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by torb-xyz 2206 days ago
Even if you don't experience discrimination based on body size, enough people do that it's become a subject and there are dedicated activists working to end discrimination based on size.

Additionally however, I don't understand how including it can be harmful? At the very worst it's a rule that never get's utilised because nobody ended up getting discriminated because of their body. There seem to be only potential upside and no potential downside.

AFAIK there doesn't exist a consistent systemic discrimination of people based on eyebrow length, but if it did, yes, why not write it in?

People in CS tend tot think you can just use universal abstractions to solve human problems the same way you can with programming (giant base class problem non-withstanding). I used to believe this too. Why call out specifics when a general description will do? But what I've learned is that we have to specifically call out any discrimination that is likely to occur. Yes, this is more complicated and certainly less elegant than a simple ”treat everybody well” statement, but the world has very clearly demonstrated that this kind of blanket statements simply don't work. People always think that group X or Y is an exception and that it's acceptable to treat them poorly, and thus you have to specifically call out all the groups that you should actually treat well.

1 comments

In short, the problem is that it's divisive as well as pointless. If I tell you to follow one of the world's "golden rules" (e.g., Treat others as you would wish to be treated.), you will tend to remember that we are all walking through the world carrying our unique burdens, and will perhaps remember that when dealing with your fellow man.

If I provide a list of specific categories, you will tend to think not of the unity of humanity, but of a specific set of historic problems, and tend to rank those you're talking to in terms of those sets. As we're seeing in contemporary culture, this generally makes things worse, not better.