Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos at redhat dot com>]

On 04/30/2018 11:03 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> The point of this joke is even more important now than it was when I
> first wrote it.  Please do not remove it.

The problem with the joke is that it touches a difficult and complex
topic, namely abortion, and this could be a trigger for certain
individuals causing them to relive a traumatic memory. I cannot condone
that we add triggers like these to a technical manual, particularly
when individuals would not expect such jokes in the manual. It can do
harm to these individuals when they expect to find themselves in a safe
space.

> GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is
> not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this.

I agree, but that's not the only reason I supported the consensus
for removal (see above).

I suggest two courses of action.

* We avoid jokes. They can be misinterpreted by individuals
  without the cultural background to understand the joke. Instead of
  the joke we should just state clearly exactly what we are worried
  about in as direct a language as we possibly can, and include a
  trigger warning (as is good practice). I would accept such a patch.
  I encourage Alex Oliva to draft such a patch and propose it for
  inclusion with appropriate references.

* We use another venue to discuss such issues. This is my recommended
  course of action. It places this discussion in a venue that has the
  appropriate context and support for such discussions. For example
  these issues could be brought up with NARAL [1] and we could support
  them with more than just jokes.

We should show our support clearly instead of using a joke.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.

[1] https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/