Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

bropages.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 872 posts

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

#501

Post by rds2000 »

glesica wrote: post #331
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)

It is offensive because it has high potential to create a hostile environment for women. This isn't just me and a few people making shit up, read my comment, it's obvious that the authors knew they were on shaky ground. They tried to defuse the situation with a cute little comment, but it would have been better to just change the name. Read this comment for a better explanation if you're actually confused: https://ne…

What creates a hostile environment for woman is where a sector, made of predominately men is scrutinized with a hysterical "boy who cried wolf" mentality.

It's a vicious cycle.

1. First there is a tiny group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers, call themselves coders, but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. They seem very happy to stir indignation.

2. Then, people in positions of power bend toward the illegitimate trolls who cried wolf. I'm talking, the word "meritocracy" being offensive by github CEO [1], python board members referring to geekfeminism.org as a charter [2] for pycon conferences.

Pack up and go home, these are the leaders, the chiefs, the alphas of engineers - and they are cowing down to politically correct trolls on twitter, who aren't even participants to the causes.

Twitter and blogs allow anyone to claim to be anything. You used to need a degree to Marketer! Now any girl with an iPhone can be one! Twitter lets anyone call themselves a programmer.

However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people!

What is really creating a hostile work environment for woman? I can tell you, men who stay silent watching this bogus stuff happen, woman with legitimate skill and talent may be cast off as a liability.

Consider this: if you are a woman, and you would let a bad joke ruin someone's life, or abuse politically correct sympathy as a female to get benefits - is that going to help your cause? If you are a leader or boss, and you let these trolls shape you - You lack backbone. I feel this is a lack of integrity, and they're not fit to lead.

I hope leaders set an example and not feed these attention trolls and call their crap out. These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong.

[1]: https://twitter.com/defunkt/statuses/426104782894284800 [2]: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct

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

#503

Post by yeukhon »

darkandbrooding wrote: post #467
yeukhon wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, risking a crusade comes to my doorstep and downvote me to the minimum, here is a true rant: I want to express my paranoia here. I really hate when people have to bring up this gender issue in every discussion a name that sounds male-only. I am just saying: "stop raising the issue like we are on a crusade." The author has the right to choose a name and it can be that the author's geninue intent to use the name…

The use of [Debatably Volatile Term] (hereafter DVT) is poor branding for a project or product, unless the cultural baggage associated with DVT aligns with the purpose of the project/product. Assume that DVT has different connotative definitions to different audiences. If some of those connotative definitions are negative, then the use of DVT as a brand name will repel people who primarily associate DVT with that neg…

There will always be people who don't agree with you. Someone even said that Python can be thought of a slang for male sexual organ. In Chinese, turtle head is slang for the head of the male sexual organ. If I name it turtlehead, I can called sexist by some Chinese feminist. But in my example that's probably a bad name to start with anyway. But is bro-page in the same category as turtle head? My opinion is not.

I really don't see the name bro-page being sexist or evidence of ignoring feminist audience. It sounds genuine. It isn't like the author have a female model in the bro page documentation.

Rather than spending the first 50 comments on this gender flame war, why don't we talk about what makes man page useful and not useful. What makes sites like explainshell and bropage useful and not useful.

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

#505

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

reallyseriously wrote: post #491
rosser wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating contexts. When a woman says, "Hey, girl", to one of her girlfriends, she's not being sexist or exclusionary; she's greeting one of her friends . Or do you somehow also think that when a guy says, "Hey, dude!" to one of his friends, who also happens to have a penis, he's somehow being sexist? That's not remotely like the exclusionary nature, whether perceived or actual, of the specific use of the wor…

Good point, contexts were definitely conflated, sloppy reasoning. A better example would have been a programming language or software tool with a female name or slang. Of course, that wouldn't be sexist by definition and I wouldn't find it exclusionary either. But, the word "bro" in this thread has been compared to racial slurs so someone out there would probably have an issue with it.

Seriously? You genuinely think that 'software tool with female name' is as 'bad' as 'software tool with male name'[0]? And you can't work out why it isn't? Here's a clue: the software industry (along with many other industries, sadly) has a certain misogynistic element that discourages women from taking part, and humanity loses out as a result. That is why perpetuating the male-centric, frat-boy atmosphere is bad on an entirely different level from the hypothetical about-turn you refer to. If it were the other way round, if women had oppressed men for thousands of years, and the software industry was dominated by women, yes, your scenario would then be bad. By all means, come back with your scenario when that's the case.

[0] I'm using your term 'name' here for simplicity, when - of course - this isn't really about 'names', as such, but silly little words such as 'bro'; I can't think of a good 'female' equivalent, probably because there isn't one for very good reasons.

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

#506

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

overgard wrote: post #216
blahedo wrote: post #99

Great idea; shame about the name. Here's the problem with using words like "bro" (however jokingly): the problem is not with what you [0] are thinking when you read the word "bro", but with what other people , especially newcomers, are thinking. The locker-room atmosphere that stuff like this creates is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, women especially, who infer that on top of all the technically difficu…

Absolutely, lets throw away our sense of humor and wordplay because there are theoretically people that might be offended (maybe, kindof. You know. In theory.). (N.B. the people that seem to be offended so far are offended on other peoples behalf..) Isn't it way more offensive to assume that women are such dainty delicate creatures that like, they won't get the joke?

> Isn't it way more offensive to assume that women are such dainty delicate creatures that like, they won't get the joke?

Literally no-one said anything of the sort; the fact that this is where your mind went speaks volumes about your attitude towards women.

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

#507

Post by teh_klev »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #54
FreezerburnV wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, some people actually use "bro" as an neutral term. I call my wife "bro" all the time, she called one of her (female) students bro, etc. And I'm not trying to downplay any bad behavior by people you've had to interact/work with. Pretty much anything can be used in a negative way in a specific context, and people can be huge jerks. I'm merely trying to say that words which you think are offensive to one gen…

It's really a shame that in the community with which you are currently participating, the word has acquired so many negative associations; I agree. I also call my (female) SO "bro" – in addition to a broad range of friends and family – in specific contexts. But I would never consider the word neutral or inclusive in the context of the tech community. Too much baggage. If any of the people I call "bro" were programmer…

As soon as I saw the title I knew there'd be this brouhaha. For over twenty years my circle of male friends have been calling each other "bro", my female pals call their brothers "bro". All this was way before "bro" was misappropriated as a term of offence just because of one word - "brogrammer". This thread has seriously deviated into the twilight zone of reductio ad absurdum.

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

#508

Post by anatoly »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #309
overgard wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, lets throw away our sense of humor and wordplay because there are theoretically people that might be offended (maybe, kindof. You know. In theory.). (N.B. the people that seem to be offended so far are offended on other peoples behalf..) Isn't it way more offensive to assume that women are such dainty delicate creatures that like, they won't get the joke?

Sure. It's just one drop of water out of a clear blue sky. The sort of thing that is easily tolerable, hardly even a nuisance really. Maybe you don't have many female friends, maybe none of your female friends work in tech, and maybe you've never had any female coworkers. The fact is, for women in tech it's been raining, it's been raining every single day for decades. One drop is tolerable, but it's the unrelenting d…

>Make no mistake, these "jokes" have consequences.

What's your evidence? Anecdotal evidence cuts both ways: every time this issue is discussed on HN there are real women in comments saying that they personally don't feel discriminated at their tech workplaces and find the claims of GeekFeminism et al about the pervasively misogynistic tech culture laughable. Do you actually know that there's an "unrelenting deluge that makes life miserable" for a typical woman in tech? Do you have real evidence that's not coming from self-appointed experts or members of outrage brigades? How do you know that you're not exaggerating and it is not, just to pick a possibility, a regrettable annoyance that we'd be much better without, but not an "unrelenting deluge that makes life miserable"?

>We look around and we wonder why there are so few women in tech. A big reason is that so few women have the passion to don raingear they'll have to wear for the rest of their lives.

How do you know that this is a big reason? What's your evidence?

In the U.S., the percentage of women in tech and CS has been steadily going down since mid-80s, while the society has been getting less sexist since that time by most evidence I can think of: for example, think of the number of women in Congress, representation in the media, jokes that have become too crass, gender pay gap that's been shrinking... If you're right about the reason women don't go into tech, wouldn't you expect the numbers to go up and not down since the 80s?

>Most rational folks will just choose to go somewhere it's not raining as much or as often

What are other occupations in which, like you're claiming for tech, a misogynistic culture drives women out? E.g. take the law. Anecdotally, the culture in law firms is often said to be dominated by very aggressive male partners, with abundant misogynistic jokes. I googled for sexism in law firms and found this article: http://ms-jd.org/what-no-one-tells-you-you-go-law-school-you... by a woman who says that before law school she "spent the several years in a heavily male-dominated profession (software), and never had any issues", but was shocked by the amount of sexism and sexual harassment in law school and law firms.

If she's right, and this is a real problem, would you expect such sexism to be "a big reason" for women leaving law as well? But ever since the 1970s there's been only an up trend in female representation in law. How do you explain that?

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

#509

Post by aiiane »

smokeyj wrote: post #393
raganwald wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude(?), I'm not MLK, and I'm not into women's rights. I'm a selfish bastard who wants to double or treble the number of productive brains in my environment. Exclusionary behaviour stands between me and my dream, and I will crush it by any means necessary. If you must compare me, think of Malcolm X. Do not make the mistake of thinking I'm nice to women, men, other people of colour, or anybody else.

> 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…

You rang? I normally avoid commenting on crap like this because people like you are a pain to talk to, but since you seem to want to take advantage of me not engaging with people like you to argue that I don't exist... hi, I exist. Now please stop it with that terrible argument.

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

#510

Post by aiiane »

reallyseriously wrote: post #448
raganwald wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can think of a number of my colleagues who specifically avoid HN because of that very reason, so, yes.
Post reply on HN