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Comment by a1a | Hacker News Reader

It might as well say "Real hackers use vi", "Real programmers use vi", or whatever. I do not see why it needs to be gender related.

The author should write whatever he pleases. But I believe it would be proper to use a language directed to a broader audience when writing a public blog post. I also believe that the author was trying to be funny and had no bad intents what so ever, but either way these tiny things matter if we ever want to see diversity in our field.

I would also like to add that your argumentation is quite unpleasant to me. I read it as you believe that diversity is this annoying thing that destroys the good ol' "all dude internet". Would you care to clarify what you meant?

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I meant that the diversity makes it annoying because things that were good jokes suddenly turn ugly. So I do have to ask what is it that is not ok now. Because alright - not everything is ok, but I'm also sure that not everything is not-ok neither. Because if everything is not-ok, then nothing is ok and the only thing left for me to do is write in pure logic, probably in some language like lojban.

Tomorrow I'll write "real hackers use vi" and someone who has never programmed and has no interest in it will correct me that they're offended - they like the article, but don't self-identify as a hacker, so my usage would offend them. That's fine, I can use other words and people can only get offended at a finite set of them, but I do need to be told where my mistake is.

That's your take on the matter. I would like to hear Red Sonja's stance.

Clarifucation: She is a true knight, not a toy, and embodies all the knightly virtues. This included "hoher muot", of which there isn't enough of going round of that.

What "argumentation"? I see a question and an explanation of the question with no commentary whatsoever.

> I would also like to add that your argumentation is quite unpleasant to me. I read it as you believe that diversity is this annoying thing that destroys the good ol' "all dude internet".

So you're saying that men (read: dudes) can't be offended by this, also? That insults me.

Seriously though: "real men" phrases are often used in a serious way to try to police men's behaviour (you probably know this already, but anyway). So I, as a man, often feel queasy about "real men" quips. But real men aren't supposed to feel uneasy about such things, so I don't know.. ;)

I don't personally feel uneasy about this: it feels like satire that plays on the old trope of "real men do <thing that is hard, often unnecessarily so>", and all over "trivial" things like text editors. I can see how some people might be offended by the phrase, though. I'm just talking for myself here.

(I hope no vi users were offended by this post.)

Real men don't get insulted about real men posts.

Exactly ;)

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