4 ms·

Why I am Renaming Testosterone

14 points by whit537 15y ago

kaolinite 15y ago
That's a shame, I don't really see the need to rename it, but that's his choice. It's a clever name and naming a product after a hormone is not sexist (and if it were, why does testrogen get her vote? That's just as bad). In my opinion, complaints like these cheapen sexism, which genuinely is a big problem in IT.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
  That's because sexism is about special rights towards women, and not equal rights. If women cannot find legitimate complaints (which do exist a plenty in computing), they manufacture complaints. Hence 'Testosterone' vs 'Testrogen'; which one did the woman say was correct, and which one did she say was incorrect? Hmm..
  - Udo 15y ago
    That's because sexism is about special rights towards women, and not equal rights. That's where you're wrong. Sexism is a process of gender discrimination and it's tied to the cultural philosophy of the person doing it. The perception (or allegation) of sexism is comes from the feeling an action invokes in the mind of the recipient. I wonder if the sexism label is doing more harm than good when it comes to eradicating the underlying problem. When I read about the "manly testing interface for Python" I clearly got the feeling this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, perhaps written by an adolescent after one beer too many. But yeah, at the same time I thought it was a really odd theme or identity for a programming project to have. I can see how it would be off-putting. It's often difficult to know how a written statement was meant to come out, especially if you don't know the author. My beef at this point would be with the project description not so much the name itself, because it seems to employ the tired cliche of hardcore things being manly. On the other hand, it's probably meant to be a joke. Which is all fine until a female developer comes along and interprets it as "fuck this, the author clearly doesn't want me to use it", or until a male developer reads it and thinks "screw this, I'm not taking lessons in gender identity from you"
- zheng 15y ago
  While in one sense I agree (testrogen is an awful name), would you want to use a test framework named "Estrogen - The girly testing framework"? Maybe it wouldn't matter to you (I don't think I'd care really), but imagine being one of the only male developers in a group of overly feminist "chickgrammers" (excuse the play on words) who all claimed that "Estrogen" made them feel super-girly, and let you know at every chance they got just how girly it made them feel. Even without the hypothetical situation, branding a framework as the "framework for [gender]" is going to implicitly exclude anyone who isn't of that gender. Not to mention those for whom gender isn't quite as binary.
  - kaolinite 15y ago
    Sure, I agree with the "framework for [gender]" argument. I don't think that "the manly testing interface for Python" is too bad, but I can agree that it may put some people off - so dropping that is a good idea. Changing the name however is a bit dramatic, in my opinion.
thraxil 15y ago
I was there when Chad launched Testosterone back at PyCon 2006. Good times, indeed. I don't think naming a test app "Testosterone" is particularly sexist, especially next to a lot of what we've seen happening recently, but I think he's making the right decision by renaming it and publicly acknowledging the issue. Sexism is a continuum. This clearly isn't as egregious as the "CouchDB + Ruby: Perform Like a Pr0n Star." talk at gogaruco or last weeks' Geeklist kerfuffle, but we need to recognize that there is a pervasive boys club atmosphere in much of the programming world. Testosterone and projects/attitudes like it set up this association of "doing X, which is tricky and requires great knowledge or skill from the programmer" is "manly" and "manly" is a positive thing. OK, Testosterone also makes a play on using curses as being manly, which is clever, but this is certainly a pervasive attitude (I remember Linus Torvalds famously making a statement to the effect of "Debugging with printk puts hair on your chest" as justification for not including debugging facilities in the Linux kernel). This kind of language is common and many of us (even women) are guilty of using it in varying degrees. Individually, these aren't a big deal. But the overall atmosphere is off-putting to many and we need to at least be aware of that. I applaud Chad for responding in a professional and respectful manner. We need more of this and less of the "I'm sorry you found that offensive" non-apology apology attitude that's been the typical response. This should be the template for the tone of future discussions. That said, "assertEquals"? Really? camelCase for a Python library? :(
Zikes 15y ago
This sort of "sexism" is as baseless and minor as her implication that I'm not manly unless I have a beard, which I'm sure a lot of you missed the first time around. Yes, there's a problem with sexism in our particularly male-dominated field, but like kaolinite said in their comment, this only cheapens the effort to fight it.
- gte910h 15y ago
  I disagree, I think small stuff like this pushes the window so bigger stuff seems less bad.
VeejayRampay 15y ago
While it's always a good thing to see people working together towards a common goal where the issues of gender and sexualization have faded away, the amount of faux-minist political-correctedness in this particular context is really mindblowing. Seriously, what was wrong about the project being called "Testosterone"? It's not like testosterone is SPECIFIC to men in the first place anyway, jeez (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone).

14 points by whit537 15y ago

That's a shame, I don't really see the need to rename it, but that's his choice. It's a clever name and naming a product after a hormone is not sexist (and if it were, why does testrogen get her vote? That's just as bad). In my opinion, complaints like these cheapen sexism, which genuinely is a big problem in IT.

TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
That's because sexism is about special rights towards women, and not equal rights. If women cannot find legitimate complaints (which do exist a plenty in computing), they manufacture complaints. Hence 'Testosterone' vs 'Testrogen'; which one did the woman say was correct, and which one did she say was incorrect? Hmm..
- Udo 15y ago
  That's because sexism is about special rights towards women, and not equal rights. That's where you're wrong. Sexism is a process of gender discrimination and it's tied to the cultural philosophy of the person doing it. The perception (or allegation) of sexism is comes from the feeling an action invokes in the mind of the recipient. I wonder if the sexism label is doing more harm than good when it comes to eradicating the underlying problem. When I read about the "manly testing interface for Python" I clearly got the feeling this was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, perhaps written by an adolescent after one beer too many. But yeah, at the same time I thought it was a really odd theme or identity for a programming project to have. I can see how it would be off-putting. It's often difficult to know how a written statement was meant to come out, especially if you don't know the author. My beef at this point would be with the project description not so much the name itself, because it seems to employ the tired cliche of hardcore things being manly. On the other hand, it's probably meant to be a joke. Which is all fine until a female developer comes along and interprets it as "fuck this, the author clearly doesn't want me to use it", or until a male developer reads it and thinks "screw this, I'm not taking lessons in gender identity from you"
zheng 15y ago
While in one sense I agree (testrogen is an awful name), would you want to use a test framework named "Estrogen - The girly testing framework"? Maybe it wouldn't matter to you (I don't think I'd care really), but imagine being one of the only male developers in a group of overly feminist "chickgrammers" (excuse the play on words) who all claimed that "Estrogen" made them feel super-girly, and let you know at every chance they got just how girly it made them feel. Even without the hypothetical situation, branding a framework as the "framework for [gender]" is going to implicitly exclude anyone who isn't of that gender. Not to mention those for whom gender isn't quite as binary.
- kaolinite 15y ago
  Sure, I agree with the "framework for [gender]" argument. I don't think that "the manly testing interface for Python" is too bad, but I can agree that it may put some people off - so dropping that is a good idea. Changing the name however is a bit dramatic, in my opinion.

thraxil 15y ago

I was there when Chad launched Testosterone back at PyCon 2006. Good times, indeed. I don't think naming a test app "Testosterone" is particularly sexist, especially next to a lot of what we've seen happening recently, but I think he's making the right decision by renaming it and publicly acknowledging the issue. Sexism is a continuum. This clearly isn't as egregious as the "CouchDB + Ruby: Perform Like a Pr0n Star." talk at gogaruco or last weeks' Geeklist kerfuffle, but we need to recognize that there is a pervasive boys club atmosphere in much of the programming world. Testosterone and projects/attitudes like it set up this association of "doing X, which is tricky and requires great knowledge or skill from the programmer" is "manly" and "manly" is a positive thing. OK, Testosterone also makes a play on using curses as being manly, which is clever, but this is certainly a pervasive attitude (I remember Linus Torvalds famously making a statement to the effect of "Debugging with printk puts hair on your chest" as justification for not including debugging facilities in the Linux kernel). This kind of language is common and many of us (even women) are guilty of using it in varying degrees. Individually, these aren't a big deal. But the overall atmosphere is off-putting to many and we need to at least be aware of that. I applaud Chad for responding in a professional and respectful manner. We need more of this and less of the "I'm sorry you found that offensive" non-apology apology attitude that's been the typical response. This should be the template for the tone of future discussions. That said, "assertEquals"? Really? camelCase for a Python library? :(

Zikes 15y ago

This sort of "sexism" is as baseless and minor as her implication that I'm not manly unless I have a beard, which I'm sure a lot of you missed the first time around. Yes, there's a problem with sexism in our particularly male-dominated field, but like kaolinite said in their comment, this only cheapens the effort to fight it.

gte910h 15y ago
I disagree, I think small stuff like this pushes the window so bigger stuff seems less bad.

VeejayRampay 15y ago

While it's always a good thing to see people working together towards a common goal where the issues of gender and sexualization have faded away, the amount of faux-minist political-correctedness in this particular context is really mindblowing. Seriously, what was wrong about the project being called "Testosterone"? It's not like testosterone is SPECIFIC to men in the first place anyway, jeez (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone).