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There seems to be a culture clash on HN. On one side there is California, where "dick wagging" is an unnecessary instance of gendered language, certain to driv

There seems to be a culture clash on HN. On one side there is California, where "dick wagging" is an unnecessary instance of gendered language, certain to drive women out of the tech industry. On the other side there's the rest of the world, where being offended by "dick wagging" seems dazzlingly childish. It's just a penis, most grown men and women know what they are and observe their motions on a daily basis. In Bhutan they draw penises on things for good luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_paintings_in_Bhutan

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ajuc 12y ago
Avoiding gendered words as a recept for more women in IT seems very funny to me. My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. Nobody have a problem with that, and I think there's more women in IT here than in US. It's obviously not the source of problem. The source is people being jerks. You don't fix that by changing the non-jerks language (jerks won't care). In fact nonjerks weren't jerks because they treated women the same as everybody. When you embarass them into treating women differently (more carefully) it becomes more awkward and reminds women more often they are different here. Counterproductive IMHO. Regarding unnessesary vulgarity - it seems weird for me, no matter if it's gendered or not. But people use different styles of communication, that's the diversity people are so proud of. Regarding SQL - yes please. It's a perfectly good wheel, don't reinvent it without a really good reason.
- aninhumer 12y ago
  >My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. >The source is people being jerks. Non-jerks being exclusionary is arguably far more of a problem than isolated jerks. If one person says "lol women suck at computers", they're obviously a moron, and can be dismissed. Whereas if everyone around you subtly assumes that all programmers are male, it's far more hurtful, because they're people that you respect. >When you embarass them into treating women differently Asking for gender neutral language isn't asking people to treat women differently.
  - lucian1900 12y ago
    > If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. But it is almost always male, even in languages that have the concept of neuter. Defaults matter.
  - ajuc 12y ago
    > If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. Well, the option is always there, you can use "The person that is using this application clicks the button X" instead of "User clicks the button X". "Person" is female so you then use female for every verb. It's just longer, inconvenient and sounds like legal text so nobody does it. People just write everything in male versions. Even "Are you sure?" is different depening on gender of "you", and I'm yet to see application that uses anything other than the male version for dialogs (except for the applications that know your gender somehow). I think the distinction beetween using defaults without assuming gender, and assumming gender is important, but some people argue for using the contrived language to not be exclusionary, and that's what I'm against, and what I think is counterproductive. Imagine if everybody talked in legalese when you aproach them, and switched to normal language otherways.
    - aninhumer 12y ago
      Humans are pretty flexible when it comes to language, what sounds awkward or verbose can often become completely natural over time. That said I agree that it's easier to make smaller language changes stick. There might be an alternative way to phrase things neutrally that's easier to say though. (passive?)
      - throwaway981 12y ago
        Yet if neither men nor women wish to change their own language, why must it be changed? Sometimes HN reminds me of Christian missionaries: interposing themselves into foreign cultures that they do not understand and saying "No! No! It's all wrong! You do it our way." It is an ugly kind of imperialism.
fit2rule 12y ago
Myself, I view it not so much as a cultural clash, but rather an academic one. People sometimes just do not know how to describe the phenomena which perplex, enrage, disturb and perturb them so, and the frustration is such that they result to the vulgar form, which .. after all .. is as you say, a fairly universally understood level of concourse and therefore has its appropriate applicability to the conversation, but naturally - since all language is a system of power and control - with the aforementioned risks of offense. Those who choose to react in offense, and those who choose to see the language being used in light of the subject, may well be the end of the conversation. But, this is a language discussion, no? I myself find SQL elegant, whereas compared to the NoSQL DSL's that shizzle the newschool nizzle, shits fucked yo.
throwmastr 12y ago
So now we have learn what to say and what not to say from feminists ? If you take offense at every single fucking thing that's your problem. Want Women in tech, say this and that. I won't. No one with descent background is explicitly trying to keep women from entering tech. In fact, if you are deep in tech no one has time to even make deliberate efforts that. STOP thought policing. Look , this is free country. While I appreciate your sentiment please don't come here for thought policing. Everyone has freedom to say what they want. If you start taking offense for every single thing written I think you are in wrong place. Go back to Reddit. Look , what you have done ? Discussion was good going on with everyone expressing what can and can not be good with SQL and Database until you brought up this stupid gender bias thing. Then there are at least 10 replies explaining why GP's comment is okay or not okay. Please get off from this site and don't waste our time. Dang - You seem to be moderating HN. Can we have policies in place for removing such comments ? It is unnecessary distraction.
- dang 12y ago
  This is one of those situations where it's impossible to point out the problem in the thread without adding to it. In the future, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com instead; it will get to us sooner and more reliably anyhow. I've detached this subthread and marked it off-topic.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ajuc 12y ago

Avoiding gendered words as a recept for more women in IT seems very funny to me. My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. Nobody have a problem with that, and I think there's more women in IT here than in US. It's obviously not the source of problem. The source is people being jerks. You don't fix that by changing the non-jerks language (jerks won't care). In fact nonjerks weren't jerks because they treated women the same as everybody. When you embarass them into treating women differently (more carefully) it becomes more awkward and reminds women more often they are different here. Counterproductive IMHO. Regarding unnessesary vulgarity - it seems weird for me, no matter if it's gendered or not. But people use different styles of communication, that's the diversity people are so proud of. Regarding SQL - yes please. It's a perfectly good wheel, don't reinvent it without a really good reason.

aninhumer 12y ago
>My language forces you to add gender-dependent postfixes to every verb and noun. If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. >The source is people being jerks. Non-jerks being exclusionary is arguably far more of a problem than isolated jerks. If one person says "lol women suck at computers", they're obviously a moron, and can be dismissed. Whereas if everyone around you subtly assumes that all programmers are male, it's far more hurtful, because they're people that you respect. >When you embarass them into treating women differently Asking for gender neutral language isn't asking people to treat women differently.
- lucian1900 12y ago
  > If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. But it is almost always male, even in languages that have the concept of neuter. Defaults matter.
- ajuc 12y ago
  > If there's truly no gender neutral way of saying something, then I'd imagine that people always use one gender for generic cases, and as such it's not exclusionary. Which is different from having the option and not using it. Well, the option is always there, you can use "The person that is using this application clicks the button X" instead of "User clicks the button X". "Person" is female so you then use female for every verb. It's just longer, inconvenient and sounds like legal text so nobody does it. People just write everything in male versions. Even "Are you sure?" is different depening on gender of "you", and I'm yet to see application that uses anything other than the male version for dialogs (except for the applications that know your gender somehow). I think the distinction beetween using defaults without assuming gender, and assumming gender is important, but some people argue for using the contrived language to not be exclusionary, and that's what I'm against, and what I think is counterproductive. Imagine if everybody talked in legalese when you aproach them, and switched to normal language otherways.
  - aninhumer 12y ago
    Humans are pretty flexible when it comes to language, what sounds awkward or verbose can often become completely natural over time. That said I agree that it's easier to make smaller language changes stick. There might be an alternative way to phrase things neutrally that's easier to say though. (passive?)
    - throwaway981 12y ago
      Yet if neither men nor women wish to change their own language, why must it be changed? Sometimes HN reminds me of Christian missionaries: interposing themselves into foreign cultures that they do not understand and saying "No! No! It's all wrong! You do it our way." It is an ugly kind of imperialism.

fit2rule 12y ago

Myself, I view it not so much as a cultural clash, but rather an academic one. People sometimes just do not know how to describe the phenomena which perplex, enrage, disturb and perturb them so, and the frustration is such that they result to the vulgar form, which .. after all .. is as you say, a fairly universally understood level of concourse and therefore has its appropriate applicability to the conversation, but naturally - since all language is a system of power and control - with the aforementioned risks of offense. Those who choose to react in offense, and those who choose to see the language being used in light of the subject, may well be the end of the conversation. But, this is a language discussion, no? I myself find SQL elegant, whereas compared to the NoSQL DSL's that shizzle the newschool nizzle, shits fucked yo.

throwmastr 12y ago

So now we have learn what to say and what not to say from feminists ? If you take offense at every single fucking thing that's your problem. Want Women in tech, say this and that. I won't. No one with descent background is explicitly trying to keep women from entering tech. In fact, if you are deep in tech no one has time to even make deliberate efforts that. STOP thought policing. Look , this is free country. While I appreciate your sentiment please don't come here for thought policing. Everyone has freedom to say what they want. If you start taking offense for every single thing written I think you are in wrong place. Go back to Reddit. Look , what you have done ? Discussion was good going on with everyone expressing what can and can not be good with SQL and Database until you brought up this stupid gender bias thing. Then there are at least 10 replies explaining why GP's comment is okay or not okay. Please get off from this site and don't waste our time. Dang - You seem to be moderating HN. Can we have policies in place for removing such comments ? It is unnecessary distraction.

dang 12y ago
This is one of those situations where it's impossible to point out the problem in the thread without adding to it. In the future, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com instead; it will get to us sooner and more reliably anyhow. I've detached this subthread and marked it off-topic.