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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

#101

Post by vezzy-fnord »

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…

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.

Oh no, quite the contrary, I'm afraid. They constantly attract large discussions and pointless drama that always gets nowhere. As we are observing right now.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#102

Post by Crito »

ben0x539 wrote: post #93
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…

This is not a witch hunt. This is a blog post. Taking away a man's livelihood by firing them is widely accepted as perfectly normal and reasonable, and hn posters regularly talk about how they wouldn't want certain people working for them. You're making a tone argument about calling someone a vulgar name, as if that is somehow worse or more important than them insisting on contributing to the pervasive exclusionary e…

In modern language, "witch hunt" does not literally mean "burn them alive because you believe that they have communed with Lucifer". The Crucible set the tone when it used literal witch hunts in an allegory about the House Un-American Activities Committee which, among other things, had it's hands in blacklisting people accused of being communists.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#103

Post by forgottenpass »

sliverstorm wrote: post #100
forgottenpass wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm confused as to what exactly you are saying, but I wasn't assigning fault to my parent.

I'm not saying you were. Just saying that not only is that a fire-able offense to Joylet, their post heavily implies that to be the motivation for the revert.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#104

Post by sliverstorm »

forgottenpass wrote: post #103
sliverstorm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused as to what exactly you are saying, but I wasn't assigning fault to my parent.

I'm not saying you were. Just saying that not only is that a fire-able offense to Joylet, their post heavily implies that to be the motivation for the revert.

Perhaps it would be most clear to say they "insinuate" that was his motivation?

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#105

Post by rosser »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #99
rosser wrote: post #51

It is so incredibly, profoundly frustrating to watch (mostly) male nerds grapple with sexism. Guys (and I mean that specifically and gendered-ly), you don't get it. You kinda can't, and I say that as a cis male person. I don't get it, either, except maybe intellectually, and even then only occasionally. To get a little meta for a moment, I think a lot of the disconnect that happens in these discussions (to, admittedl…

your perceptions of how Othering should feel don't fucking matter if you aren't the party being Othered in that specific circumstance. This is the exact same attitude that leads to such things as affirmative action and pampering. You also make the fallacious assumption that all "nerds" (what a vapid and pointless label) have been socially ostracized during their lives, thus begging the question. Your entire argument…

This stuff is less about being unable to "handle getting offended" than it is about being unwilling to tolerate people who behave offensively.

I don't think it's okay to use the word "gay" pejoratively, even when there aren't any queers in the room. I don't think it's okay to make rape jokes, even when there aren't any women around. I don't think it's okay to behave or speak in a way that is deliberately and hurtfully exclusive of anyone, for any reason, at any time.

To me, being deliberate and mindful about Othering is less about being "accommodating", and more of a useful means to help keep me from being "That Guy" in any of the countless, subtle ways that I might be — because we all do it, even the people you think of as the typically Othered, no matter how hard we try not to.

If you want to call that pampering, that's on you. I call it courtesy and decency, personally.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#106

Post by vezzy-fnord »

rosser wrote: post #105
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your perceptions of how Othering should feel don't fucking matter if you aren't the party being Othered in that specific circumstance. This is the exact same attitude that leads to such things as affirmative action and pampering. You also make the fallacious assumption that all "nerds" (what a vapid and pointless label) have been socially ostracized during their lives, thus begging the question. Your entire argument…

This stuff is less about being unable to "handle getting offended" than it is about being unwilling to tolerate people who behave offensively. I don't think it's okay to use the word "gay" pejoratively, even when there aren't any queers in the room. I don't think it's okay to make rape jokes, even when there aren't any women around. I don't think it's okay to behave or speak in a way that is deliberately and hurtfull…

I don't think it's okay to use the word "gay" pejoratively, even when there aren't any queers in the room.

That's the whole point of an insult.

I don't think it's okay to make rape jokes, even when there aren't any women around.

I don't think you understand how comedy works. In many ways, it's a coping mechanism. The jokes we laugh at are often quite depressing or disturbing if you try to elucidate their underlying subject matter, but they're presented in such a manner that we can be humored by and cope with the dark side of life.

Not making jokes of X type is just censorship and idiocy. Comedy has no boundaries.

I don't think it's okay to behave or speak in a way that is deliberately and hurtfully exclusive of anyone, for any reason, at any time.

I can agree with that, but the way you put it is excessively vague.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#107

Post by nslater »

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…

> When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens.

This is an example of gender stereotyping.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#108

Post by kika »

clarkm wrote: post #17

Ok, even though I think the singular they is awkward, I can understand the fight for removing gendered pronouns. However, something I've been wondering for a while now is: how does this issue manifest itself in other languages? Are there similar movements? How does it work in languages where every noun has a gender?

Miserably if you apply the same rules. But I can't imagine a Russian female software developer being offended by Russian "he" in the documentation. Every occupation has a gender too and 'software developer' is 'male', though you can produce the female gender from this word, but in looks very awkward in the text - if you use 'femalized' words it means you actually make a point. We also have 'neutral' gender (like "it" in English), but you usually can't use it instead of male or female unless you're writing satire :-) There're even different female forms for 'male' occupations depending on whether the female is the professional or wife of the professional. So all the documentation I can think of uses the 'default' gender which is usually male. And I'm yet to see someone offended by that, male or female.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#109

Post by yeukhon »

nslater wrote: post #107
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…

> When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. This is an example of gender stereotyping.

But to how many people we need to use a gender neutral pronoun in this context?

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#110

Post by protomyth »

jrockway wrote: post #28

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

No doubt, I was taught in the 80's in high school that "they" is only applicable to plural and "he" is the generic if you don't know sex of the person.

If I ever release a project, I'm just going to ban all pronouns because of how screwed up pronouns are in English. I'll just use single letters (U for user, P for programmer, etc).

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