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Dear Hacker News: this persistent blind spot about the many casual, unconscious and dismissive ways the tech community excludes women - and get nerd-rage defens
by RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Dear Hacker News: this persistent blind spot about the many casual, unconscious and dismissive ways the tech community excludes women - and get nerd-rage defensive about it when confronted - is a big part of why there are not more women in tech.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI'm generally in favour of calling out sexist bullshit in tech, but in this case you're talking about a very specific phrase that's been in semi-popular usage since the 1800s.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoAn appeal to 19th century cultural norms is less than helpful when considering whether a turn of phrase is sexist.
- nicholassmith 14y agoI don't believe it is cultural, I believe it was based off shortening 'mankind' to 'man'. However, I'm not a linguistics specialist and have no idea the roots of the phrase, but I've come across it in many contexts.
- joshka 14y ago... and yet by 21st century cultural norms the word 'man' is still not considered sexist by many. Besides, strictly from an etymological perspective you should not be calling for the eradication of the 'man' when used to speak of the species, rather you should call for a prefix to be used when talking of the gender (e.g. werman).
- quesera 14y agoThe habit of grepping all content for keywords without understanding context or definition inhibits rational discourse. Getting third-party apologist about it when confronted is a dead stop appeal to authority.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoI understand the context and definition. It's still sexist. It's unnecessary and would be extremely easy to replace with a non-sexist term that is equivalent in both meaning and elegance. The extreme resistance even to acknowledge that there's something wrong with using "man" to mean "humans" is very telling.