Re: [rain1@airmail.cc] Delete abortion joke

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com>]

On May  6, 2018, Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:

> On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 4:18 PM, Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> wrote:
>> On May  6, 2018, Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> (Part of why I have repeatedly refused to back my patch out is to
>>> stand for the principle that the GNU Project Leader _shouldn't_ have
>>> ex officio power to override a consensus decision of the active
>>> maintainers of a specific piece of software.  He should have to
>>> persuade us to change our minds, instead.)
>> 
>> Do you agree, however, that the consensus was only apparent, because
>> nobody else thought of asking him, and I, who was uncomfortable with the
>> change, decided to only speak up after consulting him?

> I am not sure if I understand this question.  If the following
> hypothetical scenario doesn't answer it, please let me know what you
> still want to know.

Your hypothetical scenario seems to have been carefully crafted so as to
discount my opinion.  I may not have been an active GNU libc developer,
but I'm still appointed by the GNU project as one of the maintainers,
and part of the job is precisely to stand for GNU's values and try to
steer the community when it diverges from that.

>> Wait, is [abort] only for intentional termination?  I was thinking
>> miscarriage throughout most of the entire conversation, and missed some
>> of the possibilities of trauma for that.

> In modern American English, yes, "abort[ion]" is applied only to
> intentional termination of a human pregnancy.

Interesting.  I believe this is not the case in Latin-based languages;
at least it isn't in those I speak.

>>> Do you see how _merely bringing the topic up at all_ could be an
>>> unwelcome reminder for someone who had had a bad abortion-related
>>> experience in the past, whatever that was?

>> I do, but I also realize that the alternative would be to remove the
>> documentation for abort altogether.

> I don't see how that follows.

The first point I brought into this conversation was that, possibly
because of my language background, the very definition of the function,
because of its name (and most often uses thereof) bring me memories of a
very traumatic miscarriage my wife and I had many years ago.  That was
one of the triggers that led me into depression for several years.

> (There _are_ words that are problematic in themselves to the point
> where I would support eradicating them from the manual, e.g. 'slave',
> but this is not one of them.)

For someone who appears to be so concerned about people's traumatic
experiences regarding intentional termination of pregnancies, you seem
to be far too unconcerned about those who underwent unintentional ones
but have different language backgrounds.

There are a lot more people around the world with a different language
background from yours, than people with a similar one, and that
nevertheless are able to communicate in English to the point of being
able to read the manual.  Our ability to do so does not disconnect us
from our native languages and connotations that words bring about.  The
false authority with which you state that this word is not one of them
is not just offensive to me, because it suggests you don't accept my
earlier report, and disrespectful to others like me who have suffered
such traumatic experiences, and whose memories are brought back by the
term despite your denial.


I haven't double-checked, but I guess you'll see that all of the people
who brought in opinions in support of keeping the joke, and even
suggesting other jokes along the same lines, have Latin surnames.  I
guess that's because, for us, the topics of abortion and miscarriages
are already a given within the definition of 'abort', so the humor about
the unrelated topic of censorship helps release the tension.


See, what was just a matter of censorship and pregnancy termination is
now also a matter of racial/linguistic discrimination :-(

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer