Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

   Hi Richard,

On 8/7/20 10:35 AM, Richard Barnes wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> I'll just call out a couple points here:
>
> 1. The sentiment I'm expressing here is not based on the hypothetical 
> offense of some abstract, otherized group.  I am articulating actual 
> feedback from actual people -- doing actual good work at IETF -- who 
> are seriously questioning whether to just give up on the IETF as a 
> result of this thread.  One person's "offense-by-proxy" is another 
> person's "standing up for the little guy".

   I received actual feedback from actual people who claimed they were
harmed by my first couple emails on the subject. What was the harm? One
was that this person was considering blocking me in his email filter
(i.e. putting me in a "denylist") because of my statements. The
harm would be to the IETF because it would prevent the kinds of fruitful
technical discussions that I had had with this person in the past.

   Now, that's the kind of thing an emotionally abusive person does. It's
"do what I say or you'll force me to do something you'll regret and it
will be all your fault". That's messed-up and I don't put up with those
kind of mind games. So while I too received real actual feedback from
real actual people I dismissed it.

   Your actual feedback sounds like the same sorts of mind games-- "if
this discussion continues I'll give up on the IETF and you'll regret
it!"

> 2. If you think that by virtue of being a white, American, male, 
> long-time IETF participant, you are not in an in-group for this list, 
> you are incredibly blind to your privilege.

   Oh please, spare me the white male privilege schtick. We both know
what we are talking about and that is the discussion on
draft-knodel-terminology and whether ON THAT TOPIC you are in the
"in crowd" or the "out crowd".

   You know what else is privileged? Company affiliation! I noticed my
opinion at IETF was discounted considerably when I left Cisco for a
start-up. Not part of the influential crowd anymore. So I'm keenly
aware of privilege at the IETF, don't worry about that.

> 3. You keep demanding evidence, even after several people have agreed 
> there is a problem here.  There's a word for this style of debate: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

   Oh, so several people agreeing closes off discussion, no evidence needed,
just a "I'm standing up for the little guy".

   I guess those several people are in the "in crowd", the privileged ones.
They are so privileged they merely need to refer to their existence to
squelch debate. Impressive!

   DNH.

> --RLB
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 12:15 PM Dan Harkins <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>
>     On 8/7/20 7:21 AM, Richard Barnes wrote:
>>     On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 2:30 AM Dan Harkins <[e-mail]
>>     <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>         On 8/1/20 4:05 PM, Richard Barnes wrote:
>>>         The whole point of the draft and statement that kicked off
>>>         this thread is that people hurt each other without intending
>>>         to.  That is, the point here is not the "professional
>>>         wounded person", it's the "wounded professional person", who
>>>         has to deal with an elevated ambient shittiness level just
>>>         because of things that are ingrained in the way things work
>>>         -- and things that are invisible to a lot of folks because
>>>         of that ingrainedness.  This work is about surfacing those
>>>         ingrained things, in hopes of reducing the ambient
>>>         shittiness level for the folks it matters to.
>>
>>           One of the problems of the day is that people forget the
>>         Law of Unintended
>>         Consequences. They think that the good intentions of the
>>         people who want
>>         to enact some policy will ensure it will result in exactly
>>         what is intended.
>>
>>
>>     Literally the first sentence of my message is about people
>>     causing harm without intending to.
>
>       Yea. There's a difference between someone not making a connection
>     between some action and some result ("causing harm without intending
>     to") and  someone initiating a plan of action with the expressed goal
>     of effecting some result but ending up with some completely different
>     unplanned result.
>
>       I'm suggesting that you're in the latter category. You have some
>     goal in mind-- more participation from certain segments of society--
>     and you feel you will get to that goal by reducing what you refer to
>     as the shittiness of certain speech.
>
>
>>     If I'm going to be generous, I'll admit that in some idealized
>>     sense, there are risks in both directions here -- restricting
>>     useful speech on the one hand, alienating contributors who could
>>     do good work on the other hand.
>
>       Thanks for being generous!
>
>>     But this thread itself is a testament to how free the in-group
>>     here feels to express their opinions, and I've had several people
>>     outside that group tell me how this toxic conversation is
>>     actively discouraging their participation in IETF.  Call them
>>     "professionally wounded" or "snowflakes" if you want, but the
>>     road this leads down is toward a senescent, obsolescent,
>>     irrelevant IETF.  People have better things to do with their time
>>     than engage with an organization that doesn't care about them.
>
>       Unsurprisingly, my perspective is the opposite of yours. I feel
>     that I
>     am definitely not in the "in group" having been accused of causing
>     harm with
>     my wrong think, crossing "red lines", and being on the receiving
>     end of
>     social pressure to conform with "in group" thought.
>
>       I too have been contacted by people, both those who are with me
>     in the
>     "out group" and those from the "in group" who wish to apply added
>     pressure
>     on me to conform. Those applying pressure to conform repeated your
>     assertion that reading a word in an RFC will result in people becoming
>     emotionally harmed and becoming alienated and potentially not
>     wishing to
>     take part in IETF processes. That assertion was never justified,
>     it was
>     just stated more forcefully and in a more accusatory fashion (accusing
>     me of more bad think).
>
>       The interesting thing is that in my off-list chats with the "in
>     group" I
>     was told that the harm is to segments of society by people who
>     these "in
>     group" members clearly were not part of. For example, there was a
>     reference
>     made by a white cis male to harm caused by statements made in the
>     TERF wars.
>
>       So I did not use the words "professionally wounded" or
>     "snowflakes" but
>     I have come up with another term: offense-by-proxy.
>
>
>>     In other words, the pure focus on one side of the risk equation
>>     is causing the consequence -- unintended or not -- of driving
>>     away new participants.  Which implies to me that we should let up
>>     on that and take into account the effects we have on other people
>>     -- unintended or not.
>
>       You are making an assertion (namely, certain words are "driving
>     away new
>     participants") that I do not accept. If you want to restrict
>     speech then
>     you have to do a bit more than make a simple assertion.
>
>       By all means, let's take into account the effects we have on
>     each other
>     but how about we refrain from projecting offense on behalf of
>     other groups.
>     The practice of offense-by-proxy is somewhat offensive itself,
>     unintended
>     or not, because it assumes a behavior of the imagined victim group
>     that the
>     accuser's group does not take part in. It otherizes and that's
>     offensive.
>
>       Dan.
>
>>     --Richard
>>
>>
>>           That never happens.
>>
>>           If we allow the listener to decide whether the speaker's
>>         words are shitty
>>         (and that their ambient shittiness needs to be reduced-- I
>>         know what you
>>         mean here in your impreciseness and I would appreciate it if
>>         you were to
>>         say it explicitly) we will further empower victimhood. People
>>         will have an
>>         incentive to claim they are wounded in order to alter the
>>         balance of power
>>         in a discussion, and if people can be expected to do anything
>>         we know they
>>         can be expected to respond to incentives. Nothing good will
>>         come of that,
>>         in spite of the good intentions of its proponents.
>>
>>           Dan.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>