This is such a weird thing for the dev to decide to die on. I understand, although i don’t agree, with the “there are TWO genders” issue, and the desire for folks who are in that genre of people to avoid the whole thing, perhaps even forcefully. I don’t understand why including women, one of the two genders they do approve of, is considered overly “political”. How dare someone suggest girls might like tech? Ridiculous!
I almost get the first instance, as a mistaken attempt to not support trans folks (which, again, is stupid anyway) but the constant rejection means they are CLEARLY just misogynists.
To be fair, it’s also kinda dumb to point out something as an issue when it clearly wasnt, and saying “assuming the user/developer if the OS is a male” means that the person complaining is assuming that this dev was assuming something because he used the word he.
The issue was that the person decided that it bothered them so much that they needed to ask the dev to change it.
This has idiots on both sides written all over. Why is that person being nitpicky over something so stupid. Women use she/her in their writing all the time, just like men use he/him, and people with other pronouns are more likely to use what is familiar to them such as they/them.
I say this as someone with a child that has been reading books to them and noticed that an authors gender and the pronouns they use seem to correlate more often than not. Unless the book focuses on topics of or relating to understanding and accepting the differences in people. Both people are dumb in this scenario.
Edit: let me put things into a perspective that maybe some of you can understand. Let’s take anything related to gender or being PC out of the equation.
I ask you to make a change to your documentation because I don’t like the way you said something, then accuse you of being or believing a certain kind of way because of the grammar you used.
That is what this person did.
Now let’s assume (yeah I said it) for the sake of my argument that the person doesn’t feel any kind of way about the thing that they were accused of being. I’m pretty sure that person might just take offence to that. Which in this case is exactly what happened.
Had there just been a change that said something along the lines of just a simple grammatical correction. It probably would have be pushed and ignored.
In this case the dev definitely seemed like an ass, but that’s not the point. The point is the whole fucking situation is stupid.
Obviously. It was a nice small PR to fix a typo and a pronoun in a readme file. This is the kind of change where you just press Accept, Merge, and go on with your life.
I don’t think it’s “kinda dumb” to point out the issue all, unless you’re an insufferable twatwaffle like 90% of the fucking STEM community in 2024, who can never be wrong or challenged.
Like, I’d consider myself pretty progressive, maybe even “woke” if that still has any meaning left, and even I might have just used male pronouns because I myself am male;’not for malicious reasons but just because I wasn’t thinking in that moment.
But if I was like “oh yeah, that makes sense, and cool you even did the work of fixing it for me! Merged.” and went about my day, no one would have brigaded me, no one would have posted it all over socials, there wouldn’t be blogs and articles, and I’d probably have a leg to stand on if anyone still wanted to make a big deal.
The way this dude reacted was a self-report. The community was right to push back, even if some people ended up taking it too far.
The original text had ‘he’ where ‘it’ was correct. Which supports part of your premise.
They also merged a change request that changed those instances alongside ‘they’ instances. I don’t know if the original author and denier was involved, but it’s certainly important context missing from OP blog post.
The guy is German, and the German language traditionally uses generic masculine pronouns, although that has become a big political issue in the past years. Some new gender-neutral forms have developed, but some of them have even been banned by the “center”-right-wing clowns in two state governments, and it’s all a bit of a mess. The guy probably thoght “they” in English is a similarly experimental concept, and while it’s still dumb and he should just try to be as inclusive as possible, it’s probably not a matter of him purposefully excluding women from the documentation.
That makes more sense i guess, although even with that context as you said, it is still dumb. It’s political in the US as well to use non gendered pronouns. It’s generally aimed at hurting trans folks more than anything or anyone else.
I could see the first time having it be a flippant meh response, but multiple times? Having had it explained clearly? Someone else has however said it has been fixed now.
People can change, so my current plan is to assume things are better, cautiously, and hope they continue on a more pleasant path.
This is such a weird thing for the dev to decide to die on. I understand, although i don’t agree, with the “there are TWO genders” issue, and the desire for folks who are in that genre of people to avoid the whole thing, perhaps even forcefully. I don’t understand why including women, one of the two genders they do approve of, is considered overly “political”. How dare someone suggest girls might like tech? Ridiculous! I almost get the first instance, as a mistaken attempt to not support trans folks (which, again, is stupid anyway) but the constant rejection means they are CLEARLY just misogynists.
To be fair, it’s also kinda dumb to point out something as an issue when it clearly wasnt, and saying “assuming the user/developer if the OS is a male” means that the person complaining is assuming that this dev was assuming something because he used the word he.
The issue was that the person decided that it bothered them so much that they needed to ask the dev to change it.
This has idiots on both sides written all over. Why is that person being nitpicky over something so stupid. Women use she/her in their writing all the time, just like men use he/him, and people with other pronouns are more likely to use what is familiar to them such as they/them.
I say this as someone with a child that has been reading books to them and noticed that an authors gender and the pronouns they use seem to correlate more often than not. Unless the book focuses on topics of or relating to understanding and accepting the differences in people. Both people are dumb in this scenario.
Edit: let me put things into a perspective that maybe some of you can understand. Let’s take anything related to gender or being PC out of the equation.
I ask you to make a change to your documentation because I don’t like the way you said something, then accuse you of being or believing a certain kind of way because of the grammar you used.
That is what this person did.
Now let’s assume (yeah I said it) for the sake of my argument that the person doesn’t feel any kind of way about the thing that they were accused of being. I’m pretty sure that person might just take offence to that. Which in this case is exactly what happened.
Had there just been a change that said something along the lines of just a simple grammatical correction. It probably would have be pushed and ignored.
In this case the dev definitely seemed like an ass, but that’s not the point. The point is the whole fucking situation is stupid.
Look… I certainly (particularly verbally) will probably use “he” a lot more than I should… And no one cares.
But if someone makes a PR changing these into “they”, I would reply with “shit, you’re right, this is objectively better, thanks for your work”.
Instead, these contributors get their PR shut down with the most terrible, supremacist excuse. That’s the problem. There’s the true idiot.
Obviously. It was a nice small PR to fix a typo and a pronoun in a readme file. This is the kind of change where you just press Accept, Merge, and go on with your life.
I don’t think it’s “kinda dumb” to point out the issue all, unless you’re an insufferable twatwaffle like 90% of the fucking STEM community in 2024, who can never be wrong or challenged.
Like, I’d consider myself pretty progressive, maybe even “woke” if that still has any meaning left, and even I might have just used male pronouns because I myself am male;’not for malicious reasons but just because I wasn’t thinking in that moment.
But if I was like “oh yeah, that makes sense, and cool you even did the work of fixing it for me! Merged.” and went about my day, no one would have brigaded me, no one would have posted it all over socials, there wouldn’t be blogs and articles, and I’d probably have a leg to stand on if anyone still wanted to make a big deal.
The way this dude reacted was a self-report. The community was right to push back, even if some people ended up taking it too far.
The original text had ‘he’ where ‘it’ was correct. Which supports part of your premise.
They also merged a change request that changed those instances alongside ‘they’ instances. I don’t know if the original author and denier was involved, but it’s certainly important context missing from OP blog post.
The guy is German, and the German language traditionally uses generic masculine pronouns, although that has become a big political issue in the past years. Some new gender-neutral forms have developed, but some of them have even been banned by the “center”-right-wing clowns in two state governments, and it’s all a bit of a mess. The guy probably thoght “they” in English is a similarly experimental concept, and while it’s still dumb and he should just try to be as inclusive as possible, it’s probably not a matter of him purposefully excluding women from the documentation.
That makes more sense i guess, although even with that context as you said, it is still dumb. It’s political in the US as well to use non gendered pronouns. It’s generally aimed at hurting trans folks more than anything or anyone else. I could see the first time having it be a flippant meh response, but multiple times? Having had it explained clearly? Someone else has however said it has been fixed now. People can change, so my current plan is to assume things are better, cautiously, and hope they continue on a more pleasant path.
I wrote elsewhere that based on everything I read about gender the logical conclusion is that there are only two genders. Male and political.