141–150 of 241 posts
Gender inequality is the world's greatest human rights challenge, but Ben Noordhuis is not the problem. This was idiotic politically correct micromanaging that deserved the response initially given to the PR: "not interested in trivial changes like that".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Semantics. It's the same as saying "no", and then saying "no" again. Really, if there's one thing I thought feminists had taken to heart it's "no means no".
if there's one thing I thought feminists had taken to heart it's "no means no". I'm a dude, and this comment seriously offends me. I'm sure you thought you were being funny or something, but I dare you to make that kind of quip to a woman's face, and see if you don't begin realize why by the way her expression changes.
> this comment seriously offends me
I can't imagine ever wanting to work for Bryan Cantrill or Joyent or even contribute to node.js in any capacity. I encourage Cantrill and Joyent to think about their obligations as founder and employer to their own employees. Ben was not one of their employees, but the callous remarks, the callout culture, the threat of immediate firing over something so trivial speaks to a deep misunderstanding of the modern role of…
One phrase I remember from Cantrill re: Oracle & Solaris was that "People Innovate, not companies". Commits contribute, blog posts rarely do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"butthurt" is slang for rape. I suggest you edit your comment to remove the offensive language and make it more inclusive to the Hacker News community.
Evidence? Know Your Meme documents it as related to spanking: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt That matches my understanding of butthurt as an overreaction to being chastised or shamed.
If you scroll down on that knowyourmeme page that you linked, you will see a set of memes in the "Buttfrustrated" category. The Brony meme has a set of insults that reference the anal rape: "Im sur thers sumpony who can help fill ur ass with semen laced hrut".
The percentage of cases in which a person is referencing "butthurt" to indicate a spanking is vanishingly small. Play the game "League of Legends" and complain when you lose. Ask people what they mean when they claim you must be "butthurt".
Did I just type those words?
For those who don't know what's going on: Joyent made a blogpost calling Ben, (one of _THE_ most prolific contributors to nodjs), an asshole ( http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun ) and said they'd fire him if he'd been working for them, because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral. Here's Ben's last response to the whole ordeal: https://github.com/joyent/li…
Just a note: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/nodejs/mqSf47HhmyY/m8QpZE9mJ... These are the guys in control of nodejs. They appear to be both immature and highly profit driven with far more interest in themselves than the platform. If this isn't a red flag for investing time in nodejs, I don't know what is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't know how much truth there is to that, but as a general spectator I feel like wanting to remark that Bryan Cantrill only fanned the fire here in all of this. Pretty much every participating party in this whole thing came out looking like a loser, Joycent, Strongloop, the whole nodejs scene. Here's hoping Ben now finds a workplace that appreciates him for his talents and respects him as a person. If he's butt…
You're forgetting two key points: 1) Ben is not a native English speaker, so as stated by Ben, he didn't realize it was a big deal. 2) The committer didn't sign a CLA yet.
" To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey (...)"
The difference here is not so much in language as in culture. The Dutch language has similar gender distinctions as English. Subtle differences are that: - Our nouns are male/neutral or female, similar to French 'le' or 'la' - We cannot make neutral possessive ('its') and are limited to 'his' or 'her'
For the rest it is pretty much like English, including 'him', 'her', 'they' and 'them'. Also Ben should have good knowledge of English as any young and educated dutchman.
The difference is more likely cultural. Americans seem much to be much more easily triggered by signs of potential gender inequality or racism. The Dutch are more tolerant/rude and the humor often flirts with political incorrectness. In short Ben (and I) would not have sensed this as a potential agitator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was Joyent defending their control over to project, remember that Ben & StrongLoop were a menace for Joyent: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod...
That explains a ton, I imagine. It might even explain everything. ...makes Ben's decision to pull out of the project even more interesting though. Where does that leave StrongLoop?
I don't feel like I can possibly have an informed opinion on this, but I certainly feel played for having voiced a less informed opinion on the original discussion.
For those who don't know what's going on: Joyent made a blogpost calling Ben, (one of _THE_ most prolific contributors to nodjs), an asshole ( http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun ) and said they'd fire him if he'd been working for them, because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral. Here's Ben's last response to the whole ordeal: https://github.com/joyent/li…
https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015/files
Ousted the guy because he referred to "user" as a "he" in the comments? Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm all for gender equality, but the amount of drama that came out of this is just insane and disturbing for the hacker community. I can not see it as anything more than pure politics and gender issue as a convenient pretext.
Joyent has lost all credibility for me. And Ben has taken the place of the tech drama queen of the year.
Did actually any women complain? Cause all I saw was bunch of guys arguing about how awful it is to use gender pronouns. I wouldn't care if all examples were written with "her". Cause that's absolutely unimportant. As I understand there's more serious, real issues with gender equality, like: salary difference, not promoting women, entering barrier, etc. Not damn "he" in doc examples. And as Ben mentioned he actually…
Rather than actively work towards fixing the big issues in gender inequality (which requires society as a whole to change, and consequently will take decades of slow improvement), they choose to take the easy route and fill themselves with self-righteous indignation over an open source maintainer who reverted a commit for a trivial documentation change that he thought violated commit procedures. Obviously he is a rampant misogynist and needs to be crucified.
The real irony here is that the people with the pitchforks are generally more sexist than those they choose to lambast, seeing as they feel so compelled to defend poor defenseless women from all aggressors (real and imagined).