The fight against sexism is not a free pass

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.

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

Ben's dismissive attitude, and yours, is exactly the issue tech-communities needs to tackle & extinguish. No, sed 's/him/them/' isn't going to suddenly make the world a better place but it's the thought that counts. Every small step counts. Ben's attitude about it, just closing the PR and claiming not to be concerned with trivial matters is something that at least needed a serious HR sensitivity discussion. Firing Ben for it is extreme, but not unreasonable if a company wanted to send a pro-diversity message; albeit extreme. These kinds of actions also provide a good filter for future employees. If you're so bothered by Joyent's blog post that you won't work there and you tell others to quit, it's probably better for Joyent not to have you as an employee to begin with.

+1 on that PR and on Joyent's blog post.

EDIT: Stories about sexism & racism, minor or major, in the tech-scene almost always disappear off HN's front page in like 2 minutes. That's another symptom of a problem as far as I'm concerned.