Just a Question from a man

[ikt]

Why does everything have to be only offensive or not offensive? That is a false dichotomy. Forget about offense. You don't have to get caught up in the term of offense or offensive. Mark chose certain words to express a point and better words could have been chosen that would be less exclusive. Has Mark committed a grave offense? Should he be locked up in prison? Is he a chauvinist pig? No, no, and no.

Does that mean nothing could be suggested for him to change in his speeches to better include those who are usually excluded in FOSS communities? Again, no.

I don't really care what offends you or doesn't offend you. I do care if Mark can express the same point in a more inclusive way that he consider doing so.

I understand what you're saying but I don't think you're addressing what I am trying to figure out, could he have been more inclusive? yes, is this worthy of 10 front pages calling for him to say sorry to all the people he offended, multiple OMGWTF blog and twitter posts.. ? where is the offense, what is to say sorry for, sorry I was not inclusive enough?

The thing that saddens me the most is that a large number of blog posts have shown people to be more immature than I imagined, and jono bacon who I thought was supposed to be this horrible sexist guy ends up making a fantastic post.

http://www.jonobacon.org/2009/09/30/...-conversation/

I am tired of seemingly only ever reading about the topic of women in Open Source within the context of a conflict scenario which typically spawns a spat over whether specific behaviour is deemed offensive or not. It feels like the topic has become very one-dimensional.

heh