Comment by benbeltran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benbeltran | Hacker News Reader

Sexism and Racism: two cards people play all the time for ever-annoying reasons. They're the kind of arguments you "can't be against" because, how can you be against stopping racism/sexism? They're also the kind of arguments that keep sexism/racism happening. We should focus on the important parts:

Are you offended by it? - Deal with it or don't use it or politely make your opinion known to the author. Be an adult and don't "Quit Open Source" or "Ban the package" or "Rant about how Open Source developers are discriminating white males" because that just makes you look silly and chlidish.

Did you name it that way? - if you want widespread usage of your package, know that a polarizing name and one that will be hidden under the throves of porn in a search engine can impact the adoption of your piece of software. Also, it will make you look Silly and childish.

We are all educated and grown people, we should be able to make these decisions easily in our lives.

If I make a CoffeeScript to Assembly translator called "Beaner" I should at least know that Some people won't appreciate it and call me racist and probably some mexican will quit open source software forever. And I'm taking that risk by naming my package that way.

We shouldn't be afraid of being offended. I'm offended all the time and it doesn't stop me from living my life properly.

You're asking people not to have a knee-jerk reaction to offensive language, but you're having a knee-jerk reaction to people being offended. Some people might choke on their morning coffee when reviewing a pull request for "pantyshot", but the majority of us just want a bit of civility (not unlike the rules of HN).

Nobody chokes on their morning coffee when reviewing a pull request for "pantyshot". Such people ought to be sent to the front line in all-out war to learn to deal with some real issues in life.

Besides, men wear panties too. I've seen them do it.

I don't see the connection to being sent to war: It seems like you are trying to say "because this (war) is more unpleasant, you have nothing to complain about", which makes no sense.

I think he was trying to say that experiencing high magnitude discomfort puts low magnitude discomfort in perspective.

Also, knowing several Iraq veterans before and after, it seems to get you very comfortable with offensive language :p

>You're asking people not to have a knee-jerk reaction to offensive language, but you're having a knee-jerk reaction to people being offended.

Uh, yeah, and that invalidates his point in exactly what way? It's still true that people are overreacting. If somebody is offended by the name of a freaking software package, I'd wager that this person has other problems to work out.

It's also true that "sexism" (and various other *isms) is a completely abused term that simply serves as an "argument" that nobody can counter, since if anybody does, he must be a sexist.

Besides, I think that "civility" includes not whining to everyone over being personally offended by something.

It's not at all an analogous situation. You're talking about offending people with the name of a package you wrote. This is talking about offending the person who originally wrote the package by suggesting a name, the connotations of which she didn't fully understand. Her name is now associated with it. This isn't a problem of someone childishly over reacting.

Agree! It's a problem of /many/ people childishly overreacting :p

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