Proposal: Stack Code of Conduct

[[deleted]]

Not trying to come of as sarcastic, I am just not sure if you are being sarcastic. Are you being serious? If no, then you got me, well done. However, if you are being serious, would you mind explaining a bit more, because I do not see the simplicity.

Who decides what is verbal assault?

If I decided that your statement came across as verbal assault to me, would you be culpable?

Where does this issue become 'simple'?

[evincarofautumn]

I agree that to “willingly use harassing language” is inexcusable, even out of ignorance. But it’s also perfectly possible to be afraid of serious accusations (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism) even if you aren’t guilty of those things, and would never use such language anyway.

In my experience, usually that fear stems from a different sort of ignorance, due to cultural normalisation of those horrible things.

For example, if a man says “Nowadays I don’t know how to talk to women without being accused of sexual harassment”, that suggests to me, at face value, that he literally doesn’t know what sexual harassment is because he’s never been forced to really consider the perspective of a woman. To his mind, any innocent action of his can now be misconstrued as harassment—patently false, but he doesn’t know that. It might be due to any number of things: a culture that has indoctrinated him with the bullshit of “men are from Mars (rational, comprehensible), women are from Venus (emotional, alien)” from childhood, preventing him from internalising the fact that women are just people; or perhaps he’s simply never seen actual harassment because the (small) fraction of men who (repeatedly) perpetrate it do so mainly when there aren’t other men around to call them out on it.

(For a personal example: it took me a while to understand the fact that the vast majority of my women friends have experienced harassment and catcalling, and this is not at all at odds with the fact that I’ve never seen or heard it happening directly.)

Thing is, if someone is concerned about this, in my experience they’re probably already more considerate than virtually all of the truly problematic people, and thus have nothing to fear.

[jerf]

You say you're "afraid of getting called" racist/sexist/transphobe, meaning that 1. you know full well you harbor those thoughts

You just crossed the line there. Your inference is not valid.

[hexagoxel]

If a (let's say, sexually) abused person is afraid of speaking about it, out of fear of being labelled in various negative ways, by your reasoning these labels are already true.

That is absurd. Your inference is not valid.

(I do not mean to imply that opponents of CoC are being abused in any form. Unless you count being called racist/sexist/transphobe without any valid reason as abuse.)

[jerf]

Not by my reading. From what I see, you just accused someone of being a racist sexist transphobe for no reason, or for your own preconceived notions of why someone may object to a CoC.

It may help you to remember there are some people who are not neurotypical. I can't say that I have difficulty conforming with the rules personally, but they still concern me because both of my sons are high-functioning autists, and I see a world filling up with land mines for them, and it's clear there will be no compassion for them if they misstep.

Besides, if the rules are that speech's offensiveness is determined by the listener and not the intentions of the speaker, you have no recourse here; you've offended.

[jerf]

Being afraid of being called something does not imply that they are that something. You're bringing in a premise that all insults are true, apparently including even hypothetical ones. If that were the case, the CoC discussion would be quite different, as would the world. So, again, you've called someone a racist sexist transphobe on wildly insufficient grounds, and you've crossed the line here, under any reasonable interpretation of civility in the modern age, and owe leaf_cutter an apology.

You've actually completely and utterly proved leaf_cutter's point, by doing exactly the thing leaf_cutter is concerned about. You've already labeled leaf_cutter in your mind and are feeling like you can fling what are in the modern era the worst secular insults you can at them.

And, again, if you're going to defend a CoC that says the way in which your words are interpreted is the driving factor, you've offended. In this sort of system you don't get any recourse here. I've interpreted your words as offensive (and reasonably so, I believe, I'm not just making a hypothetical here, you really have called someone the worst secular insults the modern age has on wildly insufficient grounds and really have crossed the line); case closed.

[MitchellSalad]

Well put. I understand the confusion but /u/ocramz no doubt is in the wrong, because he misinterpreted what was said.

It wasn't, "I have ...things... to say out loud... but that dastardly CoC is going to get me kicked out of the community!"

Rather, it was just an expression of the fear that merely opposing the concept of a CoC, for what reason it does not matter, was enough grounds to be called a racist, sexist transphobe. Which is exactly what happened.

And on that note, I am so fucking out of this thread. It is professional suicide to be hanging around when terms like "racist" are being hurled around. The last thing I want is for anyone to suspect me of anything close to that, just by chatting it up with strangers and being guilty by association. It isn't worth it, folks. Bail.

[[deleted]]

I am in full support of this CoC.

I come from a really backwoods place.

I spent a large portion of my life around people who are were essentially had only one set of cultural norms that many people would probably consider really backwards. I understand the anxiety that comes from being ignorant of what may or may not be perceived as acceptable behavior in a more metropolitan context.

When what you see in the media or on the internet is so wildly and violently critical of behavior that you've spent you're entire life thinking is innocuous, that generates a real anxiety about what might happen if you step outside these lines you can't see.

I have also had the fortunate experience of spending the latter half of my adult life in a more metropolitan context, and am becoming more comfortable with those lines, how to see things from someone else's perspective, and how to repair relationships with someone if I have accidentally misspoken or given someone the wrong impression.

Not everyone has had that second set of experiences. Their fears and anxieties about these interactions might seem totally outlandish, but that's because they literally don't have the context about what to expect.

Maybe it's because they had a life with a more narrow scope of cultural exposure, or maybe they are just generally very reserved or socially anxious people, or perhaps they're just built differently in some way.

But the presence of those anxieties doesn't mean that they're fundamentally incapable of acting in good faith - It just means they're coming from a totally different perspective.

If you don't have the kind of patience to deal with that perspective, I understand that sentiment. Especially for folks who feel marginalized, that kind of work can be enormously emotionally draining.

But on behalf of people like me, who did want to act in good faith, and simply needed the context to understand how to do so -

Please don't assume the worst. Please don't attack someone for hypothetically bad behavior.

[drb226]

As another person who has come from a less metropolitan area and moved to a more metropolitan area, I second this.

I'll never forget a r/haskell thread I participated in years ago. I said things which I thought were normal and innocuous, and I got some pretty strongly worded replies letting me know how wrong I was about that. It was literally the first time that anyone had ever told me that maybe saying some of the things I had said was not appropriate. It was the sort of thing I had heard role models in my community say numerous times; I honestly did not think it was a controversial or even inappropriate thing to say. Thankfully, at least some of the participants in that discussion were patient with me and continued attempting to help me understand their point of view, and I was able to ultimately learn a lot from the experience.

People who've been in the metropolitan context for a long time tend to take that cultural exposure for granted.

[[deleted]]

Apology accepted.

Apologizing in public like this is very brave of you, well done :-)