“Plug and socket”, industry group pushes for "obvious" change in terminology

Male/female terminology cuts through noise and using male/female for plugs translates to probably every language immediately if you are trying to convey what plugs into what.

I can see a possibility that it had real utility in communicating concepts across completely, different languages, where using the words socket and plug might have caused confusion and more time spent in translation.

Using gendered terminology is probably not harmful at all. Why should it be? This terminology was understood in almost all colleagues in nearly any languages. Most were men, yes, but that isn't the reason why women are underrepresentated.

You actually do, in this case. If using the terms "male" and "female" causes harm, the harm it causes is psychological. You can't really realize it from the outside. There is nothing to pre-empt here: These terms are already used to either they already cause harm or they won't start doing so. Which means there is no reason to effectively guess if they cause harm since you can actually ask someone who you think may be harmed. Solving a problem that doesn't actually exist is just a waste of time and resources. Moreover, it gives people the impression that "wokeness" in general is just pointless virtue signalling.

I do make assumptions about people pushing this at this point. I don't realize the problem and nobody can explain it. I see this as PR and people falling for it that wait for empty promises about something.

I believe you -- and I don't actually like the gendered terms myself -- but do you have a source for that?

That's what I wrote. But the Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance does not represent an affected group.

You're not calculating cost correctly. Think of it from an information theoretic point of view. You exist in a network that has already converged to a dominant representation. It's essentially a nigh universally understood application of those terms in a technical context. Even more than an API, it could be considered a part of socio-technical ABI or calling convention.

Imagine if you will a world in which every individual starts changing what they call things on a whim every day. You run into a Tower of Babel problem, and one that at best, stabilizes to a dynamic equilibrium i.e., the problem never stops, it just changes from thing to thing. Symbol changes have cost. That cost quickly amplifies in terms of required reconciliation and update of protocol across the entire human network. That means across languages, cultures, education systems, etc.

What you'll find, is this seriously grates against a bunch of people way more interested in getting work done and being understood without being on receiving end of This Week's Polemic at the same time.

This may sound callous or cold, but there is a reason society does not wholesale rewrite foundational communication structures/cultures/techné/art/etc... on a whim, and when it does happen, it's not just because a small group gets a marginal bump, but the change warrants such a bump in overall benefit or actualizable horizons of possibility, that it becomes worth the chaos of adapting to the change and shepherding it along.

Every individual may think they only have to pay or exact a one time cost but that quickly compounds.Think of all the times you end up saying "You know what I mean?" and the recipient goes on to demonstrate they do. This is one of those cases where one can only really justify change having a trivial cost in the presence of ascribing a value modifier of 0 or less to tradition, instead of actually accounting for all the instances of questions that don't need to be asked, because there is an instinctual, endemic response. While one or another person looking at themselves in isolation may see the cost as trivial to enact in their local sphere of influence, it exacts a non trivial cost in the overall context of human to human communication over time.

Note, I'm not saying no one should try to change these types of things. To do so, or try to is the essence of politics; I'm merely pointing out that the only way you see no cost is if you did count a whole lot of other implicit dependencies elsewhere as not significant.

You do you, but reality has a way of making it hurt when people do that.

Then again, people might not really like women advocacy groups if they find out they pushed such changes.

That's a feminist group, not a trans group, but point taken. Though that seems to be more of a group of female prudes. Unless female connectors/plugs are considered somehow inferior to male ones in the industry?

Does that actually matter?

I'm guessing women are under-represented in the Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance. I will admit I don't have evidence of that.

I was being sarcastic

Use a second word to identify it. A "Foo plug" or if it's just the reverse of what you normally have, an "inverted plug."