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Comment by Forgeties79 | Hacker News Reader

The dismissal of gendered language as politics is arguably “defensible” in a “I wrote this in a way that allows me to hide behind it” sort of way. It was wrong and needlessly dismissive in a way that clearly communicates he disagrees to anyone who understands typical internet discourse tactics.

If he really did not want “political drama” or whatever there are far more effective ways to handle it that don't allow you to also signal your disapproval/disagreement with the content.

TL;DR: he handled it in a way that expressed his disagreement while staying plausibly deniable.

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I completely agree that he was unnecessarily prickly/political in his response. I only disagree that it validates xgulfie's implication that he is in the "so bad we should disparage whatever he does" category.

Thank you

I think it would had been better for Andreas Kling to simply stay “our style guidelines use the masculine form when describing an unspecified person, even though the person may be masculine, feminine, or non-binary”. But I also understand his frustration: Someone who prefers using an indefinite male is not someone who, as per the now-dead slanderous parent post, “a white replacement theory type”.

Nor is someone who prefers the indefinite masculine grammatical form someone who, as per another dead post, “is completely blinded by his own privileges as a cisgender white guy”.

This kind of hyperbolic overreaction is something Kasparov, someone whose Chess playing and politics I greatly respect, recently described as “Woke 1”:

https://www.thenextmove.org/p/2020-accountability-is-mia - https://archive.ph/20260827172149/https://www.thenextmove.or...

> People know that ICE is bad, that law enforcement has a troubled history in this country.

I’m sorry but is he joking? Does he have any idea how much the Republicans/MAGA love ICE? Look at the funding it is getting, look at all the red meat being flung around about immigration. This started well before 2020. Immigration is the burning issue for the GOP. It’s been a cornerstone of Trump’s reign.

And come on, you think the average American is particularly aware of the systemic abuse that law-enforcement uphold here? That is a clearly divisive opinion that falls along political lines.

I have no interest in reading past that. His understanding of the context for these debates is completely inaccurate and warped. He is hand waving away real problems and somehow pretending people are acknowledging them when the entire point is a massive percentage of the country thinks those aren’t actual issues and thus don’t need to be addressed.

These are the same kind of talking points we see when someone goes “we all know Trump is not a great guy.” Unfortunately, no, a huge part of the country not only thinks he isn’t a bad guy, but thinks he is a role model. Someone to aspire to. So that cannot be an assumption we make when discussing Trump.

Kasparov has no fingers on the pulse here.

Here’s that sentence in context:

>>>People know that ICE is bad, that law enforcement has a troubled history in this country. Yet when they see Democratic electeds treat riots with kid gloves, they’ll support an authoritarian right over the specter of anarchy and chaos.<<<

As per https://www.npr.org/2026/02/05/nx-s1-5699413/poll-trump-ice-... 60% of Americans don’t approve of ICE, so “people know that ICE is bad” is a reasonable summary of public opinion.

If I was dealing with the same type of "person" that's only "contribution" to every github repo is to just go and ask for language policing I would intentionally be as prickly as possibly to them while telling them no.

Then you’d be a bad steward.

There is absolutely nothing constructive about removing "gendered language". He was absolutely right to shut that nonsense down.

You’re literally doing what I described. You’re not even attempting to understand the issue,

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