Dear all, I would request people to read it in full, maybe take some time and then respond.
Also please CC me if somebody responds as I'm not subscribed to the list but did read the archives of this month and the last :) Recently, Debutsav was organized in Kerala. You can read about the event at debutsav.in and whatever I could recollect and share at [1] Obviously I had to keep it short as it was supposed to be mostly about the technical aspects of the 2-day mini-conf/meetup rather than also the social side. Having been 'singed' on couple of previous occasions by A-H, as part of the team I advised the organisers to have both a CoC and have a team with women to fully staff it and have some sort of button, badge or something which people could call upon to sort out in either situations of hostilities or any sort of abusive behavior happens. While the latter could not be prepared due to shortness of time ( it was hardly 2 weeks where everything was organized) but I do feel we could have done better. I along with others also opined that we should have two women on the panel instead of just one just to keep the panel sort of gender-neutral but only Shruti was on the panel. I simply do not know the reasons to presume or assume why it happened but do care enough to point it out and to ask what we could and should have been better. It wasn't as if talent wasn't around. As far as people from LGBTQIA+ or non-binary people are concerned, I am afraid though, the road is long ahead as it wasn't even part of the discussions anywhere. Although I do hope after de-criminalization of Sec 377 we would see these conversations happen [2] [3] One of the intersting conversations I had with quite a few participants is how much they had looked at the website and the CoC. Sadly, it seems many didn't, at least not in any detail. Interestingly, it was both the genders who didn't take or have the time. I do remember some blog posts in the pasts, maybe in Pycon 2018 or in some other international conference, they had a banner which had the CoC written on it. Maybe that could be something that both Debconf and the various miniconferences could emulate aside from agreeing to the CoC ? Coming to the debian side of things, there doesn't seem to much documentation about gender diversity as far as documentation is concerned. In fact, the wiki doesn't seem to have an article on gender diversity and even the diversity statement is all to brief for somebody new to the term 'gender diversity' . It doesn't tell the person anything. Please put yourself in the shoes of 22 year old person who may come across this page for the first time and see the term for the first-time. It is a touch point so it would be nice if we could either elaborate it either there or link it to some page which better defines the terminology and the context. [4] [5] Even in debconf the term diversity is only a single page which doesn't explain what diversity is apart from sharing few examples . Could it be defined more better, more coherently, I hope so From what little I understand of the meaning and the terminology, it is a broad inclusive term rather than an exclusive term but then I'm no expert. I hope we can come up with some better wording or at least a somewhat better structure than the current wiki page we have. [6] Coming to Debconf 2016, few of the blog posts I wanted to write and had partially written about were about Rhonda and my interaction with them (using Sarah Sharp's pronouns [7] .) I wanted to share both their celebrations, the interactions and questions raised and answered about gender, my own uneasiness in how should I address them when writing as a third-person in a blog post as both the terms he/she felt wrong. I shared one of my blog posts with few DD's whom I respect and hold in high-esteem so they may help me in this delicate situation but none of them answered. Eventually I junked the blog posts because I felt even excluding them from few presentations where they made an interesting point or an insight, wouldn't that be an erasure of identity? I could have used 'somebody asked x or y question' which many a times I do use simply because I don't remember a person's name but in this situation it was different and I couldn't publish the blog posts with that knowledge in good conscience. With no way out, I simply junked the posts. In light of recent happenings it does seem that that the DD's did me a favor. It is very much possible that they were pretty much confused or indeterminate as I was. What would be a good way to address this ? Could there be a possibility of having of having a debian-diversity mailing list on lists.debian.org where some of these touchy topics could be untied or unknotted in a civil manner ? Sorry for being too long and there is a strong possibility that I shared or coupled too many things together but I do feel strongly that they are all related to one another. I would point out that I scanned the mail multiple times to see if I intentionally or unintentionally hurt somebody. I do say sorry to Rhonda whose name I have taken now and couldn't do right with them then and have no excuses. Apart from that if somebody feels hurt, I do apologize but only to the extent that whatever I shared is so that we should and could do better. 1. https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2019/01/04/debutsav-kochi-2018/ 2. https://barandbench.com/arundhati-katju-interview-section-377-supreme-court/ (sorry, paywall) 3. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/cover/after-377/article25908623.ece 4. https://wiki.debian.org/Gender 5. https://www.debian.org/intro/diversity 6. https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Diversity 7. https://sage.thesharps.us/2017/10/24/binaries-are-for-computers/ -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A 2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8
