| 6 Nov 2021 |
 abathur | I agree that some of this is just sloppy definition creep, but I do also wonder if some of this reaction is driven by cognitive dissonance around how the terms apply to the context | 23:58:16 |
| 7 Nov 2021 |
| abathur | I'm not sure I can expound on what I mean without making light of the current effort or fascism, but: I imagine a lot of people would raise an eyebrow if they followed up on a flier advertising woodworking classes and the website noted that the workshop opposed the spread of ideas rooted in communism | 00:12:31 |
| abathur | In that sense I'm not sure it's entirely unfounded for people who didn't already imagine the workshop as political or politicized, to see that statement as an indication that it would be | 00:17:13 |
| abathur | * In that sense I'm not sure it's entirely unfounded for people who didn't already imagine the workshop as political or politicized to see such a statement as an indication that it would be | 00:17:34 |
 Irenes | I'm sure there is cognitive dissonance, yeah | 01:09:38 |
| Irenes | we're going to have to do more of that work to explain this perspective | 01:09:44 |
| Irenes | it's nothing that hasn't been said before, but still | 01:09:50 |
| Irenes | like, so, I'm trans and have various pretty serious disabilities, and that doesn't go away, even though I am also wealthy and moderately well-known in queer tech circles and all that | 01:10:47 |
| Irenes | people from marginalized backgrounds experience the world differently | 01:10:59 |
| Irenes | we can't avoid being aware of certain things, that other people usually push away from their awareness | 01:11:18 |
| Irenes | or don't take seriously | 01:11:21 |
| Irenes | or underestimate | 01:11:25 |
| Irenes | we chose, when writing the RFC, to put this on the table, because otherwise we'd only be asked why we tried to hide it, you know? | 01:12:06 |
| Irenes | people would wonder what the agenda was | 01:12:29 |
| Irenes | and furthermore, in any sufficiently large group of people there's someone who actually supports fascism. I don't mean anyone in particular, I mean that it's a statistical certainty. | 01:13:33 |
| abathur | nod | 01:13:44 |
| Irenes | and we didn't want to create a risk that someone in that position could start casting aspersions about a hidden agenda | 01:13:47 |
| Irenes | and that everyone else would feel like there were two minority groups talking to each other and leaving the majority out of the conversation | 01:14:02 |
| Irenes | we wanted to make this stuff all visible so it can be discussed for real | 01:14:17 |
| Irenes | and yeah, I apologize that it scares people. I know that. I mean, it scares me, but it scares me all the time so I have learned to let go of the fear and just do the stuff I have to do. | 01:17:41 |
 tomberek | Irenes: The absence of that statement would have caused questions? By whom? | 01:26:34 |
| Irenes | by people who can sense that the RFC has some ideological position behind it (which is anyone with solid reading comprehension, I'd hope) but aren't sure what it is | 01:27:40 |
| tomberek | I'm not understanding. Was it to provide clarity about the ideological position of the proposal? I'm not sure what the questions would be. | 01:52:25 |
| Irenes | yes. | 01:56:12 |
| Irenes | the questions would be: what is the ideology behind this proposal? how can we trust someone who writes an ideological proposal but doesn't disclose what the ideology is? | 01:56:44 |
| Irenes | remember, people have vastly differing amounts of context about all this stuff. there are certain respects in which we didn't adequately take that into account in the first draft, but we did think about it. | 01:57:32 |
| tomberek | When a large amount of questions did come in, and the ensuing confusion and escalation in the discussion, did that suggest that the proposal should retain that clause for clarity? | 02:01:17 |
| Irenes | (sorry about the delay, I was doing other stuff) | 03:46:40 |
| Irenes | yeah, I mean, we surfaced the issue so that it could be discussed, and people had questions because they'd never thought about it before, and that was the discussion we wanted to have. | 03:47:27 |
| Irenes | I don't know if I would say "clarity" as the reason for keeping it at that point, but certainly I don't think removing it would accomplish anything positive, and it would send a message that I would expect to have pretty negative effects. | 03:48:09 |
