Re: IESG Statement On Oppressive or Exclusionary Language

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 09:35:45AM -0700, The IESG wrote:
> The IESG believes the use of oppressive or exclusionary language is 
> harmful.  Such terminology is present in some IETF documents, including 
> standards-track RFCs, and has been for many years. It is at odds with 
> our objective of creating an inclusive and respectful environment in the 
> IETF, and among readers of our documents.

[I'll come back to the quoted text at the bottom.]

I long ago started using, e.g., primary/replica terminology in
proprietary code.  (In open source code projects where replacing the
traditional alternative to primary/replica terminology would require
making backwards-incompatible interface changes, I've left it as it
was.)  I didn't need a policy to tell me that this might be a good idea
-- no one even told me so, I just did it.

We are adults.  We do not need explicit language policies.  We can
easily have a soft policy that the RFC production center (RPC),
shepherds, ADs, reviewers, look for offensive language and suggest or
even require changing it.  Heck, we don't even need a soft policy, as
each of those can already of their own initiative make such suggestions.

What's nice about a soft policy is that we don't have to have bitter
self-DDoS debates on this list about the offensiveness of particular
terminology.  As long as the arbiter of offensiveness is the offended,
we can't avoid such debates except by just not having them in the first
place by not having an exact policy written down.  Instead we can have
localized debates about individual terms as they come up.

Explicit language policies and the policing that goes with them
infantilize everyone in all of at least these ways:

 - In today's cancel culture atmosphere politically-correct policies
   serve to identify the in-crowd and the out-crowd at the middle school
   cafeteria.  Hint: those who object are in the out-crowd.  Objecting
   to some details still marks you as a possible thought criminal.

 - We see unsubstantiated claims as above of language causing
   unspecified "harms".  It's like we're all 5 and the teacher has to
   tell us "it's thus because [I say so]".  No argument is or will be
   accepted because we're too infantile to understand.

   Indeed, no argument will be accepted.  The proposed policy will
   almost certainly be adopted without substantial changes.

   (That language policies themselves cause harm will not even be
   considered a valid proposition, let alone considered, while the
   proposition that some terms cause harm will be accepted at face
   value with no argument even considered.)

 - Victims are made victims even when they don't know it or agree to it.
   No choice is given them.

 - Stripping away of initiative and responsibility from authors/
   contributors.  We will now need only heed the policy as written and
   will be shielded from criticism until it is updated.

 - The rationales for some of the language choices in the policy will be
   infantile, supposing that someone somewhere will view a certain term
   as conveying meaning that authors cannot possibly have meant to
   convey.

The point of all of this (as perceived by some of us at the least) is
not even to have a functional policy.  The point is to signal to the
world that we will play by the PC rules of the day, and to identify the
rebels -- the out-crowd.

Some of the readers on this list, and some of the participants in this
massive thread are terrified of losing their jobs or being denied jobs
in the future if they do anything other than voice unconditional support
for the policy.  We know how this works.  We've been watching this
movie.  The particulars of the proposed policy are not as relevant as
that not agreeing to any of it can be expected to be ipso facto grounds
for exclusion.  Speaking of exclusion...

Nico
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