There is a direct motivation for this post (see an addition from some days ago in the colorful language thread, which I just noticed today, in case you want to know) but it is about something that comes up occassionally, so a general question.

My question is how should a situations be handled where somebody quotes (in an uncritical way) something that is, at least by todays standards as I see them, sexist; and the same for similar problematics.

What to me makes this situation a bit tricky is that it is 'only' a quote. So, the person posting it is not really responsible for it. But then if one quotes uncritically one somehow endorses what is quoted and if it is on MO then one can see this (and in fact I do) as a problem.

So I am not quite sure what to do. Are critical comments sufficient? (They typically appear.) Or should there be something critical in the body of the answer? Or should it go entirely? Or still something else.

Thank you for the reply. In this case I now (only) flagged. In more urgent cases I will use the email variant.

So... we are talking about Bloch's review of Étale Cohomology? I dislike the particular quote for the sexism it demonstrates (towards men far more than towards women: just deconstruct the choice of the word "pursue") and the underlying idea that all boys "should" be pursuing one and the same "gal" (this kind of pushing onto people a particular ideal of beauty is something nauseatingly common in advertising, and I'd prefer not to see this in mathematical reviewing). Still I stand by my claim that the review is very well-written ("must-read" is a bad overstatement, and prone to the same fallacy; sorry for that). As a whole, I think, mathematics would be richer in content (and yes, diversity, to use this word in its un-politicized meaning once again) if more people would write reviews and articles like this, preferring to err on the side of the offensive instead of the boring.

I don't find this any more outrageous than Alain Valette's, or even R.H. Bing's ones (both quoted in the thread in question). And I don't find any of these particularly outrageous. Opinions are not laws; there is a big difference between "not finding something funny" and crying for the internet police.

quid: My course of action would be to do nothing in such a case. As much as machismo in jokes and quotes can do damage to the atmosphere, censorship thereof can do significantly more damage. I remember somebody summarizing the rules of MO as "everything that's okay in a seminar is fair game on MO". I don't know whether this is the mainstream opinion here, but I'd like MO to be more of a lecture hall than a minefield.

And, one could have written a non-boring review with other images.

I think this is like saying that one could have written a book with less mistakes. I am usually eager to point out the slightest flaws, but this doesn't mean I blame the author for not proofreading his texts 7 times! In this case, this isn't even an obvious mistake if you don't have the right mindset.

The gal' here is dehumanized; it is nothing but a difficult to understand (use?) sexualized object.

That's one interpretation. When I read the quote, I initially interpreted it as supposing that the "boys" to have a dehumanizing attitude with respect to the "gal", without actively endorsing this attitude (it just gives a hint what "gal" they should pursue, if they pursue one). Using a metaphor does not imply endorsing its underlying imagery or considering it "normal"/comme-il-faut; it just implies acknowledging the situation at hand has some similarities with that imagery. Usually people get this right in case of war metaphors (and we've got a lot of these in discussions and even in mathematics itself), but in case of sexist metaphors it always causes controversy.

I think the "problematic" part begins when some people are confronted with sexism like this on a regular basis, as in stalking or mobbing (which can use sexism as a weapon of choice). In this case I don't think the unhappy quote was posted to demean anyone, so there is no reason for any disciplinary action imho.

I think that some 50% of the content of the "colorful language" answers are, let's say, bad examples of "professional behaviour". All in all I don't see much reason for a "professional" code of conduct for mathematicians outside of their job. The nice thing about mathematics is that the merit of a mathematical achievement can be assessed independently of the status and the professionality of the author. We cite articles in Deutsche Mathematik because they are correct (well, some of them; it shouldn't come as a surprise that a significant part of that periodical was bullshit), not because we consider that journal a bastion of professionalism. Mathematicians are not medics or nuclear engineers. Heck, we are not even rocket scientists.

Why I mentioned censorship and internet police? Because quid proposed "Or should it go entirely?".

Let me remark that I find critical comments perfectly fair game and well-deserved. And if the critical comment receives more upvotes than the question, that's legitimate and representative. If the answerer decides to remove his answer for that reason, that's again perfectly okay. But I don't like the proposal that we should delete it, and that's what quid attempted by flagging the question.

I think I'm in a minority here, but I'm not sure I see the issue- it's like Hall's Marriage Theorem, where the goal is to find a perfect matching which covers all vertices in X ("boys"), but not necessarily in Y ("girls"). I think Bloch is refering to "boys" entirely metaphorically, in the way one speaks of "genders" of electronic connectors. So I don't see why female mathematicians aren't just as much "boys" in his metaphor as male mathematicians- that was how I read it, anyway. I.e. I didn't read "boys" as "male mathematicians", but as "humans", or as "the X set in the marriage theorem", and I think that's how Bloch meant it. Note that in the bible, in Song of Songs for instance, the metaphor is reversed- the people (irrespective of whether their IRL gender be male or female) are the "woman", while G-d is the "man".

It's odd that complaints regarding "internet police" and censorship arise here, because posts are frequently deleted from MO. If someone posts a homework question, and the question is deleted, I doubt anyone would be complaining about censorship. Indeed, we owe the success of MO partly to the diligent work of the moderators and high-level users, "internet police" who close inappropriate questions all the time.

If Mark Twain's books were posted on MO, yes, I certainly hope someone would delete them in their entirety, considering that they'd be grotesquely off-topic.

Do you want to argue that censorship on MO is bad on principle? There is meta-category "Is this question acceptable?". I guess it is not a far stretch to assume that some answers might not be acceptable.

IMO, removing the answer, which, I repeat, was a relevant one for the question, is basically the same as removing Mark Twain's books from a library. Do you favor that, Michael?

I am NOT opposed to deleting the entire thread as being not relevant. If the question is acceptable, so is the answer, which quoted a published review.

I do not like either the question or the deleted answer, BTW, but I opposed to censorship, which is very, very different from keeping material off MO that is not relevant for MO. I cannot undelete the answer, but I did vote to close the thread, and, if it gets closed, I will vote to delete it.

Here is the thread:

How can I undelete, François? I can vote to undelete questions, but I do not find any tools for deleting or undeleting an answer.

@quid: I shouldn't have quoted your first post, but went with the third one (which I mentioned two lines below anyway): "In this case I now (only) flagged."). In the first post, you are merely bringing up the censorship option as a possibility. Flagging, though, IS a call for censorship. François might be to blame for this as well, but I don't know whether he was aware what post you were talking about; he might have been suspecting something much worse.

I would agree with you that a critical comment in the answer would be a good way to go. It's community wiki, so every of us can do that on his own, and I think of this as fair game if the comment is sufficiently clearly marked as an edit by somebody else than the original answerer.

The site is considered at least by some (incidentally also by the seminar-room rule you quote) as a somewhat professional context

Ha-ha. :D

and writing a review for BAMS is also more part of the job than leisurely activity.

I am not defending the publishing of that quote in a review, not even the posting of it on MathOverflow (to say the least it is not representative of the review it is taken from). I just think that censorship (which it still is in my opinion) is much worse.

Daniel's example of Hall's marriage theorem is not exactly comparable, because it is usually formulated in that "fancy" version for n boys and n girls, and there is no objectivization of any of the sexes ("pursue") or provocation of the audience ("private parts") involved (most of the time; once I have seen an instructor prove it using the spreading of a sexual disease...). I tend to avoid this marriage metaphor not for any provocational or sexist content, but because it means telling one and the same joke to the same people (combinatorialists) over and over.

@Michael Greinecker: As for me, I am opposed to the "in case of doubt, delete" trend here, but this trend has for now been restricted mostly to questions that were not sufficiently clearly posed and did not receive good answers, not to opinions. Also I find the tendency of some question askers to delete their questions together with others' answers a scandal, but as long as we cannot change the software we cannot do anything against that here.

Sorry folks! I just realized that high-rep users deleting/undeleting answers was a SE2.0 addition...

Well, I can undelete it but I would rather not do so until there is a different proposal to resolve this commotion.

I personally would have prefered the aswer not to be deleted- comments are a much better way to make a stance.

But "deemd acceptable by the MO community" is not that universal, apparently. The original question asked for "What other examples of colorful language in mathematical papers have you enjoyed?". This is arguably too subjective, but it seems to ask for positive examples. I certainly do think that it is the sexism of the quote that is disturbing. The quote by Davey and Priestley is sexual but seems far less offensive to me.

Mein Kampf is horribly written and of limited use to anyone but extremely dedicated historians and crackpots. ;-)

I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I can't do that Bill since that's not what I think.

As a temporary compromise, I undeleted the answer but removed the contentious quote. Everyone interested can still read the quote by looking at the revision hisory. The answer was also locked to prevent tampering until this issue is resolved.

MO topic closed as "no longer relevant"? Now that can hardly be because of this discussion... If not, what makes it "no longer relevant"?

Ah, okay. I'm not sure the mission is accomplished in this case, but then again, this is not the kind of topic that has a mission. It just seemed to me that somebody decided to close the question due to the discussion here, which would really have been the worst possible idea.

I'm surprised that someone considered the answer sexist enough to warrant deletion. In the first post in this thread quid asked "Are critical comments sufficient?" I would say Yes, they are. I think MO comments, especially those with many upvotes, are fairly prominent, so it's unlikely that anyone would read the answer without also reading the comment and learning that some people didn't like the quote in the answer.

Oh, I see this has already been kind-of done. Perfect.

@Darij (but also more generally): My personal situation related to this thread was like so: I browsed around on MO (since I actually wanted to work but could not yet quite find the motivation to do so), and in doing so came across the answer in question as the question happened to be on the front page. To which I had spontaneously a quite negative reaction, noticed I was not the first (RR and ESQG comment), but also noticed that the OP of the answer did not really see the problem, and it sort of seems misunderstood ESQG's comment entirely. So I left my comment in addition. It is perhaps also relevant to add that at that time the vote pattern was quite different (if I remember right, before me voting, answer 8/9, RR 1, ESQG 0). [A problem here is also that if there are so many answers, comments are colapsed completely if they do not yet have any upvote.]

For the moment I left it at that. But then perhaps an hour later thought perhaps this is actually not sufficient. (One would have had a relatively high voted answer and some almost ignored comments; perhaps this is not a good message.) And in fact thought about just adding some commentary to the answer itself. However, then I was also not sure whether this was consider as alright. And in view of the fact that this question comes up occassionaly (though rarely) for me, I thought I will ask about this on meta.

And after some consideration, actually I had a draft for this request which gave more space to the current issue, decided for various reasons to make it rather a general request. Because I think/thought one could legitimately have different opinions on the general course of action.

I spelled out three options that I thought one could consider in principle (and indeed meanwhile for each of them somebody expressed that it would be good), and one 'open one'. One the one hand to structure the discussion, on the other hand, in view of the fact that just with asking what should/could be done, one would run the risk of getting some half-witty comments to the extent one could do this, this, or this...what are you asking about.

Now the first suggestion given was to inform the moderators, which is a good suggestion since in principle it would avoid that specific public attention is drawn to the problem which in some cases can be advantageous. One informs them, and then they can decide what to do. (So in some sense I would be willing to accept the image of calling/informing the police/an authority; but then this is not something which I consider as particularly negative, at least as long as one is in a context where these authorities are reasonable, which is the case here on MO) In particular, the suggestion was to err on the save side.

In general, flagging for moderator attention means to me what it says, bringing something to the awareness of the moderators. [Flagging as spam or offensive are very different, as they would have an immideate effect if done by a couple of people.] I do this on occassion for reasons that have nothing to do with deletion, in particular I do this (as recently mentioned) to ask for turning something into CW mode. Such a flag is accompanied by a message (max 140 char) I cannot recall what exactly I wrote, but something like that I consider this answer as it is as highly problematic, with an add on that in a different context it might not be so bad. In particular, I would also like to point out that I said here in my second comment indirectly that I do not consider the matter as urgent. As on the one hand the thing was around for almost a week already, and on the other hand it is not something which I think has a potentially instant emotionally damaging/disturbing effect (as opposed to perhaps say a highly inappropriate picture). (cont)

So, what I learned from this discussion is that some participants have a very strong opinion against deletions. While relatively strong criticism of problematic content seems to be quite universally accepted. This is useful information to have for me as it was not clear.

I'm glad to have helped bring the point across. :) I see the misunderstanding between us clearly now, and also (I think) between you and François, who also seems to have interpreted your flagging as a "please delete this" rather than a "please discuss this" signal.

Also, while I don't share Bill's desire to delete the whole question with all its answers and I don't believe he will get the votes he needs to do that (there are some highlights among the answers), his motion to do so is a valid one, as it does not lead to a chilling effect on marginal opinions, but only signalizes that MO is a place for mathematical Q&A rather than for trivia and jokes.

"MO is a place for mathematical Q&A rather than for trivia and jokes" is certainly my belief, even if I enjoy seeing an occasional humorous comment within a serious mathematical discussion. Threads devoted to humor are, IMO, out of place, and it is more or less inevitable that such threads will contain material that some participants find offensive.

@quid: I do not find the metaphor problematic in the least. I do not see in what way that is relevant, though, just I do not see in what way others finding it problematic is relevant. I can quote tons of things I find abominable (Google will find for you my collection of quotations, and you will see tons of abominable things there—along with tons which are quite not abominable, and you get to choose which are which (I have gotten a surprising number of email messages essentially requesting I somehow marked them according to my choosing :/ ...)) and doing so does not mean I endorse any of them.

I was trying to avoid the debate here, both as regards MO policy and as regards how objectionable the quote in question is...

Can I just say that I do not recognize this often dictatorial enforcement of political correctness? I fail to notice the jackboots at my door, the inspectors at my office, etc etc. What people inveigh against as "political correctness" sometimes seems more like an attempt, sometimes clumsy, to avoid language that is coarse towards others and entrenches discrimination or imbalances of power.

[I was going to reel off a list of terms that so-called "political correctness" has forced to the margins of acceptable language in Britain, but then decided it was enough to mention sewers without displaying their contents.]

And I stick by my original comment regarding the quote from Bloch, which mars an otherwise engaging review. The general metaphor seems patronizing but of its time; the closing sentence is just crass.

All that said, I am inclined to agree with Bill Johnson's take on this particular case as regards MO policy.