issues; I've had times where I couldn't pay the rent/mortgage). I do my best to default to kindness - there's a saying that people don't remember what you do, but they remember how you made them feel. I'm reminded by people who are to my left that when they say "white men do x" that a response of "not all men" or "not all white men" isn't necessary, because if I don't do that, *they're not talking about me*. I try to be kind and tolerant of people. I recognize that even when I have it bad, there are many, many people in those groups who have it far, far worse than I do, and compassion is my default stance. If someone from that community acts like an asshole or is aggressive/ abusive (and certainly, because people are involved, there are going to be some who are like that), I try to not look at that person as representative of the community as a whole - because they aren't. Everyone's dealing with their own struggles. I try not to add to them. Sometimes I even succeed.
As I said before, this is a community. Without the people, the technology doesn't happen. Excluding diverse groups has been shown to limit innovation, and for my part, I would far rather see inclusion of those marginalized groups whose ideas haven't been done, and if some self-select by declaring their "hate" or "distaste" for someone's personal life to be more important than bringing in those ideas, that's on them.
You know. A whole bunch of bad things happened to me and others under that flag. I don't care about the LGBT people and am fine with tolerating them as long as they treat me respectfully (which they haven't always done). I do not want to fly that flag though. Since I do not ask anybody to fly flags I care about either, I happen to think that's a fair deal.
The things we say and do affect other people.
Not a lot, in my experience. Especially the things we say. It's quite rare for people to listen and even rarer for them to understand.
I mean, it sounds like you've had some things that happened to you or that were said to you that have shaped a lot of your opinions around the LGBTQ+ community, and those experience affected you enough that you've devoted a lot of time to this discussion. Food for thought. I am genuinely sorry that you had those experiences, and I hope you find a way to heal. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits