Lady Aleena, I hear you that this didn't bother you, and I'm glad that for whatever reasons it didn't. I believe it may be because you've learned that despite social missteps like this one, there are a lot of great people here, or simply that because of who you are, people treat you very well. (And there's nothing wrong with that! Everybody has people they really like. Lady_Aleena is one of those for many, including me.)

But I would like to be clear here: I didn't say "I think this would bother Lady_Aleena". I said, "this bothers me," and I said why: I feel like it paints a false picture of who we are. I think that 90%+ of the people on Perlmonks really don't think that jokes like that are polite to make.

If we're truly trying to build a level playing field for everyone who comes to Perlmonks, then it should be a space in which it's possible to say, "I am uncomfortable with this" and get real discussion about the issue. Even if I'm completely off-base.

Discussion is not, "you're wrong, shut up and go away", just in case there was doubt about that. It's actually listening, actually considering, interacting honestly and directly.

Sure it's possible that the community standards are different from mine. But it should be a discussable question as to whether they are as good as they could be, as welcoming as they could be, and as open as they could be. I was shocked and stunned at the level of anger and hate in some of the replies, and I did react badly, and I regret having done that. I know better than that.

What was said to me did not feel like the sometimes scratchy, but generally cohesive place I thought I knew after my 13 years here. That makes me quite sad.

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