Subject: [Gendispatch] draft-knodel-terminology-03

From: Dan Harkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:43:13 -0700

Hello,

   This draft sees problems in language from an ethno-centric (namely, 
white,
western-educated) perspective and assumes a uniform reaction to language it
deems a problem. It creates language issues based on this perspective that
are at best invented and at worst just wrong, although not all of the 
suggestions
are bad. Merely discussing ones perspective on language would not be a 
problem
but the authors are going to be imposing requirements on the RFC editor
so it becomes everyone's issue. Therefore, I am compelled to object to this
draft.

   Let's start with "master-slave". The implication is that the 
"master-slave"
construct is seeped in racism. In fact, the last millennia-plus of slavery,
ending with the closing of the last of the slave markets of Europe in the
early 20th century, was not oriented towards race at all. While there were
black Africans being sold in Europe's slave markets most of those being 
bought
and sold were white, mostly from eastern Europe and the Balkans. The 
characteristic
that they had in common was religion-- they were Christians, but more 
importantly
they were not Muslim. Indeed, the 21st century manifestation of 
state-sanctioned
sale of human beings in the Islamic State Caliphate was not race-based 
either,
the slaves were mostly from the indigenous Yazidi sect which are 
non-Muslim and
their slavery was sanctioned by the Caliphate's religious leaders on 
religious
grounds. [1]

   While slaves in the Confederate States of America were almost 
entirely African
(it was easier to identify an African who escaped bondage than it was an 
Irishman
who escaped bondage), the slaveholders were not all white [2]. Also, the 
slaves
bought in west Africa and transported across the Atlantic were not 
snatched by
whites because they were black, they were snatched by other west African 
blacks
and (Muslim) POC from the Sahel. People were enslaved not due to race 
but due
to losing a war or, again, being a non-Muslim. And they were not enslaved by
whites. [3]

   The idea that master means white and slave means black is ahistorical 
and is an
invention of the elite, western-educated white progressive and critical 
race theory.
And it's an act of cultural supremacy to believe that view is universal. 
When
everything is viewed through the prism of race it's not surprising that 
one sees
race in everything.

   The draft states that "master-slave" is "technically and historically 
inaccurate".
It gives an example of DNS in which "the 'slave' is able to refuse zone 
transfers
on the ground that it is malformed." How is that inaccurate? Could a 
real-life slave
refuse a command on the grounds that the command given was gibberish or 
nonsensical?
Of course! It defies common sense to think otherwise. There is nothing 
technically
inaccurate with this example and no attempt at showing a historical 
inaccuracy is
attempted by the draft. Indeed, history is quite different from the 
picture being
painted by this draft.

   The suggested alternatives for "master slave" do not convey the 
managerial
oversight of the "master" and the worker role of the "slave" when used 
to describe
technical phenomena. "Primary replica"? Replica of what? "Primary 
secondary"? What
is this ordering? What does it describe? Nothing that's what! "Active 
standby"?
But none of the components are standing by, they are just implementing 
different
parts of the system differently. The fact that all of the suggested 
alternatives
are inadequate and inappropriate belies a kind of technical ignorance 
that should
disqualify one from imposing rules on terminology.

   I find the inclusion of a single random comment as "an indicator of 
actual racism"
to demonstrate the need for a "struggle against the racists among us" to 
be offensive.
Calling this random person out as a racist in what is intended on being 
a permanent
document is mean-spirited and unprofessional.

   I note that Orwell's Politics and the English Language is referenced 
as a "fun
read." Too bad the authors have completely missed the point. Their suggested
replacement metaphors are about as stale and tired as the exaggerated 
ones Orwell
lampoons. If one were to follow their guide the resulting RFC would full 
of "prose
[which] consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their 
meaning, and
more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a 
prefabricated
hen-house," as Orwell observes.

   Indeed, the quote offered in section 3, "one goal of the application 
of rhetorical
theory in the technical communication classroom is to assess the 
appropriateness of
particular terms and to evaluate whether these terms will facilitate or 
hinder the
readers' understanding of the technical material" could be used verbatim 
in an update
of Orwell's article as one of his illustrations of "mental vices" that 
are manifest
in modern writing! It is a prime example of what he describes as the 
"mixture of
vagueness and sheer incompetence [that] is the most marked 
characteristic of modern
English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing". That 
the authors of
the draft don't see this speaks volumes.

   The idea that elite white, northern Europeans are going to clean up 
gendered language
for the rest of the world is also quite presumptive. This has been 
attempted before with
"Latinx" which is supposed to be a gender-neutral term to refer to both 
Latinos and
Latinas. This, though, is another "I'm here to save you", top down 
imposition of a
solution to a non-problem that is seeing resistance from the targeted 
victim class:

    "True, gender marking in language can affect thought. But that issue 
is largely
     discussed among the intelligentsia. If you ask the proverbial 
person on the street,
     you’ll find no gnawing concern about the bias encoded in gendered 
word endings....
     To Latinos, Latinx may feel like an imposition by activists. It’s 
also too clever
     by half for Romance-language speakers accustomed to gendered 
nouns." [4]

   There were parts that made me question whether it's a parody or not. 
But when you get
to section 4 you realize it cannot be a parody.

   The idea that language can be offensive is mundane; that this is some 
new problem that
needs solving though is new. Of course language can be offensive, that 
is the whole point
of the free exchange of ideas. There is no right not to be offended nor 
should there be.
With 7+ billion people on the planet it will always be trivial to find 
someone offended
by something. This draft is full of offense. Which is fine. This 
critique will no doubt
be offensive to some who read it. Isn't free speech grand? But when 
recommendations are
being placed on the RFC editor to impose these sections of the 
prefabricated hen-house
on the woeful draft writer is becomes something else. It goes beyond 
mere offense. It
becomes action, action to force people to conform to a new orthodoxy. 
And that MUST NOT
be tolerated in the IETF.

   After all that negativity, I feel like I should suggest some edits to 
make this draft
acceptable so let me try:

   Start by removing all references to the racist affects of language-- 
[BrodieGravesGraves],
[Burgest], [Eglash] and the rest. If the authors want to improve the 
quality of RFCs they
should take a look at refreshing Orwell's tract. Make it for the IETF by 
suggesting ways
for authors to improve their use of language by making it more 
descriptive, not by
suggesting a set of metaphors that have been approved by the Ministry of 
Truth.

   I would suggest adding a useful example of how a writer could 
progress from opaque
metaphor to clear description by expanding on the idea behind the text 
in 3.2. Explain
how if a writer used "eighty six" as a verb, as in "that packet gets 
eighty-sixed", it
might be understood by a large plurality of readers but not by many who 
do not share
the cultural heritage from which that metaphor arises. So the writer 
might resort to
"blacklist" as an alternative. But that suffers from the same problem. 
That term arises
out of a certain cultural heritage as well. Instead of criticizing the 
term on racial
grounds note that it is imprecise and vague. There are plenty of people 
trying to
implement an RFC that would have to spend time figuring out what it is 
the writer means,
searching through the cultural baggage implied with the term. It's the 
kind of stale
metaphor that Orwell was discussing. What is the technical matter that 
is being described?
It's a list of criteria to use to deny access. It's a deny list. It's a 
list of reasons
things are blocked from obtaining service. Its a block list. THOSE are 
descriptive terms.
They do not assume any cultural baggage and they are not stale 
metaphors. That's what
this draft should be doing. We don't need rules to police "racist" 
speech and we don't
need speech codes and approved metaphors for RFCs. But we could all use 
some reminders
of how to write better.

   regards,

   Dan.

[1] Human Rights Watch, "Slavery: The ISIS Rules"
     https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/05/slavery-isis-rules
[2] Smithsonian Magazine, "How Native American Slaveholding Complicates 
the Trail of Tears"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-native-american-slaveholders-complicate-trail-tears-narrative-180968339/
[3] New York Magazine, "The Last Slave"
https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-excerpt.html
[4] The Atlantic, "Why Latinix Can't Catch On"
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/why-latinx-cant-catch-on/603943/