Category Archives: Society

Posts related to societies, people, communities, etc. Generally about humanity, human rights, people, and what affects them.

Stop accusing people of what they didn’t do

I sent this post as an email message to libreplanet-discuss mailing list.

Do you guys follow football? I mean the real football, not Amerikkkan one. There’s a club in Spain named Barcelona. They have a player in their team named Leo Messi. I think many of you know him.

Messi is believed to be one of the best football players in the history. During time, some people accused Messi of sexual assault and harassment. They even went to court for it and sued Messi. It turned out that all of them were only doing this for money, hoping that Leo Messi gives them some ransom.

There’s another player named Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is almost as same as Messi. He is again believed to be one of the bests in the history. He also was accused of sexual harassment and assault. Again, some people went to court and sued him, etc.

Some of the accusers never went to court but they tell very interesting stories on how they were assaulted. There were no proof and the teams (Barcelona and Real Madrid) never responded.

I can’t tell if those players who have a reputation of good behavior and charity and social work were really offenders or not, but I can tell one thing. Barca and Madrid didn’t let go of their best players because of some unproven accusations.

I remember Leo Messi once attacked a journalist physically because he was very angry but again, he made up to that, apologized, and never repeated such behavior because he was aware of how it can affect people. Again, we didn’t see any effort to ban Messi from playing football completely because that mistake.

I’m a football fan. I’m a fan of Manchester United, neither of those teams I mentioned but I never ever campaigned to throw out Messi and Ronaldo for unproven accusations.

I did not expect those teams to simply fire probably the best player of their history because some people said so.

Do you get my analogy here? I hear stories about an autistic person named RMS that he has assaulted women, harassed them, or sexually abused them. When I go and read the stories, I see what Stallman did was to “upset” some people. Not harassment, not assault, but upset.

Stallman shouted at some people or interrupted them while speaking. He hit on women or asked them out and insisted on that, which made them uncomfortable. If he was doing to me, I would be upset too, but I wouldn’t ever accuse him of assault or harassment. I wouldn’t expect FSF to fire its probably most valuable player that is known for his charity, effort for equality, justice, women’s rights, etc.

Why people expect FSF to fire its probably best player in history? I don’t understand that.

What people explain is not sexual harassment. He was an unpleasant person, maybe, to some people but he didn’t do anything to harass them.

Let me give you another example. There’s a different between patting some child on the butt and pedophilia. Now a pedophile most-probably does pat children on the butt but are all people who do that pedophiles? Hell no.

Please don’t accuse people of what they didn’t do because they made you uncomfortable or were unpleasant. If someone shouts at you, defend yourself or if the act of shouting makes you psychologically hurt, please be very very careful when you come out of your home because you may experience it almost every time.

If someone hitting on you makes you uncomfortable, ask them not to do that or ask security to help you but don’t accuse that person of harassment because looking at someone or being weird is not harassment. And again, please be careful when you come out of your house because you may experience it every day.

If someone interrupts you, ask them not to do that or argue back but don’t accuse that person of harassment because they didn’t harass you with that. Harassment is different. And please be careful when you come out of your house because people may interrupt you every day.

Stop with accusing people of things when they didn’t do that.

Also, please don’t accuse me of sexual harassment because I wrote this note. I don’t even know any of you and I did not harass you. Disagreeing with you is not harassment. Sending email messages is not assault.

I had to clarify that because as far as I’ve seen you people, the next open letter would’ve been for me. Don’t start arh-open-letter please. And yes, I’m mocking some people.

The misunderstanding of ‘believe all women’

I’m sure the slogan “believe all women” came to life with good intentions. For a long time, even today, women are being shamed for what they have no control over. For example, many blame raped women for the assault because of their choice of clothing. Or, many still harass women when they see them driving or working in an office.

I’m pretty sure “believe all women” was a slogan made to make people listen to women and have empathy for the pain they go through everyday. But should we really believe all women?

I don’t consider myself a feminist I don’t believe men and women are equal. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in equality of men and women but my understanding is that equality between men and women is them being treated with justice. When we treat both men and women with justice, we’re treating them equally.

I listen to women. If they say they’re assaulted or harassed, I’ll have empathy, but I won’t accept what they say unless there’s proof of that. I won’t ruin people’s lives because some woman accused them of rape, assault, or sexual harassment. Women are human beings after all and human beings are capable of many awful things, including lying.

I’ve seen social media ruining people’s lives because of a lie some person (man or woman) told and I’ve seen human beings suffer from those lies. Even if millions of people repeat something, unless there’s proof of that, I won’t believe it.

I respect the “believe all women” motto but for me it’s not really to believe, but to feel and have empathy for those who really are assaulted, raped, or harassed. I understand that many may experience a lot of things in their minds and the severity of harassment can be different for people based on their condition (in life or anything) but that’s not enough to accuse people of assault (or rape or harassment).

We should not cancel people or ruin people based on unproven stories. Even if the story is very much convincing, unless there’s enough evidence to prove that story, we shouldn’t accept that. In today’s world that there’s surveillance cameras everywhere (sadly) and we have a lot of tools to capture moments and we have enough technology to save the moments and incidents, there shouldn’t be a culture of cancelling based on myths, stories, and lies.

Let’s fight against this culture and while we’re fighting against them, let’s work to improve the life condition for women and those who suffered. Let’s listen to women, accept them, treat them with justice and manner, and help them to not be second class people. Don’t believe all women, but listen to them.

Instead of ruining people’s lives by believing all women, we can start empowering women to be able to defend themselves. We can develop technologies to help women (and even men) protect themselves.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a very nice story from Africa. The motivation behind the Ubuntu culture in Africa is that an anthropologist proposed a game to the African tribal children.

He placed a basket of sweets near a tree and made the children stand 100 meters away. Then announced that whoever reaches first, would get all the sweets in the basket.

When he said ‘ready steady go!”, they all held each other’s hands, ran together towards the tree, divided the sweets equally among themselves, ate the sweets and enjoyed it. When the anthropologist asked them why they did so, They answered “Ubuntu.”

Ubuntu meant ‘How can one be happy when the others are sad?’ Ubuntu in their language means “I am because we are”, a strong message for all generations. Let all of us always have this attitude and spread happiness wherever we go. Let’s have a “Ubuntu” Life.

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE.

Systemic racism explained

Imagine Jamal. Jamal is black person living in a poor neighborhood. Jamal has a friend named Kevin, a white kid living in a wealthy neighborhood. All of Jamal’s neighbors are black and all of Kevin’s neighbors are white.

Because Jamal’s school is funded mostly by property taxes, his school is not very well funded. his classrooms are overcrowded, his teachers are underpaid, and he doesn’t have access to high quality tutors or extracurricular activities.

Kevin’s school district is also funded by property taxes, so high school is very well funded, his classrooms are never crowded, his teachers are very well-paid, and he has access to high quality tutors and lots of extracurricular activities.

Kevin and Jamal live only a few streets away from each other so how come they’re growing up in such different worlds with such different opportunities for success?

The answer is systemic racism.

Continue reading →

I’m not your nigger

I’ve been called a nigger, sand nigger, monkey, subhuman, and many other derogatory terms and I know how that hurts. It makes you deeply sad and sometimes vulnerable. But after some time, you learn to stop worrying and caring about it. It also made me look into history of the word and learn about it.

Look, there’s absolutely no problem in using the word nigger. Words in and on themselves don’t have any meaning. It’s the context that matters. I use the word nigger when I’m talking about it and it has no problem, because well it’s a word. But how it makes problem when people use it? I’m gonna explain.

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“Defund the police” explained

“Defund the police” is a slogan that supports divesting funds from blue pigs departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare, and other community resources.

On 2020 June 5th, the Washington, D.C. mayor unveiled a statement, painted down the street leading to the White House, “Black Lives Matter.” Within 24 hours, Black Lives Matter activists responded with their own message: “Defund the Police.”

This slogan caught on rapidly among tens of thousands of people protesting police brutality in the United States. But what does it really mean to defund the police? And what if it’s not as radical as it sounds?

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The “capitalism <-> socialism” opposition seems outdated. I prefer to think in terms of “centralization vs decentralization”. Humans have evolved to perform best in small groups of less than 150 people. That’s why wherever there’s centralization and excessive hierarchy, there’s inefficiency and underutilized human potential. Capitalist monopolies and socialist dictatorships are equally bad.

In a natural environment, every small community is able to produce an outstanding leader and an independent thinker. In today’s world of trillion-dollar monopolies and bloated governments, the potential of hundreds of millions of people is suppressed by the limitations imposed by our artificial societal structures.

That is the reason why tens of thousands of people working at big corporations such as Facebook have failed to keep up with what our small team at Telegram has been implementing. That’s also the reason why countries like Russia fail to generate and retain global brands in their jurisdictions. Genuine creativity is rare in organizations and societies built on excessive hierarchies and lack of personal autonomy.

Pavel Durov