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The fight against sexism is not a free pass

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Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#71

Post by jrockway »

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

That's a fair point, and "they" certainly does work well in some places. But if you took every use of "he" or "she" from Shakespeare and replaced it with "they", then we'd have a problem. And that's what this post is hinting at doing.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#72

Post by CrLf »

mcv wrote: post #63
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.

But where is the sexism in this? And since when did companies earned the right to fire people over matters of personal opinion? Or stating they would do it when the person isn't even an employee?

This is a witch hunt, plain and simple. I'm amazed that people don't understand that this doesn't help the fight against sexism, at all...

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#73

Post by [deleted] »

NhanH wrote: post #62

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…

[deleted]

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#74

Post by Crito »

stephp wrote: post #66
yeukhon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I think his point is that it was not too long ago that saying "him" did not ring as sexist to most people.

If the standards of language are changing, then we have to decide what punishment, if any, we deal out to those who don't keep up quickly enough.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#75

Post by makomk »

mcv wrote: post #53
makomk wrote: post #18

So far as I can tell, it's a fundamental of all forms of feminism (though especially radical feminism) that yes, everyone must make fighting sexism and supporting feminism their #1 priority, over and above the actual goals of whatever businesses or groups they're involved in, and that anyone who doesn't is a women hater. You get stuff like Atheism+, where a bunch of feminist activists went into the atheist movement a…

No, not everybody has to fight sexism, just don't defend sexism when others fight it. Really, what makes sexism so vital that it needs to be defended?

Errrm, sexism certainly doesn't need defending. Unfortunately, as we've seen here anything that gets in the way of feminist activism gets portrayed as defending sexism. For instance, reverting feminist commits for not having the proper sign-off? Totally sexist.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#76

Post by ben0x539 »

luziphir wrote: post #38

If you actually look at the joyent blog post and the github commits its pretty obvious Ben was a dismissive prick with a bit of an agenda since this goes beyond just not accepting a pull request. I think firing someone over this would probably be a bit much but he definitely deserves to be called out for being a jackass.

If I was a company that was represented on github by someone who managed to antagonize the community I was hoping to be working with on my open source product, I'd probably fire them too and hire someone with better qualifications re: getting along with people.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#77

Post by nrodhn »

fr0sty wrote: post #57
nrodhn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, but not being sexist can be pretty hard. I always felt that obviously, I wasn't sexist: I like working with women in the workplace, I always figured we make software for everyone so it's probably best if everyone makes software, and so on. I've been fortunate to have female co-workers who I felt made terrific colleagues, both skills-wise and socially. And yet one day one of them pulled me aside and explai…

for the benefit of others could you outline what "set of assumptions" might get people fired? your post is incredibly vague...

Sorry - I wasn't saying that I'm sure I did something I would have gotten fired over, the point was more that I don't think just any instance of sexism should be treated as a fireable offense, because sexist behavior can be unintentional and due to lack of experience. "Don't be sexist and you won't have problems" as the OP put is what I thought I was doing, but wasn't.

My post is vague because it's about subtle behavioral stuff. Basically, when I interacted with male developers, my behavior toward them was based on projecting myself into them automatically. Like, say, the level of expectations I leveled against them, how competitive I would be with them, how aggressive I might be toward them was based on how I myself respond to being challenged and my own career path/experiences and things like that. I unintentionally behaved differently toward female developers (not necessarily worse actually, but differently) just because that automatic projecting would not happen, and it would end up singling them out.

Learning about that has improved my interaction not just with women but also men, actually. I make a much bigger effort to learn about the individual now.

I'm sure all this came a lot easier to others, or maybe they just had the right sort of experiences much earlier (I wonder if it would have helped if I had any siblings, say). But for me is something I can identify as "needed to learn that".

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#78

Post by yapcguy »

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'm not talking about the pronoun issue, I'm focusing on the hypothetical firing.

It's completely unreasonable to fire someone over what in essence is reversing a commit. It might warrant a discussion with a manager, it might warrant an official warning, and perhaps some other measure but summary dismissal? No way.

In my opinion, this is Bryan backing Isaacs, perhaps in a clash of egos with Ben, and grand-standing over an issue which he believes will earn Joyent brownie points.

I don't want any developer to work in an environment where the CEO openly boasts about firing people, so in summary, I guess, fuck Joyent.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#80

Post by ben0x539 »

Crito wrote: post #68
ben0x539 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hey, no one's getting angry because someone wrote 'him' instead of 'they' in the docs. The issue is that someone inisted that this must not be changed, for no good reason, pointlessly antagonizing lots of people.

If you're running an open source project and someone you pay is driving off its community, you'd probably feel justified in not giving them money anymore.

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