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Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

Would men have a hard time working with a tool called "vag"?

You seem to be infantilizing a lot of women.

> Would men have a hard time...

I mean, yeah, probably. Either through embarrassment or immaturity. Which, granted, isn't the end of the world, but I'd feel the need to qualify it with an explanation every time I mentioned it, and would probably think about switching to an alternative if I had to talk about it a lot.

It's not quite the same situation, but I switched to Glimpse so I didn't have to keep explaining GIMP to non-techies who saw it on my computer and asked. I would however consider that less excusable, since it's not an innocent word in the program's native language in the same way as Coq.

We're not talking about all women or my opinion of women, we're talking about actual women that actually complained about harassment and discomfort, which is the reason stated for the change in the linked article. Besides, it's not "infantilizing" to acknowledge the situation might feel different as a woman in a male-dominated group. You seem to think they should just tough it out because most men wouldn't have a problem with the "reverse" situation, which is a pretty rough take. Men and women's experiences with the opposite gender are not interchangeable.

How does a name generate harassment on its own? If it doesn't, then clearly the harassment is an issue that should be handled on its own.

It is definitely infantilizing to assume that any group can't adopt/use a word if they want, really has nothing to do with genders or anything like that as you seem to assert. Women don't have some unique historical relationship to the word "cock", and even if they did I don't think that would be a great reason. The black community reclaimed the N word, and that word is so extremely polarizing / offensive I'm calling it "the N word"! It's not about "toughing it out", it's about growing up and recognizing that words are whatever you want them to be.

The thread is full of stories like “woman says she works on Coq and gets harassed” or “woman foresees this problem and avoids learning Coq” or “Coq teacher (male or female) struggles to talk about Coq because students are uncomfortable”.

You seem to suggest those people train everybody around them to change behavior.

Meanwhile, every company picking a brand name will do the smart thing and avoid anything ridiculous in any of their target market; yet somehow if this happens in public it’s a scandal.

> You seem to suggest those people train everybody around them to change behavior.

Yes, I would prefer that as well. Instead of indefinitely (and rather defensively) change the names of things that might be deemed offensive, educate people that there are contexts in which they shouldn't give in to their infantile impulses.

I mean, doctors can do it.. SW engineers too, probably.

We are mostly researchers, so this is not so much a language we use as our life's work. This means we talk about it a _lot_, including in public. It's not just about people at work making jokes; it's also about what happens when you leave work and mention what you do in public as a force of habit. It's pretty awful to expect all of us, especially the women in the community, to have to police the behavior of every stranger we encounter who hears us say that we are Coq experts or something similar, and uses that to make jokes at our expense or harass us.

A guy I work with has 'balls' in his name. Yes, he and management expect people to keep their mouths shut.

Anyways, yes we could require him to change his name because it's distracting. That would be one thing to do. It's the solution suggested by people in this thread...

If you can't see the many differences between those situations, I don't feel like we will have a productive conversation.

Both involve expecting people to respect foreigners and their language.

There's a difference of magnitude, in that one is a guy's name and the other is a guy's project's name. But no, I don't see a fundamental difference.

As a man, yes, yes that would indeed make me uncomfortable.

> You seem to be infantilizing a lot of women.

Welcome to 2021. If you're born with one or more of certain immutable characteristics, you're automatically a victim who needs to be protected and rescued. Every person with certain immutable characteristics of a different category are all personally to blame.

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