Background
This is not meant to show that fighting sexism never works. It is meant to show splainers that they need to think and research a little before they come up with grand plans.
Form letter
A form letter response inspired by the anti-spam form letter.
Your post advocates a (select all that apply):
- technical
- legal
- vigilante
approach to fighting sexism in geek communities. Your idea will not work. Here is why it will not work (select all that apply):
- it's been tried several times already
- people accused of harassment and assault are often not ostracised from their community by the mere fact of the accusation, in fact their treatment often serves as an illustration of how easy it is to get away with such things
- people who say or do sexist things aren't easily identifiable by personal characteristics
- people say or do sexist things to their friends as well as to strangers
- people say or do sexist things to strangers as well as to their friends
- the police don't much care about this issue
- escalating to physical violence is a significant legal risk
- escalating to physical violence is a significant health risk
- not everyone has an army of large male friends who are very experienced at fighting, and the people who don't deserve safety too
- women in relationships with sexists deserve safety too
- very few people have enough power themselves that they can freely cut all sexists entirely out of their lives
- it is exceptionally unlikely that most people will stop noticing other people's gender cues any time soon
- it is exceptionally unlikely that most people will abandon seeing their gender as a key aspect of their identity
- spam versus ham is an easy text classification problem, hurtful versus not hurtful likely isn't
- a significant proportion of geek men have spent their whole lives knowing what feminism and sexism are, so waiting another generation is unlikely to change things by itself
- centralising all anti-sexism efforts under your control is a little vulnerable to single-point-of-failure problems
Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
- no one listening to complaints
- no one believing complaints
- no one caring much about the behaviour the complaint is about
- the unpleasantness of having every blogger in the world give their opinion on whether or not you were asking for it in that particular situation
- women's own sexual desires
- the experience of anyone with a gender identity other than "male" or "female"
- the experience of anyone with a gender identity that does not match the one assigned to them at birth
- asshats
- the patriarchy
- the kyriarchy
The following philosophical objections may also apply:
- speaking on behalf of all women everywhere is impossible
- you are very unlikely to have the most complete knowledge of oppression in this conversation
- disempowered or oppressed people should not be responsible for fixing their situation
- it isn't a universal law that women are nicer or more moral people than men
- even in the feminist utopia, being really really nice to people doesn't mean you get to have sex with them
- expecting oppressed people to modify their behavior to avoid oppression, while not expecting oppressors to change their behavior, is oppressive
- requiring women to behave exactly as you instruct them at all times in order to not experience sexism is itself sexist
See also
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