Hi, welcome to Geek Feminism Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the Talk:EMACS virgins joke page.
Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Skud (Talk) 17:30, 18 July 2009
The religious argument, and the mess we're in
Moved from Talk:EMACS virgins joke Thayvian 10:28, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
I see someone has corrected the rather... unfortunate bit in the previous version that said RMS' comments about religion and St IGNUicus were totally out of left field and irrelevant to the original e-mail (omitting to mention the part they were replying to). I reckon it's far from irrelevant, though. The paragraph in question was telling RMS that he shouldn't have done the St IGNUicus bit any any form because it was "inappropriate" to "marginalize members of the community by mocking Christianity". It's probably pretty much inevitable that this would derail the e-mail exchange away from sexism; jokes about religion were/are a big part of the hacker subculture.
While the religious aspect is a side issue in terms of the percentage of the e-mail devoted to it, it easily pushes the sexism issue that should be the main issue down to "side issue" status for someone not used to dealing with issues related to sexism. After all, the sexism complaint is just about one aspect of his presentation which he doesn't always include. The religion complaint is far broader and more personal - it attacks his right to parody religion at all, which he appears to be very attached to.
I suspect that the religious complaint probably also devalued the sexism complaints it was attached to, even when they were re-iterated. The person e-mailing has an axe to grind against the entire skit - why should RMS take his complaints about sexism seriously? (Before you say "because sexism is serious", bear in mind that it's not going to be immediately obvious to RMS that it is sexist.) An e-mail from someone else may perhaps get better results, though probably still not as good as before religion was brought into it. What a mess. -- MakoMK 17:30, 18 July 2009 (UTC)