Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only • Hacker News Board

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

#621

Post by ehsanu1 » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:32 AM UTC

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…

According to this, you're the one who's making it worse for women: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121942

I found that pretty amusing, and aligns with my expectations.

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

#622

Post by blahedo » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:32 AM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #211

BadCookie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, taking everything so seriously can make the situation worse. I'm a woman in tech, and I don't want the men in tech to feel like they have to walk around on eggshells so as not to offend me. I think that the name "bro pages" is kind of funny, for what it's worth, and all of the protest against the name is the only thing making me uncomfortable.

I thought it was short for "bro"chure anyway. I ctrl+f'ed brother on every page of that site, and I couldn't find any. If anything, people are placing the gender connotation into this command, like people do with "man"ual... why is it the creator and the people who aren't mentioning gender who are being insensitive? I find this entire argument sexist against myself as a man, as the equivalent of this would be creatin…

From the webpage:

  curl --header "X-GirlsAreBrosToo: 1" www.bropages.org
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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

#623

Post by dsuth » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:37 AM UTC

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?

Having seen this happen in a number of internet communities, where women have described the reasons they would no longer visit, and having watched these communities change from reasonably well represented by both sexes to almost exclusively male-only: yes. It's almost certainly because the community at HN is offensive and exclusionary towards women.

This seems to be something of a hot button issue within the community at the moment, probably spurred on by pg's comments taken out of context, but the last few threads on similar topics have been filled with bile, reverse sexism claims, and general attacks against women. It's sad to see, because at this stage it's essentially too late for this place. The last community community I was (and still am) a part of made a conscious effort to change its moderation and terms of use to be more inclusive and punish individuals who stepped over the lines, but it was too late for them too - the sense of community was already destroyed for most of the visibly female members there. I haven't noticed them come back.

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

#624

Post by sethammons » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:42 AM UTC

KVFinn wrote: post #288

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.

>If you're feeling oppressed and excluded by a command name, your real problems lie elsewhere. Similarly, why are you so offended by people thinking something is a bad name and expressing those sentiments?

While I cannot speak for the parent, and while I am not offended by people thinking something is a bad name, I find it to be perhaps the right sentiment directed in the wrong direction. Yes, we want to encourage more woman -- heck, more people -- into our industry. I think this is done through different means. I think it starts off when people are young and they get exposed to programming. If I knew someone left our industry because they were offended by the naming of command line tools, I would be baffled.

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

#625

Post by overgard » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:43 AM UTC

Steuard wrote: post #324

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?

It's not about offending people. It's never about offending people. Plenty of people could have delightfully off-color senses of humor, love playing Cards Against Humanity, and still find this name highly problematic. It's actually about the signals that we send by using language closely associated with groups or attitudes that have long histories of excluding women or others from our culture and community. And just…

"Signals". Ok. So what's the signal being sent to women by a bunch of men that think that women are so weak that a mild mild MILD joke about fratboys is going to chase them away? (A lame joke that doesn't even involve women directly). Do you really think they're that emotionally fragile?

Don't you see how incredibly patronizing this discussion is towards the people it's supposedly benefiting?

Which do you think is more offensive: a comment that slightly gets under your skin, or someone questioning your ability to handle a comment that gets slightly under your skin?

Isn't the whole point of feminism that we treat women like normal fully functional adults that can stick up for themselves? I'm not a feminist, but how does shit like this help their cause?

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

#626

Post by victorhooi » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:51 AM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #538

TeMPOraL wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People nowdays get offended about pretty much anything. I refuse to pay Dane-Geld[0] to them by worrying about every single word I use, because otherwise they'll never shut up. [0] - http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html

I'm not saying you're an asshole, I don't know enough about you to make that call, but comments like this really make you sound like one. You're basically saying, "I refuse to even try to live harmoniously with others because they're just going to keep demanding shit from me." If you don't want or care to examine your thoughts and actions, that's fine, but getting all high and mighty about it by invoking Kipling and…

I suppose you didn't see the irony of you calling him an a*sehole?

The fact that you did it in some round-about passive-aggressive way makes you look even more of one. You see how this just goes around in circles?

Look, I think giving up is the wrong tact so I can politely disagree with his viewpoint - we should make an effort not to be dicks - but I certainly get what he's saying.

And in my opinion, this stupid bike-shedding about OMGGG!!! He called a project "Bro!!!!" is definitely an example of this.

People with too much time, and nothing useful to do.

Guys, somebody made an effort to contribute to open-source - and if you actually knew anything about the history of OSS, you'd know this isn't the first name that's caused some small group to kick up a stink.

I mean, jeez, "git" - I didn't even see the issue until somebody pointed it out.

Or MongoDB - I thought that was stretching it, but no, there really are people offended by that.

The list goes on.

Basically, there will always be somebody, out there on the Internets that will get offended.

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

#627

Post by richardfontana » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 4:57 AM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #544

tomphoolery wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the actual joke, which is that "man" was the colloquialism for "dude" or "bro" in the 1970s, when `man` was created. So it only makes sense that a "man for modern times", or maybe a "man with less formality" would be called `bro`. Personally, I've aliased `man` to `dude` on my shell, so my laptop fits in better with its peers.

In the 1970s, did the term "man" (in that context) have the same frat-boy, jock, alpha-male, etc. set of connotations?

No, it is clear that it did not. The usage of 'man' referenced upthread was, probably somewhat earlier than that time, transitioning from 'generic term of address for a male person' to 'means of communicating emphasis when addressing someone (not necessarily male)'. It wasn't used as a labeling term for 'type of man'; rather 'man' was, of course, as it still is, the generic label for 'adult male person'. I still hear vocative and emphatic usages of 'man' though the vocative usage seems somewhat old-fashioned to me.

My assumption has been that the vocative usage of 'man' was originally associated particularly with urban African-American speech and got picked up by youth culture during the 1950s and 1960s, much as was happening with other urban African-American slang and dialect usages.

The trajectory of 'dude' in the 1980s (possibly given a significant push by the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High) was somewhat similar to that of 'vocative->emphasis man', though 'dude' of course had been a term that had earlier on been used as a label for certain categories of men (e.g. the 'surfer dude' and the much earlier usages that go back to the 19th century).

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

#628

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 5:03 AM UTC

railsdude wrote: post #380

bliti wrote: post #336

This thread has opened my eyes to the sexist atrocities carried on throughout the tech industry. The first obvious one is my current language of choice, Python. That is the worst and most sexist name for language. Why should female programmers have to put up with it? Python == Snake == Slang for male genitalia. It is so obvious! Ladies, I'm sorry for all those years of oppressive code that I've spent writing. But let…

> Python == Snake == Slang for male genitalia You jest, but in 2012 someone from the PSF made a "joke", at PyCon, asking people, men and women: "want to see my one-eyed snake?". Unfortunately, the same Python feminists that are ready to burn anyone who disagree with them regarding the use of a pronoun [1], for instance, were very quiet and dismissive about that other, and bigger, issue. [2] [1] https://github.com/joy…

[deleted]

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

#629

Post by vinceguidry » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 5:10 AM UTC

victorhooi wrote: post #626

vinceguidry wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you're an asshole, I don't know enough about you to make that call, but comments like this really make you sound like one. You're basically saying, "I refuse to even try to live harmoniously with others because they're just going to keep demanding shit from me." If you don't want or care to examine your thoughts and actions, that's fine, but getting all high and mighty about it by invoking Kipling and…

I suppose you didn't see the irony of you calling him an a*sehole? The fact that you did it in some round-about passive-aggressive way makes you look even more of one. You see how this just goes around in circles? Look, I think giving up is the wrong tact so I can politely disagree with his viewpoint - we should make an effort not to be dicks - but I certainly get what he's saying. And in my opinion, this stupid bike…

I don't think there's anything wrong with deciding in a particular case whether the complainants are being goobers or not.

What I do see a problem with is just assuming that everyone trying to do their part to moderate culture so as to be more inclusive is just an Internet whiner. That's just anti-social and it perpetuates the problem of sexism in hacker culture.

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

#630

Post by ceol » Sun, Jan 26, 2014, 5:13 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #550

ceol wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good on your for sticking up to these jackasses. I've long since given up arguing it here, but it makes me so happy to see folks like you and others in this thread shouting these idiots down.

[deleted]

Surprising you scrolled right passed the guy calling someone a "pussy whipped mofo" to tell me that saying he's a jackass is trolling.

Says something about your priorities, chrismonsanto.