7 ms·

Feminism and Programming Languages

48 points by jawngee 13y ago

fosap 13y ago
https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Objectivism-oriented_programming https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Objectivism-oriented_pro... /edit: Also, Java2K. http://esolangs.org/wiki/Java2K http://esolangs.org/wiki/Java2K
morgante 13y ago
This is a joke, right?
- fab13n 13y ago
  I'm not sure, but it seems not to be. That we can't tell whether it's an actual thesis subject or a joke tells something about the state of academic social science... Now, since the underlying question seems to be "why women don't do (computer) science?", I'd like to ask the author: why did _she_ choose to comfort socio-sexual prejudices, by studying such a stereotypically feminine subject as social sciences? Why did _she_ decide not to become a developer, a lumberjack, a surgeon, a mathematician...
southpawgirl 13y ago
Do we really need a genderised programming language? As a female programmer, I don't feel discriminated by current programming styles - I think they fit my brain as well as anyone else's. I am afraid of positive discrimination which puts any minority in a ghetto by highlighting differences who simply aren't there. Programmers come in all shapes, sizes, genders and sexual orientations: in fact, it's one of the charms of the profession. Privilege code quality over oneupmanship and more girls will come (and diversity in general will increase).
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  There's nothing wrong with doing a research project to figure out what a gendered/feminist programming language would be like if it were to exist. Perhaps a little nugget of wisdom might fall out like how men and women tend to navigate differently [1]. [1] http://searchengineland.com/human-hardware-men-women-and-how-we-find-our-way-14359 http://searchengineland.com/human-hardware-men-women-and-how...
  - fosap 13y ago
    Lingua::Romana::Perligata is gendered. I don't see how it is feminist.
  - southpawgirl 13y ago
    Hmm - what about researching how would be a programming language for black people? For lesbians? Does that makes you comfortable?
    - fosap 13y ago
      https://xkcd.com/624/ https://xkcd.com/624/
    - mtrimpe 13y ago
      The differences in cognitive styles between men and women, both when it comes to sex and gender, are actually quite interesting as an area of research. Just because they're being addressed from the angle of feminism and their focus on how many cultural artifacts reflect male dominance in subtle ways doesn't make it any less valid to me.
    - RyanZAG 13y ago
      That's perfectly all right - you can have things specifically for only women, black people or lesbians. In fact you should have those and you'd better support them. Failing to support those kind of movements means your company probably isn't moral. Of course, a programming language created specifically for white males would be both racist and sexist.
      - southpawgirl 13y ago
        True. I'd also moot a programming language for left-handed people. What the heck, a programming language for left-handed people who had a difficult childhood. Or a goth period during their teenager years. Or who are Scottish nationalists. Maybe it's me, maybe it's PCness gone full circle, but to encourage division doesn't seem the way forwards to me.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  Small point of order: a feminist programming language would not be a genderised programming language. Men can be feminists too.
  - d_theorist 13y ago
    That's not a point of order. It's a point of information.
- mrweasel 13y ago
  The article actually sounds a bit sexist. I honestly doubt that any woman who would want to learn to program would be stopped by the style of the existing programming languages.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    I honestly doubt that any woman who would want to learn to program would be stopped by the style of the existing programming languages. Where does the article claim that? Why would you assume that's even the point, when the author explains exactly what the intention is?
    - mrweasel 13y ago
      I simply cannot read any other point into this article. If you want to "create entanglements" in a language, that sound perfectly reasonable, but there's no reason to use the concept of a "feminist programming language". By spliting languages in feminist, imperative, functional, object-oriented, and logic, you're telling me that the four traditional types of programming is somehow not suitable for a feminin mindset. Why else seperate them like that? These seems like a project that has feminism tacked on to it's label for no good reason.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        The idea is applying feminist theory, which (among other things) analyzes the way gender-normativity shapes intellectual constructions, to the field of programming languages, and see what would a programming language derived from that critique look like. By spliting languages in feminist, imperative, functional, object-oriented, and logic, you're telling me that the four traditional types of programming is somehow not suitable for a feminin mindset. I believe the idea of a feminist [X] is not that X is unsuitable for women, but that it was shaped by men (which is true in the case of most programming languages, and probably paradigms). Maybe this doesn't matter, and a programing paradigm made by women would look the same, but you don't know without exploring the possibility. It's similar to Feminist Aesthetics[1], Feminist Epistemology[2], etc. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-aesthetics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-aesthetics/ [2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/
dTal 13y ago
Alan Sokal, is that you?
bencollier49 13y ago
I don't understand the terms she used well enough to work out if this is a joke or not. You will find me in Wikipedia looking up feminist subject-object theory.
- bencollier49 13y ago
  ..which doesn't appear to have much literature behind it. Is this a joke about the objectivisation of women? She appears serious enough in the comments section. It seems a shame to characterise male logic as aristotelian, and the feminist version as holistic. That seems to do a disservice to the vast number of people of both sexes who have pondered the problem. One way or another, I suspect that this will make terrific flame-bait.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    If I'm correct it refers to the preference for men's cognitive style (I perform an action on object X) whereas women's cognitive style tends to focus more on group dynamics (I relate to X and Y through Z.)
    - bencollier49 13y ago
      That actually sounds fairly interesting. Although feminist machine code would be impossible without feminist chips. So she's targeting the wrong thing. She needs to move to analogue computers (or somesuch) before addressing the language, or all she will be doing is creating an essentially male abstraction of female thinking.
    - phoboslab 13y ago
      That sounds really interesting, actually. But, please correct me if I'm wrong, isn't one of the big arguments of feminism that women and men are "the same", i.e. women and men think in the same way and our current differences are only conditioned by society? Wouldn't this feminist programming language imply that this is not actually the case? That men and women truly are different and think in different ways and that this is not (solely) a matter of condition but natural differences in our brains?
Sarien 13y ago
How does this kind of crap make it to the front page? What's next a vegan programming language? Gluten free mathematics? Dear god, for years I have been using a terminal with a black background and I AM WHITE!
- waterlion 13y ago
  > Gluten free mathematics Tell me more.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  I agree completely. I attempted a curve-free and black-on white terminal in my earlier Linux days, and the result was HORRIBLE! This is blatant racism and sexism against white men everywhere.
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  Well, if you think about it, pretty much every modern programming language has been shaped by people who also happen to eat meat. Therefore there will be systemic bias in nearly every programming language toward the "meat-eating" way of thinking, which oppresses vegans and gives meat eaters an unfair advantage when programming in those languages. There is no way to fully remove this bias other than to create a new programming language for vegans, by vegans. For example, in a programming language like C++ or Java, one is not required to think about the consequences of their design decisions. It is possible to design an API in such a way that it causes harm to another person or program, for example not using type safety, or being vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. A vegan programming language would ostensibly prevent such harmful actions by way of its very grammatical and logical structure. It would be next to impossible to write a valid construction in a vegan programming language that causes harm, because you would be required to inform the compiler of your intent. Any such construction would simply be illogical, and cause an error to occur. The differences between a vegan programming language and a non-vegan programming language could even be extended to include political correctness enforcement features. A compiler for a vegan programming language could be designed to include an artificially intelligent runtime library which attempts to decide if the actions of the program could put people or animals at risk to be harmed, and if so, modify the control flow of the program to prevent possible harm from occurring. This is relevant, because computers, and computer software, are being used as components in machines for the food industry (e.g. meat processing plants) as well as militaries (e.g. missile guidance systems.) Disclaimer: I don't eat animals.
manimalcruelty 13y ago
Is this SEO copywriting? "feminist programming language" used 9 times in such a short article.
waterlion 13y ago
> Sapri-Whorf Hypothesis [sic] ... if the hypothesis stands I don't think it does still stand, does it? For an interesting, not-overly-academic look at Sapir-Whorf, I recommend http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/0099505576 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Lan...
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  Language has even been found to influence color perception [1] so in one form or another it most certainly still stands, [1] http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color-perception.html http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color-...
  - waterlion 13y ago
    The book covered that in quite some detail, but I can't remember the specifics. Certainly, there are links between colour perception and language. As I recall (I could be wrong), the author's conclusion is that the ability of someone to think something or understand a concept isn't limited by language. The author of this paper seems to suggest that the means by which we express computer programs have some link to human behaviour (causation in either/both directions). Human behvaiour does, of course, have a massive influence of language. And I think a lot of the natural-language-redefinition and re-framing of concepts by interest groups to achieve their aims have certainly had an effect on society. But I don't think Sapir Whorf is pertinent here. Unless people are learning about the world by reading computer programs. Also, we've had half a century to express programs in all kinds of forms (LISP vs Java vs Prolog spring to mind). I'm not dismissing the potential effect that the gender imbalance has had, or the possibility of future achievements in computer science. I suppose I'll wait and see, firstly if this is a serious and credible paper, and secondly if anything comes out of it. But I don't think it will.
- azernik 13y ago
  Only in very weak formulations - things like language increasing the latency (not in the computer science sense) of specific concepts, or changing the likelihoods with which certain features of an event can be recalled.
detect0 13y ago
This reminds me of a lecture I attended in Berlin by "Alan N. Shapiro". Has anyone else here encountered his work? http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1n5tje/skeptical_about_alan_n_shapiros_work_in_computer/ http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1n5tje/skeptical_ab...
bttf123 13y ago
Having had a cursory look at 'feminist critiques of logic' and 'paraconsistent logic' I am reminded of this post-mordern article generator, complete with citations: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
- tree_of_item 13y ago
  Maybe you should take more than a cursory look. What exactly makes you think these two things have anything whatsoever to do with postmodernism? http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/ Paraconsistency is real branch of mathematical logic, and contrary to popular belief feminism is not a joke either.
clarkm 13y ago
> I am currently exploring feminist critiques of logic Can someone explain this to me? Taken at face value that seems like a ridiculous statement, but I'm assuming there's a lot of context I don't know about. I tried googling for it, but only found stuff like this: http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html which didn't clarify thigns at all. Edit The author clarifies themselves in a comment: > What is a feminist logic is a question I’ve spent the past six months thinking about and researching. There are not a lot of women in philosophy, and there are definitely not a lot of feminist philosophers, so I don’t have a good answer for this question. There is great scholarship talking about weather a feminist logic can build off of formal logic or if it has to reject the laws of identity and create something entirely new. There are solid arguments for both camps, personally I’m swayed by the constructive theories that would build onto formal logic through a feminist lens. There exist logics that handle contradiction as part of the system, namely paraconsistent logic. I think this type of logic represents the feminist idea that something can be and not be without being a contradiction, that is a system where the following statement is not explosive: (p && ¬p) == 1.
- d_theorist 13y ago
  Does that really clarify anything? I can't say I have any clearer idea of what the feminist critique of logic is after reading that. What does paraconsistent logic have to do with feminism?
- fab13n 13y ago
  That's my core problem with her approach: she seems to takes for granted that having limited formal reasoning skills is a defining feature of being female, and therefore must be promoted by feminism. It is to my understanding of feminism what Stephen Colbert is to Republicanism.
  - j2kun 13y ago
    > having limited formal reasoning skills is a defining feature of being female Where does she say this, even implicitly? Questioning the axioms of logical theories is just as much practiced by men, and has a large historical precedent.
duncan_bayne 13y ago
This is not a joke. Well, actually it is, but it's not intended to be. Some background reading: http://www.scribd.com/doc/187505014/Representing-Reason-Feminist-Theory-and-Formal-Logic http://www.scribd.com/doc/187505014/Representing-Reason-Femi... "Many of the analyses reviewed earlier expose the symbolic association be-tween rationality and masculinity. However, since human development is shaped by society and culture, those symbols have repercussions for real, concrete human beings. We are constituted as knowing agents by symbolic representations, social practices, cultural discourses, and our structural positioning. Consequently, the ideal of detachment and the separation of reason from emotion that the rationalist world view promotes have been instrumental in constructing gendered aspects of the social order, in particular the subjectivities of Western privileged white men."
- marvin 13y ago
  In layman's words, a tenet of one part of feminism is that our language is shaped in such a way that it oppresses women and sets men as the ruling part of society. Sort of like the idea in Orwell's 1984 that we modify language to not have the ability to express dissent. This is presumably a suggestion that the same principles be applied to programming languages. I read it as satire of the feminist idea that language is inherently oppressive. Are you sure it's not a joke?
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    I'm not 100% certain, to be honest. The best satire tends to be like that, I guess :)
billpg 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
revelation 13y ago
I think this type of logic represents the feminist idea that something can be and not be without being a contradiction, that is a system where the following statement is not explosive: (p && ¬p) == 1. Ohh, I understand this! It's like in quantum theory or chaos theory, you know, which is why homeopathy works.
- Morendil 13y ago
  She's talking about paraconsistent logics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic Feel better now?
  - revelation 13y ago
    I've been feeling a bit under, but it's better now. Thanks for asking! I recognize you can define your logical axioms as you wish, just as you can mathematical systems. But the question is always going to be: how powerful is your system and what useful things can be derived from it? Judging from the Wikipedia article here, that logic excludes lots of useful things we have come to expect from (you know, useful) logics, starting first and foremost with Gödel's completeness theorem.
    - aeorgnoieang 13y ago
      There's nothing particularly under-powered about para-consistent logics; they're interesting really. But the idea of para-consistent logic somehow being 'feminist' is stupid.
xradionut 13y ago
If this isn't a joke, then Grace Hopper is spinning in her grave.
rjknight 13y ago
I think there's a confusion here, but it's a very interesting one. This article raises the question: 'where do our ideas about what programming languages should be like come from?' The genesis of functional programming is obvious from its name - it is based on the mathematical concept of functions, and languages which are described as 'functional' try to remain close to the ideal of emulating mathematical functions, such that concepts which work in mathematics can be applied in computer programming. There are limits, of course - we need to interact with the world (state) and we have limits on the kinds of things that we can feasibly compute which do not exist in abstract mathematics, but the general principle holds. Object-oriented programming does involve the assumption that we have a system which can be described as a set of objects interacting with each other, which can respond to requests from the user's program. The OP is arguing that this forces the programmer to see the world as a set of objects interacting with each other, or to objectify the world or things in it, in a manner that feminists have long seen as problematic (I don't personally see it as problematic per se, but this is not about me). The OP then suggests that a feminist programming language would offer a different paradigm of non-object-oriented programming. I can think of a few critiques, of varying quality: - There's a difference between object-oriented programming (how to structure a computer program) and object-oriented analysis and design (how to decompose the world into objects in order to represent the world within a computer program). The two tend to go together, but do not have to, and it is perfectly possible to program in an object-oriented manner without objectifying real-world things, e.g. people. The 'Person' object is a very common example in texts teaching people about object-oriented design, but is quite uncommon in real-world programming. - I can, in a certain light, see how feminism and object-oriented analysis might be in tension. I am less clear on how functional programming and feminism might be in tension, but would very much like to know. - I am not sure that calling this language 'feminist' is necessarily a good idea, since one could of course find it to be an excellent programming language without sharing any of the tenets of feminism, and the label actually obscures a lot more than it reveals in this context. It's certainly going to lead to a lower-quality HN thread than if this were a discussion purely about novel programming paradigms. - Of course, one may simply disagree that there's anything particularly wrong with objectification, but at this point we're no longer talking about programming languages. On the other side, this might turn out to be really interesting! We're nowhere near having discovered all of the possible paradigms that might underpin a programming language, and new ideas should be welcomed. The only way to know if a feminist programming language is a good idea is for someone to create one and demonstrate how it can be used. On longer time horizons, many of our current assumptions about how programming works may have to be discarded - the von Neumann architecture and the idea of deterministic, predictable results from computation may prove impossible to scale for certain requirements, so we might have to embrace programming languages that deal better with contradictions and the inability to 'cleanly' categorise things. If feminism's outsider status makes it easier for feminists to think heretical thoughts about computation then perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if feminists are a good source of ideas about these things. (Nor, of course, should we pigeonhole feminists or women in general as purely contradictory thinkers, valuable only insofar as they challenge established paradigms!) EDIT: formatting
auggierose 13y ago
What's next, feminist mathematics?
beloch 13y ago
I'm probably going to regret this, but let's accept the premise that programming languages are both gendered and a product of "the patriarchy" (Sorry, Grace.). How far down does the patriarchy go? Are programming languages like C and Java, which were almost all created by men with awesome beards, inherently patriarchal? As the products of male minds, this is possible. What about assembler? Well, it's pretty much dictated by the design of the processor, which is based upon older processors, and even older processors, etc.. Women helped create these, but they were in the minority. The foundations of computing are math and physics. We exploit the laws of physics to build transistors, and combine these to form flip-flops, gates, etc.. The basic logic that computers are built of is dictated by math. No matter how far I stretch, I just can't see anything gendered in transistors, logic gates, 0's and 1's. If you insist that this is not the case, then you are asking for a new branch of feminist science that has nothing in common with the science we know. Good luck! Next, we can build computer out of our basic pieces. Modern computers are big, complex, beasts, and there is certainly room for the masculine mind to assert itself in how a processor is built. However, we can abstract things a little. Let's just stick to turing machines. Is a turing machine a product of the patriarchy? If no, we can abstract a language and build it to run on a turing machine, which can then be simulated by the processors of the patriarchy, and we're off! If yes, you need to invent a fundamentally new basis for classical computing theory. Good luck! Okay, so if you believe me so far, it should be possible to build a male-cootie free language on top of a simulated turing machine. That's doable... Okay. I'm done. Honestly, I think this kind of study is akin to literary criticism. i.e. It's a lot of pretentious wanking (Sorry about using the crass sexual argot of the patriarchy). However, the essence of academia is throwing a lot of random stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and if some of it's a bit fruity, hey, why not? Fruit can stick to stuff.
- phaemon 13y ago
  So you should regret it. The article never uses the word "patricarchy" even once. What is it about the topic of feminism that turns half of HN into illiterate halfwits? The idea is very simple: programming languages have different philosophies behind their design. Perl would be a good example here. So what would a computer language that was designed from a feminist philosophy look like? Maybe it would be nothing new. Maybe it would be useless. Or maybe it would be great. Who knows till you try it out?
redcat7 13y ago
I know some perks of that language: - time functions would be off - new boolean states: - do as you wish - maybe - I don't know - (true|false) because I say so - objects ending on vowels coundn't be treated as objects
crazychrome 13y ago
Nobody cares about the name, the inventor, the gender, where are you from, what books you have read, how many months you spent. just show me the f* codes! At the end of the day, it's all that matters. seriously though, it's a common problem for new PhD to start from manipulating concepts. we have all being there. in reality, great concepts emerge from practical, concrete and tangible things (in the case of programming, codes).
billyjobob 13y ago
This nonsense is exactly why the humanities should have no place in any scientific institution. They copy the language and structures of science without any understanding, like a cargo cult mimicking an air traffic control tower out of wood (in the hope that it will bring back the cargo planes) because they have no comprehension of the science of how a real tower works and think the form is all that matters.
changwalton 13y ago
Here https://github.com/bodil/BODOL https://github.com/bodil/BODOL is a programming language designed by a woman. I'm not sure I could actually tell that it was designed by a woman.
NAFV_P 13y ago
A feminist processor would be nice.

48 points by jawngee 13y ago

fosap 13y ago

https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Objectivism-oriented_programming https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Objectivism-oriented_pro... /edit: Also, Java2K. http://esolangs.org/wiki/Java2K http://esolangs.org/wiki/Java2K

morgante 13y ago

This is a joke, right?

fab13n 13y ago
I'm not sure, but it seems not to be. That we can't tell whether it's an actual thesis subject or a joke tells something about the state of academic social science... Now, since the underlying question seems to be "why women don't do (computer) science?", I'd like to ask the author: why did _she_ choose to comfort socio-sexual prejudices, by studying such a stereotypically feminine subject as social sciences? Why did _she_ decide not to become a developer, a lumberjack, a surgeon, a mathematician...

southpawgirl 13y ago

Do we really need a genderised programming language? As a female programmer, I don't feel discriminated by current programming styles - I think they fit my brain as well as anyone else's. I am afraid of positive discrimination which puts any minority in a ghetto by highlighting differences who simply aren't there. Programmers come in all shapes, sizes, genders and sexual orientations: in fact, it's one of the charms of the profession. Privilege code quality over oneupmanship and more girls will come (and diversity in general will increase).

mtrimpe 13y ago
There's nothing wrong with doing a research project to figure out what a gendered/feminist programming language would be like if it were to exist. Perhaps a little nugget of wisdom might fall out like how men and women tend to navigate differently [1]. [1] http://searchengineland.com/human-hardware-men-women-and-how-we-find-our-way-14359 http://searchengineland.com/human-hardware-men-women-and-how...
- fosap 13y ago
  Lingua::Romana::Perligata is gendered. I don't see how it is feminist.
- southpawgirl 13y ago
  Hmm - what about researching how would be a programming language for black people? For lesbians? Does that makes you comfortable?
  - fosap 13y ago
    https://xkcd.com/624/ https://xkcd.com/624/
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    The differences in cognitive styles between men and women, both when it comes to sex and gender, are actually quite interesting as an area of research. Just because they're being addressed from the angle of feminism and their focus on how many cultural artifacts reflect male dominance in subtle ways doesn't make it any less valid to me.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    That's perfectly all right - you can have things specifically for only women, black people or lesbians. In fact you should have those and you'd better support them. Failing to support those kind of movements means your company probably isn't moral. Of course, a programming language created specifically for white males would be both racist and sexist.
    - southpawgirl 13y ago
      True. I'd also moot a programming language for left-handed people. What the heck, a programming language for left-handed people who had a difficult childhood. Or a goth period during their teenager years. Or who are Scottish nationalists. Maybe it's me, maybe it's PCness gone full circle, but to encourage division doesn't seem the way forwards to me.
ZoFreX 13y ago
Small point of order: a feminist programming language would not be a genderised programming language. Men can be feminists too.
- d_theorist 13y ago
  That's not a point of order. It's a point of information.
mrweasel 13y ago
The article actually sounds a bit sexist. I honestly doubt that any woman who would want to learn to program would be stopped by the style of the existing programming languages.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I honestly doubt that any woman who would want to learn to program would be stopped by the style of the existing programming languages. Where does the article claim that? Why would you assume that's even the point, when the author explains exactly what the intention is?
  - mrweasel 13y ago
    I simply cannot read any other point into this article. If you want to "create entanglements" in a language, that sound perfectly reasonable, but there's no reason to use the concept of a "feminist programming language". By spliting languages in feminist, imperative, functional, object-oriented, and logic, you're telling me that the four traditional types of programming is somehow not suitable for a feminin mindset. Why else seperate them like that? These seems like a project that has feminism tacked on to it's label for no good reason.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      The idea is applying feminist theory, which (among other things) analyzes the way gender-normativity shapes intellectual constructions, to the field of programming languages, and see what would a programming language derived from that critique look like. By spliting languages in feminist, imperative, functional, object-oriented, and logic, you're telling me that the four traditional types of programming is somehow not suitable for a feminin mindset. I believe the idea of a feminist [X] is not that X is unsuitable for women, but that it was shaped by men (which is true in the case of most programming languages, and probably paradigms). Maybe this doesn't matter, and a programing paradigm made by women would look the same, but you don't know without exploring the possibility. It's similar to Feminist Aesthetics[1], Feminist Epistemology[2], etc. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-aesthetics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-aesthetics/ [2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/

dTal 13y ago

Alan Sokal, is that you?

bencollier49 13y ago

I don't understand the terms she used well enough to work out if this is a joke or not. You will find me in Wikipedia looking up feminist subject-object theory.

bencollier49 13y ago
..which doesn't appear to have much literature behind it. Is this a joke about the objectivisation of women? She appears serious enough in the comments section. It seems a shame to characterise male logic as aristotelian, and the feminist version as holistic. That seems to do a disservice to the vast number of people of both sexes who have pondered the problem. One way or another, I suspect that this will make terrific flame-bait.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  If I'm correct it refers to the preference for men's cognitive style (I perform an action on object X) whereas women's cognitive style tends to focus more on group dynamics (I relate to X and Y through Z.)
  - bencollier49 13y ago
    That actually sounds fairly interesting. Although feminist machine code would be impossible without feminist chips. So she's targeting the wrong thing. She needs to move to analogue computers (or somesuch) before addressing the language, or all she will be doing is creating an essentially male abstraction of female thinking.
  - phoboslab 13y ago
    That sounds really interesting, actually. But, please correct me if I'm wrong, isn't one of the big arguments of feminism that women and men are "the same", i.e. women and men think in the same way and our current differences are only conditioned by society? Wouldn't this feminist programming language imply that this is not actually the case? That men and women truly are different and think in different ways and that this is not (solely) a matter of condition but natural differences in our brains?

Sarien 13y ago

How does this kind of crap make it to the front page? What's next a vegan programming language? Gluten free mathematics? Dear god, for years I have been using a terminal with a black background and I AM WHITE!

waterlion 13y ago
> Gluten free mathematics Tell me more.
hrkristian 13y ago
I agree completely. I attempted a curve-free and black-on white terminal in my earlier Linux days, and the result was HORRIBLE! This is blatant racism and sexism against white men everywhere.
oakwhiz 13y ago
Well, if you think about it, pretty much every modern programming language has been shaped by people who also happen to eat meat. Therefore there will be systemic bias in nearly every programming language toward the "meat-eating" way of thinking, which oppresses vegans and gives meat eaters an unfair advantage when programming in those languages. There is no way to fully remove this bias other than to create a new programming language for vegans, by vegans. For example, in a programming language like C++ or Java, one is not required to think about the consequences of their design decisions. It is possible to design an API in such a way that it causes harm to another person or program, for example not using type safety, or being vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. A vegan programming language would ostensibly prevent such harmful actions by way of its very grammatical and logical structure. It would be next to impossible to write a valid construction in a vegan programming language that causes harm, because you would be required to inform the compiler of your intent. Any such construction would simply be illogical, and cause an error to occur. The differences between a vegan programming language and a non-vegan programming language could even be extended to include political correctness enforcement features. A compiler for a vegan programming language could be designed to include an artificially intelligent runtime library which attempts to decide if the actions of the program could put people or animals at risk to be harmed, and if so, modify the control flow of the program to prevent possible harm from occurring. This is relevant, because computers, and computer software, are being used as components in machines for the food industry (e.g. meat processing plants) as well as militaries (e.g. missile guidance systems.) Disclaimer: I don't eat animals.

manimalcruelty 13y ago

Is this SEO copywriting? "feminist programming language" used 9 times in such a short article.

waterlion 13y ago

> Sapri-Whorf Hypothesis [sic] ... if the hypothesis stands I don't think it does still stand, does it? For an interesting, not-overly-academic look at Sapir-Whorf, I recommend http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/0099505576 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Lan...

mtrimpe 13y ago
Language has even been found to influence color perception [1] so in one form or another it most certainly still stands, [1] http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color-perception.html http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color-...
- waterlion 13y ago
  The book covered that in quite some detail, but I can't remember the specifics. Certainly, there are links between colour perception and language. As I recall (I could be wrong), the author's conclusion is that the ability of someone to think something or understand a concept isn't limited by language. The author of this paper seems to suggest that the means by which we express computer programs have some link to human behaviour (causation in either/both directions). Human behvaiour does, of course, have a massive influence of language. And I think a lot of the natural-language-redefinition and re-framing of concepts by interest groups to achieve their aims have certainly had an effect on society. But I don't think Sapir Whorf is pertinent here. Unless people are learning about the world by reading computer programs. Also, we've had half a century to express programs in all kinds of forms (LISP vs Java vs Prolog spring to mind). I'm not dismissing the potential effect that the gender imbalance has had, or the possibility of future achievements in computer science. I suppose I'll wait and see, firstly if this is a serious and credible paper, and secondly if anything comes out of it. But I don't think it will.
azernik 13y ago
Only in very weak formulations - things like language increasing the latency (not in the computer science sense) of specific concepts, or changing the likelihoods with which certain features of an event can be recalled.

detect0 13y ago

This reminds me of a lecture I attended in Berlin by "Alan N. Shapiro". Has anyone else here encountered his work? http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1n5tje/skeptical_about_alan_n_shapiros_work_in_computer/ http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1n5tje/skeptical_ab...

bttf123 13y ago

Having had a cursory look at 'feminist critiques of logic' and 'paraconsistent logic' I am reminded of this post-mordern article generator, complete with citations: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

tree_of_item 13y ago
Maybe you should take more than a cursory look. What exactly makes you think these two things have anything whatsoever to do with postmodernism? http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/ Paraconsistency is real branch of mathematical logic, and contrary to popular belief feminism is not a joke either.

clarkm 13y ago

> I am currently exploring feminist critiques of logic Can someone explain this to me? Taken at face value that seems like a ridiculous statement, but I'm assuming there's a lot of context I don't know about. I tried googling for it, but only found stuff like this: http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html http://www.indiana.edu/~koertge/rfemlog.html which didn't clarify thigns at all. Edit The author clarifies themselves in a comment: > What is a feminist logic is a question I’ve spent the past six months thinking about and researching. There are not a lot of women in philosophy, and there are definitely not a lot of feminist philosophers, so I don’t have a good answer for this question. There is great scholarship talking about weather a feminist logic can build off of formal logic or if it has to reject the laws of identity and create something entirely new. There are solid arguments for both camps, personally I’m swayed by the constructive theories that would build onto formal logic through a feminist lens. There exist logics that handle contradiction as part of the system, namely paraconsistent logic. I think this type of logic represents the feminist idea that something can be and not be without being a contradiction, that is a system where the following statement is not explosive: (p && ¬p) == 1.

d_theorist 13y ago
Does that really clarify anything? I can't say I have any clearer idea of what the feminist critique of logic is after reading that. What does paraconsistent logic have to do with feminism?
fab13n 13y ago
That's my core problem with her approach: she seems to takes for granted that having limited formal reasoning skills is a defining feature of being female, and therefore must be promoted by feminism. It is to my understanding of feminism what Stephen Colbert is to Republicanism.
- j2kun 13y ago
  > having limited formal reasoning skills is a defining feature of being female Where does she say this, even implicitly? Questioning the axioms of logical theories is just as much practiced by men, and has a large historical precedent.

duncan_bayne 13y ago

This is not a joke. Well, actually it is, but it's not intended to be. Some background reading: http://www.scribd.com/doc/187505014/Representing-Reason-Feminist-Theory-and-Formal-Logic http://www.scribd.com/doc/187505014/Representing-Reason-Femi... "Many of the analyses reviewed earlier expose the symbolic association be-tween rationality and masculinity. However, since human development is shaped by society and culture, those symbols have repercussions for real, concrete human beings. We are constituted as knowing agents by symbolic representations, social practices, cultural discourses, and our structural positioning. Consequently, the ideal of detachment and the separation of reason from emotion that the rationalist world view promotes have been instrumental in constructing gendered aspects of the social order, in particular the subjectivities of Western privileged white men."

marvin 13y ago
In layman's words, a tenet of one part of feminism is that our language is shaped in such a way that it oppresses women and sets men as the ruling part of society. Sort of like the idea in Orwell's 1984 that we modify language to not have the ability to express dissent. This is presumably a suggestion that the same principles be applied to programming languages. I read it as satire of the feminist idea that language is inherently oppressive. Are you sure it's not a joke?
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  I'm not 100% certain, to be honest. The best satire tends to be like that, I guess :)

billpg 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law

revelation 13y ago

I think this type of logic represents the feminist idea that something can be and not be without being a contradiction, that is a system where the following statement is not explosive: (p && ¬p) == 1. Ohh, I understand this! It's like in quantum theory or chaos theory, you know, which is why homeopathy works.

Morendil 13y ago
She's talking about paraconsistent logics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic Feel better now?
- revelation 13y ago
  I've been feeling a bit under, but it's better now. Thanks for asking! I recognize you can define your logical axioms as you wish, just as you can mathematical systems. But the question is always going to be: how powerful is your system and what useful things can be derived from it? Judging from the Wikipedia article here, that logic excludes lots of useful things we have come to expect from (you know, useful) logics, starting first and foremost with Gödel's completeness theorem.
  - aeorgnoieang 13y ago
    There's nothing particularly under-powered about para-consistent logics; they're interesting really. But the idea of para-consistent logic somehow being 'feminist' is stupid.

xradionut 13y ago

If this isn't a joke, then Grace Hopper is spinning in her grave.

rjknight 13y ago

I think there's a confusion here, but it's a very interesting one. This article raises the question: 'where do our ideas about what programming languages should be like come from?' The genesis of functional programming is obvious from its name - it is based on the mathematical concept of functions, and languages which are described as 'functional' try to remain close to the ideal of emulating mathematical functions, such that concepts which work in mathematics can be applied in computer programming. There are limits, of course - we need to interact with the world (state) and we have limits on the kinds of things that we can feasibly compute which do not exist in abstract mathematics, but the general principle holds. Object-oriented programming does involve the assumption that we have a system which can be described as a set of objects interacting with each other, which can respond to requests from the user's program. The OP is arguing that this forces the programmer to see the world as a set of objects interacting with each other, or to objectify the world or things in it, in a manner that feminists have long seen as problematic (I don't personally see it as problematic per se, but this is not about me). The OP then suggests that a feminist programming language would offer a different paradigm of non-object-oriented programming. I can think of a few critiques, of varying quality: - There's a difference between object-oriented programming (how to structure a computer program) and object-oriented analysis and design (how to decompose the world into objects in order to represent the world within a computer program). The two tend to go together, but do not have to, and it is perfectly possible to program in an object-oriented manner without objectifying real-world things, e.g. people. The 'Person' object is a very common example in texts teaching people about object-oriented design, but is quite uncommon in real-world programming. - I can, in a certain light, see how feminism and object-oriented analysis might be in tension. I am less clear on how functional programming and feminism might be in tension, but would very much like to know. - I am not sure that calling this language 'feminist' is necessarily a good idea, since one could of course find it to be an excellent programming language without sharing any of the tenets of feminism, and the label actually obscures a lot more than it reveals in this context. It's certainly going to lead to a lower-quality HN thread than if this were a discussion purely about novel programming paradigms. - Of course, one may simply disagree that there's anything particularly wrong with objectification, but at this point we're no longer talking about programming languages. On the other side, this might turn out to be really interesting! We're nowhere near having discovered all of the possible paradigms that might underpin a programming language, and new ideas should be welcomed. The only way to know if a feminist programming language is a good idea is for someone to create one and demonstrate how it can be used. On longer time horizons, many of our current assumptions about how programming works may have to be discarded - the von Neumann architecture and the idea of deterministic, predictable results from computation may prove impossible to scale for certain requirements, so we might have to embrace programming languages that deal better with contradictions and the inability to 'cleanly' categorise things. If feminism's outsider status makes it easier for feminists to think heretical thoughts about computation then perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if feminists are a good source of ideas about these things. (Nor, of course, should we pigeonhole feminists or women in general as purely contradictory thinkers, valuable only insofar as they challenge established paradigms!) EDIT: formatting

auggierose 13y ago

What's next, feminist mathematics?

beloch 13y ago

I'm probably going to regret this, but let's accept the premise that programming languages are both gendered and a product of "the patriarchy" (Sorry, Grace.). How far down does the patriarchy go? Are programming languages like C and Java, which were almost all created by men with awesome beards, inherently patriarchal? As the products of male minds, this is possible. What about assembler? Well, it's pretty much dictated by the design of the processor, which is based upon older processors, and even older processors, etc.. Women helped create these, but they were in the minority. The foundations of computing are math and physics. We exploit the laws of physics to build transistors, and combine these to form flip-flops, gates, etc.. The basic logic that computers are built of is dictated by math. No matter how far I stretch, I just can't see anything gendered in transistors, logic gates, 0's and 1's. If you insist that this is not the case, then you are asking for a new branch of feminist science that has nothing in common with the science we know. Good luck! Next, we can build computer out of our basic pieces. Modern computers are big, complex, beasts, and there is certainly room for the masculine mind to assert itself in how a processor is built. However, we can abstract things a little. Let's just stick to turing machines. Is a turing machine a product of the patriarchy? If no, we can abstract a language and build it to run on a turing machine, which can then be simulated by the processors of the patriarchy, and we're off! If yes, you need to invent a fundamentally new basis for classical computing theory. Good luck! Okay, so if you believe me so far, it should be possible to build a male-cootie free language on top of a simulated turing machine. That's doable... Okay. I'm done. Honestly, I think this kind of study is akin to literary criticism. i.e. It's a lot of pretentious wanking (Sorry about using the crass sexual argot of the patriarchy). However, the essence of academia is throwing a lot of random stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and if some of it's a bit fruity, hey, why not? Fruit can stick to stuff.

phaemon 13y ago
So you should regret it. The article never uses the word "patricarchy" even once. What is it about the topic of feminism that turns half of HN into illiterate halfwits? The idea is very simple: programming languages have different philosophies behind their design. Perl would be a good example here. So what would a computer language that was designed from a feminist philosophy look like? Maybe it would be nothing new. Maybe it would be useless. Or maybe it would be great. Who knows till you try it out?

redcat7 13y ago

I know some perks of that language: - time functions would be off - new boolean states: - do as you wish - maybe - I don't know - (true|false) because I say so - objects ending on vowels coundn't be treated as objects

crazychrome 13y ago

Nobody cares about the name, the inventor, the gender, where are you from, what books you have read, how many months you spent. just show me the f* codes! At the end of the day, it's all that matters. seriously though, it's a common problem for new PhD to start from manipulating concepts. we have all being there. in reality, great concepts emerge from practical, concrete and tangible things (in the case of programming, codes).

billyjobob 13y ago

This nonsense is exactly why the humanities should have no place in any scientific institution. They copy the language and structures of science without any understanding, like a cargo cult mimicking an air traffic control tower out of wood (in the hope that it will bring back the cargo planes) because they have no comprehension of the science of how a real tower works and think the form is all that matters.

changwalton 13y ago

Here https://github.com/bodil/BODOL https://github.com/bodil/BODOL is a programming language designed by a woman. I'm not sure I could actually tell that it was designed by a woman.

NAFV_P 13y ago

A feminist processor would be nice.