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Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

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Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#441

Post by Perseids »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #402
glesica wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His whole point was that what is on that page IS hostile to many women in the community or thinking about joining it. You don't get to decide what offends or hurts other people. If the authors had wanted this to be a cute in-joke for the bros, then why did they publish it to the entire world? Why not just send it around to their male friends, but use a more appropriate (and they KNEW the name wasn't appropriate becau…

How about just: don't use it if you don't like it. > If the authors had wanted this to be a cute in-joke for the bros, then why did they publish it to the entire world? Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions? (I can't call all this let's-see-gender-issues-in-everything crap anything else than a stupid fashion that hopefully goes away soon) Also, t…

> How about just: don't use it if you don't like it.

But I want to use it, it looks like a great tool. Forking it just to use a different name seems unfair and waste of everyones resources.

> Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions?

It's not about mainstream "fashion", but about a certain cultural neutrality. I don't ask for this neutrality when you publish articles, essays etc., but when you write tools (or name tools for that matter) I greatly appreciate a mindset where you care about the vastly different context people might come from.

> Also, the joke is about the man pages. Not woman pages (though those exist in Emacs).

But - as said before - man pages have nothing to do with men and everything with manual. To underline the point: I didn't get the joke until I read the third Hackernews comment. I just don't associate man pages with gender.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#442

Post by DonGateley »

mumbi wrote: post #296

Great idea. Never been a fan of the whole bro thing, but I say keep the name. If the women want a 'sister pages', let them make it.

> bro alias

#An alias lets you create a shortcut name for a command

alias sister=bro

> sister alias

#An alias lets you create a shortcut name for a command

alias sister=bro

>

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#443

Post by mkdir »

scott_s wrote: post #426
overgard wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is that women have a sense of humor and we don't have to infantilize them by acting like they can't take a joke. Clearly I'm a patriarchal monster. Thank god we have all these social justice warriors to protect women from the word bro.

Please read this blog post, "Lighten Up": http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ In it, Katie Cunningham explains the problem with the "it's just a joke" sentiment. Specifically, the cumulative effect.

Genuine question:

Is it never appropriate to tell a woman to lighten up?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#444

Post by blahedo »

glesica wrote: post #343
nacs wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another offended man checking in. And yet you typed out a racist, highly offensive word (far more offensive than "bro" I'm pretty sure) in your own 2nd paragraph.

Are you joking? Seriously, I recently confused a sarcastic comment for a serious one on HN, so I'm asking honestly. Because if you're serious, then I just don't know where to start. I'll keep it short. Using a term to facilitate a discussion of that term is completely and entirely different from using it in other ways. I assumed the intellectual maturity of this audience was higher than it would be on, say, Reddit. P…

> Using a term to facilitate a discussion of that term is completely and entirely different from using it in other ways.

Side comment: The technical term for this is the "use-mention distinction". When you're dealing with rational people who don't understand the distinction (taking offence at your mention of a word as if you had used the word), explaining the distinction often helps, and the discussion is able to proceed. Doesn't help as much when dealing with irrational interlocutors, but then, not much does at that point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-mention_distinction

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#445

Post by mscarborough »

joe_the_user wrote: post #423
overgard wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this sexist? There is not a single word of disparagement on that site. Nobody in their right mind would say that the word "bro" is sexist unless they're explicitly looking to be offended. (IE: picking a fight)

In the off-chance that you somehow don't get the really basic implications here, let me explain it on a simple level. "Bro Pages" associate this piece of software with bros, men. Such an association can imply that the creators and/or user of the pages will be "bros", men, as opposed to women. That could be "just a joke" if you didn't have a significant, visible people of guys who are obnoxious and immature enough to…

Apparently a more informative name for a good idea would be bad, because IT males can be prone to persecution complexes over simple questions. Hell, we IT folks are defensive enough when questioned about bugs that we are responsible for, much less anything more meta about what we do.

And yes, there is that hostile, defensive atmosphere on full display here.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#446

Post by theorique »

moocowduckquack wrote: post #250
theorique wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole bro humour is deliberately exclusionary, it is an in-joke for tying together small groups of (mostly) young males. That is what it is for. It's important to draw the distinction between the usage of the term to (1) describe oneself and one's peers and create an ingroup as opposed to (2) describe (and often criticize) others I don't see a lot of unironic usage of (1), aside from the odd tone-deaf fratboy. I…

(1) is exactly the context of bropages though, which is the topic of this thread, so it definitely exists.

Well, that was my question.

I'm assuming that this was a double-entendre pun on "man" (short for manual) also meaning "human of male sex", and using a word related to the second meaning to give "bro".

It's similar to the situation of how "rake", derived from "ruby-make" gave rise to "hoe", riffing off the meaning of "rake" as a garden tool.

It's not clear to me how a woman using the "bro" tool at her computer would somehow be marginalized or excluded. Puns aren't automatically sexist just because they reference some aspect of maleness/femaleness.

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#447

Post by theorique »

natch wrote: post #200
paul wrote: post #155

Awesome idea. Shame about the humorless nature of this community. To me, a "bro" is a dumb, fratboy version of a man, which makes the name hilariously perfect. If you're feeling oppressed and excluded by a command name, your real problems lie elsewhere.

I'm not feeling oppressed. The problem isn't me feeling oppressed, it's other people feeling oppressed. Poor choice of language can set up an exclusionary environment. To you, this may be funny. To me, your accusation of humorlessness reminds me of people who engage in sexually harassing "jokes" in the workplace, and then try to get away with it by using "humor" as an excuse. You aren't the one who gets to decide whe…

You aren't the one who gets to decide when other people feel uncomfortable.

... because that's your job, I suppose?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#448

Post by reallyseriously »

raganwald wrote: post #421
smokeyj wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exclusionary behaviour stands between me and my dream, and I will crush it by any means necessary. I like your sentiment, but I have a hard time imagining women out there who feel excluded by things like the name of a software package. I would love to see more brains in software, but I don't think word play is a major barrier. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but I would like to hear from first hand sources -- not a…

I would like to hear from first hand sources -- not a bunch of dudes on a software forum who claim to know what women want. How very odd that despite all of our behaviour being so non-offensive and non-exclusionary, we don't seem to have any women who want to hang around this forum with us, and especially don't want to engage in discussions about exclusion where the immediate response to any questioning to for the qu…

"How very odd that despite all of our behaviour being so non-offensive and non-exclusionary, we don't seem to have any women who want to hang around this forum with us..."

Correlation -> Causation?

Is that seriously why you think there aren't more women on HN? Because it's offensive and exclusionary against women?

Re: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

#449

Post by raganwald »

thro2 wrote: post #436
raganwald wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the legitimacy of your concerns is based in how women (in this case) feel. If you can't find a person who thinks he/she is being discriminated against here, you're obviously tilting at windmills. Now what you're presenting me with is a proposition that if "X" is false, then I should reconsider my belief that "Y" is true. So before I give this further thought, let me call your bet: Will you in turn agree that if "X" t…

First of all, I think you're confusing me with the people you're arguing against (who explicitly deny that calling some website "bro" is exclusionary). I'm not arguing for that; I'm objecting to your disingenuous claim (as I read it) that you're NOT trying to act as an advocate on behalf of women. We're talking about a social construct here (exclusionarity), so certainly the more women you find, the stronger your cas…

I'll take that as a "I want you to burden yourself with justifying your position, but I'm not going to commit to any movement on my own position, and for that matter, I won't even commit to a position, I'm just lobbing a burden at you."

I choose not to play along.

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