4 ms·

The gender of the author is one of the least interesting things about this blog post, yet it's brought up in (at the time of writing this) three separate commen

The gender of the author is one of the least interesting things about this blog post, yet it's brought up in (at the time of writing this) three separate comments here. Comments that just say "It's a she" or "she" are basically spam and add nothing to the conversation unless the gender of the author is really that important. Since the blog post doesn't mention anything gender specific, I think it's safe to assume these comments are just spam.

lixtra 9y ago
The parent has a point. She knows gender gender doesn’t matter. And the author of the article wouldn’t mind either.
- cremno 9y ago
  https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/12/28/programming-doesnt-belong-to-men-it-belongs-to-me/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/12/28/programming-doesnt-belong-to...
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Look, I don't particularly want this to degrade into a stupid pointless flame war, but getting this sort of thing right does matter. Given the relative gender disparity in the technology field, it's easy to make the assumption that any given developer is a man – we all do it sometimes! It's useful to have that pointed out when we're wrong, so that we can be reminded that we sometimes make incorrect assumptions, and eventually it hopefully won't happen as much. None of the comments along those lines have been needlessly faux-offended, or attacking anyone – just pointing out a mistake that it would be good to rectify. It's really not harming anyone :)
stevenh 9y ago
Failing to correct these people feels like a large step backward, though. We shouldn't let anyone get away with misgendering transgender women under any circumstances.
- skrebbel 9y ago
  This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake". But there's also very uncharitable explanations! For instance, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that hard technical IT blogs written by women are disproportionally often written by women who were born men (disproportionally wrt the general population of transgender women). Just like the one starting this thread might have assumed that "it's deep tech, so it must be a guy", I can imagine that stevenh assumed that "it's deep tech, so she must be trans". This is beautifully similar to the sentiment of his comment in general, to not under any circumstance let anyone get away with getting gender stuff wrong. So it looks like even the people who have a strong opinion about being hard on each other about gender stuff, can do it wrong. Maybe the lesson is that we should be slightly less hard on each other about it? I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong).
  - aspaceman 9y ago
    > I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong). It's possible to politely point out peoples' mistakes while giving them no room to purposely misgender, which is exactly what this thread does. Let's examine the course of this conversation: "He said..." "It's a she" (In my opinion a polite response. This is where any discussion should have ended.) "Why does that matter?" "You can't let people get away with misgendering a trans person" If you only respond to the final comment, then your point makes sense. But the the act of politely pointing out the mistake already happened - now we must justify why it matters.
    - skrebbel 9y ago
      I only responded to the final comment. Sorry, I thought that was clear. I agree with you for the rest. I did think stevenh's comment had a needlessly militant vibe to it, which is what I responded to. The rest of the thread lacks that vibe, which is good.
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lambdawitch 9y ago
I am not sure if you have ever been on the other side of this, but having people constantly assume you are a man because you know how to program and you're on the internet gets very old, very quickly. You can either accept being constantly referred to as a guy, which becomes flat-out alienating, or you can speak up for yourself, in which case you get responses like the one you just wrote. I get that the gender of the author doesn't matter to you, and it may not even matter to the author of the article, but it does matter to a lot of people. No one is suggesting mistakes are a grave sin—even if her blog does say "Julia Evans" in giant letters right at the top. If someone makes one though, the correct response to people pointing it out is to accept the correction and keep it in mind for next time, not to accuse them of spam.
- Nexxxeh 9y ago
  Ironically, we're not supposed to assume gender based on someone's name either.
  - aspaceman 9y ago
    You're perfectly allowed to use "they" since you weren't sure. It's not nice to assume "he" to always be the default - that is what was being corrected. One did not have to know that "she" was correct, but it was easy to find out that "he" was probably wrong. Let's keep discussion on topic, rather than venturing into talking about what you're "allowed" to do.
aspaceman 9y ago
The parent comment did not bring up their gender. They simply corrected the poster who erroneously thought they were a man. This was an error, and we should hold ourselves to a standard that corrects mistakes. If anyone "brought up their gender" it was the poster that used masculine pronouns as a default for some reason.
1024core 9y ago
Referring to her with the wrong gender is no different than using the wrong name of an author. She is a woman. Anyone who glanced at the blog would see a giant, honking "JULIA" on top of the blog. Getting the obvious gender right is a matter of courtesy.
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dang 9y ago
No doubt, but by getting further into it like this, you blew it up 100x and produced by far the least interesting thing about this thread. The internet is replete with opportunities for getting triggered and starting flamewars. For HN not to sink into a deeper circle of hell, we all need to resist these temptations. So could you and everyone else please not take HN threads on generic, divisive tangents in the future? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- freehunter 9y ago
  I apologize for how this blew up, I did not anticipate that. I was trying to channel the guidelines similar to "it never does any good, and it makes boring reading", hoping HN could focus on the substance of the article, rather than the politics of whether or not it's okay to use "he" as a generic gender term. It does get extremely boring to read on every article written by or about a woman someone correcting every comment that uses "he" as a generic antecedent, but in the future I will just ignore it instead of inciting a potential flamewar.
  - dang 9y ago
    It's true, and a bit weird, that this happens even when one's sincere intention is just the opposite. It takes a bit of forethought to realize this in advance and avoid it. That's the skill we're most hoping to see become more widespread here.

lixtra 9y ago

The parent has a point. She knows gender gender doesn’t matter. And the author of the article wouldn’t mind either.

cremno 9y ago
https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/12/28/programming-doesnt-belong-to-men-it-belongs-to-me/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2014/12/28/programming-doesnt-belong-to...

matthewmacleod 9y ago

Look, I don't particularly want this to degrade into a stupid pointless flame war, but getting this sort of thing right does matter. Given the relative gender disparity in the technology field, it's easy to make the assumption that any given developer is a man – we all do it sometimes! It's useful to have that pointed out when we're wrong, so that we can be reminded that we sometimes make incorrect assumptions, and eventually it hopefully won't happen as much. None of the comments along those lines have been needlessly faux-offended, or attacking anyone – just pointing out a mistake that it would be good to rectify. It's really not harming anyone :)

stevenh 9y ago

Failing to correct these people feels like a large step backward, though. We shouldn't let anyone get away with misgendering transgender women under any circumstances.

skrebbel 9y ago
This comment made me laugh. There's a bunch of charitable explanations as to why it was written, most notably "honest mistake". But there's also very uncharitable explanations! For instance, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that hard technical IT blogs written by women are disproportionally often written by women who were born men (disproportionally wrt the general population of transgender women). Just like the one starting this thread might have assumed that "it's deep tech, so it must be a guy", I can imagine that stevenh assumed that "it's deep tech, so she must be trans". This is beautifully similar to the sentiment of his comment in general, to not under any circumstance let anyone get away with getting gender stuff wrong. So it looks like even the people who have a strong opinion about being hard on each other about gender stuff, can do it wrong. Maybe the lesson is that we should be slightly less hard on each other about it? I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong).
- aspaceman 9y ago
  > I propose we politely point out mistakes and assume the best intentions (even though of course sometimes that assumption will be wrong). It's possible to politely point out peoples' mistakes while giving them no room to purposely misgender, which is exactly what this thread does. Let's examine the course of this conversation: "He said..." "It's a she" (In my opinion a polite response. This is where any discussion should have ended.) "Why does that matter?" "You can't let people get away with misgendering a trans person" If you only respond to the final comment, then your point makes sense. But the the act of politely pointing out the mistake already happened - now we must justify why it matters.
  - skrebbel 9y ago
    I only responded to the final comment. Sorry, I thought that was clear. I agree with you for the rest. I did think stevenh's comment had a needlessly militant vibe to it, which is what I responded to. The rest of the thread lacks that vibe, which is good.

deleted 9y ago

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lambdawitch 9y ago

I am not sure if you have ever been on the other side of this, but having people constantly assume you are a man because you know how to program and you're on the internet gets very old, very quickly. You can either accept being constantly referred to as a guy, which becomes flat-out alienating, or you can speak up for yourself, in which case you get responses like the one you just wrote. I get that the gender of the author doesn't matter to you, and it may not even matter to the author of the article, but it does matter to a lot of people. No one is suggesting mistakes are a grave sin—even if her blog does say "Julia Evans" in giant letters right at the top. If someone makes one though, the correct response to people pointing it out is to accept the correction and keep it in mind for next time, not to accuse them of spam.

Nexxxeh 9y ago
Ironically, we're not supposed to assume gender based on someone's name either.
- aspaceman 9y ago
  You're perfectly allowed to use "they" since you weren't sure. It's not nice to assume "he" to always be the default - that is what was being corrected. One did not have to know that "she" was correct, but it was easy to find out that "he" was probably wrong. Let's keep discussion on topic, rather than venturing into talking about what you're "allowed" to do.

aspaceman 9y ago

The parent comment did not bring up their gender. They simply corrected the poster who erroneously thought they were a man. This was an error, and we should hold ourselves to a standard that corrects mistakes. If anyone "brought up their gender" it was the poster that used masculine pronouns as a default for some reason.

1024core 9y ago

Referring to her with the wrong gender is no different than using the wrong name of an author. She is a woman. Anyone who glanced at the blog would see a giant, honking "JULIA" on top of the blog. Getting the obvious gender right is a matter of courtesy.

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

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dang 9y ago

No doubt, but by getting further into it like this, you blew it up 100x and produced by far the least interesting thing about this thread. The internet is replete with opportunities for getting triggered and starting flamewars. For HN not to sink into a deeper circle of hell, we all need to resist these temptations. So could you and everyone else please not take HN threads on generic, divisive tangents in the future? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

freehunter 9y ago
I apologize for how this blew up, I did not anticipate that. I was trying to channel the guidelines similar to "it never does any good, and it makes boring reading", hoping HN could focus on the substance of the article, rather than the politics of whether or not it's okay to use "he" as a generic gender term. It does get extremely boring to read on every article written by or about a woman someone correcting every comment that uses "he" as a generic antecedent, but in the future I will just ignore it instead of inciting a potential flamewar.
- dang 9y ago
  It's true, and a bit weird, that this happens even when one's sincere intention is just the opposite. It takes a bit of forethought to realize this in advance and avoid it. That's the skill we're most hoping to see become more widespread here.