Libuv developer chided for making docs gender neutral | Hacker News Reader

Libuv developer chided for making docs gender neutral

github.com

32 pointszaph0d13 comments

   [*] arrogantly dismissed gender neutrality as "trivial"
   (#1015)
   [*] actively taken steps to revert positive gender
   neutrality change
   [*] chided @isaacs unnecessarily
   [] removed women entirely from the industry

Ostensibly, reverting a pointless commit is one step away from removing women entirely from the tech industry.

Most shocking to me is how some people in the previous commit discussion genuinely believe that modifying two pronouns in code comments will somehow be a crucial step towards gender equality.

Because it's magical thinking at its best...

Personally I would have used "them" from the beginning (or the equivalent in my native language), but correcting someone like this is condescending and it would irritate me too.

This atmosphere of hysteria - ooh, ooh, he's just about to remove women from the industry - reminds me of religious fundamentalists who also want to shove their worldview down everybody's throat and never fail to inform you how the apocalypse is approaching, how we're doomed to eternity because someone wore a mini-skirt etc. etc.

Except there is a difference in that the really awful scenario is already here, and little by little, with big and small efforts, some communities are trying to climb out of it. How is spreading fear of upcoming doom in any way similar to trying to fix the existing, real problem?

Title should be: "Libuv developer chided for allegedly merging commit without proper sign off"

Post should be: buried.

Especially when "making docs gender neutral" is a terribly misleading way to describe changing from the traditional gender neutral pronoun to a somewhat better one.

There was a sign-off apparently: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...

Hence "allegedly".

I don't usually a comment about the things I know little; however this seems harmless enough.

It's apparent to me there is a back story here and the guided reasons were not to demean women, but that's certainly how I feel after rereading the comment in this commit.

It would be wise to not treat things like this lightly in public forums, no matter what the back story is.

This is basically already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6821677

Reverting is pretty weird.

Some suggestions it was fraudulent over on @alex_gaynor's twitter, but unsure if something like this can be faked.

1. However well intentioned, this sort of pedantry (the change from 'him' to 'them') just alienates efforts to make things more inclusive, rather than actually helping .

2. Reverting the change appears to be fairly petty. By all means talk to the author of the commit about it, but commit tennis just makes the project look a little immature.

3. Is libuv really now at the point where it is 100% kitchen-sink-included-feature complete, mathematically and empirically tested bug proof, and with code so clean it brings a tear to a developer's eye? If not, then why are you all wasting time on such petty commits, and not on actually, you know, improving the code base.

My boss always puts herself in frame as the 'user' in her comments, documents and emails, so all examples are framed with 'her' in mind. Does anyone mind? Does anyone start making changes to 'them'? No, not really. I guess there are more important things to do.

> rather than actually helping

Nope: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=246033817...

So if I'm reading this right, using 'he' as a generic is actually worse than having explicitly male examples, in terms of comprehension?

Did they specifically test using 'they'? I would imagine that it would distract some people who expect plural, but I have no guess as to how large this factor would be in comparison.

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