> I don't know what specifically motivated this PR

It's mentioned in passing a couple of comments in. To highlight it (because it's easy to miss):

"I watched a group of people use these specific phrases to justify making sexist remarks over a communication channel that falls under these guidelines."

It's really odd to make fundamental rule changes to respond to things like that rather than carving out exceptions for sexist remarks specifically if those are the problem.

'This section shall not be interpreted to defend any communication reasonably seen as sexist, racist, or otherwise discriminatory' is much clearer than changing from 'assume good faith' to 'assume nothing, intent doesn't matter as much as impact. '

They quoted the start of a thread the author summarized saying it's bad because it gives cover to bad behavior. And can require people who recognize a pattern of bad behavior to persuade themselves they're paranoid. You might disagree. But those points have nothing to do with race or sex. And pointing out it's easier for people who face less bad behavior is about white men only incidentally.

I don't think it's a good idea to respond to this in depth, so I'll just say that I disagree with his assessment.

Apparently this mailing list comment triggered this reaction:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...

I tried really hard to follow the threading in that but I came away being completely unable to parse it, at least on mobile. What was the attempted "joke"?

Guy reports a behavior where date math doesn't return the result he expected and jokes that it might have to do with how women don't like to admit when they're aging.

I am fairly conservative libertarian leaning guy made in Russia and even I find this kind of joke absolutely unacceptable in professional setting.

I wouldn't have made the joke, myself, but it's also not really insulting to anyone. It's not saying that women are bad at math, or that women broke date arithmetic to seem younger, it's just referencing that phenomenon.

What about a joke where adding weights resulted in quantities too large, and it's suggested that it was written for dudes who want to say they can bench press more than they really can?

Same, I find this joke to be inappropriate in professional settings. May be it doesn’t offend anyone or may be it does, you never know.

I'd rather that joke were not made. There is a difference though between a discreet 'not a great moment' and public 'absolutely inacceptable [and we should hound the poor sap out of all gainful employment opportunities for life]'. A classic management principle is 'praise in public, criticize in private'. While the joke was was indeed inappropriate, the public reaction was 10x worse.

I can agree that there should be no public flogging, provided it is first couple times. If it has been explained to the individual that certain behaviour is considered unprofessional and yet they insist on engaging in it then... well, there should be consequences.