Doc Kinne wrote:
You just made my day, Scott. THANK YOU!
Maia, my concern with such a "banned topic" is that it targets LGBT
people and is therefore blatantly discriminatory. Now, I say that, at
this point, not exactly having READ it so I may be talking out of my
butt (although that hasn't happened in at least the last 5 milliseconds!)
The issue is what is banned by this policy? If I say, "My boyfriend and
I installed Ubuntu together last night and liked it" will that get me
kicked out of the channel by this policy? Because I'm a boy with a
boyfriend, is that not seen as an "LGBT topic." However, if you tried to
kick me out for saying, "My girlfriend and I installed Ubuntu..." people
would be in an uproar because no one sees anything wrong with that.
There cannot be any LGBT policies on our lists. They are discriminatory.
There are no Black policies. There are no Jewish policies. Why are there
LGBT policies?
I'm not sure how you can NOT discuss gender because its "usually"
obvious by the name. Discussions regarding the concept of gender may be
inappropriate because the channel is for dicussing Ubuntu topics, but
this is true both for Straights and LGBT people. The same thing goes
with sexuality. You need to have the SAME standards for Straight people
and for LGBT people. No one bats an eye if a boy mentions his girlfriend
or his wife. No one SHOULD bat an eye if a boy mentions is boyfriend or
his husband. And if someone DOES bat an eye, they are in the wrong and
need to be dealt with.
Within the spectrum of sexuality discussions, of course, if a guy and a
girl are discussion how they got it on last night, I think that might be
inappropriate to the forum, but not more so and not less so than if two
guys or two girls were discussing the same thing.
So, Jimmy, thank you for bringing it up.
Scott, THANK YOU for looking into it. Such a policy (granted I've not
read it, so I may not actually know what I'm talking about) would
disturb me greatly and poison the community for me.
I think you're overdramatizing. Nobody's talking about different standards - I
don't think anyone is going to raise an eyebrow over a man saying "my boyfriend
and I..." (Ubuntu people are surprisingly accepting, it seems) or, PTB forbid,
kick over it.
I believe the "no gender/sexuality talks" policy applies to raising the topic
itself. For example, if someone started comparing sexual preferences.
To give a concrete example: recently, an old acquaintance from #uncyclopedia
read my blog, joined #ubuntu-women out of all channels (his explanation: "I did
a whois and I figured this'd be the quietest channel") and started asking me
questions about my gender identity: when did I discover it, does it imply I have
a sexual preference for males, etc. I didn't object to discussing that *per se*,
but I felt uncomfortable discussing it in an open channel - not for myself, but
for the reluctant bystanders. Basic questions, sure. Extended TG-related
discussions, I thought, would be inappropriate, so I suggested him to take it to PM.
On second thought, looking back at the log, Hobbsee could have objected (after I
already did) because of the personal nature of the conversation, not its
contents. Still, I think that freeform conversations about gender and sexuality
(and I specifically don't mean just mentioning it in passing), along with
politics and religion, should be treated on a liberum veto basis: if but one
person doesn't want to hear it, I'd drop the subject.
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