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by hnnsj 3287 days ago
How about we all stop looking for reasons to be offended all the time and presume innocence and good faith until we actually do get a clearly expressed intent or do feel genuinely uncomfortable (as opposed to slightly annoyed)? I'm sure a lot of these situations can be explained by cultural differences or even language barriers such as in this case. English is the de-facto language of the tech scene, but that doesn't mean that everyone who joins in a discussion can be expected to master all the nuances of the language. It seems to be hard enough for Brits and Americans, just imagine how it is for us whose native language isn't English at all.

To be clear, I'm not talking about the harassment case here, I'm talking about the "call them women" comment.

2 comments

We have to do better on our Education to get this going, I know in America they don't properly teach cultures (candy coated stories and stereotypes are vast) and social communication at early ages. They leave children to their own devices to figure it out.
Just gonna leave this here for y'all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle