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The Mythical Man Month is also super anti-feminist, which I wish people talked about more if they're going to recommend that book.
by _0xik 3y ago
The Mythical Man Month is also super anti-feminist, which I wish people talked about more if they're going to recommend that book.
- racktash 3y agoIt's been about ten years since I read it, but I don't remember anything particularly "anti-feminist" in it. Or anything political at all. I'm curious why you think so.
- raincole 3y agolmao
- pydry 3y agoIt is not.
- hermitcrab 3y agoI don't remember that. But I read it a long time ago. Can you supply a quote to back this up?
- hermitcrab 3y agoI found this: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1461289590 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1461289590 "A team of two, with one leader , is often the best use of minds. [Note God's plan for marriage.]'" That is only sexist if he is saying that the man is naturally the leader. Did he say that?
- actionfromafar 3y agoAt the time, it must have been the straight reading, right?
- hermitcrab 3y agoThat is quite an assumption. But I don't know the full context of the quote.
- 239847823971 3y agoThe author is only forwarding what the Bible says. So your beef is not with the author, but actually with all religions.
- drewcoo 3y agoThe book is at least a decade or two out of political fashion. For thousands of years, certainly in European culture, the default human entity, when not specified, was masculine in gender. By which I mean grammatical gender, not the current politically vogue meaning of "gender." We don't need to disregard thousands of years of knowledge because the authors were unaware of what would be PC in their future. That would be puerile. ("Childish," from the Latin word for "boy.")
- eesmith 3y ago> "Childish," from the Latin word for "boy." I think you mean "puerile", not "childish." "Child" comes from Proto-Germanic. https://www.etymonline.com/word/child https://www.etymonline.com/word/child says "no certain cognates outside Germanic". The Latin word for boy is "puer": "a boy, lad (typically between ages 7-14 but could be younger) (older than an infans but younger than an adulescens)" - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puer#Noun_4 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puer#Noun_4 . Puerile comes "from Latin puerilis "boyish; childish,"'- https://www.etymonline.com/word/puerile https://www.etymonline.com/word/puerile . Grammatic gender doesn't always match natural gender even in the European languages. "Wīfman" means "woman" in Old English but is grammatically masculine. The Old English "mann" meant generally "person". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mann#Old_English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mann#Old_English making "wīfmann" a female person and "wæpnedmann" a male person, though "wer" was the usual word for "adult male" (remaining in "weregild" and "werewolf"). In modern Swedish there is no masculine gender, and "man" can mean either "an adult male" or "a person". Consider "Hysterektomi ... kan också göras om man har cellförändringar eller cancer i livmodern." which in English is "A hysterectomy can also be done if one has cell changes or cancer in the uterus." (from https://www.1177.se/behandling--hjalpmedel/operationer/operationer-av-konsorgan-och-urinvagar/att-operera-bort-livmodern--hysterektomi/ https://www.1177.se/behandling--hjalpmedel/operationer/opera... ). The Swedish "man" in that sentence translates directly as "one" in English, not "adult male", though usually in English we would write "you" as a sort of third-person pronoun, over the more formal "one" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You#Third_person_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You#Third_person_usage , even when we don't know if the reader has a uterus.
- _0xik 3y agoI don't have my copy with me so I can't supply an exact quote right now. The part that really stuck out was about companies relocating though. First, there was absolutely no possibility that women would be working, and iirc the primary reason that a company might not want to relocate was that a wife might complain her husband had to move, thus inconveniencing his boss. Something like this.
- blowski 3y agoI think "anti-feminist" implies it expressses some opinion about the feminist movement, which it doesn't, to my recollection. That said, it is somewhat sexist in its assumption that all programmers are men, which is not a surprise given when it was published. That lack of gender inclusivity is right there in the title. But it doesn't really take away from the value of the writing unless you're trying to be offended.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThe book's nearly 50 years old. Most books not written very recently are not going to adhere to contemporary values and mores. If you're not willing to offer generosity when reading them and pick the useful part and discard the parts that haven't aged well, then you're going to miss out on a lot of very worthwhile reading.
- _0xik 3y agoThat's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is: Why do we not *update* these books? This gets back into the question of copyright of course.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoBecause then we lose any sense of historical context. Old books at their essence lets us talk to people from the past. We won't always like what they have to say, but they will speak about themselves and highlight how we've changed. If we can't understand where we came from, then we can't hope to understand how we got where we are.
- _0xik 3y agoWhat? Tons of books get new editions. It happens constantly. For example, Strunk & White [0] has been updated in 1918, 1959, 1999, and 2009. Authors release different versions of their own books. I just wrote a review of a book [1] that had a 2nd edition released in 2022 after the first edition was released in 2014. J.R.R. Tolkein retconned The Hobbit after publication of Lord of the Rings. [2] (I realize this isn't really the same thing but I wanted to give an example in fiction) Anyway, point is, tons of books are changed after publication. I don't see why The Mythical Man Month shouldn't be; the technology is out of date and the gender issues are out of date. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style [1] https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Writes-Improved-Go-Ridiculously/dp/1119854164 https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Writes-Improved-Go-Ridiculo... [2] https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/12/13/how-jrr-tolkien-pulled-a-george-lucas-on-the-hobbit https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/12/13/how-jrr-tolkien-pull...
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- pipes 3y agoI haven't read it, but what does it say about feminism?