[hs-equality] People at Metalab have taken issue with some incidents at 29c3

[Michael Zeltner]

Excerpts from Koen Martens's message of 2013-01-05 17:17:58 +0100:
> Anyway, in the metalab piece I see it (as usual) centers around women and
> sexual harassment, and I feel uncomfortable entering the debate and bringing
> discrimination of homosexual (or othersexual) to the table, because in the
> past that has resulted in me being ridiculed and even death-threats from some
> of these 'feminist extremist'.

It's different aspects of equality, I would be very sad if someone would want
to exclusively claim hacker equality for any single issue other than
recognising that we have all different needs that we would like to see
respected. However, I recognise that this platform arose from the queer geeks
radio shows and meetings, so if that's how the platform shall continue to
exist, I respect that choice. It would be ludicrous for me to say otherwise.

But in the Google Hangout meetup different aspects of discrimination were
mentioned that didn't directly relate to LGBT issues - classism for example.
It's why I brought this here. It fits into my understanding of the realm of
this platform.

I think it would be great and just as important for a similar effort to happen
to support the queer hacker community. I would love to help! But I understand
if you feel unable to support what we have assembled so far.

> I am all against harassment, for equality and creating safe places. I don't
> feel the feminist extremists who poisoined the debate with those creeper
> cards are in any way rational, and I have experienced they are quite
> religious about their beliefs. To such an extend that I, as a gay individual,
> am apparently even worse than the male heterosexual macho stereotype. I'm
> sick of those extremists, and would never sign anything that so exclusively
> focusses on only sexism and women. If the feminist extremists can not see me
> as being equal to all others, how can i ever see them as more than a bunch of
> lunatics better ignored?

I don't think we have an extremist point of view in there so far? I don't think
the issue is claimed by them either. The conversations I have with people
interested in this issue are incredibly moderate. At the Austrian Pirate Party
meeting, one speaker said this: "feminism is the radical notion that women are
also people". And that's how I see it too, as does most of my environment.

I'm well aware of the existence of people thinking that all men need to be
castrated at birth because they are nothing but perpetrators - but this is not
a discussion that anyone in my environment ever argued for. Nor is anything
like that ever going to end up in the thing we started at Metalab. I believe we
have enough awesome people around hacker equality to keep things excellent.

> I don't know how to express what i'm feeling, but i'm so fed up with this
> women-centered feminism 'equality' crap. These extremist feminists are
> claiming the issue, and every other minority can go fuck themselves
> apparently. Fine. But don't be surprised when people are not getting your
> message, and in fact respond to your attempts to troll by exhibiting the
> exact behaviour you are supposedly against.

Backlash is to be expected from every effort like this. As Mitch pointed out,
we don't need _one solution_, but _many_, for all sorts of different issues -
even if things have a common superclass, it doesn't mean there's only one bug
to fix. I expected to Iteratively work our way through finding out what works
for whom. And then not judge someone else because something else works for
them.

If anyone says to you that "fags are worse" (makes me sick to read/write
this...) I'm very sorry to hear that and I would consider that fucked up
bigotry and would not want someone like this be part of the hacker equality
platform, because they have misunderstood the point of it. I can assure you,
the people that have been involved in the discussion so far are very pro queer
rights.

I would hope that we could all find some solidarity in the cause of getting rid
of all sorts of discrimination. Fix all the bugs (relating to being excellent
to each other -- sorry that was cheesy)! That's why I signed up on this list,
and visited the queer geeks meetings so far. And why I brought our pad on here
too.

Best, Michael
-- 
https://niij.org/
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