On a private mailing list there have been some recent discussions about a Code of Conduct which demonstrate some great misunderstandings. The misunderstandings don’t seem particular to that list so it’s worthy of a blog post. Also people tend to think more about what they do when their actions will be exposed to a wider audience so hopefully people who read this post will think before they respond.
Jokes
The first discussion concerned the issue of making “jokes”. When dealing with the treatment of other people (particularly minority groups) the issue of “jokes” is a common one. It’s fairly common for people in positions of power to make “jokes” about people with less power and then complain if someone disapproves. The more extreme examples of this concern hate words which are strongly associated with violence, one of the most common is a word used to describe gay men which has often been associated with significant violence and murder. Men who are straight and who conform to the stereotypes of straight men don’t have much to fear from that word while men who aren’t straight will associate it with a death threat and tend not to find any amusement in it.
Most minority groups have words that are known to be associated with hate crimes. When such words are used they usually send a signal that the minority groups in question aren’t welcome. The exception is when the words are used by other members of the group in question. For example if I was walking past a biker bar and heard someone call out “geek” or “nerd” I would be a little nervous (even though geeks/nerds have faced much less violence than most minority groups). But at a Linux conference my reaction would be very different. As a general rule you shouldn’t use any word that has a history of being used to attack any minority group other than one that you are a member of, so black rappers get to use a word that was historically used by white slave-owners but because I’m white I don’t get to sing along to their music. As an aside we had a discussion about such rap lyrics on the Linux Users of Victoria mailing list some time ago, hopefully most people think I’m stating the obvious here but some people need a clear explanation.
One thing that people should consider “jokes” is the issue of punching-down vs punching-up [1] (there are many posts about this topic, I linked to the first Google hit which seems quite good). The basic concept is that making jokes about more powerful people or organisations is brave while making “jokes” about less powerful people is cowardly and serves to continue the exclusion of marginalised people. When I raised this issue in the mailing list discussion a group of men immediately complained that they might be bullied by lots of less powerful people making jokes about them. One problem here is that powerful people tend to be very thin skinned due to the fact that people are usually nice to them. While the imaginary scenario of less powerful people making jokes about rich white men might be unpleasant if it happened in person, it wouldn’t compare to the experience of less powerful people who are the target of repeated “jokes” in addition to all manner of other bad treatment. Another problem is that the impact of a joke depends on the power of the person who makes it, EG if your boss makes a “joke” about you then you have to work on your CV, if a colleague or subordinate makes a joke then you can often ignore it.
Who does a Code of Conduct Protect
One member of the mailing list wrote a long and very earnest message about his belief that the CoC was designed to protect him from off-topic discussions. He analysed the results of a CoC on that basis and determined that it had failed due to the number of off-topic messages on the mailing lists he subscribes to. Being so self-centered is strongly correlated with being in a position of power, he seems to sincerely believe that everything should be about him, that he is entitled to all manner of protection and that any rule which doesn’t protect him is worthless.
I believe that the purpose of all laws and regulations should be to protect those who are less powerful, the more powerful people can usually protect themselves. The benefit that powerful people receive from being part of a system that is based on rules is that organisations (clubs, societies, companies, governments, etc) can become larger and achieve greater things if people can trust in the system. When minority groups are discouraged from contributing and when people need to be concerned about protecting themselves from attack the scope of an organisation is reduced. When there is a certain minimum standard of treatment that people can expect then they will be more willing to contribute and more able to concentrate on their contributions when they don’t expect to be attacked.
The Public Interest
When an organisation declares itself to be acting in the public interest (EG by including “Public Interest” in the name of the organisation) I think that we should expect even better treatment of minority groups. One might argue that a corporation should protect members of minority groups for the sole purpose of making more money (it has been proven that more diverse groups produce better quality work). But an organisation that’s in the “Public Interest” should be expected to go way beyond that and protect members of minority groups as a matter of principle.
When an organisation is declared to be operating in the “Public Interest” I believe that anyone who’s so unable to control their bigotry that they can’t refrain from being bigoted on the mailing lists should not be a member.