[OSM-talk] Call to Take Action and Confront Systemic Offensive Behavior in the OSM Community

[Frederik Ramm]

@all,

I've posted a user diary about this, at
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/woodpeck/diary/395065, copied below
for your convenience.

--------------------

Sorry / Bad choice of words
Posted by woodpeck on 10 December 2020 in English (English).

Hi,

I’ve recently got some flak about a mailing list post that I wrote
opposing a candidate for the OSMF board election. I felt that this
candidate and their employer, Facebook, were getting away with too many
things that would be inacceptable from anyone else.

Because the candidate and his employer steadfastly claim that the
attribution they provide was in accordance with the license, I saw an
analogy with Donald Trump claiming stuff that was obviously not true,
like “I had the greatest crowd in my inauguration” or so. And getting
away with it.

To make this point as drastically as possible, I used a quote from Trump
from before the 2016 election, the infamous “Access Hollywood Tape”. I
still remember when that - deeply misogynistic - claim of getting away
with sexual assault hit the press. I was sure: This man is never going
to be elected; it is just not possible. I was proven wrong. That’s why
the quote stuck in my head, as the eternal conundrum of why so many
people can vote for a politician who says such deplorable things. (There
are other examples in history books; but this one I lived through.) When
I wrote the mailing list post, I felt that, in terms of the values we
have as OSM, claiming that you can simply ignore our attribution
requirements and hoping get away with it, was equally impossible.

The echo to my mailing list post has shown me that I should have been
more careful in which words I pick up and re-use. It was totally my
intention to say “don’t vote for that candidate because they think they
can get away with crass violations of what we think is proper”. But I
now see that, by choosing these words and not, for example, the quote
about Trump being able to shoot a person dead on Fifth Avenue and get
away with it, I have dealt a blow to women in OpenStreetMap. Had I
spoken about shooting a person, that would have been “any person” of any
gender and equally bad for everyone; but my choice of words singled out
women and contained a drastic picture of sexual assault, something that
far too many women have been subjected to, or at least know someone who
has been. By even mentioning it, no matter what the context is and how
many quotes or “not”s you put around it, you can already make a female
reader feel discouraged - such a serious topic, and it’s being used here
for a cheap political takedown.

A couple of women in OSM whom I have known for a while have reached out
to me personally to make this point and I appreciate that very much. I
now understand that no matter how many people are using the phrase, we
should all work towards getting rid of it as soon as possible, rather
than using it as if it was everyday language to make points that do not
even have anything to do with sexual assault. I will certainly be more
careful in the future. I will still be finding clear words when speaking
out against things or behaviour that I find problematic, but I will
double check not to put anyone in the crossfire by choosing the wrong
words or the wrong figures of speech.

If you are a woman and if anything I ever said or wrote in OSM has given
you the impression that I am in the least a misogynist, or don’t want
women in OSM, or think that they are inferior programmers, or their
place is in the home with the kids or any of that last-century shit,
please be assured that nothing could be further from the truth. I have
worked with many women in OSM and I think we got along well even when we
had different opinions. Over the years, I’ve personally introduced more
than a hundred women to OSM mapping through introductory courses at the
local university and other events. I’m also teaching women to code as
part of their GIS studies at the local university, and I think that
within the limits of what I can do as a man, I’m doing these jobs well,
treating women with the greatest respect, encouraging them, never once
being condescending or giving them the impression that their male
classmates are “better at tech” (newsflash, they’re not, though they
often think they are).

I’m totally on board with the idea that people of any gender should get
the same chances in life. That includes taking steps to support
underrepresented genders in OSM, and that includes not throwing around
phrases about sexual assault in discussions about map attribution. I am
sorry for that; it was a bad judgement on my part. If you are a woman in
OSM - or a woman interested in OSM - and there’s something I can do to
make OSM a nicer place for you, feel free to reach out. OSM needs more
women, not less.

Sincerely, Frederik


-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"