Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know if you're familiar with the expression, but you don't have to be a man to enter a "gentlemen's agreement". You don't even have to be a gentleman for that matter.

Of course, "gentlemen's agreement" is actually what it's called in French as well, and we don't go around thinking it's exclusive to French people because it uses English words (not that we don't do that with other terms…). It's just what it's called, and been called for hundreds of years.

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Edit: OK this is way off-topic but I can't help but snicker a bit when I see these kinds of comments. The idea that we even genderize words is very arbitrary in the first place, and very inconsistent between languages.

French for example has the word "écrivain" (author) which is very masculine-sounding and as such sounds weird when used for women; but the feminine "écrivaine" sounds atrocious to French speakers. Our canadian friends exported the word "auteure" (feminine of auteur; phonetically identical). It's a whole thing. Apparently we used to use "autrice" which actually rings pretty nice (similar to acteur / actrice == actor / actress).

You'd be hard pressed to see the debate in English around Author / Authoress.

These are potentially legitimately exclusionary though, because it's not completely absurd to think that grammatical rules can influence how friendly we perceive a profession to be to that sex; eg. "fireman" vs. "firefighter", or in french "Femme de ménage" [cleaning lady] vs. "aide ménagere" [cleaning helper].

Point is, there's no reason why most of these words can't be made gender-neutral in the first place. English speakers are lucky to have a mostly gender-neutral language at all. Did you know that in french, Banks, postboxes, cars and churches are feminine, whereas computers, telephones, ovens and monasteries are masculine?

I don't get why it's a good argument to say that something exists for hundreds of years. Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years.

I agree with you. It is not a convincing argument for me either.

> Thinking about flat earth was also thought for hundreds of years

And round even longer :)

I didn't say it's a good argument to keep things that way, I meant to say that the naming itself doesn't mean women are excluded. A gentlemen's agreement is a well-understood term, and if you start saying something gender-neutral such as "gentleperson's agreement", you may sound more inclusive, but you're also less likely to be understood, especially by non-native-speakers.

What about..."agreement"? Or just "agree"?

"Can we have a gentleman's agreement to" -> "Can we agree to"

Fewer words. Well understood. Any inclusivity issues? Ah, the life of an editor.

Yes, OP could have just said "can we agree to", and in their case that would have worked fine. But I hope you're not proposing to hard-swap "gentlemen's agreement" for "agreement", because those are two very different things.

I can agree with that. I went with the idiom that came to mind and the connotation/image that I have associated with it, not really considering inclusion. Exclusion wasn't a goal, but despite less 'flavor' (with flavor being subjective and not necessary), "Can we agree to" is probably a better choice.

FWIW, I didn't have any problem with the original wording. Then somebody pointed out it's exclusivity and I thought, "Hmmm". Then all the gender contortions made me wince. I almost didn't post because I didn't want to be part of that.

For the record, my post was not an effort for social equity. It was English golfing. I'm sure there are better golfers.

Are they comparable? Earth is not flat remains static and will for a very long time while languages don't.

Though, change to languages are opposed and pushed for political reasons so it's no surprise to form an argument that relies on age of something to justify it similarly how people need political atmosphere to justify the change instead of solely arguing on the basis of descriptiveness or clarification.

Nitpick: If you're referring to the middle ages, nobody there (well, no scholarly person at least) actually thought the earth was flat. That the earth is round was known since antiquity.

The big dispute was about whether the earth was at the centre of the universe; heliocentrism was contradicting the church's doctrine at the time. Somehow this ended up in popular culture as an argument about the earth being flat which it never was.

Now of course, it's entirely possible that earlier cultures, before the Greeks, were under the impression the world was round... or any other shape.

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