Their behavior (in having a racist and sexist policy) serves to subtly redefine their community guidelines. This type of hypocrisy leads to redefining of rules the same way the Seven Commandments in Animal Farm evolved.
This post[0] from the Advocate has a great line that is relevant here. The current dialogue around diversity "...propagates something harmful: the idea that gender is simply the lack of maleness, race a lack of whiteness, sexuality a lack of gayness."
When someone establishes rules and does not adhere to those rules, they end up redefining the words in those rules until they no longer carry the literal meaning they once did.
The policy reads:
Our last social rule bans subtle racism, sexism, homophobia,
transphobia, and other kinds of bias.
... but now means:
Our last social rule bans subtle racism (except against white
people), sexism (except against cisgender men), homophobia,
transphobia, and other kinds of bias (except any bias against
white cisgender men).
The experience of that individual from the Advocate demonstrates that terms like diversity, racism, sexism and bias are being warped and redefined by society to allow for exceptions that don't include white, straight, cisgender men (and Asian men in the context of engineering).
Language evolves, and the actions of people can shape how it evolves.
Looks like I was wrong in my other post[0] in this thread about people using downvotes to moderate posts they merely disagree with. Apparently those interested in intersectionality, refuse to consider the possibility that discrimination against white cisgender males and asian cisgender men is a thing.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not anti-diversity. I'm actually a huge proponent of diversity. I just believe that hypocrisy and reserve discrimination is the wrong way to get there. And I believe that there are many more dimensions in which someone can contribute to the diversity of a group besides gender, race and sexual identity. Cognitive and cultural diversity for example are examples of two other vectors in which someone can contribute to diversity. What happened to MLK's dream of focusing on content of character instead of color of a person's skin? At the end of the day characteristics of like gender, race and identity are merely a few of the many factors that contribute to the sum total of experiences that makes someone who they are and who they will be become. The are just superficial proxies for the type of diversity we should be seeking out and celebrating and that's diversity of content of character.
What kind of message are we sending our kids when things like this can happen:
Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls
only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was
explained to him that girls need special help to become
interested in technology, and that if there are boys
around, the girls will be too scared to try.
My son came home very confused. You see, he grew up with a
mom who coded while she breastfed and brought him to his
first LUG meeting at age seven weeks. The first time he
saw a home-built robot, it was shown to him by a local
hackerspace member, a woman who happens to administer one
of the country's biggest supercomputers. Why was his
school acting like girls were dumb?
Thanks so much, modern-day "feminism", for putting very
unfeminist ideas in my son's head. [2]
This post[0] from the Advocate has a great line that is relevant here. The current dialogue around diversity "...propagates something harmful: the idea that gender is simply the lack of maleness, race a lack of whiteness, sexuality a lack of gayness."
When someone establishes rules and does not adhere to those rules, they end up redefining the words in those rules until they no longer carry the literal meaning they once did.
The policy reads:
... but now means: The experience of that individual from the Advocate demonstrates that terms like diversity, racism, sexism and bias are being warped and redefined by society to allow for exceptions that don't include white, straight, cisgender men (and Asian men in the context of engineering).Language evolves, and the actions of people can shape how it evolves.
[0] http://www.advocate.com/politics/commentary/2011/01/20/im-wh...