4 ms·

Sigh, so an interesting and thought provoking article is taken down because it could have been percieved as sexist? Why not just s/wife/partner/g and call it a

by richo 14y ago

Sigh, so an interesting and thought provoking article is taken down because it could have been percieved as sexist? Why not just s/wife/partner/g and call it a day? I don't think that it was inflammatory. Maybe it's due to wildly unchecked privilege, but I read it as "A way to convey the REST metaphor to a nontechnical person". I didn't see it as "women are stupid and need handholding to understand technology".

brazzy 14y ago
> I read it as "A way to convey the REST metaphor to a nontechnical person" How exactly did you read it that way without any knowledge about his wife's background? By implicitly assuming "wife => woman => nontechnical", that's how. That's really what makes the title work.
- __david__ 14y ago
  No. Picture the title being "How I explained REST to my brother." That still conveys the exact same sentiment, which means the "wife" part is just a red herring.
  - brazzy 14y ago
    > That still conveys the exact same sentiment No, it doesn't. Could be a little brother who's just written his first PHP script. Could be a big brother who's worked for 20 years as DBA. Lots of articles out there trying to explain REST to such people. But wife? That means "nontechnical" - just look at the comments here.
    - __david__ 14y ago
      I so disagree. This is basic English: the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?). Making the subject "brother", "sister", "mom", "dad", or "husband" has the exact same meaning to me--they are all anonymous relations and so the "non-technical" implication still carries. The subject the author chose was "wife", presumably because this was based on an actual conversation with his wife. The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication.
      - brazzy 14y ago
        > the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?). Because you can be technically inclined without perfect knowledge of REST? As I wrote: lots of articles do that. This article was very popular exactly because of the "totally non-technical" aspect. > The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication. And this article could be equally clear with the title "How I Explained REST to someone completely non-technical" or even "How I Explained REST to My (non-technical) Wife" - but that is not the title it had.
        cerales 14y ago
        It's remarkable that HN commenters will insist that there is no issue of sexism or racism even after the author has conceded it and apologised.
cerales 14y ago
The language in the original article had two properties that stood out to me: * The dialog was entirely unrealistic- to the point that a 'dialogue' was clearly simply the wrong form for what Tomayko wanted to do * the 'wife' was portrayed alternatively as infantile, naive and purely reactive. I follow Ryan Tomayko vaguely and I'd be surprised if this was a reflection of his behaviour. From what little I know he seems to have some awareness of and sympathy with struggles that come under "left politics". But my knowing that doesn't erase the issues with his original post. My comment on the original posting was thus: > So Ryan Tomayko's conversions with his wife are akin in tone and style to a language textbook aimed at tweens? You can't have that coupled with "wife" and simply wave away the problematic implications, not in our culture as of stands today. It's admirable that Tomayko is mature enough to consider challenges like this - instead of just going on the ultra defensive MRA spiel like some Redditor.
- richo 14y ago
  My recollection could have been wrong, I seemed to recall the dialog seeming a little contrived but not to the degree you describe. I might try to pull it out of cache and then reconsider.
  - hackmiester 14y ago
    Here it is: http://ompldr.org/vaHp4NQ http://ompldr.org/vaHp4NQ
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- johnward 14y ago
  What if he was talking about his specific, non-technical, wife? Why is that sexist. My wife is not technical at all, but I still understand that many women are. In fact I know a lot of women who are much more technical than me.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    From his own comments on the original post, he was: > p: Ugghh. I have to admit, this post does seem kind of sexist now that you mention it. It never occured to me that it might be taken as such. I didn’t mean to imply my wife was a layperson due to her being female. I use “explained to my wife” at work as a simple way of saying that something is being described in a way that you might be able to explain to layperson (like people who make buying decisions :) Of course, everyone at work knows that my wife is non-technical and also that she is one of the only people outside of work I get to have grown-up conversations with. > >> Dude, your wife must really love you to go through all that which was obviously of way more interest to you than to her! > > There’s a bit of context missing from the beginning of the post: I had been busy at work and hadn’t seen her much in the past week or so. When that happens she starts getting jealous of the laptop and wants to hover over my shoulder — that’s a sign, it means: put it down and pay attention to me. If I don’t heel to that hint, she’ll start asking me about whatever’s on the screen. If I’m lucky it’s vim and a terminal running screen, which freaks her out and she leaves. Otherwise, I’m usually in the browser or my newsreader. It just so happened that at this time, I was reading Roy’s Bio so she saw his picture and says, “Who is Roy Fielding??!?,” using the exact the same tone and inflection you might when saying “WTF?” > > When this happens, I usually just say, “Oh, it’s nothing,” or something like, “it’s just some stuff about a thing.” > > Anyway, the funny thing is that I wasn’t really trying to explain anything at first. It started out as a bit of joke — a be careful what you ask for type thing. But then she says, “Oh, I get it.” and I so I kept on going and the next thing I know we’re talking about polymorphism and URL canonicalization and all kinds of crazy shit. > > She gets me going on purpose just so she can see my arms waving and the vein pop out of my head while I’m trying to describe this stuff. I don’t think she really pays all that much attention to what I’m actually saying. This also explains the tone that some have complained is unrealistic: She was not trying to have a serious discussion about technology, but to wind him up. Maybe including that as an introduction to the article would have pacified some of the complaints, but the comment I've quoted above was posted in 2006 as the 6th comment on the post. It's really ridiculous that he kept getting complaints about this post.

by richo 14y ago

brazzy 14y ago

> I read it as "A way to convey the REST metaphor to a nontechnical person" How exactly did you read it that way without any knowledge about his wife's background? By implicitly assuming "wife => woman => nontechnical", that's how. That's really what makes the title work.

__david__ 14y ago
No. Picture the title being "How I explained REST to my brother." That still conveys the exact same sentiment, which means the "wife" part is just a red herring.
- brazzy 14y ago
  > That still conveys the exact same sentiment No, it doesn't. Could be a little brother who's just written his first PHP script. Could be a big brother who's worked for 20 years as DBA. Lots of articles out there trying to explain REST to such people. But wife? That means "nontechnical" - just look at the comments here.
  - __david__ 14y ago
    I so disagree. This is basic English: the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?). Making the subject "brother", "sister", "mom", "dad", or "husband" has the exact same meaning to me--they are all anonymous relations and so the "non-technical" implication still carries. The subject the author chose was "wife", presumably because this was based on an actual conversation with his wife. The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication.
    - brazzy 14y ago
      > the "Explaining REST" part of the sentence is the part that implies that the explainee isn't technical (else why would they need to have it explained to them?). Because you can be technically inclined without perfect knowledge of REST? As I wrote: lots of articles do that. This article was very popular exactly because of the "totally non-technical" aspect. > The subject does have a chance to turn the implication around. If your brother worked for 20 years as a DBA then the title would have to be "Explaining REST to a DBA" to get the correct implication. And this article could be equally clear with the title "How I Explained REST to someone completely non-technical" or even "How I Explained REST to My (non-technical) Wife" - but that is not the title it had.
      - cerales 14y ago
        It's remarkable that HN commenters will insist that there is no issue of sexism or racism even after the author has conceded it and apologised.

cerales 14y ago

The language in the original article had two properties that stood out to me: * The dialog was entirely unrealistic- to the point that a 'dialogue' was clearly simply the wrong form for what Tomayko wanted to do * the 'wife' was portrayed alternatively as infantile, naive and purely reactive. I follow Ryan Tomayko vaguely and I'd be surprised if this was a reflection of his behaviour. From what little I know he seems to have some awareness of and sympathy with struggles that come under "left politics". But my knowing that doesn't erase the issues with his original post. My comment on the original posting was thus: > So Ryan Tomayko's conversions with his wife are akin in tone and style to a language textbook aimed at tweens? You can't have that coupled with "wife" and simply wave away the problematic implications, not in our culture as of stands today. It's admirable that Tomayko is mature enough to consider challenges like this - instead of just going on the ultra defensive MRA spiel like some Redditor.

richo 14y ago
My recollection could have been wrong, I seemed to recall the dialog seeming a little contrived but not to the degree you describe. I might try to pull it out of cache and then reconsider.
- hackmiester 14y ago
  Here it is: http://ompldr.org/vaHp4NQ http://ompldr.org/vaHp4NQ
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
johnward 14y ago
What if he was talking about his specific, non-technical, wife? Why is that sexist. My wife is not technical at all, but I still understand that many women are. In fact I know a lot of women who are much more technical than me.
- vidarh 14y ago
  From his own comments on the original post, he was: > p: Ugghh. I have to admit, this post does seem kind of sexist now that you mention it. It never occured to me that it might be taken as such. I didn’t mean to imply my wife was a layperson due to her being female. I use “explained to my wife” at work as a simple way of saying that something is being described in a way that you might be able to explain to layperson (like people who make buying decisions :) Of course, everyone at work knows that my wife is non-technical and also that she is one of the only people outside of work I get to have grown-up conversations with. > >> Dude, your wife must really love you to go through all that which was obviously of way more interest to you than to her! > > There’s a bit of context missing from the beginning of the post: I had been busy at work and hadn’t seen her much in the past week or so. When that happens she starts getting jealous of the laptop and wants to hover over my shoulder — that’s a sign, it means: put it down and pay attention to me. If I don’t heel to that hint, she’ll start asking me about whatever’s on the screen. If I’m lucky it’s vim and a terminal running screen, which freaks her out and she leaves. Otherwise, I’m usually in the browser or my newsreader. It just so happened that at this time, I was reading Roy’s Bio so she saw his picture and says, “Who is Roy Fielding??!?,” using the exact the same tone and inflection you might when saying “WTF?” > > When this happens, I usually just say, “Oh, it’s nothing,” or something like, “it’s just some stuff about a thing.” > > Anyway, the funny thing is that I wasn’t really trying to explain anything at first. It started out as a bit of joke — a be careful what you ask for type thing. But then she says, “Oh, I get it.” and I so I kept on going and the next thing I know we’re talking about polymorphism and URL canonicalization and all kinds of crazy shit. > > She gets me going on purpose just so she can see my arms waving and the vein pop out of my head while I’m trying to describe this stuff. I don’t think she really pays all that much attention to what I’m actually saying. This also explains the tone that some have complained is unrealistic: She was not trying to have a serious discussion about technology, but to wind him up. Maybe including that as an introduction to the article would have pacified some of the complaints, but the comment I've quoted above was posted in 2006 as the 6th comment on the post. It's really ridiculous that he kept getting complaints about this post.