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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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This is such a weird thing for the dev to decide to die on. I understand, although i don't agree, with the "there are TWO genders" issue, and the desire for folks who are in that genre of people to avoid the whole thing, perhaps even forcefully. I don't understand why including women, one of the two genders they do approve of, is considered overly "political". How dare someone suggest girls might like tech? Ridiculous! I almost get the first instance, as a mistaken attempt to not support trans folks (which, again, is stupid anyway) but the constant rejection means they are CLEARLY just misogynists.
To be fair, it's also kinda dumb to point out something as an issue when it clearly wasnt, and saying "assuming the user/developer if the OS is a male" means that the person complaining is assuming that this dev was assuming something because he used the word he.
The issue was that the person decided that it bothered them so much that they needed to ask the dev to change it.
This has idiots on both sides written all over. Why is that person being nitpicky over something so stupid. Women use she/her in their writing all the time, just like men use he/him, and people with other pronouns are more likely to use what is familiar to them such as they/them.
I say this as someone with a child that has been reading books to them and noticed that an authors gender and the pronouns they use seem to correlate more often than not. Unless the book focuses on topics of or relating to understanding and accepting the differences in people. Both people are dumb in this scenario.
Edit: let me put things into a perspective that maybe some of you can understand. Let's take anything related to gender or being PC out of the equation.
I ask you to make a change to your documentation because I don't like the way you said something, then accuse you of being or believing a certain kind of way because of the grammar you used.
That is what this person did.
Now let's assume (yeah I said it) for the sake of my argument that the person doesn't feel any kind of way about the thing that they were accused of being. I'm pretty sure that person might just take offence to that. Which in this case is exactly what happened.
Had there just been a change that said something along the lines of just a simple grammatical correction. It probably would have be pushed and ignored.
In this case the dev definitely seemed like an ass, but that's not the point. The point is the whole fucking situation is stupid.
They didn’t just ask the dev to change it, they submitted a pr that would’ve fixed it. All the maintainer had to do is click merge
The maintainer was the one that brought politics into it!
I understand that, but the whole point behind it was them making an assumption about something and proposing a change because they didn't like their term that the dev used. Yet there was LITERALLY nothing wrong with the term.
The guy definitely made an ass of himself with his responses.
Like I said, both of them are idiots over this. It was pointless to make an issue out of it to begin with, and then then the dev making it even worse didn't help.
I’m not convinced
No, no clearly don’t.
You seem very, very sure of there being "LITERALLY" no problem with the gendered pronoun being used for an unknown user.
Instead of hand-waving it away as the author being male and just prefering his own pronouns in his writing, we could maybe consider where it is being written and why it might feel particularly non-inclusive? ie: a field that has historically been very intentionally uninviting to women?
Also, it's not like this was someone petitioning for a boycott over one assumed pronoun, they just quietly fixed the grammar and submitted the change. Absolutely nothing idiotic about it.
There literally wasn't a problem.
Until the person that asked for the correction literally assumed that said dev was assuming. Since thats what they said in their comment.
So I can understand being a little pissy at someone pointing to you and accusing you of assuming something. It's stupid.
I may have been a little irritated too if someone accused me of assuming something. I wouldn't have reacted the same, but I would have been clear that I in no way assume anything related to gender identity.
If the person wouldn't have put that assumption into their comment, the change may have been more likely to happen.
Instead they assumed something and got push back which turned into the scene we see now.
Ass u me... I mean it's pretty clear.
Ah OK, I think we're getting to the heart of why you are saying that this wasn't an issue.
When you say that the author wasn't assuming anything, what exactly do you mean? If, for example, I write in a guide that if a user of my software does 'a' then he can expect result 'b', do you disagree that I am assuming my users go by he/him pronouns?
I might not have done it with intention, but there is an assumption being made there. Words mean things.
Exactly this.
Just because you wrote your documentation a certain way, doesn't automatically mean that you feel a certain way about any particular group, or that your users are primarily a certain gender. It may just be writing what pronoun you are most familiar with.
In this particular case, we can see that the author didn't exactly make the best case for himself.
However, there was never a problem to begin with until the person that requested the change also accused the the author of assuming that the user/dev of the OS is male.
If that little bit of accusation would have been left out, and they just put a note like "grammatical correction" it may have just been accepted and moved on. Instead they asked for a change while accusing the author of feeling a certain way.
So, not 'exactly this'. I wrote that in my example an assumption had been made, whether I intended it or not.
Same as in the documentation this post is about, therefore the problem existed before it was pointed out.
The grammatical error to be fixed was the assumption in the language used. Both of these things are true. Pointing it out very simply, as part of providing the reason for the change, is completely normal
What makes you think the change suggesters assumed ill intent?
The submitted PRs seem to reason improvement, not accuse the original author. I see them suggesting a change, neutrally. With (minimal) objective reasoning.
/edit: I see the later ones did. But the first one didn't. And the second one arguably didn't.
Look... I certainly (particularly verbally) will probably use "he" a lot more than I should... And no one cares.
But if someone makes a PR changing these into "they", I would reply with "shit, you're right, this is objectively better, thanks for your work".
Instead, these contributors get their PR shut down with the most terrible, supremacist excuse. That's the problem. There's the true idiot.
Obviously. It was a nice small PR to fix a typo and a pronoun in a readme file. This is the kind of change where you just press Accept, Merge, and go on with your life.
I don’t think it’s “kinda dumb” to point out the issue all, unless you’re an insufferable twatwaffle like 90% of the fucking STEM community in 2024, who can never be wrong or challenged.
Like, I’d consider myself pretty progressive, maybe even “woke” if that still has any meaning left, and even I might have just used male pronouns because I myself am male;’not for malicious reasons but just because I wasn’t thinking in that moment.
But if I was like “oh yeah, that makes sense, and cool you even did the work of fixing it for me! Merged.” and went about my day, no one would have brigaded me, no one would have posted it all over socials, there wouldn’t be blogs and articles, and I’d probably have a leg to stand on if anyone still wanted to make a big deal.
The way this dude reacted was a self-report. The community was right to push back, even if some people ended up taking it too far.
The original text had 'he' where 'it' was correct. Which supports part of your premise.
They also merged a change request that changed those instances alongside 'they' instances. I don't know if the original author and denier was involved, but it's certainly important context missing from OP blog post.
The guy is German, and the German language traditionally uses generic masculine pronouns, although that has become a big political issue in the past years. Some new gender-neutral forms have developed, but some of them have even been banned by the "center"-right-wing clowns in two state governments, and it's all a bit of a mess. The guy probably thoght "they" in English is a similarly experimental concept, and while it's still dumb and he should just try to be as inclusive as possible, it's probably not a matter of him purposefully excluding women from the documentation.
That makes more sense i guess, although even with that context as you said, it is still dumb. It's political in the US as well to use non gendered pronouns. It's generally aimed at hurting trans folks more than anything or anyone else. I could see the first time having it be a flippant meh response, but multiple times? Having had it explained clearly? Someone else has however said it has been fixed now. People can change, so my current plan is to assume things are better, cautiously, and hope they continue on a more pleasant path.
I wrote elsewhere that based on everything I read about gender the logical conclusion is that there are only two genders. Male and political.