Comment by glesica
11 years ago
Another offended man checking in. Why is it so hard to accept that sexist language and actions are offensive to men?
I suspect that most people would agree that white people can be offended by the use of terms like "nigger", or jokes about slavery. So then why can't men be offended by misogynistic language or jokes that are likely to create a hostile environment for women?
I clicked, I saw the name and was a little turned off but thought maybe it was just a clever shortening of a reasonable word I hadn't thought of (the way "man" is short for "manual").
Then I saw the "girls are bros too" thing and I realized that nope, the authors are just insensitive at best, jackasses at worst. They saw the complaints coming, but they thought it was more important to make some sort of off-color joke than to have their product taken seriously as the useful tool it could be.
How is "girls are bros too" or the term "bro" an off-color joke or insensitive. Maybe it's just the culture that I come from, but while "bro" certainly can be used to refer to douche-bag college guys it was more often used as "hanging out with my bros" (equivalent to "hanging out with my best friends"), which certainly could be (and for us, it was) gender agnostic.
I think equating "bro" to "nigger" is a huge effort to be offended. I opened the page after reading this comments and expected to see frat insignia, cleavage, etc.... Plain blue on white. Literally 200 comments on this page because they made a clever play on the term "manpages", something that any computer professional recognizes. Truly impressive work by those looking for something to be outraged about.
I like the term "gender agnostic." Perhaps because I am a gender heretic, heh.
In what way is this sexist? There is not a single word of disparagement on that site. Nobody in their right mind would say that the word "bro" is sexist unless they're explicitly looking to be offended. (IE: picking a fight)
The term "bro" has been closely associated in the tech world lately with things like "brogrammer" culture. I don't know whether that was the intended reference in this case (though it seems pretty likely to me that something of the sort was on the authors' minds when they chose the name: why else would the term feel relevant?).
But the real issue isn't "What did they intend?" in any case: it's "What impact might this have on others in our community (or thinking about joining it)?" And intended or not, the name of this tool will call to mind the "brogammer" image for a lot of people. And that image is a significant part of what makes the tech community feel hostile to a lot of women.
And as I've said elsewhere, these issues aren't about people feeling offended. They're about people feeling excluded. There's a tremendous difference.
Here's the problem with your argument: since there's nothing actually hostile towards women on that page, what you're basically saying is that any expression of male culture at all is "hostile". It's like saying "stop being men! it's chasing all the women away!".
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If you're going to police people on their specific word choice over their intent and actual meaning, are you concerned about hurting "innocent" people? Not everyone loads the same baggage onto the word "bro" that you do. If you're the most sensitive person in the room or office, do you set the rules for speech?
Also, the majority of people (both men & women) are hostile to brogrammers so why make it a gender issue?
What's wrong with gendered things? The programming language Julia is female, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. What's wrong with a tool that has a male gendered name?
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In the off-chance that you somehow don't get the really basic implications here, let me explain it on a simple level.
"Bro Pages" associate this piece of software with bros, men. Such an association can imply that the creators and/or user of the pages will be "bros", men, as opposed to women. That could be "just a joke" if you didn't have a significant, visible people of guys who are obnoxious and immature enough to actually be hostile to women participating in programming.
When you have a hostile atmosphere, an overt (if ambiguous) statement that something is for someone else enhances, increases that hostility. A woman who is already facing hostility is certainly not "picking a fight" when she notices that naming something "bro pages" isn't a friendly gesture towards welcoming her. In fact, it is the opposite.
-- And that's not even touching the way "bro" has become synonymous lately with snicker, immature, sexist guys. Even "guy pages", "dude pages" or "pages of men" would be bad.
Ah, that makes sense. Now I understand why Julia is created and used mainly by women, and men who work in majority women environments find /sys so intimidating.
Apparently a more informative name for a good idea would be bad, because IT males can be prone to persecution complexes over simple questions. Hell, we IT folks are defensive enough when questioned about bugs that we are responsible for, much less anything more meta about what we do.
And yes, there is that hostile, defensive atmosphere on full display here.
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how are "man" pages better?
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It is offensive because it has high potential to create a hostile environment for women. This isn't just me and a few people making shit up, read my comment, it's obvious that the authors knew they were on shaky ground. They tried to defuse the situation with a cute little comment, but it would have been better to just change the name.
Read this comment for a better explanation if you're actually confused: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121717
Can you, or somebody, explain to me why it is either a responsibility or moral imperative to make HN, tech, the corner store, or anywhere else, a welcome environment for any particular set of people?
>It is offensive because it has high potential to create a hostile environment for women.
Are you kidding? Maybe if they named it bitchpages instead of bropages. Bro is used in many ways, one of which is as a term of endearment. Even if you take it in the brogrammer context, it's still a derogatory name for men, not women.
TIL that insulting men is misogyny. I guess it's like how when men die in wars, the real victims are still the women safe at home.
What creates a hostile environment for woman is where a sector, made of predominately men is scrutinized with a hysterical "boy who cried wolf" mentality.
It's a vicious cycle.
1. First there is a tiny group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers, call themselves coders, but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. They seem very happy to stir indignation.
2. Then, people in positions of power bend toward the illegitimate trolls who cried wolf. I'm talking, the word "meritocracy" being offensive by github CEO [1], python board members referring to geekfeminism.org as a charter [2] for pycon conferences.
Pack up and go home, these are the leaders, the chiefs, the alphas of engineers - and they are cowing down to politically correct trolls on twitter, who aren't even participants to the causes.
Twitter and blogs allow anyone to claim to be anything. You used to need a degree to Marketer! Now any girl with an iPhone can be one! Twitter lets anyone call themselves a programmer.
However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people!
What is really creating a hostile work environment for woman? I can tell you, men who stay silent watching this bogus stuff happen, woman with legitimate skill and talent may be cast off as a liability.
Consider this: if you are a woman, and you would let a bad joke ruin someone's life, or abuse politically correct sympathy as a female to get benefits - is that going to help your cause? If you are a leader or boss, and you let these trolls shape you - You lack backbone. I feel this is a lack of integrity, and they're not fit to lead.
I hope leaders set an example and not feed these attention trolls and call their crap out. These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong.
[1]: https://twitter.com/defunkt/statuses/426104782894284800 [2]: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct
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It's offensive in the same way it's offensive for a young man to attend a computer science class. It increases the maleness of a space.
I don't think it's sexist; I'm still turned off by the word "bro".
Are you seriously putting words "bro" and "nigger" in same category? Do you miss some screws in your head?
Nope, that wasn't my point at all, and I was very clear about it. If you had read the GP, you'd know that the claim I was objecting to was that it is somehow invalid for men to object to sexism. I used racism as an example because it is somewhat less controversial, and I used an extreme example to make the point crystal clear.
Such comments has a high potential to create a hostile environment for discussion. You don't get to decide if people will interpret your post as you putting "bro" and "nigger" in same category. Now some will be offended and hurt.
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> Another offended man checking in.
And yet you typed out a racist, highly offensive word (far more offensive than "bro" I'm pretty sure) in your own 2nd paragraph.
Are you joking? Seriously, I recently confused a sarcastic comment for a serious one on HN, so I'm asking honestly. Because if you're serious, then I just don't know where to start. I'll keep it short. Using a term to facilitate a discussion of that term is completely and entirely different from using it in other ways. I assumed the intellectual maturity of this audience was higher than it would be on, say, Reddit. Perhaps I was wrong.
> Using a term to facilitate a discussion of that term is completely and entirely different from using it in other ways.
Side comment: The technical term for this is the "use-mention distinction". When you're dealing with rational people who don't understand the distinction (taking offence at your mention of a word as if you had used the word), explaining the distinction often helps, and the discussion is able to proceed. Doesn't help as much when dealing with irrational interlocutors, but then, not much does at that point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use-mention_distinction
No I'm not joking. There are many more offended by the word you used than the word 'bro'. The discussion is not about race nor that word so it's not relevant.
Next time you argue over such an intellectually deep matter such as whether the word 'bro' may be offensive or not, you may wish to be a bit more cautious about the use of such words.
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He placed it in double quotation marks. That means that his reference was to the word itself as a syntactical construct. It carries no implications regarding the semantics of the word and does not imply any opinion on whether the word should be used in normal communication (i.e. without quotes).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...
I clicked, I saw the name and was a little turned off but thought maybe it was just a clever shortening of a reasonable word I hadn't thought of (the way "man" is short for "manual").
It's really just one of those clever little puns that Unix is known for.
e.g. "more" is a paging utility ... "less" is an alternative one, even though it doesn't show you less of the file.
"elm" is a mail reader, "pine" is a different mail reader, and they are both trees.
"man" is short for manual. Man is also the word for a male human being. "Bro" is another, affectionate word to describe a male human being.
Just another pun, not a dark scheme to alienate women from the programming world. And certainly not misogynistic language or jokes that are likely to create a hostile environment for women.
There are some possible package names that would be sexist and anti-women. This isn't one of them.
Thanks, I come to HN to see the N-word... you've made my day.
for a man to be offended by this FOR the sake of women, you must be one pussy whipped mofo.
let the down votes commence.
I believe that Hacker News is worse off when it includes comments like yours. I don't know or care who you're talking to, the tone of what you're saying drags a good forum down past Reddit and into talk radio call-in territory. And even without the tone, the premise is puerile and an insult to good faith discussions.
Sometimes, a thing just stinks. It doesn't matter which way the wind blows the stink, it stinks. Your comment stinks.
So because I find words and actions that might belittle another person offensive, there's something wrong with me? What would you call me if I objected to a racist joke? Would you claim that I was somehow "whipped" by the targeted minority group? Considering the feelings of others is not a defect, it's part of our humanity.
Good on your for sticking up to these jackasses. I've long since given up arguing it here, but it makes me so happy to see folks like you and others in this thread shouting these idiots down.
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using the word 'bro' doesn't belittle anybody. and if you objected to a racist joke, I would think you're a bitch but probably would politely ask you to leave my circle of friends.
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Your post still being +ve is proof that voting on HN is totally broken.
hit a little too close to home?