vox day, eric raymond, and the lambda conference blacklist
- April 13th, 2016
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LambdaConf – a functional programming conference – invited an active and overt white supremacist as a speaker. A bunch of people signed a petition protesting that; LambdaConf told them more or less to fuck off. Now the neofascists are targeting all the petitioners, and Eric Raymond, noted open source developer, has jumped in endorsing a do-not-hire blacklist.
And somehow, at the same time, you have the Horror Writers Association appointing fascist David A Riley to their award jury, and people are fighting over what’s wrong with that.
Now, Nick Mamatas argues that there’s a bit of a difference, in that awards are specifically bringing an entire aesthetic to a function, and Moldbug – the LambdaConf white supremacist speaker – was only going to be talking about code. True, but for me, it’s not really different, just different in degree, because developers are making decisions that affect the aesthetics of real life, all the time.
Take that flap recently where a GeoIP company sent every person looking up an IP address’s geographic location to a specific address in the middle of the US if they didn’t have an actual, correct hit for that IP address. They literally chose an old woman’s farm as their default, because it was the nearest address to geographical US centre.
As a result, she’s been facing years of abuse from strangers, because the company never thought somebody would look up some woman’s address online and go harass her.
They outright said that. Tell me that’s not bringing an aesthetic to software.
And just as much as that sort of programming aesthetic, there’s simple flat out personal safety. White supremacists – like misogynists – don’t believe that everybody in the room is an actual person, right? Unless the croud is whites only, or male only, or both, of course. Preferably both.
Take Dave Sim as an example of an overt misogynist. I won’t be in the same room with that man. Preferably not the same building; certainly not at the same event. That’s because he quite literally believes that women are not people, and that women exist only to drain off of real people, meaning men.
If I have to be in the same room with him, I want a gun, because I don’t trust him not to attack me or some other woman. I think it’s very unlikely, of course. But I’ve read his writing about women, and I would not rule it out. And if we woke up tomorrow and found he’d cut up some woman and put her parts in a dumpster, I would have exactly zero surprise.
And given that this shit happens, and happens routinely, I don’t think that’s irrational. I think it’s called real life impact.
So in the case of an overt white supremacist like Moldbug, you’d have to be profoundly stupid – on an emotional/empathetic level at very, very least – to think people of colour aren’t going to have the same reaction. Because that also happens, in real life.
And I don’t think most of these people are stupid. I just think they’re fine with that.
Which is much worse.
This is part of a collection of posts on racism, sexism, and homophobia in geek culture, covering a variety of specific subtopics. A sorted list of posts can be found here.
14 comments on Livejournal, 3 comments on Dreamwidth.
The thing that annoys me … well,at this moment in particular, since there is so *much* to be annoyed about … is that it is somehow fighting *against* this sort of thing that is “politicizing” a matter. White guy says something outrageous? No big deal. Someone objects, and bandies about the idea of taking action — *now* it’s political and not being true to the Original Subject or somesuch. This has been the case with the Puppies, with the HWA, and with LamdaConf; the status quo (or even going beyond it into outright reaction) is not political — only objecting is, and then “political” becomes a bad word.
Pfui, say I, though I think I may have a new privilege detector: when you honestly feel that you can be/that you hold a “nonpolitical” position on an issue where there are politics *anywhere*.
Particularly when you’re dealing with somebody like Moldbug, who has explicitly endorsed not just slavery in general, but race slavery in particular. jfc, how far do you have to go to the authoritarian right in order for it to be “not political” anymore? Is there a limit, because I don’t see one.
(And the answer is, of course there’s not, it’s ‘what we agree with and what holds us as straight white guys in an elevated position’ vs. ‘the people we’re abusing complaining about being abused’ that is the magic dividing line between ‘apolitical’ and ‘political.’)