If the objection were to parenthood, which is to say if nurtureboard or parentboard were similarly offensive, then I agree this would have been a stupid stupid choice.
The problem is that you had a motherboard and daughter boards, those were the accepted terms, and never fatherboard or son boards, never parentboard or child boards. Why were they gendered female in the first place?
Because they had “female connections,” which is to say their use is in plugging pins into their sockets.
Obviously that is a sexual analogy that did not age particularly well, this idea that a motherboard is the motherboard because you shove stuff into it. So people started replacing with mainboard because it makes more sense...
>Why were they gendered female in the first place?
well, for this context, it's called a "motherboard" because "mainboard" was already a thing. Motherboard was to distinguish at the time how this new board can be expanded upon by plugging in ports. There was no real malice here, it was just fancy marketing term that stuck.
Ultimately, we're humans and we try to anthropize all kinds of things in life to make them "feel relatable", be it animals, boats, hurricanes, or yes, computer. so that extends to our language as well. Especially in marketing where the goal is to make customers feel good and close the sale. There may be a conversation on WHY we do this, but starting that conversation on the foot of "well people just want to be sexist" won't get us anywhere.
It's more likely that it's a similar naming to mother lode, i.e. the motherboard is the central source of the computer and everything connected to it is a child that hangs off of it.
The problem is that you had a motherboard and daughter boards, those were the accepted terms, and never fatherboard or son boards, never parentboard or child boards. Why were they gendered female in the first place?
Because they had “female connections,” which is to say their use is in plugging pins into their sockets.
Obviously that is a sexual analogy that did not age particularly well, this idea that a motherboard is the motherboard because you shove stuff into it. So people started replacing with mainboard because it makes more sense...