[Noisebridge-discuss] Be Excellent to one another

[Meredith L. Patterson]

Brian Molnar wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Meredith L. Patterson 
> <mlp at thesmartpolitenerd.com <mailto:mlp at thesmartpolitenerd.com>> wrote:
> 
>     I regard this situation more along the lines of someone offering Jake a
>     fresh, tasty Ball Park frank, being told "no thanks, I'm vegan," and
>     then giving him shit about his choice to be vegan. 
> 
> Well that's an interesting analogy, but, way off.

It's funny you say that, because I thought Al's was way off in the sense 
that his analogy was to passive offense (no one's getting all het up at 
the mere *existence* of hot dogs^W^Wgendered language errors). But I see 
what you're saying; let me see if I can clarify below.

> It's more like a vegan being offered a tasty Ball Park frank and being 
> told "No, I'm vegan. You offering me that hot dog was taken as a 
> personal attack. I demand you apologize."

I agree that on a mailing list, no one knows anything about you (except 
maybe whether your spelling is any good) until you tell them. 
(ObNewYorkerCartoon: "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.")

I don't know whether Miah had ever mentioned anything on-list about her 
gender identity before this thread started; I personally didn't know 
until she clarified it. So, if we were letting me keep score (which 
we're not, but whatevs), Peter would get the "oh, shit, didn't realise, 
I'm sorry" pass -- but the people coming down hard on Miah for being 
upset about ohGodnotANOTHER instance of the crap she has to deal with as 
a transwoman are, IMO, being quite rude.

--mlp