Organizations setting limits on what type of discussion is allowed is a good thing, and again, specifics matter. The statement, at its heart, stifles the speech of these groups by trivializing the concerns of those people who are affected by the systems termed "rape culture"( systems supporting violence against certain groups ). The fact that the transition to a more inclusive community involves prohibiting this type of speech is a given IMO, since that speech is precisely what makes for a hostile climate to non-white-guy contributors. Such statements are problematic if the community in question claims to be based on freedom and inclusivity.
[Edit]: In general, I think "freedom of speech"( and the implied "freedom to be offended" ), are less important than maintaining a community climate that feels safe for its members.
If "post-liberal" feminists think the patriarchy so powerful, I find it hard to understand why they are not more worried about the possibility of the machinery they happily advocate to be set up for their own protection being co-opted by the same and turned against them. The persecution complex of midwestern American Evangelicals demonstrates that even a group completely outgunning everyone else in terms of both numbers and sheer influence can successfully delude itself into believing that it is oppressed and in dire need of protection, and the damage they could do to the feminist cause if they got to seize the "safe space" policies in place at many university campuses and rewrite them to sanction statements that "make Christians feel unsafe" in the same way in which they currently sanction statements that "make women feel unsafe" is palpable.
> Organizations setting limits on what type of discussion is allowed is a good thing
In general? Now that's a statement I would really be inclined to apply the adjective "problematic" to...
Regarding your position following "[Edit]:", accepting it as true still allows for two possible consequences apart from "restrict freedom of speech until everyone feels safe", namely:
* trivially, to exclude the members who feel unsafe until everyone feels safe;
* less trivially, to educate/ease/pressure/brainwash (whichever verb you prefer) members who feel unsafe into feeling safe.
If neither of the two options is considered legitimate under any circumstance, any individual with a psychiatric disorder making them feel a constant feeling of dread would be sufficient to shut down any forum to which they manage to gain admission. Conversely, I have yet to see a comprehensive argument against even a stubborn approach along the lines of "People still feel unsafe? More brainwashing starting at an earlier age it is, then!" - something we would probably do without batting an eye if a different feeling of unsafety interfered with the social participation of a large portion of the demographic, like the hikikomori phenomenon.
* Women are underrepresented in organisations which matter, such as in particular open source software development conferences.
* This underrepresentation is [at least to a significant extent] due to these organisations maintaining a climate that is hostile or unpleasant to female contributors.
* One instance of such hostility are misogynistic statements being made freely [without punitive measures being taken by the organisers in response].
* The trivialisation of the concept of "rape culture" is one such misogynistic statement.
Since the leap from the first point being merely about a small free software conference to applying to every forum in which anything resembling a binding political decision is made is natural (if anything, most would argue that proportional representation of each gender in any such forum is much more significant than proportional representation in the free software movement), the complete argument does seem to imply that concept X should not be trivialised in any forum of nontrivial influence - and, as I stated in my original post, concept X is sufficiently recursive already that the upgrade to "concept X, and if F(Y)='trivialisation of concept Y is to be prohibited', F(X), F(F(X)), etc." seems fairly near. (I have used the implication that "misogynistic => to be prohibited in any influential forum" which I would like to believe I derived above in the definition of F.)
You are right in that the referenced "joke" is not a good example of a nuanced discussion of rape culture, but it at least feels to me like accepting the proposition that "jokes about (the concept that jokes and nitpicks about $concept are bad) are bad" here is like giving 0.9 miles and expecting the whole mile to not be taken. ("are bad" is to be understood as shorthand for "are misogynistic" and hence "to be prohibited(...)" as above.)
(Apologies for what you might perhaps perceive as an unnecessarily tedious writing style; given that this is a very politically and emotionally charged topic, I felt the need to tread more carefully to avoid being erroneously assumed to hold some wildly unpopular opinion.)