Spamming PyPI with stupid packages

[Ben Finney]

Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> writes:

> On Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:54:09 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > It objectifies women.
>
> So you claim.

I'm sure you have a hundred ready rationalisations for why a joke that
has “girlfriend” as a fungible object, together with “car” and “house”
as things to mechanically import into one's life, is somehow not
objectifying women.

But, while those rationalisations may satisfy you, I'm not interested in
hearing them. If you don't see that the joke objectifies women, that
tells me quite a lot about how blinkered you are to the problem.

For what it's worth, I'm very familiar with such rationalisations,
having employed them many times myself. Fortunately there are women who
will speak up against it and encourage men to do the same 
<URL:http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x168.html>.

> Since you can't or won't persuade me (and anyone else reading) that
> this sort of joke is harmful, does that mean that you will stop
> claiming that it is harmful?

I have no idea what it would take to persuade you in particular. I do
know that the combined privileges of being white, male, not-poor, and
English-fluent (and many more privileges, I'm sure) grant both of us the
luxury of barely even perceiving the harm done by a pervasive atmosphere
of even low-level prejudice against any given group of people.

Women (to return to the people in question), on the other hand, do not
have that luxury. In this community they have no option but to be aware
of the privileges we males have here.

We have very effective cognitive blinders, merely because we have never
needed to know what it's like being a woman in this prevalently-male
field. The onus is on us to try hard to see, despite those blinders and
easy rationalisations, that there is a lot we allow from our fellows
which is perpetuating a hostile environment.

I'm not making a fuss about one sexist joke, which has already been
retracted by its author. I'm making a fuss about allowing and, worse,
defending such jokes as a tacitly-accepted norm of our community. And I
hope those of us who prefer to think of ourselves as not-sexist will act
to clean up our house more.

-- 
 \          “A hundred times every day I remind myself that […] I must |
  `\       exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have |
_o__)                received and am still receiving” —Albert Einstein |
Ben Finney