On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 10:07 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solip...@pitrou.net> wrote:
> What if someone is wearing a religious symbol?
>
> If one is concerned about horrible beliefs or opinions, there are a
> good deal of them in many religious ("holy") books (*), yet CoCs are
> generally meant to prohibit discrimination based on religious
> beliefs... So the argument that CoCs should not protect political
> beliefs is starting to become flimsy (horrible beliefs are ok if they
> are part of a religious system, not otherwise?).
>
> And it's not just theoretical, because people are physically repressed,
> in various parts of the world, in the name of religious beliefs.
Yeah, it's difficult. But to address specifically the question of
"what's the difference between listing religion and listing political
affiliation":
Say you're considering whether to participate in a project. Maybe
you're marginalized on some axis, or have been harassed before, and
before joining in you want to know how the community will respond if
something happens. Of course it's impossible to know, but maybe
reading the CoC can help you make some imperfect guess.
Now if you see "religion" there, then what does that tell you? Maybe
it means that these people are really excited about protecting
oppressive religions. Or... maybe it means that they're opposed to
anti-semitism, Islamophobia, etc. That would be a pretty obvious
interpretation too, and makes a lot more sense in the context of the
rest of the text. Of course you're not certain, and yeah, maybe
someone will harass you and then claim it's because of their religion
and then the community will point at the CoC and take their side. It's
possible. But seeing that word isn't a huge red flag either.
What about "political affiliation"? Well, if it's the US in the 1950s,
obviously they're taking a brave stand against McCarthyism... but
that's probably not what jumps to anyone's mind today :-). Context
matters! Especially in the OSCON case, where apparently they slipped
"political affiliation" into their CoC immediately after the US
election in 2016, without telling anyone or giving any explanation.
That's like... perfectly designed to make people nervous and
suspicious about their intentions.
What does this mean for NumPy's CoC? Not sure -- obviously the whole
"secretly added to the CoC at the same time everyone is freaking out"
part doesn't apply. I think Robert's message made some good points.
-n
--
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org
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