Just a question: why have we ommited the word "women"

[carlad]

That's actually what i meant by diluting the message. I think the first point should read:

To speak out against all forms of violence, harassment and discrimination against women.

otherwise it's airyfairy and vague and doesn't really address the issues which is specifically violence against women...

[carlad]

To elaborate: here's a conversation Sven and I had on IRC:

svenfuchs that's an outcome from a discussion we've had
svenfuchs the issue was raised that "against women" would draw an unwanted line that excludes other minorities
svenfuchs so this now aligns with the statement here: http://rubyberlin.org/2013-10-statement-community.html
svenfuchs i think given the current situation i don't really think it dilutes the message
svenfuchs carlad: do you feel very strong about this?
svenfuchs there was a strong feeling about including "against women" there
carlad i feel pretty strongly
carlad i mean
carlad isn't that the whole inspiration and point
carlad it's not like there are other minorities expressing complaints about violence against them
carlad i just feel a STRONG message needs to be sent
carlad and we shouldn't hide from the fact that, yes, this is specifically about women
carlad if it was a problem of rascism
carlad it would be stated explicitly
carlad was say no to rascism
carlad it wouldn't be
carlad we say no to rascism and other forms of discrimination
carlad it would be a stance against rascism
svenfuchs well, there are, like LGBT, or people of color
carlad yeah exactly
carlad it's not like a campaign against homophobia
carlad includes a campaigna gainst rascism and sexism and etc etc
carlad i understood the white ribbon was specifically about women
carlad to address violence against women
carlad i thought that was our message
svenfuchs but "men/women" nowadays is a not so binary thing anymore
carlad well - maybe in a non-gender normative space like.... highly intellectual circles
carlad but
carlad in the rest of the world
carlad ...
carlad anyway
svenfuchs well, i'm personally not tied to either of these choices
svenfuchs i think they're both good, eventually
carlad i think fundamentally if this is going to happen it should be a clear strong specific message
svenfuchs maybe you wanna raise and explain this on the issue tracker?
svenfuchs so others can chime in?

[svenfuchs]

I really think both options are good. What does everyone else think about this?

[anikalindtner]

hej,
i too feel very strongly, but about leaving the "women" part out.

carla: you said, you don't want to tie this to the exact context of justine speaking up, so i think, since we don't have this specific background, we don't need to have a strong only-women focus here.

for me it would be short-sighted to only focus this on women. maybe for the time, no gay man or colored disabled woman has "complained" about stuff, but for me the white ribbon thing should not be a reaction, but a stand to prevent discrimination/viloence in any form. it's a stand for an open mind, a reflection about behaviour and a signal that people are aware of these problems in the community and that these problems and incedents can be prevented by changing minds and actions. and for me this includes everybody. even heterosexual white men (!) that are surely not underrepresented, but deserve political correct behaviour as well. for me it's not about who we want to protect (because that's always hard to define), but WHAT we want to dismiss. in our case: discriminating behabiour, vilolence, harassment. against everybody.

[anikalindtner]

BUT i think, it totally depends here on how you see the white-ribbon-campaign and what you want to achieve. if it's a campaign that reacts to the latest events and wants to shed more light on the problems, and discriminations especially women have lived through in our communtiy, then of course narrowing it down to only women makes sense.

i think, we have to decide, what this white ribbon should aim for and then it's a piece of cake to decide on the wording.

[FrauBienenstich]

First of all: I can't say I feel strongly about any of the two options. In my opinion they are both valid and I am ok with both wordings.
I had a slightly weird feeling about making it about women only because that makes it sound as if women need extra treatment and need to be handled with silk gloves. And this to me doesn't make sense in terms of real equality. Also, when I first heard about it, the white ribbon idea seemed to be a campaign organized by men. The image of men taking care of women is also something I find problematic. I guess, though, here it depends on how the campaign will be presented in the end.
Then, as Annika pointed out, there are other groups that face discrimination in this community as well. Maybe it's not (yet) that much of a topic, I still feel that these should be included. If this becomes a women-only campaign I think there is also the need for an additional more inclusive version of that campaign (whatever this campaign might look like).
For these reasons I tend to prefer the wording without "women".

[carlad]

" think, we have to decide, what this white ribbon should aim for and then it's a piece of cake to decide on the wording."

Yup :)