

Childish behaviour - markokocic
http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/2011/07/childish-behavior.html

======
lzm
Political correctness aside, names like 'pantyshot' and 'upskirt' do pose a
practical problem: search results about these terms have the risk of being
NSFW, and might be even blocked by your company's firewall.

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JonnieCache
The main reason I don't like the name upskirt is that it led to me wasting
precious brain-seconds trying to work out in what sense it was a pun on
'Markdown,' after the fashion of 'Discount,' and so on.

Obviously it turns out that it isn't a pun at all. I had assumed that the pun
would excuse the sexist connotations of upskirt, that it would be an amusing
bait-and-switch manoeuvre, that the author wanted to be able to say, "Hey, you
thought I was being misogynistic, but in fact the error was yours when you
failed to recognise my magnificently subtle wordplay, you philistine! Sexist?
Me? How dare you leap to such conclusions!"

In fact all they wanted to do was evoke images of sexual assault. How
disappointing.

EDIT: An interesting thought: would upskirt be an acceptable name for a
portscanner/banner-scraper? I think perhaps it would, but it would open the
doors to a whole area of _extremely_ distasteful names for pentesting tools in
general.

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willvarfar
Googling Misaka - the new name chosen - made me despair. Its like the author
wants another sly chuckle at his towering maturity.

~~~
Hisoka
Misaka is just a Japanese name.. dun see anything wrong with it.

~~~
rubinelli
I can't say getting the reference makes me feel very mature but, Misaka is an
anime heroine with psychic powers... that uses shorts under her skirt.

------
pnathan
If you want to have your packages used in a buttoned-up corporate environment,
you had better use more professional names.

If you want your community to be acceptable for such an environment (ie, you
want to see that awesome technology stack in the company rather than the
latest blandware), you should put pressure on your community to be _at least
marginally acceptable_.

------
true_religion
Does everything sexual have to be the bastion of _men_?

Does everything sexual at a woman's expense have to be misogynist by
implication?

Does everything sexual have to be juvenile?

Is this how the international population perceives sexual interactions and
situations?

~~~
peteretep
> Does everything sexual have to be the bastion of men?

No, but this was

> Does everything sexual at a woman's expense have to be misogynist by
> implication?

Yes. The clue is in the phrase "at a woman's expense". Does everything
invoking female sexuality have to be misogynistic? No.

> Does everything sexual have to be juvenile?

No. But inappropriate sexuality (ie: naming a software library after sexual
assault) is juvenile.

~~~
true_religion
I don't disagree with the conclusions reached by the article nor the Cheesebox
board. I disagree with their arguments though.

\--

Misogynistic isn't defined as "sexuality at a woman's expense". It isn't
defined as anything that makes one feel discomforted.

It is _hatred_ and _dislike_ onto women. Even if something is inappropriate or
childish or disgusting or any number of epithets that you can tack onto it, it
is _not_ automatically misogynistic simply because it relates to women.

Using heighten terminology out of place cheapens the terminology and makes it
lose the caustic impact that rightly should have.

\--

Secondly, inappropriate sexuality is not juvenile. Inappropriate sexuality is
often _illegal_ , and I wouldn't characterize that as being something expected
from children.

I suspect people want to call it juvenile in order to have a way to publicly
shame those who practice it.

In their (and perhaps your too) zeal to censure others, you've created an odd
situation wherein:

1\. The situation is called misogynist---aka evil.

2\. The situation is called childish.

So misogynistic is childish now? Or is it the reverse: are children
misogynistic then grow out of it?

\--

See this is why I don't agree with the arguments as used. They're the
arguments of a firebrand or a demagogue---not a logician.

~~~
CodeMage
_See this is why I don't agree with the arguments as used. They're the
arguments of a firebrand or a demagogue---not a logician._

I find that statement ironic, given the fact that your own argument has a
glaring logical fallacy in it:

 _1\. The situation is called misogynist---aka evil.

2\. The situation is called childish.

So misogynistic is childish now? Or is it the reverse: are children
misogynistic then grow out of it?_

1\. My computer is a laptop.

2\. My computer has 4 USB ports.

So all laptops have 4 USB ports? Or is it the reverse: are all computers with
4 USB ports called laptops?

I hope this serves to illustrate the point that "P and Q" is not the same as
"P implies Q" nor "Q implies P".

~~~
true_religion
In a P and Q situation, the appopriate thing to do is what I did: ask for
precision. Does P imply Q? Does Q imply P? What is the relationship between
the two.

This is especially relevant when P and Q have diverging connotations. Usually
one would expect not to say something is both misogynistic and childish. The
meanings are not completely orthogonal.

------
arctangent
Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2687372>

------
owlbear
It seemed like the author was just trying to please people while being
apathetic to the whole thing. This isn't an issue of censorship, people who
want the library and all references of it online to be removed are trying to
censor the author. If you own a repo and choose not to host someone's project
because of an offensive name, that's fair. It's not stopping the project from
being hosted elsewhere. Plenty of programming forums will ask a user to change
his name if it's reported as offensive, it's the same thing. It's not stopping
him form still participating in the community nor is it censorship because if
he chooses to post the same thing under the same name somewhere else he's
welcome to.

If they want to continue hosting the project under the original name, fine, if
they want to ask him to change the name, fine, but hiding behind "free speech"
is ridiculous.

------
mbubb
Much milder - but I always got a chuckle over the pornview program - a nice
little program to view whole directories of photos under Debian.

Quite possibly not the best for the job but a name stuck in memory.

~~~
kelnos
That reminds me: I'm not sure if it's still the case, but I recall that the
image decoding library written for Mozilla was called "libpr0n". Pretty high
profile, and I imagine many people might consider it inappropriate.

------
swalkergibson
This is discussion is interesting. Are there any women that care to comment?
It seems that, as of now, the commentary is coming from men deciding how women
should feel.

~~~
carols10cents
Woman here. I don't offend easily though...

If I were to come across this library as something that I wanted to use, it
would probably merit a sigh or a shake of my head. I'd also be more likely to
dismiss the whole library as a joke since the name seemed to be a (not very
wise) joke, and I would look for something of better quality.

I wouldn't hold it against the host of the library, though, unless they were
actively promoting it or something. There will always be bad apples in every
community. As long as they're on the fringe I don't think the community as a
whole should be judged by them.

------
kanja
I will never understand why some people have such a need to control the
language of others. When that need starts being given serious consideration
organization - regardless of the "think of the X" logic being thrown around -
it's a really bad sign.

~~~
talaketu
Oh come on. It's PSF's shop. Their catalog. Their speech. Their freedom.

------
nekitamo
Boy never grow up; their toys just get more expensive.

------
fmavituna
So many open source developers code stuff for fun and calling their projects
something like "fucking simple fuzzer".

When I write something for fun I want to name it something fun and I don't
care what other thinks, whether they can find it in their Google or not, the
point was writing the code and if I can't give a lovely name to my own
projects what's it good for? If you find it offensive for you taste don't use
it. An open source repository that tries to police this kind of stuff is just
ridiculous unless there is a legal issue.

Who finds "upskirt" offensive? It's childish, yeah, offensive, I don't think
so. If a woman decides to not work on open source projects because she finds
that a library named "upskirt", that's her problem.

~~~
rdtsc
I think it is attitudes like this that stop women and others from
participating. I am against censoring but I am for self-policing and being
sensitive to others. So it is not about someone coming and bashing you on the
head, it is about you hopefull realizing that you are hurting the community
and just change the name of the project voluntarily.

If you were a nerd in high-school (I know I was) remember how it felt
sometimes if you tried to fit in with the jocks because perhaps you wanted to
give some sport a try, but everyone kept making fun of skinny-know-it-all-
glasses-wearing-nerd jokes around you? They would think it is fun, and not
offensive, but you as a skinny-glasses-wearing-nerd would feel singled out and
rejected.

~~~
dexen
_> I think it is attitudes like this that stop women and others from
participating. _

Perhaps as an excuse, but rather not as a real reason.

Upskirt's original author is a woman alright: Natacha Porté, a.k.a. `the lady
of markdown'.

~~~
urbanjunkie
If you read the OP, you'd see that there's a strong implication that the
original author of libupskirt did not understand the connotations of upskirt
when she agreed to the name

"My personal distate for these particular names is heightened because it
appears that the original libupskirt author's acceptance on trust of a
foreign-language name for her library has caused her considerable discomfort
and possibly harassment. She apparently no longer wishes to work on open
source."

~~~
docgnome
That makes me more upset than the original story.

