
The fight against sexism is not a free pass - jodal
http://antirez.com/news/64
======
stephp
I definitely wouldn't have reacted if I was personally involved in this.
However, I do think it's worth pointing out how masculine pronouns can wear a
girl down over time / create general awkwardness (ie: Send your "web guy"
over).

I'm generally not bothered by subtleties, but then I realize that what's
subtle to me as a woman is entirely invisible to men.

If the guy prefers masculine pronouns, it doesn't make him a sexist exactly.
But it would imply that he doesn't experience the subtle discomfort in his
everyday life. So, it's worth pointing out. In a chill way, if possible.

------
olalonde
> Everybody has his fight

Shouldn't that be "Everybody has their fight"? I guess antirez is sexist.
/sarcasm

~~~
mcv
> Shouldn't that be "Everybody has their fight"?

Of course not. Only men have legitimate fights. When a fight is only being
conducted by women, it must be something trivial.

------
kika
<sarcasm>"to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the
principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable
offense" \- nice place to work, congrats Joyent employees.</sarcasm>

There's one practical problem with this approach though. If you start aligning
everyone against a single doctrine and prosecute deviations, you'll quickly
lose the ability to innovate. Start sending people to jail for having an
opinion different from the Central Committee of the Communist Party and you'll
end up not only with engineers in jail but with an industry 100% copied from
someone else. Ask me how I know.

~~~
ben0x539
Good thing nothing like that is happening or likely to happen, then, just good
old social repercurssions for bad behavior.

------
seiji
Do we know if it was more than what the commit said? The reverse said it was a
policy violation to have him commit it directly. It didn't _actually_ say
anything about being a he-man-woman-hater.

------
melindajb
Never mind those generations of discrimination. We men will tell you what is
an acceptable commit and that's that. Offended? Tough luck. We run the world!
It's a meritocracy don'tchaknow??!!

(But don't publicly shame us! We're too threatened a species! we're just
innocent victims of tradition! Who got this way through our own hard work! Oh
no the womenz are attacking!!!!!!!!! Poor us!)

------
mcv
This article misses the point. Before it goes on to speculate about
hypothetical situations, it says:

> The reality is that probably Ben is not a sexist, maybe he believes simply
> that “him” does not make a difference in sexism. Everybody has his fight,
> and changing “him” is not the Ben fight

And that's okay. It doesn't have to be Ben's fight. The problem is that Ben
denies this fight to others. The problem is not that Ben doesn't work to
improve gender equality, the problem is that he rejects and reverts other
people's work to improve gender equality.

And I can fully understand that this would be a firing offense in some
companies. Rejecting and undoing other people's good work is seriously not
cool.

~~~
riffraff
but apparently ben didn't revert the commit on the basis of its content, he
reverted it on the basis of a bad process (lack of review).

So we should criticize "people who don't accept these commits", or "people who
revert commits because of bad process", but the case "people who revert these
kind of commits" is not valid.

~~~
ben0x539
He initially rejected it on the basis of its content, and then reverted it on
a basis that didn't hold up to scrutiny, as one the first comments on the
revert commit demonstrates. Seems like that meets both your criteria?

------
peter2012
[http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001175517/0cb3ef6e1d30edc00...](http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001175517/0cb3ef6e1d30edc0038eaa58f90b507c_xlarge.jpeg)

~~~
ben0x539
You might be missing the bigger picture of witch hunts and the feminist
movement if you're trying to draw parallels like that.

------
makomk
So far as I can tell, it's a fundamental of all forms of feminism (though
especially radical feminism) that yes, everyone must make fighting sexism and
supporting feminism their #1 priority, over and above the actual goals of
whatever businesses or groups they're involved in, and that anyone who doesn't
is a women hater. You get stuff like Atheism+, where a bunch of feminist
activists went into the atheist movement and declared that from then on, it
must revolve entirely around their form of feminism, and that it didn't even
matter if members were actually atheists so long as they supported that kind
of feminism. Radical/non-intersectional feminists even tried to do the same to
groups fighting against other forms of discrimination such as racism and
homophobia.

~~~
mcv
No, not everybody has to fight sexism, just don't defend sexism when others
fight it.

Really, what makes sexism so vital that it needs to be defended?

~~~
makomk
Errrm, sexism certainly doesn't need defending. Unfortunately, as we've seen
here _anything_ that gets in the way of feminist activism gets portrayed as
defending sexism. For instance, reverting feminist commits for not having the
proper sign-off? Totally sexist.

------
jrockway
Gender neutral pronouns _suck_ in English. Fix that before you start firing
people over not using them.

~~~
yxhuvud
We recently added 'hen' as a gender neutral pronound in Swedish, to go with
'han' (he) and 'hon' (she).

~~~
theorique
The impression of that change in the US media seemed to be "oh my God, look at
those overly politically correct Europeans inventing words to be politically
correct" (when they noticed it at all).

What was the impression on the ground in Sweden?

------
clarkm
Ok, even though I think the singular they is awkward, I can understand the
fight for removing gendered pronouns.

However, something I've been wondering for a while now is: how does this issue
manifest itself in other languages? Are there similar movements? How does it
work in languages where every noun has a gender?

~~~
kika
Miserably if you apply the same rules. But I can't imagine a Russian female
software developer being offended by Russian "he" in the documentation. Every
occupation has a gender too and 'software developer' is 'male', though you can
produce the female gender from this word, but in looks very awkward in the
text - if you use 'femalized' words it means you actually make a point. We
also have 'neutral' gender (like "it" in English), but you usually can't use
it instead of male or female unless you're writing satire :-) There're even
different female forms for 'male' occupations depending on whether the female
is the professional or wife of the professional. So all the documentation I
can think of uses the 'default' gender which is usually male. And I'm yet to
see someone offended by that, male or female.

------
rosser
It is so incredibly, profoundly frustrating to watch (mostly) male nerds
grapple with sexism. Guys (and I mean that specifically and gendered-ly), you
don't get it. You kinda can't, and I say that as a cis male person. I don't
get it, either, except maybe intellectually, and even then only occasionally.

To get a little meta for a moment, I think a lot of the disconnect that
happens in these discussions (to, admittedly, stretch the term a bit) comes
from the fact that nerds are already deeply familiar with Othering. We know
what that shit feels like, man; we've been Othered all our lives.

Consequently, when we see an instance of gender-based Othering that seems
trivial to us (witness all this foofaraw over the gender of a pronoun — it's
different by _three whole letters_!), we tend to rank our perception of that
triviality over the Othered party's experience. After all, we know what
Othering feels like, and saying "him" instead of "them" sure as hell doesn't
feel like that. _Ipso facto_ , it can't be Othering, and is therefore just
those damned misandrists trying to make trouble again.

But that's exactly the thing you need to understand if you want to approach
and engage meaningfully with feminism (in the "women are people, too" sense,
which is how it's used by _most_ people): your perceptions of how Othering
should feel _don 't fucking matter_ if you aren't the party being Othered in
that specific circumstance.

Just like an unpopular, male nerd might, in some ways rightly, object to a
popular, pretty, smart girl bemoaning being treated differently for being
"nerdy", because she's never had the experience of being Othered for her
unpopular, male nerdiness, a male nerd can't legitimately claim, "That's
nothing!" when presented with a case of gendered, grammatical Othering. He's
not the Other there.

So, no, it's not reasonable for a male person to reject a gender-neutralizing
pull request on the basis that the gender-based Othering that it's correcting
is "trivial". It may _seem_ trivial to him, but he isn't in a position to
legitimately judge its triviality. That's not to say it's necessarily a firing
offense, but I know I'd, personally, be uncomfortable working with someone who
consistently manifests Ben's attitude towards women and gender issues.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_your perceptions of how Othering should feel don 't fucking matter if you
aren't the party being Othered in that specific circumstance._

This is the exact same attitude that leads to such things as affirmative
action and pampering.

You also make the fallacious assumption that all "nerds" (what a vapid and
pointless label) have been socially ostracized during their lives, thus
begging the question.

Your entire argument basically revolves around accommodating to the feelings
of others, consistently. There are cases where this should be taken into
account, but it is not a rule of thumb. Sometimes a triviality is a
triviality, a ridiculous expectation is a ridiculous expectation.

I think this is the main reason of our present misfortune: we just can't
handle getting offended. If we stopped being so emotional about the most minor
of annoyances, we'd be much happier. In some ways, technology has contributed
to this. We now have too much convenience, and not enough annoyance. It has
made us brittle, weak and sensitive.

~~~
rosser
This stuff is less about being unable to "handle getting offended" than it is
about being unwilling to tolerate people who behave offensively.

I don't think it's okay to use the word "gay" pejoratively, even when there
aren't any queers in the room. I don't think it's okay to make rape jokes,
even when there aren't any women around. I don't think it's okay to behave or
speak in a way that is deliberately and hurtfully exclusive of anyone, for any
reason, at any time.

To me, being deliberate and mindful about Othering is less about being
"accommodating", and more of a useful means to help keep me from being "That
Guy" in any of the countless, subtle ways that I might be — because we all do
it, even the people you think of as the typically Othered, no matter how hard
we try not to.

If you want to call that pampering, that's on you. I call it courtesy and
decency, personally.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_I don 't think it's okay to use the word "gay" pejoratively, even when there
aren't any queers in the room._

That's the whole point of an insult.

 _I don 't think it's okay to make rape jokes, even when there aren't any
women around._

I don't think you understand how comedy works. In many ways, it's a coping
mechanism. The jokes we laugh at are often quite depressing or disturbing if
you try to elucidate their underlying subject matter, but they're presented in
such a manner that we can be humored by and cope with the dark side of life.

Not making jokes of X type is just censorship and idiocy. Comedy has no
boundaries.

 _I don 't think it's okay to behave or speak in a way that is deliberately
and hurtfully exclusive of anyone, for any reason, at any time._

I can agree with that, but the way you put it is excessively vague.

------
im3w1l
Is there a scientific basis for wanting to remove gendered pronouns?

~~~
ben0x539
Is there a scientific basis for insisting on gendered pronouns if there's no
shortage of people telling you that they're offputting and exclusionary?

~~~
thescribe
If we did whatever 'people told us' we wouldn't do anything, this alone isn't
a reason for action.

------
luziphir
If you actually look at the joyent blog post and the github commits its pretty
obvious Ben was a dismissive prick with a bit of an agenda since this goes
beyond just not accepting a pull request. I think firing someone over this
would probably be a bit much but he definitely deserves to be called out for
being a jackass.

~~~
ben0x539
If I was a company that was represented on github by someone who managed to
antagonize the community I was hoping to be working with on my open source
product, I'd probably fire them too and hire someone with better
qualifications re: getting along with people.

------
lukaseder
This is yet another display of people discussing the bikeshed:

[http://blog.jooq.org/2013/12/01/the-open-source-
bikeshed/](http://blog.jooq.org/2013/12/01/the-open-source-bikeshed/)

And

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality)

------
moocowduckquack
We'll run out of tar and feathers at this rate.

~~~
ben0x539
I kind of hoped we'd run out of sexists first.

~~~
Crito
Cast your net wide enough, and you will find that at a certain point some
people will perceive an injustice and will begin _turning themselves 'into'
sexists_, just to spite you.

I am spartacus. Or if you prefer, Giles Corey's refusal to plead.

Begin firing people for using "him" instead of "they", and you will
"radicalize" many formally apathetic people.

~~~
ben0x539
Hey, no one's getting angry because someone wrote 'him' instead of 'they' in
the docs. The issue is that someone inisted that this must not be changed, for
no good reason, pointlessly antagonizing lots of people.

If you're running an open source project and someone you pay is driving off
its community, you'd probably feel justified in not giving them money anymore.

~~~
Crito
> _for no good reason, pointlessly antagonizing lots of people._

Read the actual source, don't rely on editorials.

------
taspeotis
When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was
penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened:

* Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs

* Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change

* Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes)

* Party B reversed the change under the impression than neither he nor Party D had signed off on it

* Joyent would fire Party B for this

It just so happens that the minor change was removing two masculine pronouns
into favour of gender neutral ones.

I can't reconcile the blog post on Joyent with what actually happened.

Blog post [1]:

    
    
        Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.
    

The pull request wasn't rejected on any pronoun principle [2]:

    
    
        Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.
    

And again:

    
    
        Especially when that poor behavior transcended into the gobsmackingly inappropriate as Ben tried to revert Isaac's commit
    

The actual commit message [3]:

    
    
        @isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will.  All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert.  Isaac, consider yourself chided.
    

Unless bnoordhuis was aware the patch had been signed off on (in which case
reversing the commit is a dick move), all he's doing is following procedures.

[1] [http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-
pronoun](http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun)

[2]
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

[3]
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48)

~~~
taspeotis
I'm replying to my own comment to attach an opinion to it (I want the original
comment to remain neutral). But, maybe we can't have women in IT because
people like Bryan Cantrill can't avoid attaching themselves and company to
even the most trivial gender issues and posting inflammatory blog posts about
it?

I'd wager that there are less women in IT because of behaviour like Bryan's
and a company like Joyent that will host his views than there are because of
declined pull requests.

~~~
waterlion
From what I've seen, this is the result of polarised thinking. There are lots
of issues upon which campaigners are unwilling to accept any compromise on any
level.

Case in point feminism. Women have put up with a lot over the years and I can
understand someone being angry and having the courage of their convictions as
a result.

In a way, I respect that. It's their prerogative to try and bring about
change. Refusing to enter into dialogue over certain issues will certainly not
win anyone over who isn't already on their side, but admitting that things
aren't black and white is admitting that they could be wrong.

But mixing take-no-prisoners thinking with the workplace and you can end up
with a very poisonous atmosphere. You always need some flexibility of thought,
however strong your views, because sooner or later a situation will come up
which requires clarification and discussion. Not everything is black and
white, and sometimes there are mistakes and misunderstandings. I think the
error bars on that github activity are wide enough that we can't be certain.

This blog rant reflects very badly on Joyent. I think it shows that Bryan
Cantrill has exceptionally poor judgment. Bryan says "we believe that empathy
is a core engineering value". That seems a bit hypocritical given his
behaviour.

------
CrLf
I'm sorry to invoke Godwin's law on this, but this is beyond absurd...

Stating that defending that pronouns should be gendered is a fireable offense
is more than just ridiculous political correctness, it's criminalizing
opinion. It's the Holy Inquisition.

~~~
rjknight
You can only invoke Godwin's law after someone else draws a comparison to the
Nazis. You cannot invoke it on yourself prior to drawing a comparison to the
Holy Inquisition, no matter how far beyond absurdity the situation may be.

~~~
Crito
The shrill objections that people raise when people draw parallels between
things in history that are not strictly equal in _all_ respects _( "Do you
really think this is equivalent to torturing people for being jewish?!?")_ are
the same.

It is a shame that people have to preface legitimate comparisons to historic
events with these sort of disclaimers.

------
NhanH
Out of sheer curiosity, since the Joyent's blog post had such a big emphasis
on "empathy", but wouldn't sociopaths/ psychopaths be even more likely to be
not sexists? Because they would be an assholes to everyone anyway, regardless
of gender :-). (I'm sorry, this is probably really wrong to be joking with,
it's just that the whole situation is completely bizarre and incomprehensible
to me, so weird questions just pop up).

~~~
Crito
A clever psychopath can put on the mask of an empathetic person when it suits
them. Think Ted Bundy as an extreme case (of course most
psychopaths/sociopaths/whatever are not serial killers).

------
trekky1700
Things that are obvious: 1\. Gender neutral language is obviously and
undoubtedly preferable. 2\. The changes would have been incredibly easy to
implement, the work was already done.

I can't think of a good reason not to accept the pull request. It all seems
like such a simple problem getting blown way out of proportion.

~~~
overgard
There's a more subtle issue at play: accepting the pull request could be seen
as "admitting" that the original phrasing was offensive. Perhaps they didn't
want to do so because they disagreed with the premise. Accepting the patch
isn't a neutral action, it also means implicitly accepting a certain world
view.

The patch itself comes across almost as bullying: accept our view, or be
publicly shamed as a misogynist.

~~~
trekky1700
I wouldn't even call it offensive. I don't get where that's even coming from.
It's not offensive, it's just simply incorrect phrasing. It's poor English if
you will.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Nice job by Joyent. A lot of people will feel that this firing is an
overreaction, but this is how civil rights movements work. You inconvenience
the apathetic until they realize that apathy is as unacceptable as anything
else.

This is the only way it can change the developer community. Don't be a sexist
and you won't run into this problem.

~~~
nrodhn
I hear you, but not being sexist can be pretty hard. I always felt that
obviously, I wasn't sexist: I like working with women in the workplace, I
always figured we make software for everyone so it's probably best if everyone
makes software, and so on. I've been fortunate to have female co-workers who I
felt made terrific colleagues, both skills-wise and socially.

And yet one day one of them pulled me aside and explained to me what exactly I
was doing that was making being at her job harder. It wasn't something I did
intentionally, it wasn't because I thought ill of her, it was just that I
didn't think much at all. I behaved differently toward her (and, I guess,
other female developers) because I had a set of assumptions I automatically
brought to bear against male developers I wasn't sure applied to her, and it
affected my behavior in ways that kept singling her out and making her feel
uncomfortable.

One of the most embarassing, humbling and in retrospect, valuable moments in
my professional life.

I'm happy it went that way instead of a complaint followed by me losing my
job. I think a lot of male developers don't want to be sexist, but we need to
learn what that actually means in practice, and it's not as intuitive as you
make it out to be. Wasn't for me at least.

~~~
fr0sty
for the benefit of others could you outline what "set of assumptions" might
get people fired? your post is incredibly vague...

~~~
nrodhn
Sorry - I wasn't saying that I'm sure I did something I would have gotten
fired over, the point was more that I don't think just any instance of sexism
should be treated as a fireable offense, because sexist behavior can be
unintentional and due to lack of experience. "Don't be sexist and you won't
have problems" as the OP put is what I _thought_ I was doing, but wasn't.

My post is vague because it's about subtle behavioral stuff. Basically, when I
interacted with male developers, my behavior toward them was based on
projecting myself into them automatically. Like, say, the level of
expectations I leveled against them, how competitive I would be with them, how
aggressive I might be toward them was based on how I myself respond to being
challenged and my own career path/experiences and things like that. I
unintentionally behaved differently toward female developers (not necessarily
_worse_ actually, but _differently_ ) just because that automatic projecting
would not happen, and it would end up singling them out.

Learning about that has improved my interaction not just with women but also
men, actually. I make a much bigger effort to learn about the individual now.

I'm sure all this came a lot easier to others, or maybe they just had the
right sort of experiences much earlier (I wonder if it would have helped if I
had any siblings, say). But for me is something I can identify as "needed to
learn that".

------
jnbiche
Oh dear God. This is what we've sunk to? Saying we'd love to fire some
"asshole" because he chose not to pull a pull request changing two instances
of "him" to "they"?

First, let me get it out of the way that I actually agree with the pull
request. In this day, the personal pronoun "they" makes a more inclusive
pronoun that just "him". Zed Shaw's suggestion of "you" is also a good
alternative, particularly if you're wanting to be less formal.

That said, let me note that many of us were taught in school that using "he"
here is the preferred pronoun. And that's just one reason why I can imagine
why someone would reject this pull request. Because as much as I agree with
the PR, I have the ability to conceive of other perspectives. We have no idea
why Ben chose to reject the request.

1\. Maybe he thought it was incorrect grammar. I disagree, since there's a
strong history of singular, third-person use of "they" in English. But it's
what we were taught.

2\. Maybe he's overwhelmed with issues and pull requests, and thinks this is
too trivial of a matter and doesn't want to encourage this kind of
contribution to the project.

3\. I can think of about 3-4 other valid reasons, but I won't bore you.

Bottom line, this has all the characteristics of a witch hunt. Joyent is OK
with taking away a man's livelihood because he chose not to accept a two-word
commit, and one that didn't even deal with code? Not only that, but to
publically call him an asshole?

I'm all for making small steps toward gender equality like this one, but
calling someone who doesn't share that opinion vulgar names and wanting to
fire them is an altogether inappropriate move.

~~~
yeukhon
I am just afraid there is going to be a retaliation against Ben. Remember what
happened early this year at PyCon? Honestly, people need to stop acting like
animals and stop bash him out. There are other contributors who can rule him
out and we don't need those hash comments.

Sexism is not about woman. When we call a country "she" we are making a female
description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. And since there are
more and more single fathers we should be allowed to call a nation "he"
instead of "she".

I often write in HN with the phrase "but your average uncle joe..." and this
is sexist. So one day I will be asked to write "your average auntie Mary" or
better yet "your average consumer."

Freedom of press should be honored. If I were an author and I like to write
with "he" instead of "they" I should have that freedom. Yes, the project is
owned by contributors. So like I said, let other contributors rule him out.

And why do we have sexism in the first place? Because we all assume to have
some roles in this society. Today women want the same rights that men do, but
there are also rights that men don't get easily (or assume to have less). For
example, raping a woman is a big crime but raping a man, have you ever heard
of that? Sure. But to some people that's less severe than raping a woman. I am
just stating the obvious. In some countries, raping a man is a less severe
crime. And law is making a sexist decision.

I believe in people's performance over gender.

All points from either side will draw to the same root cause: we want to be
superior. We want to demonstrate that we are superior. We don't really want to
be equal, we just want to be superior. If you think about it a moment - that's
really where sexism lies. Because there are fewer woman in engineering, we
ought to demonstrate our success and ability too.

I have bias, yes, because I am a man. Who doesn't? But I see performance. My
sister is very capable and more capable than I am. I always look up to her.

And yes, the solution is to make gender neutral but we are looping between
anti-sexist and feminism. There is often a confusion between what a feminist,
a sexist or an anti-sexist person would do... We need Yi-Yang logo here.

\-- EDIT --

I just thought this is a legitimate question to ask: any difference between an
anti-sexist and a feminist? Do feminists prefer gender neutral or do they
prefer to have "she" instead?

~~~
stephp
Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a
comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption
about a specified group of people.

As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit
more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape
victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to
conceive.)

~~~
reeses
Male prison rape is a joking matter in many places. "Pound me in the ass
prison" is well-known in the hacker community.

Think before you react.

~~~
stephp
To state the obvious: female rape jokes are everywhere, all the time. Both are
terrible, of course.

~~~
reeses
Indeed. However, you tell a rape joke about women and someone _should_ (and
very likely will) tell you that it's not funny.

Comments like,"Don't drop the soap," are so benign in our culture that you
would have to be in a hypersensitized environment to be concerned about
repercussions of any sort.

How many people feel as if justice is served when a male prisoner is raped to
death, à la Jeffrey Dahmer. In fact, many would not call Dahmer's homicide a
rape, but switching genders would absolutely qualify it as such.

I'm sounding as if I'm on a soapbox about this, but I'm not defending female
rape in any way or the power imbalance of gender in most of the world.

