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The fight against sexism is not a free pass

antirez.com

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Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#61

Post by moocowduckquack »

stephp wrote: post #32
jrockway wrote: post #28

Gender neutral pronouns suck in English. Fix that before you start firing people over not using them.

Truth. I figured after Facebook started using "they" in a singular sense that the grammar rules would change. They have only unofficially.

They or their as singular has been part of recognised English for a very long time.

"God send every one their heart's desire!" - Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Scene 4

"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me, As if I were their well-acquainted friend." - Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#62

Post by NhanH »

Out of sheer curiosity, since the Joyent's blog post had such a big emphasis on "empathy", but wouldn't sociopaths/ psychopaths be even more likely to be not sexists? Because they would be an assholes to everyone anyway, regardless of gender :-). (I'm sorry, this is probably really wrong to be joking with, it's just that the whole situation is completely bizarre and incomprehensible to me, so weird questions just pop up).

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#63

Post by mcv »

CrLf wrote: post #15

I'm sorry to invoke Godwin's law on this, but this is beyond absurd... Stating that defending that pronouns should be gendered is a fireable offense is more than just ridiculous political correctness, it's criminalizing opinion. It's the Holy Inquisition.

It's not criminalizing anything. It's pointing out that it goes against that company's policy. Is it really so bad for a company to have a policy to prefer gender equality?

I'm rather amazed to see people rushing to defend sexism. Please tell me: what's so great about sexism? Why is it so wrong to fight it? Because I really don't get it.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#64

Post by riffraff »

mcv wrote: post #34

This article misses the point. Before it goes on to speculate about hypothetical situations, it says: > The reality is that probably Ben is not a sexist, maybe he believes simply that “him” does not make a difference in sexism. Everybody has his fight, and changing “him” is not the Ben fight And that's okay. It doesn't have to be Ben's fight. The problem is that Ben denies this fight to others. The problem is not tha…

but apparently ben didn't revert the commit on the basis of its content, he reverted it on the basis of a bad process (lack of review).

So we should criticize "people who don't accept these commits", or "people who revert commits because of bad process", but the case "people who revert these kind of commits" is not valid.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#65

Post by NhanH »

mcv wrote: post #39
jnbiche wrote: post #26

Oh dear God. This is what we've sunk to? Saying we'd love to fire some "asshole" because he chose not to pull a pull request changing two instances of "him" to "they"? First, let me get it out of the way that I actually agree with the pull request. In this day, the personal pronoun "they" makes a more inclusive pronoun that just "him". Zed Shaw's suggestion of "you" is also a good alternative, particularly if you're…

If he's overwhelmed, why would he go to the extra effort of reverting the commit? He didn't just not pull, he reverted it when someone else pulled it. That means he does care. He cares enough to enforce gendered pronouns in the face of others who prefer neutral pronouns.

He explicitly stated the reason for that in his revert: either he or another leader (that wasn't the one who did the merge) has to sign off before changes can be merged. He does care, not about the gendered pronouns but rather the principle of commits/ merges in a big project.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#66

Post by stephp »

yeukhon wrote: post #35
jnbiche wrote: post #26

Oh dear God. This is what we've sunk to? Saying we'd love to fire some "asshole" because he chose not to pull a pull request changing two instances of "him" to "they"? First, let me get it out of the way that I actually agree with the pull request. In this day, the personal pronoun "they" makes a more inclusive pronoun that just "him". Zed Shaw's suggestion of "you" is also a good alternative, particularly if you're…

I am just afraid there is going to be a retaliation against Ben. Remember what happened early this year at PyCon? Honestly, people need to stop acting like animals and stop bash him out. There are other contributors who can rule him out and we don't need those hash comments. Sexism is not about woman. When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. And sin…

Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption about a specified group of people.

As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to conceive.)

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#67

Post by mcv »

olalonde wrote: post #19

> Everybody has his fight Shouldn't that be "Everybody has their fight"? I guess antirez is sexist. /sarcasm

> Shouldn't that be "Everybody has their fight"?

Of course not. Only men have legitimate fights. When a fight is only being conducted by women, it must be something trivial.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#68

Post by Crito »

ben0x539 wrote: post #23
moocowduckquack wrote: post #11

We'll run out of tar and feathers at this rate.

I kind of hoped we'd run out of sexists first.

Cast your net wide enough, and you will find that at a certain point some people will perceive an injustice and will begin turning themselves 'into' sexists, just to spite you.

I am spartacus. Or if you prefer, Giles Corey's refusal to plead.

Begin firing people for using "him" instead of "they", and you will "radicalize" many formally apathetic people.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#69

Post by [deleted] »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #61
stephp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth. I figured after Facebook started using "they" in a singular sense that the grammar rules would change. They have only unofficially.

They or their as singular has been part of recognised English for a very long time. "God send every one their heart's desire!" - Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Scene 4 "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me, As if I were their well-acquainted friend." - Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3

[deleted]

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#70

Post by yeukhon »

smtddr wrote: post #59
yapcguy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any reaction should be towards Joyent - not Ben. What we have learnt is that the CEO of Joyent is prone to over-reacting and will fire people over nothing. So don't work for Joyent as there is no job security when you can be fired for a commit. If you're a Joyent employee and you're not part of the Node.js groupie love-fest, better spend your holiday looking for a new job. Imagine a lunch-time conversation over the A…

I don't agree with you at all. 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 s…

I think you have a fair point. HR issue. For an employee this is a big red flag - now Ben's employer will probably receive some angry emails this weekend and Ben will probably face some angry comments this weekend too. Nasty situation.

If we do let Ben be a good man as he claims to be, then maybe it was a stupidity to rule out the ticket so quickly. How would a clever "sexist" person do? This "sexist" person would probably say "well, I don't like they. Not the way my teacher taught me grammar. Rephrase the whole sentence."

Or just don't bother deal with any pull request related to sexist.

But I agree with the parent. The CEO is afraid of any negativity. This is a typical way people handle crisis - find someone responsible and fire that person. A true heroic responsible CEO should first accept / address issue with the PR, then if the community thinks "YES DO IT" then accept the pull request and requires at least 2 contributors with sign off privilege to accept a pull request from that point onward. Firing someone quickly is the worst way to be a boss.

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