First, let me say that I do know Frederik personally, I have had
pleasant dinners with him and hope to do so again post-pandemic. He
has apologised for his poor choice of words, and I accept his apology.
The volume of attacks and hostile tone against Celine in reaction to
the document she shared demonstrates exactly why OSM is not a
welcoming community for the majority of women. For myself, I find the
listservs to be the least welcoming part of the community. These
comments are not enough to prevent me from mapping and participating,
but they are discouraging and demotivating.
A lot of people on this list are conflating systems of discrimination
and inequality with hostile intent. Systems are not personal and are
not about intent. Discrimination and inequality can be structural, and
can and do take place without intent, sometimes by accident, sometimes
due to structural inequities not within the immediate control of the
actor(s) examining the issue.
To make a non-technical analogy, if you step on someone's foot by
accident, you still stepped on their foot, and their foot still hurts.
Apologising helps, but it would be better if you didn't step on their
foot in the future. If one group has shoes and another group does not,
the group without shoes is more likely to be on the end of painful
steps. How do you solve such a systematic problem? One option would be
to give everyone shoes. Another would be for those with shoes to step
more carefully. Right now, society demands that those without shoes do
the work of dodging everyone else's steps, documenting a list of times
they've been stepped on, and explaining why getting stepped on hurts.
Underrepresentation of women and gender minorities, racial
underrepresentation, geographic underrepresentation, these are all
symptoms. If OSM did not systematically exclude these groups, these
groups would not be underrepresented. Such a problem is not unique to
OSM, nor is it easy to solve. Step 1 is to recognize the problem. A
vocal contingent of the community is not willing to do that. I believe
this contingent is vocal but not a majority of OSM, but
overrepresented on the listservs. I would encourage those who are
watching this firestorm to consider that the listservs are a very poor
representation of the OSM community and the views of its members. I
would also strongly encourage those watching to vote in the OSMF Board
elections.
Kathleen
On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 11:25 AM wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> as usual when it comes to this kind of complex topics I have the feeling that
> people tend to writing about only that part which is interesting to them,
> throw that piece into the arena and in the end there is a lot of confusion,
> misunderstanding and no constructive way out.
>
> For this reason let me try to tackle things separately to get a clearer
> picture.
>
> 1. The message by Frederik: The starting point for the whole debate, so we
> should be aligned about its interpretation. It seems obvious to me, and not
> only after further clarification by the author, that Trump's quote in NO WAY
> reflects Frederik's mindset. Anybody suggesting this should be disqualified
> from further debate as it completely lacks objective basis. One could then
> argue that he could have backed the same argument, the same message with a
> different quote, a different wording. That is right and it implies the
> following: Whatever you say, no matter how valid your point is, no matter
> what the context of the wording is and even if you are only quoting: don't
> use words with a sexual connotation because the sole mention of it will
> offend some people. If that's what it takes to make those people feel more
> comfortable I am fine with it. To avoid misunderstandings based on cultural
> differences regarding what is allowed I consequently encourage to create a
> list of "undesirable wordings" so everybody knows what is acceptable or not.
>
> What really strikes me is that if Frederik had used a similar quote, e.g. "I
> could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t
> lose any voters", nothing of all this would have happened. This reminds me of
> the censorship logic apparently used in US movies: You can show how people
> kill, torture, severe limbs - but don't you dare show a nipple because that
> could offend.
>
> Bottomline: We are not discussing a general offensive attitude nor an
> individual offensive message, we are discussing the pure wording of a message.
>
> 2. The topic of Fredrik's message
>
> A real pity this is taking a backseat, especially because it is somehow
> linked to what many people are apparently fighting for: Diversity, Open
> Community, Inclusion etc.
>
> I´ll try to keep it short as it is worth a big debate on its own: This is
> about Facebook. Their business model is based on the opposite of everything
> this community should stand for. They represent the antagonism of a free,
> self-determined,
