

Sexism Isn't Simple (2013) - peri
https://jculpon.github.io/fighting-sexism.html

======
DangerousPie
I don't know the details of this case, but is anybody else a bit shocked by
this quote from Joyent?

> 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

They justify this by arguing that "that insistence can only come from one
place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to
software".

Is it really that impossible to believe that someone would just prefer
gendered pronouns for stylistic reasons? I find it quite scary that you
apparently can't risk having an opinion on something like this without
committing a fireable offense in some peoples' eyes.

~~~
billyhoffman
From a stylistic perspective, it is challenging to write gender neutral
pronouns. In English, the third person singular pronouns are he, she, it.
However, using "it" sounds very strange since it is often used as pronoun for
objects, not for people.

You might say: "The user does an action. Next, he cooks lunch." Saying "The
user does an action. Next, it cooks lunch" is odd.

A common workaround is to use "they" as a 3rd person gender neutral singular
pronoun. "The user does an action, Next they cooks lunch." But this is even
more odd and confusing, since they is a 3rd person plural pronoun. So you have
to alter the verb to match, and you get "The user does an action. Next, they
cook lunch." This is turn can change the meaning of your sentence, because you
really don't mean 2 or more users. You are talking about a single user.

I have always struggled with this myself and am never really sure what to do.
My default is to alternate between "he" and "she"

~~~
mcphage
> they is a 3rd person plural pronoun

I don't know why people keep repeating this. The usage of 3rd person singular
"they" is older than the modern English language itself:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they).
In other words, it is correct, and has always been correct. If your English
teacher told you differently, they were either mistaken or lying.

------
entreat
> being polite and welcoming can help. It doesn't cost much, and it's a
> positive first step.

Except, unless you're a naturally benevolent person (most people aren't),
being polite usually does cost something, even if that something is a bit of
time and brain cycles. The cost also stacks, and paradoxically increases as
your project grows from your niceness.

In the course of business, that politeness is paid for with money in the form
of risk of churn. Yet for much of open source, nobody is paying or incensing
the maintainer to be polite and "considerate". Asking a volunteer FOSS
maintainer to be polite is more or less asking for free work, on top of the
free work they're doing by giving you software.

I actually think the problem of sexism, discrimination, and unwelcoming in
FOSS is intimately tied to the fact that most FOSS is not meaningfully being
paid for by its users.

~~~
peri
Being polite costs me a lot. I have to keep HN on aggressive noprocrast
settings or I will _never_ finish anything. I'm lucky enough to be at a stage
in my career where I can do that. Wasn't always this way.

------
sambeau
The problem here is that if we don't try to change things - nothing will get
changed. Our language is currently sexist by default and if we don't try to
change that it will remain sexist by default.

Why would anyone not want to change that? It's beyond me. If our language was
racist by default we would rightly want to change it.

 _" To operate the vehicle a white man should insert his white man's key into
the ignition and turn clockwise..."_

It looks crazy. But that's the world we inhabit for gendered language.

I'm not a woman but I would be livid if every time someone made a concerted
effort to remove gendered language someone reverted it on 'principle'. I'd be
calling for people's heads let alone their jobs!

I don't think it's much to ask for us to try to fix this. If we can't do it
from the top down, what is wrong with attempting to do it from the bottom up?

~~~
ryanlol
That's nonsense, English isn't sexist by default. It's only sexist if you
decide to make it so, e.g. by intentionally misinterpreting it.

~~~
sambeau
The problem with that argument is that sexism is subjective and it is up to
those being discriminated against to decide what is a discriminatory act, not
the perpetrators.

There is no deliberate misinterpretation. The fact that there are so many
women who find our default use of male gender in English discriminatory is
proof of discrimination - whether deliberate or not. You can't just wave it
away as "nonsense".

It is such a simple thing to change - and it hurts no-one to do it. Why
wouldn't we just do it if only to make those people happy?

~~~
ryanlol
Are those the same women that refuse to identify as "women" and use terms such
as "womyn" instead?

~~~
sambeau
Nope. Now you're just trading in insults.

------
peri
OP here. I'm not bringing this up to reopen old wounds — I talked with antirez
privately after this happened and I think we both learned a lot.

But I do think it's a good reminder, now that students are coming back to
campuses and getting back online again, that things that you say hastily can
stick around the internet a lot longer than you'd like. I'm relatively lucky
in that most of my weird computer experiments were in the 90s when the
demoscene was pretty active.

Even without policy changes to the CFAA or DMCA, it takes a very delicate hand
to guide students. Those of us who teach, publicly or privately, have a
serious responsibility here to make sure we're dealing with subtle linguistic
issues even in documentation or comments.

~~~
mdisraeli
Thanks for the additional context, both for the importance of the repost, and
in general regarding this incident.

As a woman working in tech, I was understandably very upset about the whole
affair. I'm very much glad that actual outreach happened behind the scenes,
and learning of this makes me feel safe to be part of certain communities
again.

------
UnGravitas
I always find this parody amusing and educational when discussing the "is a
default gendered pronoun sexist?" thing.
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html)

~~~
peri
That wasn't parody the first two dozen times I read it in the 80s and 90s,
alas

------
idiotclock
Thank you for this brief and calm comment on the delicacy of politesse.

~~~
peri
Glad you enjoyed it. It's really difficult for me to share writing about this
stuff publicly.

