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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

#81

Post by forgottenpass »

sliverstorm wrote: post #9
taspeotis wrote: post #4

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened: * Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs * Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change * Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes) * Party B reversed the change under the impress…

Minor detail: your summation makes it sound like Joyent would fire over reversing a change, when in fact Joyent appears to be saying they would fire over reversing the change because the change was removing two masculine pronouns . It's a pretty extreme reaction by Joyent; I wonder how much further away "We would also fire whoever used the gendered pronouns in the first place" is.

Minor detail: It was misleading in the Joyent blog post, the fact that it also reads as misleading in the parent post isn't the poster's fault.

When I read the Joyent post, it doesn't seem like they acknowledge any other possible motivation for revert. When I later saw the revert message regarding sign-offs I was quite surprised that the blog neither mentioned it, nor was written in a way that indicated they had read it.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#82

Post by tks2103 »

taspeotis wrote: post #4

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened: * Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs * Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change * Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes) * Party B reversed the change under the impress…

The pull request was titled "Removed use of gendered pronoun". I think that's a key fact missing from your summary.

I mean, there isn't really a whole lot of information from Ben here except two actions, the rejection and then the reversion.

Did he look at the title and think "I should reject a PR titled 'Removed use of gendered pronoun' because the act of removing a gendered pronoun is trivial"? Did he just look at the diff and think "This is a couple of characters, not important." Did he see the change and think "I can't wait to marginalize the shit out of these women reading my documentation!"

There's just not a lot of info from Ben. And now because of all this bluster, there is likely not to be.

Seems like a bunch of drama, rather than a fruitful discussion.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#83

Post by ben0x539 »

taspeotis wrote: post #33
taspeotis wrote: post #4

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened: * Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs * Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change * Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes) * Party B reversed the change under the impress…

I'm replying to my own comment to attach an opinion to it (I want the original comment to remain neutral). But, maybe we can't have women in IT because people like Bryan Cantrill can't avoid attaching themselves and company to even the most trivial gender issues and posting inflammatory blog posts about it? I'd wager that there are less women in IT because of behaviour like Bryan's and a company like Joyent that will…

That seems like a really silly notion...

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#84

Post by smtddr »

yapcguy wrote: post #78
smtddr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

And I'm focusing on what you wrote:

>> What we have learnt is that the CEO of Joyent is prone to over-reacting and will fire people over nothing.

If you think what took place in that github thread was nothing, you represent exactly the dismissive attitude of sexism the tech-industry needs to get rid of.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#85

Post by Crito »

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…

A clever psychopath can put on the mask of an empathetic person when it suits them. Think Ted Bundy as an extreme case (of course most psychopaths/sociopaths/whatever are not serial killers).

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#86

Post by Crito »

ben0x539 wrote: post #80
Crito wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> for no good reason, pointlessly antagonizing lots of people.

Read the actual source, don't rely on editorials.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#88

Post by ben0x539 »

kika wrote: post #46

"to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense" - nice place to work, congrats Joyent employees. There's one practical problem with this approach though. If you start aligning everyone against a single doctrine and prosecute deviations, you'll quickly lose the ability to innovate. Start sending people to jail f…

Good thing nothing like that is happening or likely to happen, then, just good old social repercurssions for bad behavior.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#89

Post by ben0x539 »

jrockway wrote: post #31
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He deliberately made the pronoun masculine for no apparent reason other than to stick it in women's eyes.

So here's the problem. English doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun that refers to a single person. So you have to pick "he" or "she". If you switch it around every sentence, the text is hard to follow. If you pick one and use it for the entire text, you're sexist. What's your solution to this beyond trolling HN?

Singular 'they' has been a thing for centuries.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#90

Post by ben0x539 »

ars_technician wrote: post #41
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He deliberately made the pronoun masculine for no apparent reason other than to stick it in women's eyes.

No he didn't. He reversed a commit that didn't follow standard procedures.

Except it did, he just didn't know, and this whole thing could have been avoided if he had signed it off himself in the first place instead of calling it trivial.
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