Re: GNOME Speaker Guidelines

["Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>]

On 6/26/10 7:09 AM, "Richard Stallman" <rms gnu org> wrote:
>
> The GNOME speaker guidelines were at least partly a reaction to my
> Saint IGNUcius comedy routine.  So if I don't have a beef with these
> guidelines, why should anyone else?

Good question. It seems some folks are intent on "defending" you, whether
you're looking for defense or not.

I've had a bunch of 'em email my managers, our clients, and uninvolved
members of my family, over my disagreements on this issue. You may recall
that I wrote you privately about this about three months ago, and you saw no
problem with it at the time, but perhaps you've reconsidered that.

Asking them to knock it off seems reasonable to me, certainly.

> I am proud of my Saint IGNUcius routine.

I am, in all honesty, sorry to hear that. I feel that's a shame, myself.

> Thousands of people have laughed at it.

Keen student of world history that you are, you're surely aware that tens of
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, laughed (and cheered and applauded)
at each and every beheading conducted during the Reign of Terror.

I guess by this metric, if a speaker wants to throw in a guillotining or
two, well, why not? As long as people laugh, right?

> The routine makes fun of people, especially Emacs
> users, but does not insult or attack anyone, not even Emacs users.

As I've shown, opinions varied. Celeste Lyn Paul felt insulted. Chani
Armitage felt more at risk of being attacked. I felt offended. Thanks for
making it clear that our various feelings in this matter were in fact
groundless, and should not be considered as being material to, or indicative
of, anything.

See, from where I was sitting, the routine _seemed_ to be making fun of
women in particular as some sort of technical ignorami, helplessly waiting
around for some big, strong _male_ hacker to explain to them the wonders of
EMACS. Surely, "virginity" is a small, even insignificant, thing to trade
for some awesome knowledge and power. It's easy to see why such a message
would achieve a level of popularity with your typical "FLOSS community
conference" audience.

By the same token, I personally _believed_ (mistakenly, apparently) that I
could well imagine why a woman in attendance, outnumbered by men at perhaps
a ratio of 40-to-1, might be made just a _wee_ bit uncomfortable by that
notion.

Evidently, however, that's a lot harder for yourself, and others, to
envisage, thus conclusively demonstrating my (and Celeste's, and Chani's,
and Matt's, and Matthew's, and Andre's, and Sandy's, and...) error in this
matter.

> It
> doesn't advocate doing anything to people by force -- not even
> teaching them Emacs (which is how one loses Emacs virginity).

Well, see? That's why I keep asking for a handout. I've never heard of
"relieving" a woman's "virginity" through teaching her how to use a
40-year-old text editor. I'm also unclear how a unilateral "Holy Duty" to
impose something, anything, on some nonconsenting other doesn't amount to
"doing something by force". As I've said, I was taught to always say, "May
I?" first. There was no mention of anything like that at GCDS. Just your
"Holy Duty".

> I don't think there's anything bad about it.

I'd intuited that, yes. Again, a shame, in my view.

> But it does refer to sex and religion.

Well, at least we're on the same page there.