Re: [Terminology] Terminology draft revised

Dan, I don’t think anybody called you a racist or a Nazi. However, I have to say I strongly disagree with your views and find this discussion rather worrying.

Mirja

> On 29. Oct 2021, at 12:49, Dan Harkins <dharkins@lounge.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>   Hi,
> 
> On 10/28/21 11:59 PM, Lars Eggert wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On 2021-10-29, at 6:09, Dan Harkins <dharkins@lounge.org> wrote:
>>> But there was nothing racist about
>>> those drafts. Lars called them "racist" in a tweet but that was to appease
>>> the twitter mob.
>> I don't think I used that term on Twitter, but we did say the anonymously posted drafts in question were "racist and deeply disrespectful" in the IESG announcement about their removal: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gendispatch/3U8Yem7eo3HoZa5VGE7Spnx7RIw/
> 
>   My bad. You actually replied on twitter to one of the authors of the draft with a link
> to the mailarchive in which you said "racist".
> 
>> Different ADs had different reasons to support that phrasing. I don't want to speak for other IESG members, but when I read the two drafts, one of the most revolting concepts was that of an algorithm to assign a "victimization score" to individuals based on their race and gender and sexual identities, etc. I come from a country (Germany) that within the last century has categorized and labeled individuals in a very similar way, in order to then prioritize the order in which to murder millions of them. I find it abhorrent to see this idea submitted to the IETF as a contribution to community discourse. And no, dressing these ideas up as humor or sarcasm or satire to me did not change their nature, nor did posting them on April 1.
> 
>   But assigning a victimization score is not racist. In fact, that is exactly what the woke
> (who I was satirizing) do. Case in point, Dave Chappelle's new routine on Netflix. He's a
> comedian and like all comedians he makes fun of people and groups and things people do. All
> well and good. He's very successful because he's very funny when he makes fun of people.
> Except when he makes fun of certain groups. Now, Chappelle is black but he is being accused
> of making fun of trans people and is being condemned and there are calls to cancel his show.
> The CEO of Netflix gave a mealy-mouthed apology for airing Chappelle's routine. Now normally
> you'd think, "a bunch of white people trying to shut up a black man? Outrageous!" But no,
> you'd be wrong. These are not mere "white people" they are trans activists.
> 
>   So given who is allowed to make fun of whom gives us a hierarchy, trans is above black.
> I could give you other examples to fill out the hierarchy I provided in my draft but I
> think Niels (an author of the draft, btw) said it best while whipping the mob up on Twitter:
> "hint2: make fun of people with more power than you not less". So there's dynamic in play
> here but it's not how Niels frames it, it's group identity and some groups are more protected
> than others, some groups cannot be criticized (or made fun of) by other groups. As
> demonstrated by Dave Chappelle, trans is above black. Just like it was in my draft. Again,
> I could provide other examples with other groups showing how the hierarchy in my draft is
> pretty accurate among the woke but for the sake of brevity I hope you'll just accept that.
> 
>   Now your Nazi references fall flat because of the other thing I was ridiculing:
> intersectionality. Where identity groups can compound their power with the intersection
> of their venn diagram of group identity. A trans black activist would have more
> "authenticity", more ability to shout down Dave Chappelle than a white trans activist
> and both of them would have more power than some cis white male trying to shout down Dave
> Chappelle. If this was an exercise in Nazism, as you sadly try to make it into, no one
> would practice intersectionality because it would be inherently dangerous. But in this
> case, there is power in that intersection, the power to shut others down, the power
> to be above criticism. See? It's the opposite. The goal is to be in as many identity
> groups as possible. They highlight their group identity intersection because it _increases_
> their place on the hierarchy! Exactly as I ridiculed in my draft.
> 
>   You can claim that my sense of humor is bad, that it wasn't funny, you can say all
> sorts of things like that but you can't say it's racist and you should be careful who you
> accuse of practicing what the Nazis did. A good plan when in a hole is to stop digging,
> so don't compound calling me a racist with implying I'm a Nazi, OK?
> 
>   Dan.
> 
> -- 
> "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to
> escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius
> 
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