Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants (was: Harassment, abuse, accountability. and IETF mailing lists)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 6/13/22 23:11, Barry Leiba wrote:

> For what it's worth, we have collectively used "greybeard" to refer to
> long-time IETF participants, for various reasons and don't further
> this particular conversation, and it's not fair to say that we can use
> it to refer to ourselves but others can't use it to refer to us.  We
> can have a separate discussion about whether it's a non-inclusive term
> that's an artifact of the past and better let go, but at this point
> it's neither ageist nor misandrist to use it.

I don't consider the term "greybeard" by itself to be ageist or 
misandrist.  It's the construction taken as a whole that raises a red 
flag for me.

If you don't see the problem with the construction, try this exercise:  
Make up as many combinations of:

"Those <derogatory-adjective> 
<people-identified-by-physical-characteristic> did <bad-thing>"

...and see whether you think the resulting expressions are overt 
displays of prejudice.   Be your own judge.

(and for this particular example, perhaps also recall that there's some 
recent history of IETF community leaders explicitly promoting that kind 
of prejudice, which adds additional context for those who are aware of 
that history)

> But if your experience is that
> every time you've been treated badly it's been by a long-term IETF
> participant, it's NOT ageist to tell people that that's the case.

I disagree, but because of selection bias.   If you have some prejudice, 
you're very likely to pay attention to experiences and/or information 
that supports your prejudice, and give more credence to it, than to 
experiences and/or information that would contradict your prejudice.    
Pretty much everybody does this, so I don't blame people for having such 
biases.   I do, however, blame people somewhat for promoting such 
prejudices, encouraging them in others, trying to penalize those whom 
one is prejudiced against.

Even though our brains are pretty much wired to identify and name 
patterns, including patterns of people, educated people should know to 
give other groups some benefit of the doubt.  It's not a perfect 
solution to the problem of prejudice but it's kind of a minimum 
responsibility, IMO.

>   And
> then we need to ask ourselves whether there's a tendency toward that:
> is it true that we have a long-term IETF culture of behaving that way?

Well, I offered a possible explanation in another message, without 
trying to promote prejudice against any group of people, and with the 
goal of trying to provide insight and suggesting possible changes to 
address the issue.

>   Is that an aspect of our long-term culture that we would be better
> off changing?
>
> I think we do, and it is, and getting offended and claiming ageism
> when someone points that out doesn't help.  Let's look at ourselves
> and see how we can do better.
Sure, but I don't see anything wrong with us realizing when we're being 
ageist or misandrist, while we're also looking at other things.

But do we have over-critical people in IETF who are too eager to shoot 
ideas down?   Sure we do, at least IMO.   But of those people, why 
penalize only those who have grey beards, or who are older males?   Why 
are those things relevant?   What purpose does that serve?

Keith