Ask HN: Is the term 'software craftsman' sexist?

haha, yeah, sandwich artist. lol.

I have been known to get into arguments about this sort of label. My argument is that it is not sexist seems to be backed by Linda Greenlaw (made famous in the movie The Perfect Storm) who is called by many "the best fisherman", and on her website, describes herself "Between her three New York Times bestsellers and her role in the Discovery Channel's current hit series Swords, Linda Greenlaw has undoubtedly become America's best-known fisherman."

I don't win many over with this argument, but I think there are better places to spend our energy in not making women and girls feel uncomfortable in this profession. We as an industry are doing a terrible job.

And I think that "developer" is a good label in any case.

Are you sure about that? Perhaps you have mixed up "artisan" and "artist"? Both come from the root word ars (“art, skill”); from which we also get "artificial", for "made by skill", and the web site "Ars Technica" for the art/skill of technology.

Quoting again from Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artisan : "Artisans practice a craft and may through experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist" and "Artisans were the dominant producers of consumer products prior to the Industrial Revolution"

Of course, WP can be wrong, so I pulled up a few examples from Google Books from the 20th century, so there could be no feedback from Wikipedia usage:

I found https://books.google.com/books?id=CIH912O6ogAC&printsec=fron... :

> Nehemiah Wallington was a London Puritan artisan .... Wallington remained in the house of his birth, where he learned his father's trade as a turner and became free of the Company of Turners by patrimony.

And https://books.google.com/books?id=oRgNAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA34&dq=ar... :

> His set of motivations, ambition, resentment, acquisitiveness, duty, and altruism, is typical of that shown by the uneasy class of artisan and petit bourgeois reformers. Like Lovett, Place, and later George Howell, Linton was confident of his skills and entrepreneurial abilities and needed litle capital to make an income; but he, like them, remained vulnerable to market changes, indignant at his lowly status, and sensitive to rebuffs from superior powers. .... William Lovett, the upright, self-educated artisan radical ...

And https://books.google.com/books?id=8YukeIgFlL4C&pg=PA105&dq=a... :

> In olden days, these village artisans used to be self-sufficient in meeting their family requirements through the payments received by them by operating agriculture supporting artisan enterprises. ... Among the several artisan enterprises, the business of only blacksmiths, carpenters, cobblers and ropemakers is in existence today

None of these suggest patronage of any sort. Until the industrial age, artisans were self-employed, and free from direct financial ties to a single patron.

First off, you are right. Artisans during the industrial age were increasingly employed for factory production.

That's still not working for a patron.

Second off, the OP asked about a name for "engineering postings for our company". That's part of a factory system. If anything, the term "artisan" is even an more appropriate description.

Factories and employment lead to the near demise of artisans, as that last reference I gave suggests. The use now is a revival of the original handcraft sense, which is why that's what I covered.

On the other hand, consider terms like "cowboy", "best boy", and "bus boy".

While "cowgirl" exists, it's usually associated with a different set of roles than a cowboy. We also usually find "cowboy coder" in a negative context, but a search now for "cowgirl coder" finds more positive contexts. Eg, "My name is Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack, and I blog about Linux, coding, current technology, and women’s issues in the IT workplace right here at The Cowgirl Coder." and "I was one happy cowgirl coder, so I just kept going—learning as much as I could about design, development, and tech in general."

(The general neutral term seems to be "cow hand" or "cattle handler".)

The term "best boy" appears to be used for both men and women, with no difference in their roles. This would be a non-sexist, or at least minimally sexist, use of the term.

The term "bus boy" appears to be disappearing, in place of busser. This is part of the general trend towards gender-neutral job titles, but part of me thinks it's also part of a longer trend of egalitarianism. That is, "boy" when directed towards an adult can indicate superior status. Hence why "garçon" - French for "boy" - should not be confused with the polite way to get the attention of a server in a French restaurant. As a more direct example, traditionally "boy" was also used by many white people to refer to any black male, no matter the age, specifically because blacks had inferior status than whites.

(And then there's "cabana boy", which can be used in contexts where "young male" is an essential aspect of the job, in the same eye candy way that "young woman" was an aspect of being a cigarette girl.)

You could pick out how "boy" is used in "best boy" to argue that it isn't a sexist term. But that argument would be incomplete because the issue isn't about any single title but the default-is-male implication in many titles.

I believe that your argument with "fisherman" is similar. If I ask "how many businessmen wear dresses?", I suspect that most would be be confused, and think I am asking about male transvestites, and only secondarily consider that many businesspeople are businesswomen who wear dresses.

I can ask the same question using other gendered topics. How many firemen have given birth? Of the policemen with heavy periods, do most prefer pads or tampons? I think more people would have a double-take with these -man/-men titles compared to the general-neutral forms of "firefighters" and "police officers". If I'm correct, that would suggest that -man in those titles comes with an assumption that they will be held by males, which makes them more sexist than the gender-neutral forms.