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> Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology that I’d just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the replies asked me to prove that th

by OJFord 3y ago

> Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology that I’d just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the replies asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive (which of course is besides [sic] the point) or tried to explain to me why it actually wasn’t a problem. > So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post: Of course I understand no responsibility to 'prove' anything and can guess the comments weren't written well - but I think there may be a genuine misunderstanding and miscommunication here, or maybe it's even a BrE/AmE thing, because 'to grope' around for something (often blindly in the dark or similar) isn't at all sexual, typically not even an animate thing you'd be groping for (e.g. a light switch) - and I'm fairly certain that that usage isn't by analogy to sexual assault. Or am I just repeating what's 'besides the point'? I don't think it is, words can have multiple meanings, be used in foul ways, but still be usable fairly and legitimately. 'I coloured in a picture' isn't 'gross'? My 'garden hoe' is fine?

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
The non-sexual meaning was almost certainly the intended one (because the sexual meaning makes no sense at all in that context). I think we can give the original developers a full pass and assign no blame. It may still be a good idea to change it (and, indeed, they have done so; it's just that Apple retains an older version for licensing reasons).
wpietri 3y ago
"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for women to make. As she says, original intent doesn't matter a ton. If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. Because what I care about is getting my point across. When I see instead strident defense of language that's bothersome to a historically marginalized group, I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change. A change I'll note the dig maintainers made back in 2017, so it's not like they care.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  > If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. If original intent doesn’t matter, your audience shouldn’t differentiate between writing which is intentionally offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well assume you are malicious. That’s not the world I want to live in. It’s also not the world we do live in. English is the most widely spoken language on the planet, and its speakers come from all sorts of cultural and educational backgrounds. They don’t have the time or the privilege of knowing about every term which can potentially be offensive. My point isn’t that we shouldn’t change “groper” to something more inclusive. My point is that in practical terms intent does matter.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    It's more that intent was irrelevant than any intent should be presumed. Word meanings drift and we update as we go. That doesn't mean the previous author was evil; it means they were writing in a different context and the context is defunct. Especially for a living document like the documentation of a still-used tool, modifying word choice to avoid unintended negative connotation is wise.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Please note that you went from my "doesn't matter a ton" to "doesn't matter" period. That's a straw man. If you'd like to argue with something I said, I'd be glad to engage. But not with a cartoon of my point.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  > But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper The first (and the only non-slang one) definition of that is "a person or thing that gropes". Context matters, as in "groping $person" versus "groping $object". You cannot sexually touch domain information, so that couldn't possibly be the meaning.
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juped 3y ago
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lucideer 3y ago
I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes - that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that was the case in the 80s. --- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually relevant --- I did click through to the Mastodon link from the OP and had a look at the "dudes in the replies demanding that i prove [...]" - the replies were largely supportive, apart from 2 "dudes" saying they hadn't considered the sexual-assault meaning before now & weren't sure if that was intended BUT still strongly agreeing that it should be removed, and 1 other dude (possibly non-native English speaker?) surprised that such a sexual-assault-related interpretation existed and asking for further context (not "demanding proof"). That's all followed by a lot of extremely confrontational replies from the OP assuming bad faith in every case. Julia is a fantastic tech writer, & I'm sure I'll continue to read her blog regularly, but... this isn't a great look. Asking for the manpage to be changed is perfectly reasonable but the ad hominem really wasn't needed here.
- metadat 3y ago
  Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend. Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the author has lost some credibility with me. I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a dictionary site which only contained the definition she found offensive. If you put "define: grope" into Google, the non-offensive definition is the first one listed: Grope (verb) 1. to feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands. Which was why I latched onto this aspect in the first place - sexual groping has always been the minor definition in American English for at least the past 30 years. It's at least somewhat disingenuous to completely ignore this fact and focus only on the maximally offensive possibility. https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope
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xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
Language evolves. I definitely associate "grope" more with sexual assault than trying to find a glass of water in the dark. It's understandable that the document could evoke discomfort. The "they're just words" argument/defense is certainly never an acceptable response. It's one thing to go on a witch hunt and extrude connotation where there is none, but that's not what this is. Instead, use this as an opportunity to understand others better and learn to be more empathetic.
- jlawson 3y ago
  Indulging someone's hypersensitivities is not helping them, it's harming them.
  - NateEag 3y ago
    Ehhh... that's pretty black-and-white. It's definitely possible to hurt someone by indulging their hypersensitivity, but it's also possible to hurt someone by completely ignoring them when they tell you "what you said hurt me." Like engineering, communication in hard situations isn't about following rules legalistically - it's about understanding the nuances of the situation and your tools well and making the best judgments you can admit the different tradeoffs you're balancing in a given moment.
stronglikedan 3y ago
I agree with you, and chalk it up to people projecting their own warped views onto otherwise innocuous things.
deleted 3y ago
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xwdv 3y ago
I don’t think it’s worth worrying about or changing your writing style. I’m tired of these people who blanche in the face when you write something in a way that isn’t how they expect and where they are haunted by the possibility of a double meaning in what you said. “Smoking a fag” for instance is a perfectly British phrase that will have an uncultured American clutching their pearls and groping around for any kind of downvote or report button. If you’re scared, don’t read anything. Reading is scary and dangerous.
lambda 3y ago
Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in that context could be fine ("grope around"). But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning. It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.
- OJFord 3y ago
  I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when it's a human assailant either though? And 'dig' is a tool that searches (or 'digs') for certain information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits! I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to me. I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (& learnt from) her writing on many occasions.
- ctrlp 3y ago
  It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity notwithstanding.
haswell 3y ago
> So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post: When I read the Mastodon thread, this jumped out at me as well. A couple of the guys who raised the point clarified that they fully agreed that the removal of “groping” was a good thing, but by that point, the author wouldn’t be able to see the clarification. I’m really torn on this. I fully support people’s choices to set boundaries and block abusive behavior. At the same time, “I disagree with you so I’m going to insta-block you and not even give you a chance to clarify” seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse. But having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger. I don’t know what the right balance is, and it’s likely very personal and contextual, but I’ve personally started to only engage with conversations if I’m willing to deal with all of the likely categories of response (barring obvious abuse). Disagree=block seems to increase polarization and seems counterproductive in the long run. It also seems like a good way to reinforce my own blind spots, even if it turns out that I’m “right” some of the time.
- wpietri 3y ago
  > insta-block [...] seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse. > having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to. I am moderately mouthy on social media. I get a much, much smaller level of pushback than similar women do. When I do, the level of respect is higher, and I almost never get my credentials questioned. But I regularly see women with much stronger credentials get those inspected and/or dismissed. Just yesterday I saw a woman with a relevant PhD getting talked down to by some random guy. And then when she made a separate post about her frustration with reply guys and how she was thinking about leaving Mastodon, some different random dude told her to "get a live". Historically, we spent thousands of years keeping women in "their place". That was partly legal, but mostly social. We've solved the legal stuff in the US, but only recently. (E.g., states only started to outlaw marital rape in the 1970s, and it wasn't fully outlawed until 1992.) It should be no surprise to anybody that the social mechanisms did not magically evaporate the moment we passed some laws. And I think one of those social mechanisms is the disproportionate negativity women get from men when they are not in "their place". When they have the audacity to act like they know things and have valid opinions just like men do. If you want to read more on this, Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of misogyny" is a very careful examination of the mechanisms and their effects. If you're looking for "the heart", I think that's a good place to continue your search.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
There's a lot more interesting things in Julia's post than relitigating this specific example.
- OJFord 3y ago
  That's why it stuck out to me I suppose - the rest seemed like solid advice, and this a misunderstanding that was treated not really in the spirit of some of the other points.
0xfae 3y ago
There is a difference between: - What I meant to say. - The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of). - The impact of the words I use. Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on. Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings. In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.
- haswell 3y ago
  I fully agree that there are often clear distinctions between intent and impact, and that people should become more aware of this distinction and of the impact of their words. > In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing. I’d be more careful with this though. Ideally, this needs to look more like mutual respect/trust, and both parties are ideally: 1. Considering the impact of what they’re saying 2. Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when something doesn’t sound right, and talking about it when things seem misaligned Caring about impact is important. There’s also a failure mode here that results in complete communication breakdown as one party tries not to upset the other. Communication is intrinsically a shared experience, and both parties bear some responsibility for how things are interpreted. As long as both parties engage in good faith and communicate about confusion, everyone learns/grows and it’s a self solving problem.

by OJFord 3y ago

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago

The non-sexual meaning was almost certainly the intended one (because the sexual meaning makes no sense at all in that context). I think we can give the original developers a full pass and assign no blame. It may still be a good idea to change it (and, indeed, they have done so; it's just that Apple retains an older version for licensing reasons).

wpietri 3y ago

"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for women to make. As she says, original intent doesn't matter a ton. If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. Because what I care about is getting my point across. When I see instead strident defense of language that's bothersome to a historically marginalized group, I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change. A change I'll note the dig maintainers made back in 2017, so it's not like they care.

janalsncm 3y ago
> If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. If original intent doesn’t matter, your audience shouldn’t differentiate between writing which is intentionally offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well assume you are malicious. That’s not the world I want to live in. It’s also not the world we do live in. English is the most widely spoken language on the planet, and its speakers come from all sorts of cultural and educational backgrounds. They don’t have the time or the privilege of knowing about every term which can potentially be offensive. My point isn’t that we shouldn’t change “groper” to something more inclusive. My point is that in practical terms intent does matter.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  It's more that intent was irrelevant than any intent should be presumed. Word meanings drift and we update as we go. That doesn't mean the previous author was evil; it means they were writing in a different context and the context is defunct. Especially for a living document like the documentation of a still-used tool, modifying word choice to avoid unintended negative connotation is wise.
- wpietri 3y ago
  Please note that you went from my "doesn't matter a ton" to "doesn't matter" period. That's a straw man. If you'd like to argue with something I said, I'd be glad to engage. But not with a cartoon of my point.
johnnyworker 3y ago
> But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper The first (and the only non-slang one) definition of that is "a person or thing that gropes". Context matters, as in "groping $person" versus "groping $object". You cannot sexually touch domain information, so that couldn't possibly be the meaning.
deleted 3y ago
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juped 3y ago

[flagged]

lucideer 3y ago

I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes - that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that was the case in the 80s. --- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually relevant --- I did click through to the Mastodon link from the OP and had a look at the "dudes in the replies demanding that i prove [...]" - the replies were largely supportive, apart from 2 "dudes" saying they hadn't considered the sexual-assault meaning before now & weren't sure if that was intended BUT still strongly agreeing that it should be removed, and 1 other dude (possibly non-native English speaker?) surprised that such a sexual-assault-related interpretation existed and asking for further context (not "demanding proof"). That's all followed by a lot of extremely confrontational replies from the OP assuming bad faith in every case. Julia is a fantastic tech writer, & I'm sure I'll continue to read her blog regularly, but... this isn't a great look. Asking for the manpage to be changed is perfectly reasonable but the ad hominem really wasn't needed here.

metadat 3y ago
Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend. Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the author has lost some credibility with me. I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a dictionary site which only contained the definition she found offensive. If you put "define: grope" into Google, the non-offensive definition is the first one listed: Grope (verb) 1. to feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands. Which was why I latched onto this aspect in the first place - sexual groping has always been the minor definition in American English for at least the past 30 years. It's at least somewhat disingenuous to completely ignore this fact and focus only on the maximally offensive possibility. https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope
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xyzzy_plugh 3y ago

Language evolves. I definitely associate "grope" more with sexual assault than trying to find a glass of water in the dark. It's understandable that the document could evoke discomfort. The "they're just words" argument/defense is certainly never an acceptable response. It's one thing to go on a witch hunt and extrude connotation where there is none, but that's not what this is. Instead, use this as an opportunity to understand others better and learn to be more empathetic.

jlawson 3y ago
Indulging someone's hypersensitivities is not helping them, it's harming them.
- NateEag 3y ago
  Ehhh... that's pretty black-and-white. It's definitely possible to hurt someone by indulging their hypersensitivity, but it's also possible to hurt someone by completely ignoring them when they tell you "what you said hurt me." Like engineering, communication in hard situations isn't about following rules legalistically - it's about understanding the nuances of the situation and your tools well and making the best judgments you can admit the different tradeoffs you're balancing in a given moment.

stronglikedan 3y ago

I agree with you, and chalk it up to people projecting their own warped views onto otherwise innocuous things.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xwdv 3y ago

I don’t think it’s worth worrying about or changing your writing style. I’m tired of these people who blanche in the face when you write something in a way that isn’t how they expect and where they are haunted by the possibility of a double meaning in what you said. “Smoking a fag” for instance is a perfectly British phrase that will have an uncultured American clutching their pearls and groping around for any kind of downvote or report button. If you’re scared, don’t read anything. Reading is scary and dangerous.

lambda 3y ago

Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in that context could be fine ("grope around"). But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning. It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.

OJFord 3y ago
I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when it's a human assailant either though? And 'dig' is a tool that searches (or 'digs') for certain information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits! I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to me. I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (& learnt from) her writing on many occasions.
ctrlp 3y ago
It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity notwithstanding.

haswell 3y ago

> So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post: When I read the Mastodon thread, this jumped out at me as well. A couple of the guys who raised the point clarified that they fully agreed that the removal of “groping” was a good thing, but by that point, the author wouldn’t be able to see the clarification. I’m really torn on this. I fully support people’s choices to set boundaries and block abusive behavior. At the same time, “I disagree with you so I’m going to insta-block you and not even give you a chance to clarify” seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse. But having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger. I don’t know what the right balance is, and it’s likely very personal and contextual, but I’ve personally started to only engage with conversations if I’m willing to deal with all of the likely categories of response (barring obvious abuse). Disagree=block seems to increase polarization and seems counterproductive in the long run. It also seems like a good way to reinforce my own blind spots, even if it turns out that I’m “right” some of the time.

wpietri 3y ago
> insta-block [...] seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse. > having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to. I am moderately mouthy on social media. I get a much, much smaller level of pushback than similar women do. When I do, the level of respect is higher, and I almost never get my credentials questioned. But I regularly see women with much stronger credentials get those inspected and/or dismissed. Just yesterday I saw a woman with a relevant PhD getting talked down to by some random guy. And then when she made a separate post about her frustration with reply guys and how she was thinking about leaving Mastodon, some different random dude told her to "get a live". Historically, we spent thousands of years keeping women in "their place". That was partly legal, but mostly social. We've solved the legal stuff in the US, but only recently. (E.g., states only started to outlaw marital rape in the 1970s, and it wasn't fully outlawed until 1992.) It should be no surprise to anybody that the social mechanisms did not magically evaporate the moment we passed some laws. And I think one of those social mechanisms is the disproportionate negativity women get from men when they are not in "their place". When they have the audacity to act like they know things and have valid opinions just like men do. If you want to read more on this, Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of misogyny" is a very careful examination of the mechanisms and their effects. If you're looking for "the heart", I think that's a good place to continue your search.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

There's a lot more interesting things in Julia's post than relitigating this specific example.

OJFord 3y ago
That's why it stuck out to me I suppose - the rest seemed like solid advice, and this a misunderstanding that was treated not really in the spirit of some of the other points.

0xfae 3y ago

There is a difference between: - What I meant to say. - The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of). - The impact of the words I use. Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on. Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings. In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.

haswell 3y ago
I fully agree that there are often clear distinctions between intent and impact, and that people should become more aware of this distinction and of the impact of their words. > In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing. I’d be more careful with this though. Ideally, this needs to look more like mutual respect/trust, and both parties are ideally: 1. Considering the impact of what they’re saying 2. Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when something doesn’t sound right, and talking about it when things seem misaligned Caring about impact is important. There’s also a failure mode here that results in complete communication breakdown as one party tries not to upset the other. Communication is intrinsically a shared experience, and both parties bear some responsibility for how things are interpreted. As long as both parties engage in good faith and communicate about confusion, everyone learns/grows and it’s a self solving problem.