17 ms·

The Power of a Pronoun

123 points by benwen 13y ago

dmvaldman 13y ago
That seems....excessive
tptacek 13y ago
I'm happy to see that gender discrimination is radioactive at a big tech company, and more than happy to grammar-nerd about "they" versus "he". But even I think this would be a silly reason to fire someone.
- recuter 13y ago
  Someone or something you insensitive clod. Who says it is human or singular for that matter. :P
  - rch 13y ago
    > this would be a silly reason to fire something ...this would certainly be mistaken for a threat. Please choose your verbs carefully as well.
- bcantrill 13y ago
  (Disclosure: I wrote the linked blog entry.) Just to be clear, the use of the gendered pronoun isn't the issue -- it was the insistence on it, to the point of attempting to revert @izs's commit fixing the issue. To me, that transcends from rational position to unacceptably inappropriate, and it speaks well beyond a pronoun. You might say that reaction is extreme, but I would be willing to bet that you've fired people for less: I bet you have (or would) fire people for merely being an asshole. Firing someone for being such an asshole on such a small issue that in fact has broader consequences for the hostility of a work environment is actually a no-brainer.
  - cdcarter 13y ago
    I think the concern is that there is no provided evidence of Ben behaving as a bad project leader before now. If he's been an ass two to three times, that's a problem. If he's having an off day and makes a small mistake, there are better ways to solve the problem than publicly blogging about how you would have fired him.
  - waterlion 13y ago
    I suppose it depends on the prevailing culture (I'm guessing American). As a European, I would say firing someone over the above would be a deeply intolerant act, and possibly illegal.
    - drakeandrews 13y ago
      In a lot of cases (at least in the UK), it could fall under gross misconduct, for which your employer is allowed to terminate you on the spot. Of course, you can then take them to an employment tribunal who will then deliberate on if this was appropriate.
      - waterlion 13y ago
        Yes, gross misconduct is a valid cause for termination. I think an employer would have a very tough time justifying behaviour like this.
  - nfm 13y ago
    Agreed, the revert paints things in a whole new light: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...
  - rrhyne 13y ago
    Did he insist on using a masculine pronoun or was he guilty of being insinsitive to the importance of the commit? those are two very different things. Reasoned discussion could have fixed the latter, which I suspect is the case here.
  - 13y ago
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Where exactly was an explicit insistence on using gendered pronouns ever stated? How would an insistence on using gendered pronouns automatically equal a belief in an inextricable link between software and masculinity? Don't you realize that considering empathy as an engineering value is offensive to sociopathic engineers? (joking on that one)
static_typed 13y ago
The commit itself, and the events around that were already discussed on another thread, but about this blog posting specifically - this is a little extreme. I would have hoped at this point, an official posting, on the corporate pages would have a more sensible and calming approach. I guess not. All in all, no one comes out of this looking well.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  Not so sure about that. I had no opinion about Joyent before but now they sound quite positive in my book.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    OTOH, I had no opinion about Joyent before, and now have a lower'ish opinion of them. This seems like a combination of over-reaction, obsessive "PC" thinking, and an attempt to mask a potential PR gaffe. If Joyent cares so much about gender equality, I imagine that there are more concrete actions they could take to encourage that, than threatening to fire somebody who isn't even an employee - over a pronoun.
    - brown9-2 13y ago
      It's not the pronoun, it's the bad attitude and commit reversal.
      - manish_gill 13y ago
        Calling people asshole and "firing" them instead of initiating a discussion is also bad attitude.
mindcrime 13y ago
and that an engineer that has so little empathy as to not understand why the use of gendered pronouns is a concern almost certainly makes poor technical decisions as well. Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH, blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people to accept either: a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon or b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of indicating inclusiveness.
- VonGuard 13y ago
  b is awesome. White Wolf books used to use "she" everywhere, too. Write a script to change it every month.
- matdesigner 13y ago
  except women and men aren't the only genders in tech/the english language, and just switching between "he" and "she" is still non-inclusive of them.
  - Tohhou 13y ago
    There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?
    - gruntmaster9000 13y ago
      Gender != sex.
      - Tohhou 13y ago
        Gender is the grammar layer above sex. Sex informs gender. Gender is not a purely social construct out of nowhere. In English, there is the ternary, but it is defined as without the male/female. People generally don't like being called it though. Even if they have a special snowflake prounoun such as xer which they prefer the rest of the world can't know this and so it is fair and reasonable to call them what they look like they most identify out of the binary. Or we can just stop using pronouns altogether, even in industries largely of men, because we wouldn't want to make it seem like women can't take part in them (even when there is nothing stopping them). I'd be fine with that. Men don't exist anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
nawitus 13y ago
Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days? My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to Wikipedia, "he" used to be gender neutral[1]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Generic_he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...
- juridatenshi 13y ago
  Being respectful of diverse groups of people and technical ability are not mutually exclusive.
- auganov 13y ago
  It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender. So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be appropriate anymore.
  - sontek 13y ago
    But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?
    - auganov 13y ago
      Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it. But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.
- acdha 13y ago
  Your question was discussed at length in the post above. Part of your ability to function on a team requires empathy – deliberately choosing to be antagonistic over an admittedly small effort to be more inclusive shows lurking problems in that area
spindritf 13y ago
> while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as professionalism and empathy at Joyent?
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? No. I think it's fairly absurd as well, FWIW.
- edwardy20 13y ago
  I completely agree with you. And more to the point: does this hypersensitivity over gender issues ameliorate the problem, or only makes it worse?
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  Honestly the author makes himself look not only immature and unprofessional, but also just as absurd as those they're criticizing.
- LeafStorm 13y ago
  > On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it's not the use of the gendered pronoun that's at issue (that's just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that's not an attitude that Joyent tolerates. They're not opposing the use of the word "he," they're opposing him saying "no, go away, I don't see any reason someone could take offense" when the issue was pointed out instead of "thanks for the patch."
  - dlitz 13y ago
    ... and then reverting the change when another committer landed it.
cbg0 13y ago
I take it Joyent employees will live in fear of being fired for not being politically correct from now on, if they weren't already.
- acdha 13y ago
  You didn't read before commenting, did you? The point wasn't the choice in the first place or a grammatical debate but rejecting the idea that there was a question and then, after more discussion, reverting a two-word change in a fit of pique. I note that none of the anti-PC reactionaries are giving much attention to the part about throwing a for and reverting another developer's commit, which is telling.
- msmillie 13y ago
  As a Joyent engineer, I feel qualified to field this one. tl;dr: you couldn't be more wrong. The long version requires a crucial observation: this wasn't one simple mistake, made in haste, ignorance, or confusion. This was a deliberate action to revert to exclusionary language. Speculating on the precise motivation strikes me as pointless; it's the action itself that is problematic. At Joyent, I have room to make mistakes, and enough respect among my colleagues that I can take corrections without misgivings. Deliberate and repeated "mistakes" on my part would have consequences (but surely that's the literal definition of a problem employee). In case you aren't already one step ahead of me, here is the corollary: I am protected from the deliberate and repeatedly hostile actions of others. So: the ability (even obligation) to speak your mind, listen to others, and be protected from bullying, exclusionary behaviour? That, my friend, is what you call security.
  - waterlion 13y ago
    Do we know absolutely, for sure, that this is what happened? From the revert, bnoorhuis clearly didn't know that Bert had signed it off. To me it looks like there was a bit of confusion, and there's not enough info to say either way. As I said elsewhere, the error bars on this look far too wide. Given even the remotest possibility that this was a confusion, such a public and childish telling off seems entirely unreasonable. I appreciate you are an employee and are qualified to speak as such. But as an outsider (and a feminist), I won't touch Joyent with a bargepole after this.
bradleyjg 13y ago
I'm aware that singular they is attested all the way back to the 16th century, but it still doesn't read right to me. Particularly in the case where the pronoun definitely refers to one person, albeit of unknown gender, rather than where it could refer to either a singular or plural antecedent. I'd actually prefer the awkward 'he or she'. De gustibus non est disputandum, but to claim that preference for the generic he, or even the kind of indifference that could lead one to reject such a patch as a waste of time, can only come from a deep wellspring of misogyny, is absurd.
- LeafStorm 13y ago
  He didn't quote Strunk & White to justify rejecting the patch, nor did he bring up the grammatical argument at all when reverting it. He just said "this is not worth spending time on" and closed the ticket. (And if it was truly not worth spending time on, he wouldn't have contramanded one of his fellow maintainers to revert the patch, then rewrite the repository's history to cover himself.)
knowitall 13y ago
We never even heard the back story on that one... I suspect it's not so much about the gender of pronouns as about being patronizing, which people tend to resent.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  What do you mean "never heard the back story"? The post linked to a pull request and commit that are the back story...
  - knowitall 13y ago
    How are you sure about that? For example I don't know if the people involved ever communicated before and how they relate to each other.
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      I suppose. But do their personal interactions before matter?
      - knowitall 13y ago
        Of course - the reverted commit seems to be much more likely the result of personal differences rather than sexism. At least to me.
rjknight 13y ago
Fuck Joyent. Seriously. This is something that calls for dialogue, discussion and debate. I seriously hope Ben Noordhuis learns from this. But to say that you would fire someone over this is a sign that you are not a fit company for a reasonable person to buy from or work for.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  Is there seriously an argument to be made for a pro-"he" side? I don't understand how people both say "there should be a debate" and also "it's one word in meaningless documentation".
  - rjknight 13y ago
    There's probably an argument for it, yes. I can't imagine that it's a very good one, but I imagine that it exists. (There's always an argument for the status quo, which is "this is how we've always done it", and there's certainly a tradition of using "he" as a singular pronoun). In any case, I am contrasting "debate" with "we would fire you for not agreeing with us". Debate does not imply that both sides are equal, but it does mean that people are given the opportunity to hear both sides of an argument and decide what they want to do. If Ben Noordhuis still thinks that gendered pronouns are a good idea after this debate, he's still entitled to his opinion, but if Joyent are the owners of the project he's working on then he'll have to keep his opinion to himself when working on that project.
  - anon4 13y ago
    Oh yes there is. He and She can only refer to people while They can refer to things, too. Take for example: "if a person wishes to rungle the querts, they need to configure them such so that they will be in the state indicated by the widget manager". A sentence like that, while ultimately understandable, does cause me mild confusion at first read, and I'm sure I can come up with a more natural-sounding, but more confusing example, if I weren't so tired. From my point of view, English is basically fucked. You've ended up with third person pronouns that are irredeemably connected with the gender of the person they describe. They is really a cludge that sort of works, but isn't quite a drop-in replacement for good old She and He. I'd use They when the text can flow naturally with it, but drop to She/He when it starts sounding ambiguous or use any other kind of description. If writing instruction manuals, I'd use You to refer to the user at all times, or just drop to passive form and not mention people's genders at all.
LolWolf 13y ago
I can't be the only one who seriously doesn't even understand this article. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gender-equality, but say what about languages like Spanish? Do those have to be gender-neutral, too? Should we fire people because their culture dictates that gendered pronouns (which, by themselves, offer little to the conversation except perhaps a passing thought, at best) be used? Really? Is that what it's come down to? Of the millions of things that could be argued and put down due to gender inequality, we're firing people over pronouns. Congratulations. I'll give you that.
paulrademacher 13y ago
I applaud Joyent for their brave stand in theoretically firing someone who does not work for them. The legal issues they would theoretically face are daunting.
- dmourati 13y ago
  This. Talk is cheap. Pull his committer status at least before all the bluster.
whytaka 13y ago
I haven't the slightest idea what the commit was over but I'd like to point out that ~(non-gendered pronouns are mandatory) =/= (gendered pronouns are mandatory) The authors would still be free to use their own choice of pronouns.
alexandros 13y ago
This to me sounds like a company terrorised that the political-correctness police is coming after them, and going way too far in the opposite direction just to prove their PC credentials. While on first read I was as surprised as anyone at the magnitude of the over-reaction, on second read, I'm starting to think how bad things have become, i.e. the environment of fear, to lead companies to react this way.
- mdpopescu 13y ago
  "the environment of fear" This, exactly.
patio11 13y ago
I'm as capitalist as the day is long, but some of the Can't Get Your Degree Without Learning Applied Marxism memories are getting pinged a bit by the naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime. This impression is further strengthened by the not insignificant detail that Capital is here asserting the right to punish Labor even though Capital has negative a billion desire to ever cut Labor a check. Another thing reminding me of university: "The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small" was originally said about academic infighting but could also be applied to drama over the social functioning of a commit bit.
- 21echoes 13y ago
  firing people for immature, nigh-bigoted behavior is not "naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime", sorry.
  - patio11 13y ago
    He's not getting "fired" for behavior, he's explicitly getting fired because the decision maker believes that the behavior must be motivated by an attitude the decision maker disapproves of. That's the thoughtcrime. This is not the subtext of the post. It is the explicit text. Also in the explicit text is the decision maker praising an actual employee for probably being free of the thoughtcrime that is a firing offense at his employer. Does that ping your Ominous Sentences radar just a little bit? Let me try a different tact. Suppose for the moment that you and I have the same politics with regsrds to the underlying issues. It is very very dangerous to endorse employers doing this. Think whose ox is going to get gored more often. It is probably not well-paid cisgendered white men who hold opinions which are widely representative of those in the tech community.
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      Maybe I missed some context in the linked post, I didn't see much explanation of anything Ben did other than reject a pull request. Personally I don't think the fight over the use of "he" as a gender neutral pronoun is over and done so without additional context it seems rather extremist to declare Ben as the next Hitler, let alone to imagine what Ben's reasoning was. Edit: I went back and read the comments on the pull request and the revert and I'm not seeing evidence of misogyny or even anything that could be a firing offense. Yeah Ben was a jerk and who knows maybe his reason for rejecting the pull request was actually misogynistic. Getting rid of a contributor seems like the worst possible solution to the problem though. Remonstrate with them and explain that using gender neutral language is a valid change and that they shouldn't be passive aggressive with their VCS actions if they want to continue to be part of the project. Giving them the boot for perceived thought crimes is just horrible in every aspect.
onli 13y ago
This insistence on political correctness is harmful to the cause of gender equality, is harmful to the state of our society and harmful to the technology sector. It is the construction of thought barriers, the creation of solely accepted behaviour and arbitrary creation of anormal behaviour, by redefining what is normal and not discriminating in any way (to use he in a normal sentence) as discriminating and bad and as a cause to lose an existence (i.e. getting fired). It is morality not for creating good, but for appearing moralic, one of the lowest kinds of behaviour on an ethical level. Damning someone who seemingly tried to hinder those artificial norms getting a foot into a project is a mistake.
- IdahoEv 13y ago
  > This insistence on political correctness It isn't "political correctness" - the phrase implies that the language has no real effect and changing it is merely for show, or as a political statement. Using male pronouns as gender neutral has a measurable effect on comprehension that has studied and reproduced repeatedly. Using "he" pronouns as generics does in fact lead both men and women to exclude women in their comprehension of the sentence a statistically significant fraction of the time. See for example http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103091639063 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&s.... Revising language not a "thought barrier", it's an actual real benefit. Your entire premise is false.
benwerd 13y ago
This is a great response. Like the article says, it's not that the original author was both sexist and sloppy with language, although they were. The problem is that the sexism was actively reinforced in a public forum, first by a dismissive comment and then by an actual reversion. It would have taken no effort at all to make the correction; it was actually more work to reinforce the sexism. That means it was willful. If one of my employees was being willfully sexist in public in a way that reflected on my company, I'd fire them too. Node.js is a really important project, closely associated with Joyent, and they've already seen some backlash from this. This kind of behavior could have real implications for the company's bottom line, and potentially even legal liabilities. Being inclusive is good business. To reiterate: the original sexism, while dumb, is not a fireable offense. To actually go out of your way to be an asshole and practice discrimination while representing a company: totally a fireable offense. I'm not really sure why so many other commenters feel differently.
RivieraKid 13y ago
Firing someone because he uses "he"? That's really fucked up. P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Is that a widespread phenomenon or specific to IT community? Am I the only one who finds it awkwardly forced?
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  It's a widespread phenomenon by now. It's been around in written language before, but it has received more adoption recently. I have nothing against it, personally, although I feel as though a lot of people use it to compensate for some sort of guilt they have.
- theorique 13y ago
  P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Self-consciously overcompensating, and in-group signaling. You're communicating to other people that you are not one of the Bad, Bad Sexist Men In Tech.
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Some people who for whatever reason refuse to use singular they will alternate between he and she instead.
thenerdfiles 13y ago
This isn't good. The title should be "The Power of Gendered Pronouns" — it's about gendered pronouns and our intentions/perceptions around their use, not about pronouns in general. Here's my simple argument against pronouns (even gendered ones) in documentation. Too often you hear, which can often be the turning point of a "polite" discussion to a "heated" discussion: Don't talk about me as if I'm not here. My name is ----. Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense. I want to say further that pronouns do a disservice to the "organic conversation" that is Source Code just as pronouns do a disservice to polite discussion. Pronouns may be common in usage, but their use turns a discussion into something informal. Their "power" in general is a question of emotive/suggestive language, as vagueness implies, versus explicit/shareable/re-useable language.
- mdisraeli 13y ago
  'Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.' I've actually tested this. Or rather, I live by this - I default to gender neutral pronouns for everyone. I have done this for many years in customer facing call centres, dealing with 30+ callers a day and working alongside 100+ support staff, and communicating across all levels of business, from shop floor to CEO. I have had people comment on singular they. Mostly LGBT+ people who understood gender issues and actively had a preference. Everyone else? NOT A SINGLE COMMENT. You may personally have a preference about people's use of pronouns for yourself, and that is actually a wonderful thing - knowingly having a gender identity is awesome! :) But, at least in the UK, there is nothing offensive about gender neutral 'they'.
  - thenerdfiles 13y ago
    Very cool. I take your experience shared here to stand corrected!
  - makomk 13y ago
    This does have the, ah, interesting consequence that essentially any policy you could have about when you use gender-neutral pronouns will either offend or involuntarily out at least some trans or genderqueer people. (Even if most of the gender-binary cis populace won't notice.) Using gender neutral pronouns for everyone unless they object seems especially likely to do so though.
ddod 13y ago
I'm afraid some will look at this as an issue of the fickle HN crowd never being satisfied, but it really is more about exercising rationality. Firstly, nobody really had to publicize this ridiculously miniscule episode, as it was sorted out responsibly without the attention. It's great for women to see how many people rally to their inclusion in tech, but there's a not-too-fine line between displays of inclusion and Joyent's response. This sort of response is polarizing and inasmuch works against the goal of equality, safety, and comfort of men and women in the industry. Also, has anyone considered language barriers in this discussion, because if that was a factor, it would be an even worse reason to start a public shaming and loss of a contributor.
jellicle 13y ago
I clicked the comments to write "Joyent is going to get a lot of hate mail from Hacker News woman-haters", and indeed, with 21 comments so far, that seems to be true. Good job, Bryan Cantrill and Joyent. One small step forward. (And now I see this posting getting flagged down the page rapidly, like anything else on the topic of Silicon Valley's disdain for women. Has dropped from #3 to #35 in roughly 3 minutes.)
- afandian 13y ago
  Maybe it's being downvoted because it's deliberately antagonistic (and maybe you knew that already).
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    Stories cannot be downvoted.
    - afandian 13y ago
      (I thought jellicle was talking about his own post.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  Pointing out a complete overreaction is now woman-hating, it seems. It's almost as if being a misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore. It just becomes another mundane everyday action. It shouldn't be, but you're redefining it to be.
  - mdisraeli 13y ago
    "misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore" You mean it ever actually took effort? The truth is that our entire society is misogynist. I'm a woman, and I do my upmost to not be, but /because society itself is screwed/, even I can't avoid being misogynist occasionally. In this particular case, you're thankfully calling the actions of men "overreactions", but that EXACT word is used to belittle women the world over, in exactly this same way. Wanting people to be decent human beings is "overreacting". Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks, or walking them home, or coming into their house... overreacting. And that's not even going into the gender aspects of calling a man that.
pepve 13y ago
I read some of the comments on the pull request and the commits. This is the worst part of Github, these kinds of public massive flame wars, complete with animated gifs. I think Github should have moderation features for situations like this. Even though they're not common, they're damaging the constructive atmosphere that's usually present.
davorak 13y ago
If you maintain a flagship open source project for you company, you are not just a programmer. You are a public representative of the company. So as a company representative it seems reasonable to be fired for either directly going against a known view point of the company, or being ignorant of view points you are supposed to representing(after reasonable opportunity to learn what they are.) It seem reasonable to fired for not representing a company the way it wants to be represented when part of the job is to represent that company.
olefoo 13y ago
This should be a reminder to everyone that your public actions on public code repositories can carry consequences. That said, I personally approve of the work that people like Ashe Dryden, Coda Hale and others have been doing to help the tech industry grow up. We need to move beyond the time when mastering this weeks hot skill entitles you to act like a jerk. And if making it known that acting like a jerk in public will get you fired from the places where you'd like to work is one of the things that it takes to effect that change; that is a positive development.
RivieraKid 13y ago
> we believe that empathy is a core engineering value What?? That's pure BS. Is empathy a political value? Or a filmmakers' or writers' value? And what about honesty or team spirit? Are they core engineering values?
heterogenic 13y ago
What we really need here is some kind of blind poll, with results aggregated into two buckets: "Female developers who have worked in the valley." and "Everyone else". I think the HN community might be surprised by the results. As a female developer, I assert that you haven't a clue what you're talking about, and you don't understand what it's like to work in this industry as a woman. First, try listening. Then, try observing your workplace and peers. Finally, consider what Ben's actions (particularly his refusal to accept feedback or accept reality) have unveiled about his biases and daily behavior.
- knowitall 13y ago
  So have you been using "they" in you comments from the very beginning, or have you used "she", or "he"?
  - heterogenic 13y ago
    I can't find any examples of a pronoun in my personal repository or work repository, but in a few bug submissions I say "she". But if anyone ever challenged me on it, or suggested it was inappropriate, or rejected a pull request, I'd _totally_ understand. Just as if I accidentally said something which was accidentally racist or ethnocentric. It's not about the original "he", it's about the rejection of active inclusion. edit: Scanned my whole code tree and ticket database, and found 7 "she"'s, 5 "he"'s and 8 "they"'s. The gendered pronouns were all referring to specific people, except for one "she", referring to a hypothetical external API customer. I've just patched it to "they". Of course, my team works for a female CTO (me) and is ~50/50 m/f, so we are very much not representative. But since this was totally unplanned, this suggests a curious corollary that the absence of default-masculinity seems to be at least be correlated with gender equality in an office.
    - knowitall 13y ago
      It's not that surprising that the presence of a diverse mix of people makes it likely for imaginary people to be less stereotyped. I must admit as a non-native speaker, I am still not quite sure how to properly use "they". I wasn't aware of the possibility before this discussion occurred.
prolways 13y ago
Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still considered grammatically incorrect? If gendered pronouns are such a big issue why is there no effort to make a lasting official solution by updating the standards of English? I know most of my school teachers would not have let me written "they/them" in this situation. Have things changed and "they" is now acceptable? I think the only correct solution available today which sounds decent at all is to say "the user".
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still considered grammatically incorrect? No. Singular they has never been grammatically incorrect. The frequency of its use has simply varied throughout the years. For what it's worth, singular they seems to predate gender-neutral 'he' in written English.
rickbeerendonk 13y ago
Not a motivation for non-native speakers to contribute to English dominated open-source.
- acdha 13y ago
  Your argument apparently being that non-English speakers are just incurably rude? The problem wasn't the minor doc change but how it was handled – less capable speakers might make a mistake but a simple “oh, thanks for the correction” avoids any problem.
deleted 13y ago
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sergiotapia 13y ago
>But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. Sounds like a fun place to work!
AwesomeTogether 13y ago
makes me sick to see the mob get its way.
xs_kid 13y ago
Obviously Node.js isn't a community project, it's a Joyent project and this is a clear confirmation of it.
- forgottenpass 13y ago
  Oh, I wouldn't say that. The clear confirmation came from the introduction of the CLA. Regardless of how free the license is (or which type of freedoms you want from a license) once you make one party more equal than all others the pretense of "community project" goes out the window. That's not to say people outside the company can't be highly involved and feel like they have an ownership stake in productive way. Just that when push comes to shove they find out they don't have an ownership stake. See: The Hudson/Jenkins split.
mdisraeli 13y ago
Putting aside gender theory, there is a much simpler issue here. This is the same issue that affects wikipedia. Writing that deny took more effort than just allowing the change. If it really was trivial, then there is no harm in accepting it. Denying it is shouting down someone's effort to improve the project. It destroys community rather than builds.
banachtarski 13y ago
Lol. Joyent, the people who tried to optimize their whole product around nodejs because it was hip is now creating excessive coverage with pretty extreme language to paint themselves as the "White knight" of the tech world. Lame company is lame.
hackula1 13y ago
Ben is not a Joyent employee, but a Strongloop employee/cofounder. I Cannot say I am terribly surprised. Strongloop has rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. Since they have launched, they have displayed all the integrity of a used car salesman. I know they have some very strong core devs, and I know they are not all like this, but their public image has been max-sleaze ever since they started marketing in shady ways suggesting that they were the creators of node.js.
mdisraeli 13y ago
Because no-one's posted it yet, Tom Scott has a great video on grammatical gender that is worth a watch: http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk
mseepgood 13y ago
It's 2013. Some people in the open source community seem to still live mentally in the 1950s.
gizmo686 13y ago
>to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense. ... the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. So what. The request was rejected on the principle of it being trivial: > Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. [1] I can find no mention in the discussion of anyone arguing against the change on the grounds that gendered pronouns are preferable. We can still argue over wheather this is a good reason to reject a pull request. Personally, I think that trivial requests should be accepted if for no other reason than to be welcoming to newcomers who are testing the waters before becoming active. However, accepting pull requests takes time, and one might not want to encourage a community to spam oneself with minor corrections. Furthermore, in this particular example, the proposed changes were grammatically incorrect, as the object itself is the singular "user", while the new pronoun is the plural "they/them". This could easily be resolved by making user plural, or avoiding the pronoun altogether, but this still takes more of the maintainers time. Notwithstanding that, it seems completely dishonest to frame the original dispute as Ben Noodhuis objecting to removing gendered pronouns on principle. [1] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...
__pThrow 13y ago
It's shocking for many reasons that Joyent thinks its reasonable to fire an employee over something as trivial as that pull rejection. Not correct him first, but fire him. Not stand behind him, as in "sometimes we all make errors", but fire him. This is callous, abusive, shocking behavior. Is it a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of Joyent, or their fear of retaliation from the Tech Feminism? This statement of Joyent's should be condemned by anyone who has ever held down a job.
e512 13y ago
I suppose discriminating on sexuality is just fine at Joyent then? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM...
JohnTHaller 13y ago
For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on the matter thus far: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... "@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert. Isaac, consider yourself chided." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... "Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things. Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc. That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object? Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them. To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field? I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
tokenadult 13y ago
I scanned the comments here to see if anyone has brought up data about the underlying linguistic issue. I call baloney on the silly idea that "gendered pronouns" make life better or worse for anyone in actual society as contrasted with "nongendered pronouns." What is my evidence? I speak the world's most-spoken language (the only language that arguably has more speakers than English, namely Modern Standard Chinese) and it has totally nongendered pronouns. There is not a distinction in spoken Chinese[1] between "he," "she," or "it," as the language has just one third-person singular pronoun, namely tā. But my wife, who grew up in Chinese-speaking society and has since lived in English-speaking society, and I, who have lived in both places, think it is ludicrous to suppose that Chinese-speaking society is "less sexist" in any systematic way just because of the pronoun system of Chinese. Pronouns appear to make no difference at all. The map is not the territory. On this issue, languages appear to vary arbitrarily with no particular influence on social custom, and not much influence from social notions of male or female superiority or inferiority. Gendered pronouns don't matter for anything important. It is an extraordinary claim to say that they do. People who make extraordinary claims should bring along extraordinary evidence to back up those claims. [1] Under Western influence, after extensive contact with speakers of Indo-European languages and translation of books from those languages into Chinese, the Chinese writing system has sometimes distinguished written forms '他,'她,' and '它' for "he," "she," and "it," but all are pronounced /tā/ in speech and this distinction has to be painstakingly learned by Chinese children in school, with many native speakers of Chinese confusing the pronouns of English as to gender for years after learning them. For example, I have heard plenty of Chinese-language conversations in which someone describes a situation involving men and women and then starts speaking about individual persons in the situation as he/she did this or that to him/her, and sometimes a listener breaks into the conversation with "male or female?" to keep track of who is whom. And I've heard plenty of Chinese speakers talk about "my sister . . . he is" or "my brother . . . she is" and so forth, making clear that their brains don't distinguish pronouns by grammatical gender in any language.
iterationx 13y ago
Would the commit have happened if the offending pronoun was 'she' instead of 'he'? This is speculation but it seems clear that the pronoun 'she' would have been allowed to remain, because it is as a sign of progressiveness and inclusiveness, but 'he' is a sign on retrograde patriarchal medievalism that must be combated with our every waking breath, if you don't agree you are clearly a misogynist bigot.

123 points by benwen 13y ago

That seems....excessive

I'm happy to see that gender discrimination is radioactive at a big tech company, and more than happy to grammar-nerd about "they" versus "he". But even I think this would be a silly reason to fire someone.

recuter 13y ago
Someone or something you insensitive clod. Who says it is human or singular for that matter. :P
- rch 13y ago
  > this would be a silly reason to fire something ...this would certainly be mistaken for a threat. Please choose your verbs carefully as well.
bcantrill 13y ago
(Disclosure: I wrote the linked blog entry.) Just to be clear, the use of the gendered pronoun isn't the issue -- it was the insistence on it, to the point of attempting to revert @izs's commit fixing the issue. To me, that transcends from rational position to unacceptably inappropriate, and it speaks well beyond a pronoun. You might say that reaction is extreme, but I would be willing to bet that you've fired people for less: I bet you have (or would) fire people for merely being an asshole. Firing someone for being such an asshole on such a small issue that in fact has broader consequences for the hostility of a work environment is actually a no-brainer.
- cdcarter 13y ago
  I think the concern is that there is no provided evidence of Ben behaving as a bad project leader before now. If he's been an ass two to three times, that's a problem. If he's having an off day and makes a small mistake, there are better ways to solve the problem than publicly blogging about how you would have fired him.
- waterlion 13y ago
  I suppose it depends on the prevailing culture (I'm guessing American). As a European, I would say firing someone over the above would be a deeply intolerant act, and possibly illegal.
  - drakeandrews 13y ago
    In a lot of cases (at least in the UK), it could fall under gross misconduct, for which your employer is allowed to terminate you on the spot. Of course, you can then take them to an employment tribunal who will then deliberate on if this was appropriate.
    - waterlion 13y ago
      Yes, gross misconduct is a valid cause for termination. I think an employer would have a very tough time justifying behaviour like this.
- nfm 13y ago
  Agreed, the revert paints things in a whole new light: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...
- rrhyne 13y ago
  Did he insist on using a masculine pronoun or was he guilty of being insinsitive to the importance of the commit? those are two very different things. Reasoned discussion could have fixed the latter, which I suspect is the case here.
- 13y ago

vezzy-fnord 13y ago

Where exactly was an explicit insistence on using gendered pronouns ever stated? How would an insistence on using gendered pronouns automatically equal a belief in an inextricable link between software and masculinity? Don't you realize that considering empathy as an engineering value is offensive to sociopathic engineers? (joking on that one)

static_typed 13y ago

The commit itself, and the events around that were already discussed on another thread, but about this blog posting specifically - this is a little extreme. I would have hoped at this point, an official posting, on the corporate pages would have a more sensible and calming approach. I guess not. All in all, no one comes out of this looking well.

brown9-2 13y ago
Not so sure about that. I had no opinion about Joyent before but now they sound quite positive in my book.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  OTOH, I had no opinion about Joyent before, and now have a lower'ish opinion of them. This seems like a combination of over-reaction, obsessive "PC" thinking, and an attempt to mask a potential PR gaffe. If Joyent cares so much about gender equality, I imagine that there are more concrete actions they could take to encourage that, than threatening to fire somebody who isn't even an employee - over a pronoun.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    It's not the pronoun, it's the bad attitude and commit reversal.
    - manish_gill 13y ago
      Calling people asshole and "firing" them instead of initiating a discussion is also bad attitude.

mindcrime 13y ago

and that an engineer that has so little empathy as to not understand why the use of gendered pronouns is a concern almost certainly makes poor technical decisions as well. Uuuuh, yeah, except for the little bit about the English language having notoriously poor support for gender neutral pronouns in the first place. TBH, blindly substituting "them" and "they" everywhere will result in sentences that are incorrect. It doesn't take a huge lack of empathy to suggest that it's better to write in a way that's grammatically correct while asking people to accept either: a. the generic use of "he" OR "she" as a universal singular pronon or b. randomly switching between the two throughout the document as way of indicating inclusiveness.

VonGuard 13y ago
b is awesome. White Wolf books used to use "she" everywhere, too. Write a script to change it every month.
matdesigner 13y ago
except women and men aren't the only genders in tech/the english language, and just switching between "he" and "she" is still non-inclusive of them.
- Tohhou 13y ago
  There are human genders other than male and female? Scientific or imaginary?
  - gruntmaster9000 13y ago
    Gender != sex.
    - Tohhou 13y ago
      Gender is the grammar layer above sex. Sex informs gender. Gender is not a purely social construct out of nowhere. In English, there is the ternary, but it is defined as without the male/female. People generally don't like being called it though. Even if they have a special snowflake prounoun such as xer which they prefer the rest of the world can't know this and so it is fair and reasonable to call them what they look like they most identify out of the binary. Or we can just stop using pronouns altogether, even in industries largely of men, because we wouldn't want to make it seem like women can't take part in them (even when there is nothing stopping them). I'd be fine with that. Men don't exist anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZAuqkqxk9A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

nawitus 13y ago

Is political correctness more valuable than technical ability these days? My personal opinion is to make "he" gender neutral again. According to Wikipedia, "he" used to be gender neutral[1]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Generic_he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neut...

juridatenshi 13y ago
Being respectful of diverse groups of people and technical ability are not mutually exclusive.
auganov 13y ago
It seems like though it was used as gender neutral only for undefined gender. So if one knew for a fact that a given person is female, "he" would not be appropriate anymore.
- sontek 13y ago
  But when writing documentation, you are unaware of who it is for, so it would be a valid use of gender neutral he, correct?
  - auganov 13y ago
    Yep. But the gender undefined pronoun would be the male pronoun. So while semantically it would be gender neutral, from an overall perspective it's still male-centric. And we might want to have a way to refer to humans in a completely gender neutral way without ever having to explicitly specify it. But still, I guess using 'he' as a universal pronoun would be the most elegant solution. Although you can imagine some not liking it's historical baggage.
acdha 13y ago
Your question was discussed at length in the post above. Part of your ability to function on a team requires empathy – deliberately choosing to be antagonistic over an admittedly small effort to be more inclusive shows lurking problems in that area

spindritf 13y ago

> while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as professionalism and empathy at Joyent?

mindcrime 13y ago
Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? No. I think it's fairly absurd as well, FWIW.
edwardy20 13y ago
I completely agree with you. And more to the point: does this hypersensitivity over gender issues ameliorate the problem, or only makes it worse?
gum_ina_package 13y ago
Honestly the author makes himself look not only immature and unprofessional, but also just as absurd as those they're criticizing.
LeafStorm 13y ago
> On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it's not the use of the gendered pronoun that's at issue (that's just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that's not an attitude that Joyent tolerates. They're not opposing the use of the word "he," they're opposing him saying "no, go away, I don't see any reason someone could take offense" when the issue was pointed out instead of "thanks for the patch."
- dlitz 13y ago
  ... and then reverting the change when another committer landed it.

cbg0 13y ago

I take it Joyent employees will live in fear of being fired for not being politically correct from now on, if they weren't already.

acdha 13y ago
You didn't read before commenting, did you? The point wasn't the choice in the first place or a grammatical debate but rejecting the idea that there was a question and then, after more discussion, reverting a two-word change in a fit of pique. I note that none of the anti-PC reactionaries are giving much attention to the part about throwing a for and reverting another developer's commit, which is telling.
msmillie 13y ago
As a Joyent engineer, I feel qualified to field this one. tl;dr: you couldn't be more wrong. The long version requires a crucial observation: this wasn't one simple mistake, made in haste, ignorance, or confusion. This was a deliberate action to revert to exclusionary language. Speculating on the precise motivation strikes me as pointless; it's the action itself that is problematic. At Joyent, I have room to make mistakes, and enough respect among my colleagues that I can take corrections without misgivings. Deliberate and repeated "mistakes" on my part would have consequences (but surely that's the literal definition of a problem employee). In case you aren't already one step ahead of me, here is the corollary: I am protected from the deliberate and repeatedly hostile actions of others. So: the ability (even obligation) to speak your mind, listen to others, and be protected from bullying, exclusionary behaviour? That, my friend, is what you call security.
- waterlion 13y ago
  Do we know absolutely, for sure, that this is what happened? From the revert, bnoorhuis clearly didn't know that Bert had signed it off. To me it looks like there was a bit of confusion, and there's not enough info to say either way. As I said elsewhere, the error bars on this look far too wide. Given even the remotest possibility that this was a confusion, such a public and childish telling off seems entirely unreasonable. I appreciate you are an employee and are qualified to speak as such. But as an outsider (and a feminist), I won't touch Joyent with a bargepole after this.

bradleyjg 13y ago

I'm aware that singular they is attested all the way back to the 16th century, but it still doesn't read right to me. Particularly in the case where the pronoun definitely refers to one person, albeit of unknown gender, rather than where it could refer to either a singular or plural antecedent. I'd actually prefer the awkward 'he or she'. De gustibus non est disputandum, but to claim that preference for the generic he, or even the kind of indifference that could lead one to reject such a patch as a waste of time, can only come from a deep wellspring of misogyny, is absurd.

LeafStorm 13y ago
He didn't quote Strunk & White to justify rejecting the patch, nor did he bring up the grammatical argument at all when reverting it. He just said "this is not worth spending time on" and closed the ticket. (And if it was truly not worth spending time on, he wouldn't have contramanded one of his fellow maintainers to revert the patch, then rewrite the repository's history to cover himself.)

knowitall 13y ago

We never even heard the back story on that one... I suspect it's not so much about the gender of pronouns as about being patronizing, which people tend to resent.

dkuntz2 13y ago
What do you mean "never heard the back story"? The post linked to a pull request and commit that are the back story...
- knowitall 13y ago
  How are you sure about that? For example I don't know if the people involved ever communicated before and how they relate to each other.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    I suppose. But do their personal interactions before matter?
    - knowitall 13y ago
      Of course - the reverted commit seems to be much more likely the result of personal differences rather than sexism. At least to me.

rjknight 13y ago

Fuck Joyent. Seriously. This is something that calls for dialogue, discussion and debate. I seriously hope Ben Noordhuis learns from this. But to say that you would fire someone over this is a sign that you are not a fit company for a reasonable person to buy from or work for.

brown9-2 13y ago
Is there seriously an argument to be made for a pro-"he" side? I don't understand how people both say "there should be a debate" and also "it's one word in meaningless documentation".
- rjknight 13y ago
  There's probably an argument for it, yes. I can't imagine that it's a very good one, but I imagine that it exists. (There's always an argument for the status quo, which is "this is how we've always done it", and there's certainly a tradition of using "he" as a singular pronoun). In any case, I am contrasting "debate" with "we would fire you for not agreeing with us". Debate does not imply that both sides are equal, but it does mean that people are given the opportunity to hear both sides of an argument and decide what they want to do. If Ben Noordhuis still thinks that gendered pronouns are a good idea after this debate, he's still entitled to his opinion, but if Joyent are the owners of the project he's working on then he'll have to keep his opinion to himself when working on that project.
- anon4 13y ago
  Oh yes there is. He and She can only refer to people while They can refer to things, too. Take for example: "if a person wishes to rungle the querts, they need to configure them such so that they will be in the state indicated by the widget manager". A sentence like that, while ultimately understandable, does cause me mild confusion at first read, and I'm sure I can come up with a more natural-sounding, but more confusing example, if I weren't so tired. From my point of view, English is basically fucked. You've ended up with third person pronouns that are irredeemably connected with the gender of the person they describe. They is really a cludge that sort of works, but isn't quite a drop-in replacement for good old She and He. I'd use They when the text can flow naturally with it, but drop to She/He when it starts sounding ambiguous or use any other kind of description. If writing instruction manuals, I'd use You to refer to the user at all times, or just drop to passive form and not mention people's genders at all.

LolWolf 13y ago

I can't be the only one who seriously doesn't even understand this article. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gender-equality, but say what about languages like Spanish? Do those have to be gender-neutral, too? Should we fire people because their culture dictates that gendered pronouns (which, by themselves, offer little to the conversation except perhaps a passing thought, at best) be used? Really? Is that what it's come down to? Of the millions of things that could be argued and put down due to gender inequality, we're firing people over pronouns. Congratulations. I'll give you that.

paulrademacher 13y ago

I applaud Joyent for their brave stand in theoretically firing someone who does not work for them. The legal issues they would theoretically face are daunting.

dmourati 13y ago
This. Talk is cheap. Pull his committer status at least before all the bluster.

whytaka 13y ago

I haven't the slightest idea what the commit was over but I'd like to point out that ~(non-gendered pronouns are mandatory) =/= (gendered pronouns are mandatory) The authors would still be free to use their own choice of pronouns.

alexandros 13y ago

This to me sounds like a company terrorised that the political-correctness police is coming after them, and going way too far in the opposite direction just to prove their PC credentials. While on first read I was as surprised as anyone at the magnitude of the over-reaction, on second read, I'm starting to think how bad things have become, i.e. the environment of fear, to lead companies to react this way.

mdpopescu 13y ago
"the environment of fear" This, exactly.

patio11 13y ago

I'm as capitalist as the day is long, but some of the Can't Get Your Degree Without Learning Applied Marxism memories are getting pinged a bit by the naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime. This impression is further strengthened by the not insignificant detail that Capital is here asserting the right to punish Labor even though Capital has negative a billion desire to ever cut Labor a check. Another thing reminding me of university: "The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small" was originally said about academic infighting but could also be applied to drama over the social functioning of a commit bit.

21echoes 13y ago
firing people for immature, nigh-bigoted behavior is not "naked use of economic power to punish thoughtcrime", sorry.
- patio11 13y ago
  He's not getting "fired" for behavior, he's explicitly getting fired because the decision maker believes that the behavior must be motivated by an attitude the decision maker disapproves of. That's the thoughtcrime. This is not the subtext of the post. It is the explicit text. Also in the explicit text is the decision maker praising an actual employee for probably being free of the thoughtcrime that is a firing offense at his employer. Does that ping your Ominous Sentences radar just a little bit? Let me try a different tact. Suppose for the moment that you and I have the same politics with regsrds to the underlying issues. It is very very dangerous to endorse employers doing this. Think whose ox is going to get gored more often. It is probably not well-paid cisgendered white men who hold opinions which are widely representative of those in the tech community.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    Maybe I missed some context in the linked post, I didn't see much explanation of anything Ben did other than reject a pull request. Personally I don't think the fight over the use of "he" as a gender neutral pronoun is over and done so without additional context it seems rather extremist to declare Ben as the next Hitler, let alone to imagine what Ben's reasoning was. Edit: I went back and read the comments on the pull request and the revert and I'm not seeing evidence of misogyny or even anything that could be a firing offense. Yeah Ben was a jerk and who knows maybe his reason for rejecting the pull request was actually misogynistic. Getting rid of a contributor seems like the worst possible solution to the problem though. Remonstrate with them and explain that using gender neutral language is a valid change and that they shouldn't be passive aggressive with their VCS actions if they want to continue to be part of the project. Giving them the boot for perceived thought crimes is just horrible in every aspect.

onli 13y ago

This insistence on political correctness is harmful to the cause of gender equality, is harmful to the state of our society and harmful to the technology sector. It is the construction of thought barriers, the creation of solely accepted behaviour and arbitrary creation of anormal behaviour, by redefining what is normal and not discriminating in any way (to use he in a normal sentence) as discriminating and bad and as a cause to lose an existence (i.e. getting fired). It is morality not for creating good, but for appearing moralic, one of the lowest kinds of behaviour on an ethical level. Damning someone who seemingly tried to hinder those artificial norms getting a foot into a project is a mistake.

IdahoEv 13y ago
> This insistence on political correctness It isn't "political correctness" - the phrase implies that the language has no real effect and changing it is merely for show, or as a political statement. Using male pronouns as gender neutral has a measurable effect on comprehension that has studied and reproduced repeatedly. Using "he" pronouns as generics does in fact lead both men and women to exclude women in their comprehension of the sentence a statistically significant fraction of the time. See for example http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103091639063 http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=2&uid=4&s.... Revising language not a "thought barrier", it's an actual real benefit. Your entire premise is false.

benwerd 13y ago

This is a great response. Like the article says, it's not that the original author was both sexist and sloppy with language, although they were. The problem is that the sexism was actively reinforced in a public forum, first by a dismissive comment and then by an actual reversion. It would have taken no effort at all to make the correction; it was actually more work to reinforce the sexism. That means it was willful. If one of my employees was being willfully sexist in public in a way that reflected on my company, I'd fire them too. Node.js is a really important project, closely associated with Joyent, and they've already seen some backlash from this. This kind of behavior could have real implications for the company's bottom line, and potentially even legal liabilities. Being inclusive is good business. To reiterate: the original sexism, while dumb, is not a fireable offense. To actually go out of your way to be an asshole and practice discrimination while representing a company: totally a fireable offense. I'm not really sure why so many other commenters feel differently.

RivieraKid 13y ago

Firing someone because he uses "he"? That's really fucked up. P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Is that a widespread phenomenon or specific to IT community? Am I the only one who finds it awkwardly forced?

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
It's a widespread phenomenon by now. It's been around in written language before, but it has received more adoption recently. I have nothing against it, personally, although I feel as though a lot of people use it to compensate for some sort of guilt they have.
theorique 13y ago
P.S. What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Self-consciously overcompensating, and in-group signaling. You're communicating to other people that you are not one of the Bad, Bad Sexist Men In Tech.
rsynnott 13y ago
> What's with the trend of obsessively using "she"? Some people who for whatever reason refuse to use singular they will alternate between he and she instead.

thenerdfiles 13y ago

This isn't good. The title should be "The Power of Gendered Pronouns" — it's about gendered pronouns and our intentions/perceptions around their use, not about pronouns in general. Here's my simple argument against pronouns (even gendered ones) in documentation. Too often you hear, which can often be the turning point of a "polite" discussion to a "heated" discussion: Don't talk about me as if I'm not here. My name is ----. Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense. I want to say further that pronouns do a disservice to the "organic conversation" that is Source Code just as pronouns do a disservice to polite discussion. Pronouns may be common in usage, but their use turns a discussion into something informal. Their "power" in general is a question of emotive/suggestive language, as vagueness implies, versus explicit/shareable/re-useable language.

mdisraeli 13y ago
'Refering to someone as "they" or "them" is an even worse offense.' I've actually tested this. Or rather, I live by this - I default to gender neutral pronouns for everyone. I have done this for many years in customer facing call centres, dealing with 30+ callers a day and working alongside 100+ support staff, and communicating across all levels of business, from shop floor to CEO. I have had people comment on singular they. Mostly LGBT+ people who understood gender issues and actively had a preference. Everyone else? NOT A SINGLE COMMENT. You may personally have a preference about people's use of pronouns for yourself, and that is actually a wonderful thing - knowingly having a gender identity is awesome! :) But, at least in the UK, there is nothing offensive about gender neutral 'they'.
- thenerdfiles 13y ago
  Very cool. I take your experience shared here to stand corrected!
- makomk 13y ago
  This does have the, ah, interesting consequence that essentially any policy you could have about when you use gender-neutral pronouns will either offend or involuntarily out at least some trans or genderqueer people. (Even if most of the gender-binary cis populace won't notice.) Using gender neutral pronouns for everyone unless they object seems especially likely to do so though.

ddod 13y ago

I'm afraid some will look at this as an issue of the fickle HN crowd never being satisfied, but it really is more about exercising rationality. Firstly, nobody really had to publicize this ridiculously miniscule episode, as it was sorted out responsibly without the attention. It's great for women to see how many people rally to their inclusion in tech, but there's a not-too-fine line between displays of inclusion and Joyent's response. This sort of response is polarizing and inasmuch works against the goal of equality, safety, and comfort of men and women in the industry. Also, has anyone considered language barriers in this discussion, because if that was a factor, it would be an even worse reason to start a public shaming and loss of a contributor.

jellicle 13y ago

I clicked the comments to write "Joyent is going to get a lot of hate mail from Hacker News woman-haters", and indeed, with 21 comments so far, that seems to be true. Good job, Bryan Cantrill and Joyent. One small step forward. (And now I see this posting getting flagged down the page rapidly, like anything else on the topic of Silicon Valley's disdain for women. Has dropped from #3 to #35 in roughly 3 minutes.)

afandian 13y ago
Maybe it's being downvoted because it's deliberately antagonistic (and maybe you knew that already).
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  Stories cannot be downvoted.
  - afandian 13y ago
    (I thought jellicle was talking about his own post.)
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vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Pointing out a complete overreaction is now woman-hating, it seems. It's almost as if being a misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore. It just becomes another mundane everyday action. It shouldn't be, but you're redefining it to be.
- mdisraeli 13y ago
  "misogynist doesn't take any effort whatsoever anymore" You mean it ever actually took effort? The truth is that our entire society is misogynist. I'm a woman, and I do my upmost to not be, but /because society itself is screwed/, even I can't avoid being misogynist occasionally. In this particular case, you're thankfully calling the actions of men "overreactions", but that EXACT word is used to belittle women the world over, in exactly this same way. Wanting people to be decent human beings is "overreacting". Wanting people to check for consent before buying them drinks, or walking them home, or coming into their house... overreacting. And that's not even going into the gender aspects of calling a man that.

pepve 13y ago

I read some of the comments on the pull request and the commits. This is the worst part of Github, these kinds of public massive flame wars, complete with animated gifs. I think Github should have moderation features for situations like this. Even though they're not common, they're damaging the constructive atmosphere that's usually present.

davorak 13y ago

If you maintain a flagship open source project for you company, you are not just a programmer. You are a public representative of the company. So as a company representative it seems reasonable to be fired for either directly going against a known view point of the company, or being ignorant of view points you are supposed to representing(after reasonable opportunity to learn what they are.) It seem reasonable to fired for not representing a company the way it wants to be represented when part of the job is to represent that company.

olefoo 13y ago

This should be a reminder to everyone that your public actions on public code repositories can carry consequences. That said, I personally approve of the work that people like Ashe Dryden, Coda Hale and others have been doing to help the tech industry grow up. We need to move beyond the time when mastering this weeks hot skill entitles you to act like a jerk. And if making it known that acting like a jerk in public will get you fired from the places where you'd like to work is one of the things that it takes to effect that change; that is a positive development.

RivieraKid 13y ago

> we believe that empathy is a core engineering value What?? That's pure BS. Is empathy a political value? Or a filmmakers' or writers' value? And what about honesty or team spirit? Are they core engineering values?

heterogenic 13y ago

What we really need here is some kind of blind poll, with results aggregated into two buckets: "Female developers who have worked in the valley." and "Everyone else". I think the HN community might be surprised by the results. As a female developer, I assert that you haven't a clue what you're talking about, and you don't understand what it's like to work in this industry as a woman. First, try listening. Then, try observing your workplace and peers. Finally, consider what Ben's actions (particularly his refusal to accept feedback or accept reality) have unveiled about his biases and daily behavior.

knowitall 13y ago
So have you been using "they" in you comments from the very beginning, or have you used "she", or "he"?
- heterogenic 13y ago
  I can't find any examples of a pronoun in my personal repository or work repository, but in a few bug submissions I say "she". But if anyone ever challenged me on it, or suggested it was inappropriate, or rejected a pull request, I'd _totally_ understand. Just as if I accidentally said something which was accidentally racist or ethnocentric. It's not about the original "he", it's about the rejection of active inclusion. edit: Scanned my whole code tree and ticket database, and found 7 "she"'s, 5 "he"'s and 8 "they"'s. The gendered pronouns were all referring to specific people, except for one "she", referring to a hypothetical external API customer. I've just patched it to "they". Of course, my team works for a female CTO (me) and is ~50/50 m/f, so we are very much not representative. But since this was totally unplanned, this suggests a curious corollary that the absence of default-masculinity seems to be at least be correlated with gender equality in an office.
  - knowitall 13y ago
    It's not that surprising that the presence of a diverse mix of people makes it likely for imaginary people to be less stereotyped. I must admit as a non-native speaker, I am still not quite sure how to properly use "they". I wasn't aware of the possibility before this discussion occurred.

prolways 13y ago

Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still considered grammatically incorrect? If gendered pronouns are such a big issue why is there no effort to make a lasting official solution by updating the standards of English? I know most of my school teachers would not have let me written "they/them" in this situation. Have things changed and "they" is now acceptable? I think the only correct solution available today which sounds decent at all is to say "the user".

rsynnott 13y ago
> Isn't using "them/they" in the singular to avoid gendered pronouns still considered grammatically incorrect? No. Singular they has never been grammatically incorrect. The frequency of its use has simply varied throughout the years. For what it's worth, singular they seems to predate gender-neutral 'he' in written English.

rickbeerendonk 13y ago

Not a motivation for non-native speakers to contribute to English dominated open-source.

acdha 13y ago
Your argument apparently being that non-English speakers are just incurably rude? The problem wasn't the minor doc change but how it was handled – less capable speakers might make a mistake but a simple “oh, thanks for the correction” avoids any problem.

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sergiotapia 13y ago

>But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. Sounds like a fun place to work!

AwesomeTogether 13y ago

makes me sick to see the mob get its way.

xs_kid 13y ago

Obviously Node.js isn't a community project, it's a Joyent project and this is a clear confirmation of it.

forgottenpass 13y ago
Oh, I wouldn't say that. The clear confirmation came from the introduction of the CLA. Regardless of how free the license is (or which type of freedoms you want from a license) once you make one party more equal than all others the pretense of "community project" goes out the window. That's not to say people outside the company can't be highly involved and feel like they have an ownership stake in productive way. Just that when push comes to shove they find out they don't have an ownership stake. See: The Hudson/Jenkins split.

mdisraeli 13y ago

Putting aside gender theory, there is a much simpler issue here. This is the same issue that affects wikipedia. Writing that deny took more effort than just allowing the change. If it really was trivial, then there is no harm in accepting it. Denying it is shouting down someone's effort to improve the project. It destroys community rather than builds.

banachtarski 13y ago

Lol. Joyent, the people who tried to optimize their whole product around nodejs because it was hip is now creating excessive coverage with pretty extreme language to paint themselves as the "White knight" of the tech world. Lame company is lame.

hackula1 13y ago

Ben is not a Joyent employee, but a Strongloop employee/cofounder. I Cannot say I am terribly surprised. Strongloop has rubbed me the wrong way from the very beginning. Since they have launched, they have displayed all the integrity of a used car salesman. I know they have some very strong core devs, and I know they are not all like this, but their public image has been max-sleaze ever since they started marketing in shady ways suggesting that they were the creators of node.js.

mdisraeli 13y ago

Because no-one's posted it yet, Tom Scott has a great video on grammatical gender that is worth a watch: http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk http://youtu.be/46ehrFk-gLk

mseepgood 13y ago

It's 2013. Some people in the open source community seem to still live mentally in the 1950s.

gizmo686 13y ago

>to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense. ... the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. So what. The request was rejected on the principle of it being trivial: > Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. [1] I can find no mention in the discussion of anyone arguing against the change on the grounds that gendered pronouns are preferable. We can still argue over wheather this is a good reason to reject a pull request. Personally, I think that trivial requests should be accepted if for no other reason than to be welcoming to newcomers who are testing the waters before becoming active. However, accepting pull requests takes time, and one might not want to encourage a community to spam oneself with minor corrections. Furthermore, in this particular example, the proposed changes were grammatically incorrect, as the object itself is the singular "user", while the new pronoun is the plural "they/them". This could easily be resolved by making user plural, or avoiding the pronoun altogether, but this still takes more of the maintainers time. Notwithstanding that, it seems completely dishonest to frame the original dispute as Ben Noodhuis objecting to removing gendered pronouns on principle. [1] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...

__pThrow 13y ago

It's shocking for many reasons that Joyent thinks its reasonable to fire an employee over something as trivial as that pull rejection. Not correct him first, but fire him. Not stand behind him, as in "sometimes we all make errors", but fire him. This is callous, abusive, shocking behavior. Is it a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of Joyent, or their fear of retaliation from the Tech Feminism? This statement of Joyent's should be condemned by anyone who has ever held down a job.

e512 13y ago

I suppose discriminating on sexuality is just fine at Joyent then? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bGkVM...

JohnTHaller 13y ago

For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on the matter thus far: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... "@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert. Isaac, consider yourself chided." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... "Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things. Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc. That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object? Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them. To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field? I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

tokenadult 13y ago

I scanned the comments here to see if anyone has brought up data about the underlying linguistic issue. I call baloney on the silly idea that "gendered pronouns" make life better or worse for anyone in actual society as contrasted with "nongendered pronouns." What is my evidence? I speak the world's most-spoken language (the only language that arguably has more speakers than English, namely Modern Standard Chinese) and it has totally nongendered pronouns. There is not a distinction in spoken Chinese[1] between "he," "she," or "it," as the language has just one third-person singular pronoun, namely tā. But my wife, who grew up in Chinese-speaking society and has since lived in English-speaking society, and I, who have lived in both places, think it is ludicrous to suppose that Chinese-speaking society is "less sexist" in any systematic way just because of the pronoun system of Chinese. Pronouns appear to make no difference at all. The map is not the territory. On this issue, languages appear to vary arbitrarily with no particular influence on social custom, and not much influence from social notions of male or female superiority or inferiority. Gendered pronouns don't matter for anything important. It is an extraordinary claim to say that they do. People who make extraordinary claims should bring along extraordinary evidence to back up those claims. [1] Under Western influence, after extensive contact with speakers of Indo-European languages and translation of books from those languages into Chinese, the Chinese writing system has sometimes distinguished written forms '他,'她,' and '它' for "he," "she," and "it," but all are pronounced /tā/ in speech and this distinction has to be painstakingly learned by Chinese children in school, with many native speakers of Chinese confusing the pronouns of English as to gender for years after learning them. For example, I have heard plenty of Chinese-language conversations in which someone describes a situation involving men and women and then starts speaking about individual persons in the situation as he/she did this or that to him/her, and sometimes a listener breaks into the conversation with "male or female?" to keep track of who is whom. And I've heard plenty of Chinese speakers talk about "my sister . . . he is" or "my brother . . . she is" and so forth, making clear that their brains don't distinguish pronouns by grammatical gender in any language.

iterationx 13y ago

Would the commit have happened if the offending pronoun was 'she' instead of 'he'? This is speculation but it seems clear that the pronoun 'she' would have been allowed to remain, because it is as a sign of progressiveness and inclusiveness, but 'he' is a sign on retrograde patriarchal medievalism that must be combated with our every waking breath, if you don't agree you are clearly a misogynist bigot.