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Oh dear God. This is what we've sunk to? Saying we'd love to fire some "asshole" because he chose not to pull a pull request changing two instances of "him" t

by jnbiche 13y ago

Oh dear God. This is what we've sunk to? Saying we'd love to fire some "asshole" because he chose not to pull a pull request changing two instances of "him" to "they"? First, let me get it out of the way that I actually agree with the pull request. In this day, the personal pronoun "they" makes a more inclusive pronoun that just "him". Zed Shaw's suggestion of "you" is also a good alternative, particularly if you're wanting to be less formal. That said, let me note that many of us were taught in school that using "he" here is the preferred pronoun. And that's just one reason why I can imagine why someone would reject this pull request. Because as much as I agree with the PR, I have the ability to conceive of other perspectives. We have no idea why Ben chose to reject the request. 1. Maybe he thought it was incorrect grammar. I disagree, since there's a strong history of singular, third-person use of "they" in English. But it's what we were taught. 2. Maybe he's overwhelmed with issues and pull requests, and thinks this is too trivial of a matter and doesn't want to encourage this kind of contribution to the project. 3. I can think of about 3-4 other valid reasons, but I won't bore you. Bottom line, this has all the characteristics of a witch hunt. Joyent is OK with taking away a man's livelihood because he chose not to accept a two-word commit, and one that didn't even deal with code? Not only that, but to publically call him an asshole? I'm all for making small steps toward gender equality like this one, but calling someone who doesn't share that opinion vulgar names and wanting to fire them is an altogether inappropriate move.

yeukhon 13y ago
I am just afraid there is going to be a retaliation against Ben. Remember what happened early this year at PyCon? Honestly, people need to stop acting like animals and stop bash him out. There are other contributors who can rule him out and we don't need those hash comments. Sexism is not about woman. When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. And since there are more and more single fathers we should be allowed to call a nation "he" instead of "she". I often write in HN with the phrase "but your average uncle joe..." and this is sexist. So one day I will be asked to write "your average auntie Mary" or better yet "your average consumer." Freedom of press should be honored. If I were an author and I like to write with "he" instead of "they" I should have that freedom. Yes, the project is owned by contributors. So like I said, let other contributors rule him out. And why do we have sexism in the first place? Because we all assume to have some roles in this society. Today women want the same rights that men do, but there are also rights that men don't get easily (or assume to have less). For example, raping a woman is a big crime but raping a man, have you ever heard of that? Sure. But to some people that's less severe than raping a woman. I am just stating the obvious. In some countries, raping a man is a less severe crime. And law is making a sexist decision. I believe in people's performance over gender. All points from either side will draw to the same root cause: we want to be superior. We want to demonstrate that we are superior. We don't really want to be equal, we just want to be superior. If you think about it a moment - that's really where sexism lies. Because there are fewer woman in engineering, we ought to demonstrate our success and ability too. I have bias, yes, because I am a man. Who doesn't? But I see performance. My sister is very capable and more capable than I am. I always look up to her. And yes, the solution is to make gender neutral but we are looping between anti-sexist and feminism. There is often a confusion between what a feminist, a sexist or an anti-sexist person would do... We need Yi-Yang logo here. -- EDIT -- I just thought this is a legitimate question to ask: any difference between an anti-sexist and a feminist? Do feminists prefer gender neutral or do they prefer to have "she" instead?
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Any reaction should be towards Joyent - not Ben. What we have learnt is that the CEO of Joyent is prone to over-reacting and will fire people over nothing. So don't work for Joyent as there is no job security when you can be fired for a commit. If you're a Joyent employee and you're not part of the Node.js groupie love-fest, better spend your holiday looking for a new job. Imagine a lunch-time conversation over the Affordable Care Act, would you dare voice your opinion? To Bryan Cantrill, just because you're the boss doesn't mean you can fire at will, without cause, and ruin a programmer's life, unless that is you like the idea of a lawsuit and getting into the press since literally nobody is talking about Joyent and SmartOS anymore.
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I don't agree with you at all. Ben's dismissive attitude, and yours, is exactly the issue tech-communities needs to tackle & extinguish. No, sed 's/him/them/' isn't going to suddenly make the world a better place but it's the thought that counts. Every small step counts. Ben's attitude about it, just closing the PR and claiming not to be concerned with trivial matters is something that at least needed a serious HR sensitivity discussion. Firing Ben for it is extreme, but not unreasonable if a company wanted to send a pro-diversity message; albeit extreme. These kinds of actions also provide a good filter for future employees. If you're so bothered by Joyent's blog post that you won't work there and you tell others to quit, it's probably better for Joyent not to have you as an employee to begin with. +1 on that PR and on Joyent's blog post. EDIT: Stories about sexism & racism, minor or major, in the tech-scene almost always disappear off HN's front page in like 2 minutes. That's another symptom of a problem as far as I'm concerned.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      I think you have a fair point. HR issue. For an employee this is a big red flag - now Ben's employer will probably receive some angry emails this weekend and Ben will probably face some angry comments this weekend too. Nasty situation. If we do let Ben be a good man as he claims to be, then maybe it was a stupidity to rule out the ticket so quickly. How would a clever "sexist" person do? This "sexist" person would probably say "well, I don't like they. Not the way my teacher taught me grammar. Rephrase the whole sentence." Or just don't bother deal with any pull request related to sexist. But I agree with the parent. The CEO is afraid of any negativity. This is a typical way people handle crisis - find someone responsible and fire that person. A true heroic responsible CEO should first accept / address issue with the PR, then if the community thinks "YES DO IT" then accept the pull request and requires at least 2 contributors with sign off privilege to accept a pull request from that point onward. Firing someone quickly is the worst way to be a boss.
mcv 13y ago
If he's overwhelmed, why would he go to the extra effort of reverting the commit? He didn't just not pull, he reverted it when someone else pulled it. That means he does care. He cares enough to enforce gendered pronouns in the face of others who prefer neutral pronouns.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  >If he's overwhelmed, why would he go to the extra effort of reverting the commit? For a possible answer to this (admittedly rhetorical) question, please re-read my comment, particularly the lines "...doesn't want to encourage this kind of contribution to the project." Some developers cleverly attach their name to famous project "Contributors" lists by making small grammar changes to the documentation, and then put it on their CV. In my mind, that's actually not a bad thing, since documentation is improved and everyone benefits. But I can understand that some developers may not think that such recognition is deserved. He may have reverted because it might have appeared that Isaac was trying to bullishly overrule him in violation of project guidelines (I'm not sure whether that's actually true, but it may have appeared as such).
  - mcv 13y ago
    Excluding contributors simply because you want to feel like you're part of some exclusive group, is possibly even more harmful to open source projects than insisting on gender-exclusive language. People who improve the code or documentation, even if it's in some really minor way you don't care about, are vital to any open source project. If you exclude them, you're voting for your project to remain small and irrelevant.
- NhanH 13y ago
  He explicitly stated the reason for that in his revert: either he or another leader (that wasn't the one who did the merge) has to sign off before changes can be merged. He does care, not about the gendered pronouns but rather the principle of commits/ merges in a big project.
ben0x539 13y ago
This is not a witch hunt. This is a blog post. Taking away a man's livelihood by firing them is widely accepted as perfectly normal and reasonable, and hn posters regularly talk about how they wouldn't want certain people working for them. You're making a tone argument about calling someone a vulgar name, as if that is somehow worse or more important than them insisting on contributing to the pervasive exclusionary effect of gendered language.
- Crito 13y ago
  In modern language, "witch hunt" does not literally mean "burn them alive because you believe that they have communed with Lucifer". The Crucible set the tone when it used literal witch hunts in an allegory about the House Un-American Activities Committee which, among other things, had it's hands in blacklisting people accused of being communists.

by jnbiche 13y ago

yeukhon 13y ago

I am just afraid there is going to be a retaliation against Ben. Remember what happened early this year at PyCon? Honestly, people need to stop acting like animals and stop bash him out. There are other contributors who can rule him out and we don't need those hash comments. Sexism is not about woman. When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. And since there are more and more single fathers we should be allowed to call a nation "he" instead of "she". I often write in HN with the phrase "but your average uncle joe..." and this is sexist. So one day I will be asked to write "your average auntie Mary" or better yet "your average consumer." Freedom of press should be honored. If I were an author and I like to write with "he" instead of "they" I should have that freedom. Yes, the project is owned by contributors. So like I said, let other contributors rule him out. And why do we have sexism in the first place? Because we all assume to have some roles in this society. Today women want the same rights that men do, but there are also rights that men don't get easily (or assume to have less). For example, raping a woman is a big crime but raping a man, have you ever heard of that? Sure. But to some people that's less severe than raping a woman. I am just stating the obvious. In some countries, raping a man is a less severe crime. And law is making a sexist decision. I believe in people's performance over gender. All points from either side will draw to the same root cause: we want to be superior. We want to demonstrate that we are superior. We don't really want to be equal, we just want to be superior. If you think about it a moment - that's really where sexism lies. Because there are fewer woman in engineering, we ought to demonstrate our success and ability too. I have bias, yes, because I am a man. Who doesn't? But I see performance. My sister is very capable and more capable than I am. I always look up to her. And yes, the solution is to make gender neutral but we are looping between anti-sexist and feminism. There is often a confusion between what a feminist, a sexist or an anti-sexist person would do... We need Yi-Yang logo here. -- EDIT -- I just thought this is a legitimate question to ask: any difference between an anti-sexist and a feminist? Do feminists prefer gender neutral or do they prefer to have "she" instead?

yapcguy 13y ago
Any reaction should be towards Joyent - not Ben. What we have learnt is that the CEO of Joyent is prone to over-reacting and will fire people over nothing. So don't work for Joyent as there is no job security when you can be fired for a commit. If you're a Joyent employee and you're not part of the Node.js groupie love-fest, better spend your holiday looking for a new job. Imagine a lunch-time conversation over the Affordable Care Act, would you dare voice your opinion? To Bryan Cantrill, just because you're the boss doesn't mean you can fire at will, without cause, and ruin a programmer's life, unless that is you like the idea of a lawsuit and getting into the press since literally nobody is talking about Joyent and SmartOS anymore.
- smtddr 13y ago
  I don't agree with you at all. Ben's dismissive attitude, and yours, is exactly the issue tech-communities needs to tackle & extinguish. No, sed 's/him/them/' isn't going to suddenly make the world a better place but it's the thought that counts. Every small step counts. Ben's attitude about it, just closing the PR and claiming not to be concerned with trivial matters is something that at least needed a serious HR sensitivity discussion. Firing Ben for it is extreme, but not unreasonable if a company wanted to send a pro-diversity message; albeit extreme. These kinds of actions also provide a good filter for future employees. If you're so bothered by Joyent's blog post that you won't work there and you tell others to quit, it's probably better for Joyent not to have you as an employee to begin with. +1 on that PR and on Joyent's blog post. EDIT: Stories about sexism & racism, minor or major, in the tech-scene almost always disappear off HN's front page in like 2 minutes. That's another symptom of a problem as far as I'm concerned.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    I think you have a fair point. HR issue. For an employee this is a big red flag - now Ben's employer will probably receive some angry emails this weekend and Ben will probably face some angry comments this weekend too. Nasty situation. If we do let Ben be a good man as he claims to be, then maybe it was a stupidity to rule out the ticket so quickly. How would a clever "sexist" person do? This "sexist" person would probably say "well, I don't like they. Not the way my teacher taught me grammar. Rephrase the whole sentence." Or just don't bother deal with any pull request related to sexist. But I agree with the parent. The CEO is afraid of any negativity. This is a typical way people handle crisis - find someone responsible and fire that person. A true heroic responsible CEO should first accept / address issue with the PR, then if the community thinks "YES DO IT" then accept the pull request and requires at least 2 contributors with sign off privilege to accept a pull request from that point onward. Firing someone quickly is the worst way to be a boss.

mcv 13y ago

If he's overwhelmed, why would he go to the extra effort of reverting the commit? He didn't just not pull, he reverted it when someone else pulled it. That means he does care. He cares enough to enforce gendered pronouns in the face of others who prefer neutral pronouns.

jnbiche 13y ago
>If he's overwhelmed, why would he go to the extra effort of reverting the commit? For a possible answer to this (admittedly rhetorical) question, please re-read my comment, particularly the lines "...doesn't want to encourage this kind of contribution to the project." Some developers cleverly attach their name to famous project "Contributors" lists by making small grammar changes to the documentation, and then put it on their CV. In my mind, that's actually not a bad thing, since documentation is improved and everyone benefits. But I can understand that some developers may not think that such recognition is deserved. He may have reverted because it might have appeared that Isaac was trying to bullishly overrule him in violation of project guidelines (I'm not sure whether that's actually true, but it may have appeared as such).
- mcv 13y ago
  Excluding contributors simply because you want to feel like you're part of some exclusive group, is possibly even more harmful to open source projects than insisting on gender-exclusive language. People who improve the code or documentation, even if it's in some really minor way you don't care about, are vital to any open source project. If you exclude them, you're voting for your project to remain small and irrelevant.
NhanH 13y ago
He explicitly stated the reason for that in his revert: either he or another leader (that wasn't the one who did the merge) has to sign off before changes can be merged. He does care, not about the gendered pronouns but rather the principle of commits/ merges in a big project.

ben0x539 13y ago

This is not a witch hunt. This is a blog post. Taking away a man's livelihood by firing them is widely accepted as perfectly normal and reasonable, and hn posters regularly talk about how they wouldn't want certain people working for them. You're making a tone argument about calling someone a vulgar name, as if that is somehow worse or more important than them insisting on contributing to the pervasive exclusionary effect of gendered language.

Crito 13y ago
In modern language, "witch hunt" does not literally mean "burn them alive because you believe that they have communed with Lucifer". The Crucible set the tone when it used literal witch hunts in an allegory about the House Un-American Activities Committee which, among other things, had it's hands in blacklisting people accused of being communists.