
The Power of a Pronoun - benwen
http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
======
spindritf
> while Isaac is a Joyent employee, 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.

Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with
calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as
professionalism and empathy at Joyent?

~~~
na85
It's not so crazy if you put down your pitchfork for a sec.

1) Every employee is an ambassador of your company's brand, and Tech already
has a sexism problem to begin with.

2) It's not about the pronoun so much as it's about Ben _re-rejecting_ a patch
that Isaac, the project lead, had already accepted, solely on the grounds of
pronoun genders.

#2 really has no other explanation than sexism; and when his behaviour is
conducted in public on the internet, where the "Joyent employs bigots" meme
has potential to go viral, that'd be cause for concern for any employer.

Now, I like to think that had Ben been a Joyent employee the author of this
pieces would have had a standard "we have concerns with your conduct" meeting
with Ben before reaching for the banhammer but we don't really have any way of
knowing.

~~~
theorique
#2 has the alternative explanation of passive aggressive frustration, in
addition to sexism. Sort of an irritable "you aren't going to tell me what to
do" attitude. Not sure if that is better or worse than sexism, but it is a
definite possibility.

~~~
na85
Again, something you wouldn't want in a potential employee.

------
patio11
I'm as capitalist as the day is long, but some of the Can't Get Your Degree
Without Learning Applied Marxism memories are getting pinged a bit by the
naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime. This impression is further
strengthened by the not insignificant detail that Capital is here asserting
the right to punish Labor even though Capital has negative a billion desire to
ever cut Labor a check.

Another thing reminding me of university: "The fights are so vicious because
the stakes are so small" was originally said about academic infighting but
could also be applied to drama over the social functioning of a commit bit.

~~~
overgard
Thoughtcrime is a great way to describe this.

I haven't seen any (comprehensive) explanation for why the original patch was
rejected, but it might be as simple as that he wasn't interested in his
project becoming part of someone else's fight. That doesn't mean he's sexist,
it might be as simple as that he isn't interested in feminism's battle to
redefine acceptable language. Reasonable people can disagree on that sort of
thing without being women haters.

~~~
stefan_kendall
You might want to read up on the term "thoughtcrime."

Ben was an ass and very poorly represented the Node.js community. A
"thoughtcrime" is a crime that is a crime because of the thoughts of the
perpetrator.

~~~
rmc
Every country, essentially, has crimes based on your thoughts. It's called
"intent to XXX", where XXX is some actual criminal act that you didn't do.
"Intent to commit murder" is a crime for planning to kill someone.

------
benwerd
This is a great response.

Like the article says, it's not that the original author was both sexist and
sloppy with language, although they were. The problem is that the sexism was
actively reinforced in a public forum, first by a dismissive comment and then
by an actual reversion. It would have taken no effort at all to make the
correction; it was actually more work to reinforce the sexism. That means it
was willful.

If one of my employees was being willfully sexist in public in a way that
reflected on my company, I'd fire them too. Node.js is a really important
project, closely associated with Joyent, and they've already seen some
backlash from this. This kind of behavior could have real implications for the
company's bottom line, and potentially even legal liabilities. Being inclusive
is good business.

To reiterate: the original sexism, while dumb, is not a fireable offense. To
actually go out of your way to be an asshole and practice discrimination while
representing a company: _totally_ a fireable offense. I'm not really sure why
so many other commenters feel differently.

------
tptacek
I'm happy to see that gender discrimination is radioactive at a big tech
company, and more than happy to grammar-nerd about "they" versus "he".

But even I think this would be a silly reason to fire someone.

~~~
bcantrill
(Disclosure: I wrote the linked blog entry.)

Just to be clear, the use of the gendered pronoun isn't the issue -- it was
the insistence on it, to the point of attempting to revert @izs's commit
fixing the issue. To me, that transcends from rational position to
unacceptably inappropriate, and it speaks well beyond a pronoun. You might say
that reaction is extreme, but I would be willing to bet that you've fired
people for less: I bet you have (or would) fire people for merely being an
asshole. Firing someone for being such an asshole on such a small issue that
in fact has broader consequences for the hostility of a work environment is
actually a no-brainer.

~~~
heterogenic
I say this fully aware that it risks inviting a backlash, but as a female
developer I applaud this move.

Misogynist assholes are insidious in that they are often hard to uncover, but
brutal to any women in the office. All developers are not misogynist assholes;
quite the opposite, the vast majority I've worked with have been pleasant and
awesome. But when that one asshole sneaks in, and nobody sees his assholery
but you, it becomes an office environment of "me or him, and he has more
experience and I don't want to seem to be rocking the boat... nobody else has
a problem with him, maybe it's me?", then eventually I left.

I could ramble about this for a while, but it may just not be one of those
things which can be easily communicated. Now, as a manager, I look for
examples like this which demonstrate a person's biases, and if they don't
self-correct (with prodding) I have zero compunctions with letting them go. It
keeps the family healthy.

~~~
waterlion
The problem I have is calling someone a "misogynist asshole" on the basis of
just one thing. It doesn't look like there's been any dialogue with this
person, the blog post doesn't touch on past behaviour. What if the person in
question was reverting to reasons other than the content? What if English
isn't his first language and he didn't fully understand the implications? From
here it just looks like "he's a witch burn him".

There is no question that people with negative attitudes can have a deeply
destructive effect on a team and an industry in general, or that you and
others have suffered because of them. But this seems to have kicked off on a
real hair trigger.

How would you react to someone that writes a blog post at a moment's notice
calling someone an "asshole" and saying "he should be fired", whatever the
issue is?

~~~
heterogenic
In this particular case I notice he not only rejected the pull request, but
then (after having the issue explained to him) [ _re-submitted_
]([https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48))
the change to revert.

That's where he (potentially) stepped over the line. If he were in the office
it would at the very least precipitate a serious discussion. It's the refusal
to acknowledge the feedback or policy which really screams out "asshole".

Again, I would need to have a relationship with him to be sure of it, but the
OP did have that relationship. Assuming this wasn't the first issue, it would
be even more inappropriate for him to go blabbing about that history on a
random pull request, don't you think? That would just be character
assassination.

~~~
waterlion
As others have said, this might still have been the result of confusion.
bnoordhuis clearly didn't realise that bert had signed off on the change
already. There are apparently other issues, such as people making minor
changes and sneaking into the contributor list, which maintainers have to deal
with day to day. I don't know much of this, but it's detailed in other posts.

I think this isn't clear cut. Certainly not clear enough cut for all this
uproar.

~~~
heterogenic
Since he's just a contributor, and has not been fired (nor could he be), in
this case OP is describing a hypothetical situation in which someone in his
office might exhibit similar behaviour and how that would be handled.

The situations are different enough that I consider his post one which uses
the opportunity to make a hypothetical point rather than one which describes a
real situation. (For instance, in an office setting a first step would be to
_talk_ to the person in question. The second step would be to consider their
holistic reputation in the office. Etc.)

~~~
waterlion
I went back and read the article. Weasel words. Yes it's hypothetical
situation but he is explicitly linking Ben and this hypothetical situation. He
didn't have to use Ben's name and the word 'asshole' in adjacent sentences. It
looks pretty deliberate to me.

I think a lot of people (Bryan, commenters in this thread, and the people
abusing and bullying noorhuis on twitter) got hot under the collar and are
retroactively trying to rationalise and explain their behaviour rather than
apologising and saying "sorry we got caught up in the lynch mob". I've not
seen a single answer to the question of "why are you ignoring the fact that he
was following the procedure had no option".

Anyway, this has been talked to death. I'm interested in this because I
empathise with the injustice of it, can't stand a witchhunt, and don't think
that bullying should happen, in any of its forms. Everyone's drawn a slightly
different conclusion about the people involved, we can all learn something
about humanity and move on.

------
rjknight
Fuck Joyent. Seriously.

This is something that calls for dialogue, discussion and debate. I seriously
hope Ben Noordhuis learns from this. But to say that you would fire someone
over this is a sign that you are not a fit company for a reasonable person to
buy from or work for.

~~~
brown9-2
Is there seriously an argument to be made for a pro-"he" side? I don't
understand how people both say "there should be a debate" and also "it's one
word in meaningless documentation".

~~~
anon4
Oh yes there is. He and She can only refer to people while They can refer to
things, too. Take for example: "if a person wishes to rungle the querts, they
need to configure them such so that they will be in the state indicated by the
widget manager". A sentence like that, while ultimately understandable, does
cause me mild confusion at first read, and I'm sure I can come up with a more
natural-sounding, but more confusing example, if I weren't so tired.

From my point of view, English is basically fucked. You've ended up with third
person pronouns that are irredeemably connected with the gender of the person
they describe. They is really a cludge that sort of works, but isn't quite a
drop-in replacement for good old She and He.

I'd use They when the text can flow naturally with it, but drop to She/He when
it starts sounding ambiguous or use any other kind of description. If writing
instruction manuals, I'd use You to refer to the user at all times, or just
drop to passive form and not mention people's genders at all.

------
heterogenic
What we really need here is some kind of blind poll, with results aggregated
into two buckets: "Female developers who have worked in the valley." and
"Everyone else".

I think the HN community might be surprised by the results.

As a female developer, I assert that you haven't a clue what you're talking
about, and you don't understand what it's like to work in this industry as a
woman.

First, try listening. Then, try observing your workplace and peers. Finally,
consider what Ben's actions (particularly his refusal to accept feedback or
accept reality) have unveiled about his biases and daily behavior.

~~~
knowitall
So have you been using "they" in you comments from the very beginning, or have
you used "she", or "he"?

~~~
heterogenic
I can't find any examples of a pronoun in my personal repository or work
repository, but in a few bug submissions I say "she".

But if anyone ever challenged me on it, or suggested it was inappropriate, or
rejected a pull request, I'd _totally_ understand. Just as if I accidentally
said something which was accidentally racist or ethnocentric. It's not about
the original "he", it's about the rejection of active inclusion.

edit: Scanned my whole code tree and ticket database, and found 7 "she"'s, 5
"he"'s and 8 "they"'s. The gendered pronouns were all referring to specific
people, except for one "she", referring to a hypothetical external API
customer. I've just patched it to "they".

Of course, my team works for a female CTO (me) and is ~50/50 m/f, so we are
very much not representative. But since this was totally unplanned, this
suggests a curious corollary that the absence of default-masculinity seems to
be at least be correlated with gender equality in an office.

~~~
knowitall
It's not that surprising that the presence of a diverse mix of people makes it
likely for imaginary people to be less stereotyped.

I must admit as a non-native speaker, I am still not quite sure how to
properly use "they". I wasn't aware of the possibility before this discussion
occurred.

------
mindcrime
_and that an engineer that has so little empathy as to not understand why the
use of gendered pronouns is a concern almost certainly makes poor technical
decisions as well._

Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having
notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH,
blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences
that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that
it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people
to accept either:

a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon

or

b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of
indicating inclusiveness.

~~~
matdesigner
except women and men aren't the only genders in tech/the english language, and
just switching between "he" and "she" is still non-inclusive of them.

~~~
Tohhou
There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?

~~~
gruntmaster9000
Gender != sex.

~~~
Tohhou
Gender is the grammar layer above sex. Sex informs gender. Gender is not a
purely social construct out of nowhere. In English, there is the ternary, but
it is defined as without the male/female. People generally don't like being
called it though. Even if they have a special snowflake prounoun such as xer
which they prefer the rest of the world can't know this and so it is fair and
reasonable to call them what they look like they most identify out of the
binary. Or we can just stop using pronouns altogether, even in industries
largely of men, because we wouldn't want to make it seem like women can't take
part in them (even when there is nothing stopping them). I'd be fine with
that. Men don't exist anyway.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender)

~~~
gruntmaster9000
You are confusing grammatical gender with gender identity. It is also informed
by sex, but that is only one influence.

~~~
Tohhou
>It is also informed by sex, but that is only one influence.

Right, so it's not fair to say that gender != sex when gender is the
grammatical expression of a sex within an environment's constraints.

>You are confusing grammatical gender with gender identity.

The grammar is the expression of masculine and feminine, which vary based on
constraints, but still stick to the sexual binary. Going beyond that is
special snowflake territory where people invent their own thing to be unique
while expecting to be taken seriously. Complaining that people don't use your
preferred pronoun is a perfect case for first world problems.

My original comment you replied to "There are human genders other than male
and female? Scientific or imaginary?"

All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine) are
imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not merit
being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition. Male and
female based sexes will always be re-expressed in very similar ways, as they
have all over the world in varying civilizations, while others will never be
the same. I'ts the same as religions or ideologies. It is complete fabrication
of the mind. If people want to invent new identities fine, but white washing
away him and her so that all of the other newly minted pronouns don't feel
left out is ridiculous.

>Hi, I'm Caramelkh. I'm demisexual, polyromantic, fat positive genderqueer
(neutrois, femme presenting), sexual assault survivor (7 times), native
American, Muslim neuroatypical with OCD, cotard delusion, trimethylaminuria,
social phobias, depression, post traumatic stress, anxiety issues and I can't
walk very far. On my blog I will NOT tolerate any form of oppressive bullshit
language and I will not hesitate to call you out on it. My preferred pronouns
are ze/zy/zo/zum. After reading my about me section above, you still know
nothing about me other than that the long list of labels means I get to have
experienced nearly every type of kyriarchy oppression and so I can call people
out on anything and say it triggers and offends me. If people get bored, I
invent new oppressions. I'm triggered by the color teal.

Or better yet the new thing of people insisting to be called only by the
pronoun brony.

~~~
gruntmaster9000
Gender _identity_ is _not at all_ the “grammatical expression of a sex within
an environment’s constraints”. It is ‘a person's sense of self as a member of
a particular gender.‘ —
[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gender_identity](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gender_identity)

> All else other than male (primary masculine) and female (primary feminine)
> are imaginary, and not based on biological reality. Those things do not
> merit being taken seriously no more than any religion or superstition.

Complete and utter bullshit, evidenced by how the ideas of “masculine” and
“feminine” vary between and even within societies. These ideas are hardly the
same “all over the world in varying civilizations”. Please, please read the
Wikipedia article on Gender Identity, especially the section on non-western
gender identities. It is _such_ a different concept than classifying nouns.

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-Western_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Non-Western_gender_identities) * [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)

Even grammatical gender is hardly consistent or strict with its being informed
by sex. In Spanish, a man’s shirt would still be “la camisa”, a feminine noun.
A female cheetah would still be called “el guepardo”. This insistence on
adhering to biological sex — which itself isn’t even always binary — as a
strict basis for gender makes no sense.

~~~
Tohhou
Grammar is how an idea is communicated. If a person has an identity they want
to share then the pronouns they use communicate their identity, but if they
use an uncommonly used pronoun then their identity is not understood, not
communicated, and if gender neutral pronouns are used then no identity is
communicated, or it's just completely confusing as is the case with using xer.
I'm fine with people inventing identities outside of the binary, I'm fine with
cultures having outliers to the natural occurring roles the constraints of
reality offer, because all cultures and languages developed in different
environments with different forces pushing and pulling. What bothers me is the
white washing of the binary male/female him/her in an attempt to represent
everyone when people invent their own identities which did not occur naturally
as a consequence of environment. If a culture has some instances where
definite articles are sometimes out of what is naturally expected from the
basic grammar then that's cool, but it's still not the norm. You mention
because they are exceptions not because they are everywhere.

>, evidenced by how the ideas of “masculine” and “feminine” vary between and
even within societies

I did say that they did vary in an earlier comment, but they still follow the
biological binary. They are a product of biology. I'm talking from experience
of being around different cultures and I have never been in one where men are
not generally male and women are not generally female. The same gender roles
also still exist, because the dimorphic nature of humans make different
behaviors more advantageous for each sex to do.

I'm aware of things like XYY syndrome, but expression wise they are still
male.

>third gender

Transpeople exist, yeah! Like in an earlier comment I also said that there is
a third option in English the it, but transpeople don't like that word as far
as I know because it has a history of being derogatory as is illustrated in
the wikipedia page as people being seen as without gender. They are people
with gender dysphoria, because they generally would have rather been born the
other gender. For whatever reason, as they developed their hormones were not
at the male/female ideals and so they expressed in different ways outside of
the male/female ideal ranges, and their behavior expressed in ways not common
within their natural sex, so they become outcasts being not really attractive
or useful to either natural sex in traditional societies. I empathize with
their suffering, but I still see it for what it is. There is no plethora of
varying genders divorced from sex. There is a lot of made up stuff though with
no basis in science. "Social science" isn't.

In English we do have a grammar with gender, and I know that there are
generally assumptions about gender/sex which people want to change, and many I
do not agree with. How far away is that from real human suffering? How serious
should we really take a person who looks like a male within our culture and is
offended with a person calls this person a him?

>It is such a different concept than classifying nouns.

Why reply at all to my original post then when the person I was replying to
was talking about pronouns, and I was clearly using the word gender defined as
an attribute of sex.

If you can make the world a better place with less human suffering then good
luck. I see it all as being biologically informed and so useless to even
bother with. This dialog is useless too. You've not given me any new
information and I already have reflected on it all and I see it as another
way. It's not worth either of our time to continue, so, good day to you, xer.

------
jellicle
I clicked the comments to write "Joyent is going to get a lot of hate mail
from Hacker News woman-haters", and indeed, with 21 comments so far, that
seems to be true.

Good job, Bryan Cantrill and Joyent. One small step forward.

(And now I see this posting getting flagged down the page rapidly, like
anything else on the topic of Silicon Valley's disdain for women. Has dropped
from #3 to #35 in roughly 3 minutes.)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Pointing out a complete overreaction is now woman-hating, it seems.

It's almost as if being a misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever
anymore. It just becomes another mundane everyday action. It shouldn't be, but
you're redefining it to be.

~~~
mdisraeli
"misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore"

You mean it ever actually took effort? The truth is that our entire society is
misogynist. I'm a woman, and I do my upmost to not be, but /because society
itself is screwed/, even I can't avoid being misogynist occasionally.

In this particular case, you're thankfully calling the actions of men
"overreactions", but that EXACT word is used to belittle women the world over,
in exactly this same way. Wanting people to be decent human beings is
"overreacting". Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks,
or walking them home, or coming into their house... overreacting.

And that's not even going into the gender aspects of calling a man that.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
If our entire society is so pervasively misogynist that you can basically do
it all the time just by going through your daily routine, then why is misogyny
even notable at all? Misogyny is supposed to be an abnormal thing.

How do you define misogyny?

Yeah, the word "overreaction" can be applied to many contexts. Who would have
known?

 _Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks_

I wish someone bought me free stuff.

 _or walking them home_

That one I can agree with, but how exactly does someone walk you home without
your consent? I mean, if they don't have it, then by definition it's following
or stalking.

 _coming into their house_

As in, they knock and come in uninvited? Politely send them away. If they come
in forcefully, that's a different issue entirely.

~~~
rsynnott
> Misogyny is supposed to be an abnormal thing.

I'm not sure why you think it has to be necessarily. By analogy, would you say
that racism is supposed to be an abnormal thing? We have plenty of examples of
societies where racism is or was the norm.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
In contemporary Western society, misogyny is considered abnormal.

But like I said, I'd require a more thorough definition of what the OP
considers "misogyny". Because for some people I've noticed that all minor
annoyances and socially awkward situations are misogynistic and sexist.

~~~
rsynnott
> In contemporary Western society, misogyny is considered abnormal.

That's... a terribly rosy view of Western society you have there, I'm afraid.

------
LolWolf
I can't be the only one who seriously doesn't even understand this article.

Don't get me wrong, I'm _all for_ gender-equality, but say what about
languages like Spanish? Do those have to be gender-neutral, too? Should we
fire people because their culture _dictates_ that gendered pronouns (which, by
themselves, offer little to the conversation except perhaps a passing thought,
at best) be used?

Really? Is that what it's come down to?

Of the millions of things that could be argued and put down due to gender
inequality, we're _firing people over pronouns_.

Congratulations. I'll give you that.

------
cbg0
I take it Joyent employees will live in fear of being fired for not being
politically correct from now on, if they weren't already.

~~~
msmillie
As a Joyent engineer, I feel qualified to field this one.

tl;dr: you couldn't be more wrong.

The long version requires a crucial observation: this wasn't one simple
mistake, made in haste, ignorance, or confusion. This was a deliberate action
to revert to exclusionary language. Speculating on the precise motivation
strikes me as pointless; it's the action itself that is problematic.

At Joyent, I have room to make mistakes, and enough respect among my
colleagues that I can take corrections without misgivings. Deliberate and
repeated "mistakes" on my part would have consequences (but surely that's the
literal definition of a problem employee).

In case you aren't already one step ahead of me, here is the corollary: I am
protected from the deliberate and repeatedly hostile actions of others.

So: the ability (even _obligation_ ) to speak your mind, listen to others, and
be protected from bullying, exclusionary behaviour?

That, my friend, is what you call security.

~~~
teacup50
The fact that you don't see Bryan Cantrill's public shaming as deliberately
and extremely hostile is _astounding_. It was misleading, it was predicated on
a straw man that wasn't remotely supported by the evidence, and it was mind-
boggling aggressive. The permanent social and business ramifications for
everyone involved are substantial, and if Bryan Cantrill were my employee, __I
'd have him posting an apology or submitting his resignation __.

I'm not sure what sort of culture you have there at Joyent, but if it's a
monoculture that fully supports this sort of grossly disproportionate public
escalation and aggressive behavior from _anyone_ , _especially_ under the
company's name, then I'm happy to keep Joyent off the short list of companies
I'd consider working for or with.

Surveying the facts, I'm far more inclined to believe that this event simply
provided you with a convenient self-righteous excuse for Joyent to stretch the
truth enough to hang what you considered to be a troublesome contributor (and
competitor) with his own rope.

[edit] On top of all this, I've had to fire a number of people over the years,
and always, regardless of how justified it was, I did so with a heavy heart.
The fact that Bryan Cantrill would speak to gleefully of firing _anyone_ is,
if nothing else, a testament to the myopia of self-righteousness.

~~~
jpll
speaking of monoculture:
[https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/407228751731101696](https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/407228751731101696)

------
alexandros
This to me sounds like a company terrorised that the political-correctness
police is coming after them, and going way too far in the opposite direction
just to prove their PC credentials. While on first read I was as surprised as
anyone at the magnitude of the over-reaction, on second read, I'm starting to
think how bad things have become, i.e. the environment of fear, to lead
companies to react this way.

~~~
mdpopescu
"the environment of fear"

This, exactly.

------
olefoo
This should be a reminder to everyone that your public actions on public code
repositories can carry consequences.

That said, I personally approve of the work that people like Ashe Dryden, Coda
Hale and others have been doing to help the tech industry grow up. We need to
move beyond the time when mastering this weeks hot skill entitles you to act
like a jerk. And if making it known that acting like a jerk in public will get
you fired from the places where you'd like to work is one of the things that
it takes to effect that change; that is a positive development.

------
nawitus
Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days?

My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to
Wikipedia, "he" used to be gender neutral[1].

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-
neut...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-
neutral_pronouns#Generic_he)

~~~
auganov
It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender.
So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be
appropriate anymore.

~~~
sontek
But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would
be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?

~~~
auganov
Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while
semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's
still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a
completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it.
But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant
solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.

------
paulrademacher
I applaud Joyent for their brave stand in theoretically firing someone who
does not work for them. The legal issues they would theoretically face are
daunting.

~~~
dmourati
This. Talk is cheap. Pull his committer status at least before all the
bluster.

------
tokenadult
I scanned the comments here to see if anyone has brought up data about the
underlying linguistic issue. I call baloney on the silly idea that "gendered
pronouns" make life better or worse for anyone in actual society as contrasted
with "nongendered pronouns." What is my evidence? I speak the world's most-
spoken language (the only language that arguably has more speakers than
English, namely Modern Standard Chinese) and it has totally nongendered
pronouns. There is not a distinction in spoken Chinese[1] between "he," "she,"
or "it," as the language has just one third-person singular pronoun, namely
_tā._

But my wife, who grew up in Chinese-speaking society and has since lived in
English-speaking society, and I, who have lived in both places, think it is
ludicrous to suppose that Chinese-speaking society is "less sexist" in any
systematic way just because of the pronoun system of Chinese. Pronouns appear
to make no difference at all. The map is not the territory. On this issue,
languages appear to vary arbitrarily with no particular influence on social
custom, and not much influence from social notions of male or female
superiority or inferiority. Gendered pronouns don't matter for anything
important. It is an extraordinary claim to say that they do. People who make
extraordinary claims should bring along extraordinary evidence to back up
those claims.

[1] Under _Western_ influence, after extensive contact with speakers of Indo-
European languages and translation of books from those languages into Chinese,
the Chinese writing system has sometimes distinguished written forms '他,'她,'
and '它' for "he," "she," and "it," but all are pronounced /tā/ in speech and
this distinction has to be painstakingly learned by Chinese children in
school, with many native speakers of Chinese confusing the pronouns of English
as to gender for years after learning them. For example, I have heard plenty
of Chinese-language conversations in which someone describes a situation
involving men and women and then starts speaking about individual persons in
the situation as he/she did this or that to him/her, and sometimes a listener
breaks into the conversation with "male or female?" to keep track of who is
whom. And I've heard plenty of Chinese speakers talk about "my sister . . . he
is" or "my brother . . . she is" and so forth, making clear that their brains
don't distinguish pronouns by grammatical gender in any language.

------
bradleyjg
I'm aware that singular they is attested all the way back to the 16th century,
but it still doesn't read right to me. Particularly in the case where the
pronoun definitely refers to one person, albeit of unknown gender, rather than
where it could refer to either a singular or plural antecedent. I'd actually
prefer the awkward 'he or she'.

 _De gustibus non est disputandum_ , but to claim that preference for the
generic he, or even the kind of indifference that could lead one to reject
such a patch as a waste of time, can only come from a deep wellspring of
misogyny, is absurd.

~~~
LeafStorm
He didn't quote Strunk & White to justify rejecting the patch, nor did he
bring up the grammatical argument at all when reverting it. He just said "this
is not worth spending time on" and closed the ticket. (And if it was truly not
worth spending time on, he wouldn't have contramanded one of his fellow
maintainers to revert the patch, then rewrite the repository's history to
cover himself.)

------
onli
This insistence on political correctness is harmful to the cause of gender
equality, is harmful to the state of our society and harmful to the technology
sector.

It is the construction of thought barriers, the creation of solely accepted
behaviour and arbitrary creation of anormal behaviour, by redefining what is
normal and not discriminating in any way (to use he in a normal sentence) as
discriminating and bad and as a cause to lose an existence (i.e. getting
fired).

It is morality not for creating good, but for appearing moralic, one of the
lowest kinds of behaviour on an ethical level.

Damning someone who seemingly tried to hinder those artificial norms getting a
foot into a project is a mistake.

~~~
IdahoEv
> This insistence on political correctness

It isn't "political correctness" \- the phrase implies that the language has
no real effect and changing it is merely for show, or as a political
statement.

Using male pronouns as gender neutral has a _measurable_ effect on
comprehension that has studied and reproduced repeatedly. Using "he" pronouns
as generics does in fact lead both men and women to exclude women in their
comprehension of the sentence a statistically significant fraction of the
time. See for example
[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&s...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103091639063).

Revising language not a "thought barrier", it's an actual real benefit.

Your entire premise is false.

------
gizmo686
>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.
... the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered.

So what. The request was rejected on the principle of it being trivial:

> Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. [1]

I can find no mention in the discussion of anyone arguing against the change
on the grounds that gendered pronouns are preferable.

We can still argue over wheather this is a good reason to reject a pull
request. Personally, I think that trivial requests should be accepted if for
no other reason than to be welcoming to newcomers who are testing the waters
before becoming active. However, accepting pull requests takes time, and one
might not want to encourage a community to spam oneself with minor
corrections. Furthermore, in this particular example, the proposed changes
were grammatically incorrect, as the object itself is the singular "user",
while the new pronoun is the plural "they/them". This could easily be resolved
by making user plural, or avoiding the pronoun altogether, but this still
takes more of the maintainers time.

Notwithstanding that, it seems completely dishonest to frame the original
dispute as Ben Noodhuis objecting to removing gendered pronouns on principle.

[1]
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

------
vezzy-fnord
Where exactly was an explicit insistence on using gendered pronouns ever
stated?

How would an insistence on using gendered pronouns automatically equal a
belief in an inextricable link between software and masculinity?

Don't you realize that considering empathy as an engineering value is
offensive to sociopathic engineers? (joking on that one)

------
sergiotapia
>But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, 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.

Sounds like a fun place to work!

------
banachtarski
Lol. Joyent, the people who tried to optimize their whole product around
nodejs because it was hip is now creating excessive coverage with pretty
extreme language to paint themselves as the "White knight" of the tech world.

Lame company is lame.

------
ddod
I'm afraid some will look at this as an issue of the fickle HN crowd never
being satisfied, but it really is more about exercising rationality. Firstly,
nobody really had to publicize this ridiculously miniscule episode, as it was
sorted out responsibly without the attention. It's great for women to see how
many people rally to their inclusion in tech, but there's a not-too-fine line
between displays of inclusion and Joyent's response. This sort of response is
polarizing and inasmuch works against the goal of equality, safety, and
comfort of men and women in the industry. Also, has anyone considered language
barriers in this discussion, because if that was a factor, it would be an even
worse reason to start a public shaming and loss of a contributor.

------
JohnTHaller
For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on
the matter thus far:

"Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."

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

"@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."

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

"Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things.

Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc
changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to
collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc.

That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' \- in this
case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker,
the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us
scores of female contributors, who am I to object?

Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit
of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions.
On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would
have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt
from them.

To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a
mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved
in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number
of women in the field?

I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do
it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal
with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up.
Thanks."

\-
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172)

------
RivieraKid
Firing someone because he uses "he"? That's really fucked up.

P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Is that a widespread
phenomenon or specific to IT community? Am I the only one who finds it
awkwardly forced?

~~~
theorique
_P.S. What 's with the trend of obsessively using "she"?_

Self-consciously overcompensating, and in-group signaling.

You're communicating to other people that you are not one of the _Bad, Bad
Sexist Men In Tech_.

------
davorak
If you maintain a flagship open source project for you company, you are not
just a programmer. You are a public representative of the company.

So as a company representative it seems reasonable to be fired for either
directly going against a known view point of the company, or being ignorant of
view points you are supposed to representing(after reasonable opportunity to
learn what they are.)

It seem reasonable to fired for not representing a company the way it wants to
be represented when part of the job is to represent that company.

------
hackula1
Ben is not a Joyent employee, but a Strongloop employee/cofounder. I Cannot
say I am terribly surprised. Strongloop has rubbed me the wrong way from the
very beginning. Since they have launched, they have displayed all the
integrity of a used car salesman. I know they have some very strong core devs,
and I know they are not all like this, but their public image has been max-
sleaze ever since they started marketing in shady ways suggesting that they
were the creators of node.js.

------
iterationx
Would the commit have happened if the offending pronoun was 'she' instead of
'he'? This is speculation but it seems clear that the pronoun 'she' would have
been allowed to remain, because it is as a sign of progressiveness and
inclusiveness, but 'he' is a sign on retrograde patriarchal medievalism that
must be combated with our every waking breath, if you don't agree you are
clearly a misogynist bigot.

------
__pThrow
It's shocking for many reasons that Joyent thinks its reasonable to fire an
employee over something as trivial as that pull rejection.

Not correct him first, but fire him.

Not stand behind him, as in "sometimes we all make errors", but fire him.

This is callous, abusive, shocking behavior.

Is it a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of Joyent, or their fear
of retaliation from the Tech Feminism?

This statement of Joyent's should be condemned by anyone who has ever held
down a job.

------
RivieraKid
> we believe that empathy is a core engineering value

What?? That's pure BS. Is empathy a political value? Or a filmmakers' or
writers' value? And what about honesty or team spirit? Are they core
engineering values?

------
mdisraeli
Putting aside gender theory, there is a much simpler issue here. This is the
same issue that affects wikipedia.

Writing that deny took more effort than just allowing the change. If it really
was trivial, then there is no harm in accepting it. Denying it is shouting
down someone's effort to improve the project. It destroys community rather
than builds.

------
xs_kid
Obviously Node.js isn't a community project, it's a Joyent project and this is
a clear confirmation of it.

~~~
forgottenpass
Oh, I wouldn't say that. The clear confirmation came from the introduction of
the CLA. Regardless of how free the license is (or which type of freedoms you
want from a license) once you make one party more equal than all others the
pretense of "community project" goes out the window.

That's not to say people outside the company can't be highly involved and feel
like they have an ownership stake in productive way. Just that when push comes
to shove they find out they don't have an ownership stake. See: The
Hudson/Jenkins split.

------
rickbeerendonk
Not a motivation for non-native speakers to contribute to English dominated
open-source.

~~~
acdha
Your argument apparently being that non-English speakers are just incurably
rude? The problem wasn't the minor doc change but how it was handled – less
capable speakers might make a mistake but a simple “oh, thanks for the
correction” avoids any problem.

------
dmvaldman
That seems....excessive

------
pepve
I read some of the comments on the pull request and the commits. This is the
worst part of Github, these kinds of public massive flame wars, complete with
animated gifs. I think Github should have moderation features for situations
like this. Even though they're not common, they're damaging the constructive
atmosphere that's usually present.

------
whytaka
I haven't the slightest idea what the commit was over but I'd like to point
out that

~(non-gendered pronouns are mandatory) =/= (gendered pronouns are mandatory)

The authors would still be free to use their own choice of pronouns.

------
prolways
Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still
considered grammatically incorrect?

If gendered pronouns are such a big issue why is there no effort to make a
lasting official solution by updating the standards of English? I know most of
my school teachers would not have let me written "they/them" in this
situation. Have things changed and "they" is now acceptable?

I think the only correct solution available today which sounds decent at all
is to say "the user".

~~~
rsynnott
> Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still
> considered grammatically incorrect?

No. Singular they has never been grammatically incorrect. The frequency of its
use has simply varied throughout the years. For what it's worth, singular they
seems to predate gender-neutral 'he' in written English.

------
e512
I suppose discriminating on sexuality is just fine at Joyent then?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059)

------
mdisraeli
Because no-one's posted it yet, Tom Scott has a great video on grammatical
gender that is worth a watch: [http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-
gLk](http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk)

------
mseepgood
It's 2013. Some people in the open source community seem to still live
mentally in the 1950s.

------
AwesomeTogether
makes me sick to see the mob get its way.

------
static_typed
The commit itself, and the events around that were already discussed on
another thread, but about this blog posting specifically - this is a little
extreme.

I would have hoped at this point, an official posting, on the corporate pages
would have a more sensible and calming approach. I guess not.

All in all, no one comes out of this looking well.

~~~
brown9-2
Not so sure about that. I had no opinion about Joyent before but now they
sound quite positive in my book.

~~~
mindcrime
OTOH, I had no opinion about Joyent before, and now have a lower'ish opinion
of them. This seems like a combination of over-reaction, obsessive "PC"
thinking, and an attempt to mask a potential PR gaffe.

If Joyent cares so much about gender equality, I imagine that there are more
concrete actions they could take to encourage that, than threatening to fire
somebody who isn't even an employee - over a pronoun.

~~~
brown9-2
It's not the pronoun, it's the bad attitude and commit reversal.

~~~
manish_gill
Calling people asshole and "firing" them instead of initiating a discussion is
also bad attitude.

------
thenerdfiles
This isn't good. The title should be "The Power of Gendered Pronouns" — it's
about gendered pronouns and our intentions/perceptions around their use, not
about pronouns in general.

Here's my simple argument against pronouns (even gendered ones) in
documentation. Too often you hear, which can often be the turning point of a
"polite" discussion to a "heated" discussion:

    
    
        Don't talk about me as if I'm not here. My name is ----.
    

Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.

I want to say further that pronouns do a disservice to the "organic
conversation" that is Source Code just as pronouns do a disservice to polite
discussion. Pronouns may be common in usage, but their use turns a discussion
into something informal. Their "power" in general is a question of
emotive/suggestive language, as vagueness implies, versus
explicit/shareable/re-useable language.

~~~
mdisraeli
'Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.'

I've actually tested this. Or rather, I live by this - I default to gender
neutral pronouns for everyone. I have done this for many years in customer
facing call centres, dealing with 30+ callers a day and working alongside 100+
support staff, and communicating across all levels of business, from shop
floor to CEO.

I have had people comment on singular they. Mostly LGBT+ people who understood
gender issues and actively had a preference. Everyone else? NOT A SINGLE
COMMENT.

You may personally have a preference about people's use of pronouns for
yourself, and that is actually a wonderful thing - knowingly having a gender
identity is awesome! :) But, at least in the UK, there is nothing offensive
about gender neutral 'they'.

~~~
makomk
This does have the, ah, interesting consequence that essentially _any_ policy
you could have about when you use gender-neutral pronouns will either offend
or involuntarily out at least some trans or genderqueer people. (Even if most
of the gender-binary cis populace won't notice.) Using gender neutral pronouns
for everyone unless they object seems especially likely to do so though.

~~~
mdisraeli
Generally most trans people have commented during QUILTBAG events or private
company. I've found that in a formal office environment, they tend to welcome,
or at least not notice, gender neutral defaults

------
knowitall
We never even heard the back story on that one...

I suspect it's not so much about the gender of pronouns as about being
patronizing, which people tend to resent.

~~~
dkuntz2
What do you mean "never heard the back story"?

The post linked to a pull request and commit that _are_ the back story...

~~~
knowitall
How are you sure about that? For example I don't know if the people involved
ever communicated before and how they relate to each other.

~~~
dkuntz2
I suppose. But do their personal interactions before matter?

~~~
knowitall
Of course - the reverted commit seems to be much more likely the result of
personal differences rather than sexism. At least to me.

