Re: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Riccardo Bernardini <[e-mail]>]

I think that it is important to discuss it in order to avoid further
degeneracy in this direction.

I expect that what I am going to say will be quite unpopular, but I think
that a line need to be draw somewhere.  Do not get me wrong, I am totally
in favor of diversity, inclusiveness and avoiding offensive language, but
in the cases at hand (master/slave and blacklist/whitelist) the expressions
never had any negative or offensive weight and if someone gets offended by
some concatenation of ideas, that is a problem of its.

I mean, it is like a neighbor that complains because when you come home
from work at 6pm you take a shower.  "I am having dinner at that time and
hearing the water of your shower make me thing about bathrooms just when I
am eating."  If this seems exaggerate to you, please note that it is not
too different from being offended by master/slave because reminds you about
slave trades happened few centuries ago. (BTW, slavery has not been limited
to that period, so I guess many people should be offended).   Also
whitelist/blacklist _never_had_any_racial_meaning_ at all. .  If they
remind you about racism, the problem is definitively on your side.
Another example is currently discussed on inksscape mailing lists: someone
complained because inkscape has a translation in pig latin (as I understand
was added for testing and then it remained there) and the term "pig latin"
offended him (I know it is a "him" because I know the name).

The idea "let's not offend anyone," while good in theory leave you open to
the attack of definitively oversensitive people.  I mean, if I say "Do not
wear a tie.  It looks like a phallic symbol and it offends me.  Moreover,
it is sexist." are you going to prohibits ties?

What is the limit of reasonable complaints and when a complaint is
excessive?  Difficult to say, as in many other cases the border between
reasonabilit and excess is fuzzy, nevertheless there are cases that are
clearly on one side.  The cases master/slave, whiteist/blacklist and "pig
latin" are definitively, IMHO, on the excessive side.

Running for cover...

R.


On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 11:27 AM Niels ten Oever <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> On the hrpc-list [0] there has been an intense conversation which was
> spurred by the news that the Python community removed Master/Slave
> terminology from its programming language [1].
>
> In the discussion that followed it was remarked that in RFCs terms like
> Master/Slave, blacklist/whitelist, man-in-middle, and other terminology
> that is offensive to some people and groups is quite common.
>
> This is not a discussion that can be resolved in hrpc, but rather should
> be dealt with in the IETF community (because hrpc doesn't make policy
> for terminology in the IETF), which is why I am posting this here.
>
> If people find the discussion worthwhile, we might also be just in time
> to request a BoF on this topic.
>
> Looking forward to discuss.
>
> Best,
>
> Niels
>
>
> [0] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/hrpc/
> [1]
>
> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language
>
>
> --
> Niels ten Oever
> Researcher and PhD Candidate
> Datactive Research Group
> University of Amsterdam
>
> PGP fingerprint    2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488
>                    643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3
>
>