Genderidentity

[Johnny Jazeix]

Hi,

As you said, this is off-topic regarding the initial issue (the problem
will still be present even if the proposed changes here are applied). I was
really reluctant to reply because it's a delicate subject, more
philosophical/political/social than related to GCompris and I don't really
want to take too much of my time on these kind of discussion. I'm not
saying it is not an important or valid concern, I'm saying that I would
prefer to use my time on other subjects. But, in the actual world, not
replying would probably be seen by some as I'm against it or I don't care
(and by an extrapolation, I would be against it) because I initiated the
thread (or even worse it could be said it's the position of GCompris
community). Also, this answer is a personal answer, anybody in the GCompris
community may or may not share it, it's not relevant here.

I just kept the kde-devel mailing list in the loop because this thread
originated here, let's not "spam" the other lists please.

The code is open, feel free to make a MR or open a bug/feature
request/discussion with the team to propose your ideas for the activity.
Just discussing here won't move things. Please note that it is not just
about changing this specific string. the whole activity would be impacted:
a lot of other strings/variables related, images, translation, voices...

" And than I read about this thread, that a program that is made for kids
is
teaching them the binary gender system and are telling me that is a good
thing
from a pedagogical point of view: Sorry NO! This is discriminating and
making
it less likely that we will overcome with the discrimination. "

It was never said by anyone that "binary gender system is teached by this
activity and it is good from a pedagogical point of view". It was said that
having 2 distinct sets was good for the pedagogical point of view.

Le jeu. 6 janv. 2022 à 20:01, Sandro Knauß <sknauss at kde.org> a écrit :

> Hey,
>
> > There is a time and place to teach kids about the complexity of gender
> > and I don't think an exercise about arithmetic/counting is the right
> > place.
>
> Fully ACK - I don't want to teach kids the complexity of gender. This
> exercise
> is about arithmetic/counting and should concentrate on that.
>
>
Then, when you use this activity with children, can you skip this part for
now and let the children focus on what the activity is about? And discuss
with them the complexity of gender later, when you feel it will be more
adequate for them?
The activity itself is just a tool designed to help teaching some math and
it is used by a person behind. It is up to the person to decide on how to
use the tool and what to focus on. Talking about the gender of the children
was never though or expected from the developers.

But I also don't need to teach them to seperate people by gender indirectly!
>
> Why not use cats and dogs or plants and animals as distinct sets? Than we
> are
> not hurting anyone.
>
>
I'm sure whatever is used, there will be someone who can be hurt and can
complain (rightfully or not). We are close to 8 billions of people in the
world and there is not one subject that we can all agree on. Why cats and
dogs and not rabbits and horses? Maybe this is not an important cause to
you because they are "generic" animals but for someone else it could be (or
some children using the software may have ailurophobia or cynophobia).
Note the activity for now is to share pieces of candy (let's not open a new
thread about the danger of sugar please). If we put animals instead of
people, indirectly children using the software could think it is a good
idea to give candies to their animals (which is not).
Only colors should be avoided because some children have poor or deficient
color vision.
Clothes: which kind? Some people may get offended because the size of the
T-shirt is "standard", not small or extra.

These examples can be seen as exagerations but there is nothing that can
guarantee nobody will get offended by any of these ideas (maybe not now but
what in 5/10/20 years?). And at that point, what do we do? Do we change
again?
On my side, I don't see any advantages on the pedagogic side to change the
activity to use something else that so I won't personally put efforts to
directly work on it (but if there is a MR, I will review it as any other
one), I have things I consider more important to work on GCompris.

The application is to be played by children, let's not extrapolate
everything and let's not add more activism than necessary in a software
designed for children.

Johnny

ps : please, don't assume by this answer that I am for or against the third
gender and not telling explicitely what is my opinion about it makes me by
default against it. I think it is just not the place in GCompris.
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