Hi y'all!
I have heard that this is a Texan greeting, so, I hope nobody feels
offended...
Am Freitag, 21. November 2014 08:36:40 UTC+1 schrieb Nathann Cohen:
>
> > Also, I can accept that using "he" as a general pronoun is not intended
> to
> > be sexist, especially from a non-nature speaker, but I am really
> struggling
> > to find a reasonable interpretation this last sentence. The best I can
> come
> > up with is that you are trying to be funny and it's lost in translation.
> Is
> > this what you intended?
>
> It was a joke, indeed. It is getting dangerous to joke, guys....
>
That's the problem with political correctness. I know that some people,
mainly in the USA but not so much elsewhere, find PC very important. But
they should not forget:
- In international settings (such as here!) you simply can not expect that
everybody knows about fine details of the English language. For example, my
German translation for "guys" would be "Leute", which is 100% neutral and
actually only exist in plural (there is no "der Leut/ die Leut" referring
to a single person), and I suppose in French (Nathann's principal language)
it is "les gens", which I think is similar. So, I was shocked when someone
stated that Nathann was sexist when speaking about "10 to 20 guys
discussing".
--> If we'd start with PC, we would seriously discriminate non-native
English speakers. Thus, PC is politically incorrect when used in an
inter-cultural setting.
- In the case of cultural differences, which sometimes become apparent in
jokes that can't be understood by people from another culture, one should
generally assume that the other person does *not* have a bad intention.
Also known as "in dubio pro".
--> If you can see a neutral or positive meaning in what someone says, then
you shouldn't assume a bad intention (double meaning of "to assume" is
totally intended here...).
- PC is a moving target. Words that used to be perfectly neutral in the
past are now considered offensive. And words that have been used as insult
of a minority are sometimes taken up by the minority and re-defined as
positive --- but then sometimes the minority would only allow the use of
the "formerly offensive" word by members of the minority, not by outsiders.
Which is discrimination answered by discrimination, and is near to
impossible to understand for non-native speakers, which is again
discriminating.
--> Don't start to try and define what is offensive. It is useless.
So, please cut PC out! There is some truth in its basic idea (one should
speak in a way that does not exclude people that shouldn't be excluded),
but it becomes totally unreasonable and seriously discriminating in any
pluralistic setting. That's funny, since PC pretends to support pluralism,
but from my perspective it miserably fails. PC (when it is supposed to be
more than a very rough guideline) is unacceptable as the base of a
pluralistic society such as ours.
Back to the question of a code of conduct.
- Law (or a code of conduct) can define what is misbehaviour, but it can
not *prevent* misbehaviour.
- A committee that creates bad consequences for offenders would
theoretically be able to prevent continued misbehaviour. However, I'd think
the creation of such committee would be overbearing. Sage is not a state.
- It strikes me as perfectly possible that person A acts in compliance with
a code of conduct, but still person B feels offended by person A. This is a
totally normal situation in real life and keeps courts busy. And this
situation can by definition not be avoided by *any* kind of code of conduct.
- I know that some people disagree with me, but I truly believe that
bluntly punishing a criminal is *not* helpful for the crime victim. And far
less when it is not a crime but just "civil" misbehaviour.
I do acknowledge that there has been hurt feeling on sage-(combinat-)devel
in the past, but I think our existing way of dealing with it is of a very
suitable kind. Certainly it could be improved ("be more supportive for the
offended", and "avoid replying to an offender in an offensive way, since
this would feed the troll"), but a code of conduct would totally change our
existing approach, and this strikes me as plain wrong.
William was correct in counting my vote as "-1".
Cheers,
Simon
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