[diversity] Hosting RIPE85 in Serbia that is trying to cancel EuroPride 2022

On Aug 29, 2022, at 08:14, Shane Kerr <shane at time-travellers.org> wrote:

On 29/08/2022 12.43, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
>> Our community has to be inclusive in *all* respects.
> 
> Does it?
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

That's interesting, Shane, if a shade theoretical!

I think there's a more practical problem here when it comes to choosing in-person meeting venues, though.

There is no utopian paradise which is safe for all; there are real and recent examples why particular individuals might not feel safe meeting in the Netherlands or Germany or France, for example (list of all countries abridged for clarity and random examples selected for illustration). This is fundamentally a problem with society, or perhaps humanity and not just the NCC or RIPE.

The only way we can probably hope to level the playing field here is never to meet in person and only to meet online using tools that place the fewest demands on local connectivity possible. This means we're likely all meeting using irc until further notice. If the community wants to meet in person despite the potential danger to specific, important groups, then some degree of compromise will continue to be necessary. 

[let me confirm for clarity at this point that I am a strong ally of 2SLGBTIA+ people in a very personal sense and I take the safety of that particular group very seriously.]

If we cannot meet in-person in a way that doesn't cause harm to anybody, we could recast the diversity requirements for venue selection in terms of disadvantaging different groups each time we meet rather than the same group every time. That might actually work out to be an argument in favour of meeting in a place that is more hostile to one group from time to time, so long as the place is less hostile to another. There should be limits, however, and of course I agree we should not knowingly place people in harms way. I do not know whether that is the situation in Serbia.

As an aside, I currently live in a place where pride flags were recently torn down by angry strangers from private houses and burnt, and where elected, municipal officials in a nearby town have gone on record in council meetings to argue against the idea of rainbow crosswalks being painted on streets on the grounds that rainbows were mentioned in the bible's flood story and should therefore not be associated with those who have chosen "unnatural lifestyles". I live in Canada. Reality on the ground in any particular place does not always reflect its legislation or marketing. 


Joe