Announcing Diversity in Swift!

I hope not, John, but I'm afraid I see it inevitably spiraling in that direction.

Suppose there was a hypothetical announcement of a Swift conference that was exclusive to people with a certain immutable characteristic (sex, race, sexuality, disability, mental illness, criminal history, veteran status, age, wealth, or one of the many other ways to categorize people)

  1. It could be announced on the "public" section of the forums, and certainly get push back from people who aren't okay with exclusivity of this kind.
  2. Or, it could be posted to the private section of the forums, with universal appraisal from a like-minded set of people. "Preaching to the choir", so to speak

The temptation would be towards the latter, as a path of least resistance.

There are people who think this kind of exclusivity is useful, positive and trying to making up for inequalities past and present. There's also a large group of people who seem them as prejudicial and discriminatory, and especially frightening when endorsed by a professional organization like a big company or this community. Regardless of where people might stand on these issues, I guarantee you these disagreements won't be happening if they're siloed off in immutable-characteristic-specific private forums.

Edit: naturally, people have the freedom to organize such things in private messages, other forums, etc. I think it's different when such an event gets officially endorsed by an entity like "the Swift Community", whatever that is.

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