@davidgerard let me guess, they're using a variant of the Contributor Covenant to do that. It's real good for suppressing people, it's what it was made for.
@adversary Indeed.
https://go.dev/conduct
Such codes of conduct are designed to ensure that a central power structure (usually a corporation) has total and unappealable control on the project and can use such power with minimal review. In this case, ultimate power on any conflict is given to Google's OSPO (whoever that is now that Chris Dibona has been laid off).
@nemobis @adversary That's absolutely not what CC is made for. It's what fake corporate or ass-covering CoCs that ignore power dynamics and entrenched systems of oppression are made for. CC is designed not to do that, but of course a bad actor adopting or adapting it as CYA can try to use it that way.
The CC was primarily adapted from the policy documents of the Geek Feminism wiki, which itself was a project of the Ada Initiative.
Those policy docs were written by a dyadic trans man from the Bay Area named Tim Chevalier (aka Monadic, aka fatneckbeardguy on Twitter). Chevalier designed these policy documents to not just enable, but to actively sanction the use of these policies to suppress his political opposition.
1/24
The CC was directly adapted from these policy documents by Coraline Ehmke, who is a friend of Chevalier's. That's why the GF wiki is referenced in the footer of it.
The other thing referenced in the footer was the first attempt to turn the GF policies into a CoC.
2/24
If you hunt around on Twitter, you may be able to find Coraline's side of their conversation discussing how the intention of the GF policy, the CC, and the use of the language in them is intended to enable the enforcing of their specific political aims by way of protecting certain classes of people.
You won't be able to see Chevalier's side of that chat, he locked his accounts after being fired from Google in 2018.
3/24
There are a number of classes of people that Chevalier wanted to be able to act against with impunity, but I will limit my comments to the specific prejudice of his which I have direct experience of and which I can explain the full implications of.
Strap in, this gets nasty.
4/24
Tim Chevalier is a massive, raging #interphobe. The protected classes of people were specifically devised to prevent #intersex people being protected on account of our intersex variations; which are all physical, genetic variations.
The only way for us to be protected is if we accept his position that intersex is under the trans umbrella or that it is a disability.
Both of these are wrong.
5/24
The view of intersex-led human rights orgs is that issues of both #trans and #intersex rights fundamentally boil down to matters of #BodilyAutonomy and #SelfDetermination. So intersex people should be free of non-consensual medical interventions, while everyone should be free to choose whatever medical treatment is right for them, including trans people.
Chevalier does not share this view.
6/24
Chevalier's position is that everything centres around access to medical treatments. These procedures are either available or they're not; and he views the fight for #intersex human rights as a potential threat to #trans healthcare.
Especially the campaigns to end #IntersexGenitalMutilation (#IGM) and other sterilising procedures.
7/24
The GF policies, the CC, and all derivative policies have been intentionally crafted to enforce these prejudices within all the projects and orgs which adopt them or any policy derived from them.
As this thread already shows, that includes some quite large projects; such as entire programming languages, like #GoLang and #Python. It also includes #FreeBSD (hi @benno) and the #LinuxKernel.
8/24
My own adverse encounters with this stemmed from direct conflict with Chevalier in the middle of 2016 by way of the Geek Feminism wiki. In that case he used the policy documents he devised to silence my attempt to correct his definition of what #intersex is on that site (which states, amongst other things, that intersex is "under the trans umbrella").
9/24
One of the tactics used by Chevalier in this conflict, and which Coraline Ehmke has also used in some of her online discussions, is to redefine "biological essentialism" to cover all discussion of physical sex characteristics and thus all discussion of intersex variations.
Real biological essentialism is stating things like "men are XY and women are XX" and that example is interphobic because there are intersex variations that fall outside that.
10/24
Chevalier and Ehmke redefine it to cover discussion of any biological trait. In doing so they enable classifying intersex people discussing intersex variations as the same thing.
So any discussion of the genetic causes of an intersex variation (bear in mind that many of them are named for the nature of that genetic variation), is now reclassified as biological essentialism and thus transphobic.
11/24
Thus they are both able to twist the actual meaning of biological essentialism to use it as a means to explicitly silence intersex people, whom they see as a threat to trans rights.
Mainly as a result of an unfounded fear of the consequences of intersex people obtaining human rights and banning non-consensual medical interventions.
12/24
To use myself as an example, this is a non-exhaustive list of how I am in automatic breach of the GF wiki policies, the CC and all policies derived from them:
1) I am intersex and neither trans nor cis.
2) I oppose IGM and other non-consensual medical interventions.
3) My intersex variation is not a disability.
13/24
4) My intersex variation is a naturally occurring (cause = pure random chance, BTW, and that's true random, not pseudo-random like in computing) physical, genetic variation.
5) I believe it is possible for everyone to be able to be free of non-consensual medical intervention, while being able to access whatever healthcare they do wish to consent to.
14/24
6) I do NOT believe that intersex people are inherently transphobic just for existing.
7) As a public signatory to the Darlington Statement I clearly support the intersex human rights movement (hi @intersexaus).
https://ihra.org.au/darlington-statement/
15/24
8) Support for the Darlington Statement is mutually exclusive from the GF wiki policies, the #ContributorCovenant and ALL policies and CoCs derived from them.
9) They are mutually exclusive because Tim Chevalier explicitly and intentionally crafted his policies to facilitate the enforcement of his view of us in any community in which those policies or their derivatives apply.
16/24
10) I believe that opposing the rights of #intersex people to #BodilyAutonomy is inherently #interphobic.
11) I believe that even if current medical interventions on intersex people do provide medical practitioners the means of honing the skills and knowledge to practice gender affirming care; that is not justification to use intersex people for that purpose.
17/24
12) To reiterate the previous point; I believe that intersex people are deserving of human rights and should not be used as experiments for the benefit of others.
13) I also believe that intersex people should be free to be who and what we are, and to express ourselves on these issues without censure or suppression from #endosex people (dyadic/endosex = not intersex).
18/24
Every project and organisation, whether commercial or not, which adopts any version of these policies in any capacity has the interphobia baked in. No ifs, buts, or maybes. As a consequence they are all interphobic.
Google is particularly egregious with this; having hired both Chevalier and #AdaInitiave co-founder, Mary Gardiner. They've made interphobia part of their culture.
19/24
@adversary
First of all let me say this has been interesting to read, and this misuse of the term "biological essentialism" that you describe seems rather concerning.
However, I don't understand your argument that *every* project that uses the ConCov is automatically hostile to intersex people.
There seem to be quite a few projects that have picked the ConCov just because other projects use it and the text itself seems okay, without any considerations regarding its history being a factor.
I would think each such project makes its own choices in how to interpret the document, and many would choose an intersex-friendly interpretation. If intersex people raise concerns I would think such a project would usually choose to just add intersex to the protected categories of people, rather than go with this very strange abuse of the term "biological essentialism".
Or at least, I would hope so.
(nevermind because this reply will never arrive; I forgot I have made an "interesting life decision" with my instance choice)
