An Open Letter to the Open Source Community (Melissa Draper)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 04:01:32PM +0100, Robert McWilliam wrote:
> This was one of the examples Melissa gave as well (though indirectly).
> I don't want to prove your point about how terrible this community is
> in defending sexism, but: Can someone tell me what is offensive about
> that joke? It relies on there being differences between males and
> females which can make dealings between them hard, but I don't get how
> that can be offensive since that is also (partly) what Melissa is
> saying. 

The punchline of the joke is "for men, relating to women is so difficult as
to be impractical---even for an omnipotent deity".

The message is "don't bother trying".

It's easy to overlook bias when you aren't on the receiving end.  As an
exercise, rewrite the joke using roles to which you've been sensitized
yourself.  For example, to say that your best friend's age, ethnic
background, religion, income level, sexual preference, etc. is
incomprehensible to someone of your own persuasion.

-- 
 - mdz