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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

#831

Post by godDLL »

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 sure felt uncomfortable all over the comments page. Yuck bra.

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

#832

Post by Crake »

KuraFire wrote: post #829
Crake wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was comparing social ostracizing to social ostracizing. Your comment doesn't even contain a strawman, it's just a pile of straw being yelled at. I am part of three of the minority categories you listed above as experiencing Serious Oppression. I'm also a nerd. Perhaps it is you who needs some perspective?

Being shot or earning less money unfairly is not "social ostracizing." You're being so incredibly disingenuous here and discrediting yourself so fiercely on any topic relating to society, economics or social justice that I truly do not understand why you keep opening your mouth. But by all means, go on.

I think you need to listen to minorities more instead of attacking and talking over them. You're no ally, that's for sure.

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

#833

Post by djillionsmix »

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…

>These are brilliant, fun, unflappable women

Unflappable except supposedly they literally can't read this website out of the inescapable fear that someone will make a pun about man pages, and then someone else will be unimpressed with their outrage at a pun about man pages.

Lolks

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

#835

Post by serge2k »

argumentum wrote: post #815
Jtsummers wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working in NC for a few years. I did not hear the term "brogrammer", but after leaving there and learning the term, it applied to several companies I knew. The typical setup was younger men with a manager in his 30s or early 40s. It was a tight knit group, they hung out together after hours, drank together, sports activities together, picked up women at bars (or tried to). Strong encouragement to work overtime,…

How is this a culture than women do not fit into? Are women not allowed to go into bars and "hit on" guys? Women are 1/2 of the equation here, if there were no women in bars, guys would have nobody to "hit on". Btw, this is a phenomenon is certainly not any more common than in other professions .. watch any television show about cops, lawyers, bankers or doctors .. it's just our culture.

Right, they are, sure.

But what women is going to go out with the team of 5-6 guys to do that?

Of course that begs the question, would a lot of these problems be lessened if there was simply more women?

You can hardly ask guys to stop forming friendships based on things that will often exclude women. It's going to happen. It's a problem when women find their careers suffering because of it, or when they don't get a chance to form friendships they can enjoy at work. Yes, they can be friends with men, but it's going to be harder when it's a bunch of guys who want to go do things that a bunch of guys do.

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

#836

Post by xamebax »

jacobtracey wrote: post #820
xamebax wrote: post #810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IRC is gender neutral. So you read about someone's experience proving otherwise (I have had similar experiences on IRC, getting treated shitty for being a woman) and you stated something else in an authoritarian fashion, without feeling the slightest need to prove your point. How... interesting.

Saying his personal experience proves anything about IRC as a medium is a stretch. No requirement exists to give your gender or a name that may reveal a gender. That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'. If someone makes assumptions about other people it's their own issue, it has nothing to do with what is essentially an anonymous medium. I really didn't think it needed 'proving'.

Of course you didn't think that. I think your confusion stems from the fact that, when speaking about IRC, one speaks also about the community that uses IRC -- without the people using IRC, it would be useless, since its aim is to make communication possible. I'm a bit surprised this wasn't taken into account.

> That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'.

No, because women receive shit and most users are considered male by default.

> Saying his personal experience proves anything about IRC as a medium is a stretch.

His experiences are not the only ones that exist. At least a couple female IRC users I know carefully chose handles that do not reveal their gender, because they wanted to spare themselves all the negative comments they received before the handle change.

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

#837

Post by jacobtracey »

xamebax wrote: post #836
jacobtracey wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying his personal experience proves anything about IRC as a medium is a stretch. No requirement exists to give your gender or a name that may reveal a gender. That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'. If someone makes assumptions about other people it's their own issue, it has nothing to do with what is essentially an anonymous medium. I really didn't think it needed 'proving'.

Of course you didn't think that. I think your confusion stems from the fact that, when speaking about IRC, one speaks also about the community that uses IRC -- without the people using IRC, it would be useless, since its aim is to make communication possible. I'm a bit surprised this wasn't taken into account. > That, by any definition, is 'gender neutral'. No, because women receive shit and most users are considered…

Why do you need to tell people your gender on a communications medium that doesn't require you to? I don't consider anyone to be male or female on IRC, they're just users.

The thing I always loved about IRC was that even when I was 12 years old, people took me seriously, not because I was male, or white, or an adult, but because I was thoughtful and intelligent - age in this case being the key differentiating factor.

Disgusting sexist people exist. If you tell them your gender they may well attack you for it, because they are terrible people. What are we debating here? The only assertion I've made is that IRC is inherently gender neutral by definition.

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

#838

Post by jcromartie »

glesica wrote: post #390
overgard wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem with your argument: since there's nothing actually hostile towards women on that page, what you're basically saying is that any expression of male culture at all is "hostile". It's like saying "stop being men! it's chasing all the women away!".

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…

> You don't get to decide what offends or hurts other people.

While this is of course true, I do not believe that what offends other people should dictate our actions. There is someone out there to be offended for everything you could imagine. Implying that homosexuality is OK or that the universe is billions of years old will offend literally millions of people in the US alone. Implying that women should be allowed to go to school or marry who they want is offensive to plenty of people in the wlrld too.

It would be ridiculous to cater to those people's sensitivities! And I feel that it is silly to worry about things like the word "bro".

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

#839

Post by theorique »

KuraFire wrote: post #830
theorique wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not reading anyone saying that women are inferior to men here. The only thing I'm seeing people say is that both sexes need to earn their stripes and credibility through effort - and this needs to be true in programming just like any other field.

It's disingenuous to argue that all genders need to "earn their strips and credibility through effort" when everyone who isn't male (and additionally, not white, and not straight, and not able-bodied, etc.) is actively discriminated against and enjoys fewer opportunities to learn programming or design techniques.

I didn't realize that TCP/IP had a "race" byte that introduces errors preferentially based on the ethnic background of the programmer.

OK, so I'm being snarky there, but the nucleus of computer science and programming is truly objective and has no preference or prejudice based on race/sex/religion/disability/etc. As others have said, the compiler doesn't care who or what you are. And there are a ton of free resources available online. A person who wants to learn this material, who truly has the will and drive to mastery, and an internet connection, can do so.

The barriers to learning that you describe are cultural, not intrinsic to the subject, and people are chipping away at them (Ada, Black Girls Code, etc), and that's a fine thing too. Changing the stereotype of "programmer" as a fat white guy in a basement chugging Mountain Dew and covered in Cheetos dust is a goal we can all get behind.

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

#840

Post by hobbit125 »

jacobtracey wrote: post #764
jabelk wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YOU moved the discussion goalposts by bringing up your trip to Asia in the first place. And then you told me I had no right to be indignant about the systematic exclusion of women from tech because it was a "first world problem" compared to the discrimination you faced in Asia which, of course, you didn't even care about anyway! So don't try to tell me that I'm unreasonable.

That did not move the goal posts. You're being intellectually dishonest and attacking a straw man.

She's not. You made a poor point toward the larger argument, you got called out on it and now you're trying to back out of it. You're claiming that it's off-topic or "moving the goal posts", when in reality it speaks to the very core of what you're not understanding on this issue.

It's not about whether or not you find it offensive or exclusionary. It's about whether or not many others would reasonably find it offensive and/or exclusionary. And it asks so little of you too. It's such a small consideration to choose a name that wouldn't contribute toward reminding women that technology/software is a "man's world."

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