[rylee]

> Questioning my right to exist with human dignity is not a "differing opinion", sorry.

>It is a "differing opinion", you think you have the right to exist with human dignity, he does not.

Even @meh knows he's in an uphill battle. This is a fucking joke. Who is transphobic in 2015? Why would you want someone like that on your team?

[kbenson]

I think it's less an issue of wanting the person on your team than it is of respecting that someone may have separate personal and private personas and that should be respected. If it's wrong to exclude a transgender person from a team based on their personal views and lifestyle, what's the argument that explains why it's acceptable to exclude the transphobic person? Cultural norms should be removed, where possible, from professional decisions.

[krainboltgreene]

> respecting that someone may have separate personal and private personas and that should be respected.

It wasn't private.

> Cultural norms should be removed, where possible, from professional decisions.

That's. Not. How. Humans. Work.

[kbenson]

> It wasn't private.

But was it in the context of this project? Were the views expressed along with information that linked to this project, or did someone have to look into the person (I don't know, I'm asking).

> That's. Not. How. Humans. Work.

I reject any argument that we shouldn't at least try to tame our more troublesome quirks as a species. Where possible we should reject our pre-programmed response to stimuli where it steers us wrong in favor of rational thought.

[wutbrodo]

I suppose it's too much to expect that you understand the hilarious irony of what you're saying. Racism, sexism, discrimination against gay and transgender people, hating and fearing people different from you: all of these are "how humans work". If everyone had your attitude of fatalism towards "how humans work" instead of fighting against our baser animal instincts, we'd have long ago given up on combating those ills. Thank God most people don't think like you.

[quesera]

> Cultural norms should be removed, where possible, from professional decisions.

Your qualifier doesn't help though. Business, law, and society all run on (and through the expression of) cultural norms.

Some of these cultural norms are regrettable, but you'll have a hard time getting large groups to agree on which ones are regrettable and which are the very foundations of our society.

[kbenson]

> Some of these cultural norms are regrettable, but you'll have a hard time getting large groups to agree on which ones are regrettable and which are the very foundations of our society.

Which is why I suggest caution when punishing someone professionally for what is seen as an extreme position personally. Moderating (but not removing) our desire to punish the outsider may yield a more fair society. I hope. I think it's a good goal to have, even if it's often unachievable.

[chazu]

I don't know the owner of the project, but it seems that they are more concerned about the possibility of their project becoming a political football than anything else, which makes sense to me - in theory.

It also seems logical to point out that the contributor in question was effectively politicizing the project by making a bigoted comment on twitter, which undermines my previous statement.

The core question to me, as someone who understands the desire to remain consciously apolitical (or to try to, as many would say its an impossible task), is this: is it even _possible_ for maintainers of projects to sidestep these sorts of things? What kind of code of conduct would a project need to adopt to make sure that issues like this detract minimally from the progress of the project itself? I'm curious what others who feel strongly about communities in OSS think.

[krainboltgreene]

> is it even _possible_ for maintainers of projects to sidestep these sorts of things?

You can try very hard but realistically we're human and we have biases and our biases dictate what we do. If you are transphobic it's going to influence your opinion of a changeset from a transgender person. That's how we're wired to work.

> What kind of code of conduct would a project need to adopt to make sure that issues like this detract minimally from the progress of the project itself.

The Clearwater.rb project pulled in the Contributor Covenant, for what that's wroth.

[DanBC]

What does a changeset from a trans person look like?

I'm pretty sure people get more worked up about spaces vs tabs (at least they used to) or curly braces.

I totally agree that any transphobic comments or activity connected to the project needs to be dealt with.

But it's weird that people think this behaviour does anything to persuade the bigots. It's totally ineffective method of persuasion.

[joshuapants]

>Why would you want someone like that on your team?

Presumably because their talents add value to the team. Do his opinions affect the software in any way? Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions? If not, who cares?

[rylee]

>Do his opinions affect the software in any way?

Excluding an entire swath of people.

>Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions?

Any future or current trans members of the Opal team who are or would be dissuaded away from a bigot.

[joshuapants]

> Excluding an entire swath of people.

That's interesting, you must have read different tweets than I did.

> Any future or current trans members of the Opal team who are or would be dissuaded away from a bigot.

In the string of tweets, the only abrasive behavior I saw came from Kurtis, not Elia. I don't think it's accurate to paint Elia as a bigot, though I don't agree with him.

edit: I can't reply to your post, but it's worth noting:

> He straight up says Transgender people are insane.

No, he didn't "straight up" say anything like that. You put those words in his mouth in your next post by appending a fragment of his post to your own interpretation of those words.

[krainboltgreene]

He straight up says Transgender people are insane.

How the hell is that not bigoted?

> That's interesting, you must have read different tweets than I did.

I'm reading reams of tweets saying transgender people refuse to work with a transphobic person.

[KingMob]

Don't forget that while trans developers are probably incredibly rare, the amount of trans-accepting developers who might be dissuaded is probably higher, and likely to grow.

[chazu]

Anecdotally it seems to me that the percentage of developers who are trans is actually higher than in the general populace. I'd be curious to see statistics though.

[krainboltgreene]

> Do his opinions affect the software in any way?

Yes.

> Is he unable to work with other team members because of his opinions?

Are any of his current or future team members transgender? Then yes.

> If not, who cares?

Wat.

[joshuapants]

As in "if his opinions don't affect the software and don't cause internal problems, then who cares."

edit: Oh I see, you're the guy from the Twitter thread.

[norea-armozel]

What if the team lead is transgender? Seriously, you need to take into account that there's another human on the end of the screen. This whole mess isn't an easy "separate politics from work" sort of thing. Folks like Elia I will never work with or for due to their beliefs. I've dealt with that in other workplaces and found my productivity plummet since I had to worry about being a target for harassment for being transgender. So, no it doesn't work in the real world.

[joshuapants]

> What if the team lead is transgender?

What if the team lead is a reproductive rights activist who doesn't like Elia's avowed anti-abortion stance?

> Seriously, you need to take into account that there's another human on the end of the screen.

I'm not a sociopath and I don't appreciate you painting me like one. Interestingly, if you applied that in the other direction you might find that Elia is a person on the other end of the screen and shouldn't be callously dismissed because he holds views you don't like.