contributor_covenant
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Kink and consensual, adult sexual proclivities
The point of this PR is to add language to protect already vulnerable people from discrimination based on kink or sexual proclivities.
This is a large enough topic that I would like to open it up for public discussion and get input on wording. Be sure to be respectful and remember our own CoC in these discussions.
This one is tricky, I think, because a simple clause to poke it makes a nice foothold to justify sexual behavior -- especially ambiguously so -- in spaces. In the absence of an enforcement document, I'm not sure what the best way to address it is.
It seems like most of the cases I can think of that would be a worry around this are covered by other parts of the CoC already. E.g. if someone was outed for a thing they keep out of a professional setting, that would be covered by the section about publishing others private information; discussions of sexual details inappropriate for a professional setting would be covered by the section about sexualized language/imagery; and the mention of sexual identity/orientation might cover a few things.
Do you have some use cases you (or others) feel aren't covered by the current code of conduct that you're concerned about adding coverage for?
This has been on my mind, because I've applied the CC CoC to one of my projects and it's got good image support, which means that it's almost inevitable that it it's going to be used for a person's kink, if people start to use it.
Let me see if I can try to enumerate some cases that came to my mind:
If someone's using the software to power their kink, that's covered by the overall software license and saying "...except porn" makes it fail most free software / open source license standards. And that doesn't touch the CoC because it's all about contributions.
If someone were to report a bug encountered while in the service of a kink, they'd have to carefully structure their bug or other sort of contribution to make sure that it was SFW. That's already covered, I think, by the unacceptable behavior section.
If a person has a kink on their own twitter/facebook/myspace/et al account and keeps a valid separation between that account/accounts and their public profile, that's covered by scope, I think. Outing someone and violating that separation is also covered.
You want to avoid the case where a contributor who has a kink is quietly boundary-pushing. If both sides obey the CoC, the "Project maintainers are responsible for clarifying..." cause makes me think that when it's a surprise to the contributor, that means that the maintainers haven't been clarifying. But I think that's covered by the "other conduct..." section to be a boundry-pushing kinkster.
And then you have, as @CoralineAda says, the desire to "protect already vulnerable people from discrimination based on kink or sexual proclivities", where a hypothetical member of the vulnerable population has a kink and another member seeks to remove said vulnerable member, solely on the basis of their kink. This entire discussion, I've been trying to push the case that triggered this out of my head and think what would happen to the people I know with a kink who are women or of color or disabled.
Maybe there's the larger issue of having one's private life outside of the project used against them, of which kink is a subset? As in, what would happen if one were to change "or sexual proclivities between consenting adults" in the 1.4.1 draft to "or private life"? Maybe there's a better way to say that. Because I'm thinking of other things that can be weaponized to exclude people. Instead of just a kink, what about sailor moon fanfic?
@wirehead I'd suggest being careful about the wording in the phrase "Personal life". It could be used to defend White Supremacists, for Instance.
@wirehead I'd suggest being careful about the wording in the phrase "Personal life". It could be used to defend White Supremacists, for Instance.
Just curious, is the point of this document to be able to exclude people you specifically don't like even if they do it privately without others knowing?
or sexual proclivities between consenting adults.
Also, who is to decide who and who is not consenting, because I saw a tweet from @CoralineAda where she decided that people couldn't consent to something even though the law says they can. So is this to allow for the ability to decide who is consenting and who is not and exclude those kinks that you dislike?
Also, there seems to be a lot of talk about making sure vulnerable people are protecting, so does this document/clause only protect those defined as vulnerable and others are on their own or can be removed at will? Or is it to create a space that everyone can be welcome to as long as they publically adhere to a specific set or rules?
Switch to Federal-REACH LOGO PLEASE.