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Comment by CyberDildonics | Hacker News Reader

But you do agree they dictate what is ok to say on reddit, irc, newsgroups, and github correct? I've seen people scolded for saying 'hey guys'. You can say that is a good thing, but to me it seems like a passive aggressive way to show authority over someone with a virtue contest.

The problem is that it turns a meritocracy into something that can be sidestepped and warped by one person claiming to be offended. In practice someone scolds another person for something that they say might offend someone reading.

I also haven't seen any sort of evidence that it solves a problem. It seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem. I don't think it magically takes care of toxic people.

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We don't ban people for saying "hey guys", we politely tell them that not everyone is a guy and that's pretty much it.

I can name plenty of women that I know that are put off from participating in such communities because everyone just assumes that they are male. Individual occurrences are nbd, but in aggregate it gets really annoying. It's a good thing to teach the community to avoid such behavior.

The Rust community is one of the nicest online communities I've come across. We get feedback every week from folks happy to participate in the community and contribute to ecosystem/core because it's very nice. I'd say that's plenty evidence it's doing some good.

First, you are equating a blanket 'hey guys' with assuming everyone is a guy which is nonsense. It is a generic greeting, and you decide it is worth flexing authority over another adult, not to mention it is the definition of bike-shedding.

Then, you are attributing people's hard work of being helpful with a 'code of conduct' which is unfair to their efforts. The people helping build up rust aren't doing it because someone decided to dictate the greetings they can use.

The code of conduct doesn't dictate which kind of greetings to use. Nobody has dictated that in the Rust community. Community members just politely ask that you don't use some greetings. Nobody will stop you from continuing to do so.

The "hey guys" thing isn't about intent. People are aware that you are not assuming that everyone is a guy. They are asking that you be considerate of people who have to deal with being misgendered all the time and made to feel like they don't belong. There is no authority being flexed. It's usually regular community members asking not to use "hey guys", not moderators. (This is also a super rare occurrence anyway).

No, I'm not talking about helpfulness, I'm talking about people being nice. That's exactly what the code of conduct is about, and it seems to achieve that goal pretty well.

> being misgendered all the time

Saying "guy" isn't misgendering because it's a gender neutral pronoun. People call women "guys" all the time. Most people realize this.

> I can name plenty of women that I know that are put off from participating in such communities because everyone just assumes that they are male.

Is that a bad thing? That's the ultimate in equality.

Are you kidding? Because that's not remotely equality at all. In fact, this comment itself seems rather sexist, since you're advocating that women are only equal to men if they're treated like men.

That's what equality is, treating people equally. Are you advocating that women be treated differently? That would be sexist.

Advocating for the idea that woman should be happy they're being treated like men is not equality. It's blatant inequality, and you're coming just short of explicitly saying that women are inferior to men.

So you think women should be treated differently to men? That is sexual discrimination.

I'm not sure you're grasping the equality concept. Treating people the same is equality. Treating different genders differently is sexism.

Someone here is clearly sexist, but it's not me.

Edit - instant down votes, the sjw debate philosophy.

Do you also greet your mother with "Hey dad", or do you refer to her by a different word because of her gender?

Of course I don't. But Mum's job was to stay at home, look after the kids and have dinner on the table at 6pm. That was a very gendered households, not uncommon at the time.

Are you saying that this gendered language should continue?

No. But using the wrong gendered language for someone is still bad. In fact, this is why in general lots of folks advocate for the usage of singular "they" when speaking of people with unknown gender. This is the problem with "hey guys" in the first place; there are gender neutral ways of addressing groups of people. Yet you are choosing the non gender neutral way of doing it.

You haven't been arguing against gendered language here, you're arguing for using gendered language -- just gendered language for the same gender -- for everyone, when gender-neutral language has existed for centuries.

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Equality is about treating men and women the same. Having women feel like a fish out of the water by having their identity rejected is not the same. Having women feel like their identity is being rejected is not the same.

Equality does not mean rejecting individuality. Equality is not assuming that everyone is Bob and has the same personality, emotions, and gender as Bob. That's unfair to people who aren't Bob. Equality is treating them the same, or more specifically not treating someone worse because of an aspect of their existence that they have little control over. You can and should still respect their identity.

If male and female identity would be identical, then neither would be male and female identity. It would be human identity, for which both women and men should equally be happy with.

If we treat women as men, we are also treating men as women. A major part of the equality feminism (the dominated faction within feminism until the start of the 21th century) had this as their primary concept. People gave kids either gender neutral colors, or switched them randomly and had both girls and boys wearing pink and blue clothes. However, this practice and theory of feminism was dethroned by difference feminism that believes that people are different, should be treated as different, but end up with equal results. This was then incorporated as part of the modern feminism practice, for which postmodern feminism (current minority faction) is rejecting which also happens to lean towards equality feminism style of practice.

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