[DanBC]

It's pretty hard to explain.

Some meet-ups and projects had a problem with people being fucking arseholes. They developed "codes of conduct" to help them deal with those harassing abusive people.

This woman gave a talk to this meeting. She described her experience of working in open source. She was careful to say it worked for her but might not for other people; she was careful to say that it was anecdotal.

Someone at this meeting thought that she should have given stronger warnings about open source. That person is saying that by not giving the bigger warning the speaker was performing a micro-aggression against all the other people who've had poor experiences in open source because she was supposedly erasing their experience.

They're saying the speaker violated the code of conduct.

When the speaker asked for clarification the meeting organisers didn't apologise for making a mistake; they persisted in their description of the speaker as someone who violated the CoC.

So, that's roughly what the meeting organisers think. Clearly, they're wrong. Micro-aggressions are a thing and they're something we should be mindful[1] of, but this isn't an example of a micro-aggression. And there's a difference between a woman saying "I had a good experience in open source, but other people might not" and for example a man saying "there are no problems in open source development you just need to toughen up".

[1] Mostly because people who are oblivious to micro-aggressions tend to be taking discriminatory actions that potentially leave their companies open to lawsuits.

[sjcoles]

So we're supposed to simply know what other people's past, present, and future experiences may or will be?

Wouldn't using indicators like class, race, and gender to make these assumptions be a micro-aggression in and of itself?

E: To be clear I am honestly curious. This whole argument gets into a circular reasoning of "oh you should just know you silly cis het male, if I have to tell you it won't make a difference/defeat the purpose."

[DanBC]

> we're supposed to simply know what other people's past,

Can you tell me how I can reword "be mindful of" to avoid the implication that you need to know anything at all about other people? Because that's not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was "being aware of micro-aggressions is a small part of not being a complete cunt".

[sjcoles]

The issue I have is the goal posts are constantly moving in an ever frustrating way.

In one setting being mindful of one aspect that may affect the group will be acceptable but may be perceived as a slight with another group of listeners.

It truly feels like a no-win situation.

Yes, I do think micro-aggression is real, but when disparate groups, even if they are morally or politically aligned, have vastly different definitions it becomes a tool to oust instead of include.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think the problem is with how you worded it. I think the problem is with what happened at the meeting. How was the presenter supposed to know, before receiving feedback, that someone would consider her words to be "othering"?

[icebraining]

But DanBC explicitly said the person admonishing the speaker was wrong, so how are you expecting him to answer that?

[AnimalMuppet]

I wasn't. I was agreeing with DanBC, not arguing with him.