Comment by overgard
11 years ago
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!".
So, we have enough issues with improving women's place in STE. It's not like we need to invent new ways to keep technology male.
I've helped different women with less experience in commandline stuff and linux/unix in general. In the workplace, and with tutoring middle/high school kids of both genders.
If I ever had to say "go check the manpage, and the bropage" I would feel like a huge asshole.
7 replies →
Brogrammer culture is hostile to women (at least in the sense that most women would feel less comfortable in a workplace dominated by that culture). It doesn't sound like you're arguing against that point.
So to the extent that the name of the "bro" command invokes that culture (and that's the point of the joke, right?), it reinforces the association between brogrammer attitudes and tech in general. Embedding that association into the tools we all use seems like a really bad idea. And yes, it could make programming feel one step more hostile for quite a lot of women (and men, for that matter).
Fundamentally, I don't think that either intensely male culture or intensely female culture (or for that matter intensely Democratic culture or intensely Republican culture or intensely Episcopalian culture or...) have any place in a professional environment (unless you're working at a Democratic campaign office or an Episcopalian summer camp or...).
39 replies →
His whole point was that what is on that page IS hostile to many women in the community or thinking about joining it. You don't get to decide what offends or hurts other people. If the authors had wanted this to be a cute in-joke for the bros, then why did they publish it to the entire world? Why not just send it around to their male friends, but use a more appropriate (and they KNEW the name wasn't appropriate because they tried to cutely head off controversy in their examples) name when they launched it to the public?
27 replies →
Exclusion is a better word for what is going on than hostility. The name is based on the homonym between 'man' as short for 'manual' and 'man' as a synonym for 'male'.
Though a tool for manuals the author chose the namesake by the identification with males.
Do you see why this might make some people feel excluded, why if you want to make a tool to help people it's probably a good idea to not exclude people?
Are you saying the name is a good name? Or just defending the right to be exclusionary?
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?
I'm sure some feminist somewhere is offended by it. I mean, we say that we use programming languages for things. So clearly using Julia is condoning rape of women, or some such nonsense.
Julia is a first name which is free of negative association.
Bro is associated with obnoxious, stupid, despicable, disrespectful.
7 replies →
It's also the last name of Gaston Julia, who has a set named after him.
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.
We are our own worst enemy sometimes.
how are "man" pages better?
"Man pages" is short for "manual pages". You know, as in, "read the...", or even RTFM?
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
Hey dude, here's a hint: perhaps these women are arguing on social media because guys like you fail to give them the basic modicum of respect as a human being, and they have to spend time fighting to be respected, which takes away from their time to build stuff. Whereas, unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect, you have plenty of time to spend on doing things you enjoy, rather than getting people to treat you like an equal human being.
Beyond that, the entire rest of your comment reeks of sexist views (prejudiced biases against women), so I’m probably already wasting my time trying to get you to open your mind slightly to the possibility that perhaps nobody here is "cowing" to anyone, that being "politically correct" is actually the admirable and proper way of being a decent human being (aka "not being an asshole"), that people favor those leaders who listen to complaints from within their communities rather than those who behave like dicks and tell huge numbers of people to go away, like you're suggesting. But if you entertain these ideas for some time and express a genuine desire to learn, rather than find support for your skewed and misinformed perspectives on how the industry (and society) works in the dark recesses of a community that was once full of people sharing your harmful worldview, then I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.
12 replies →
> but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building.
The irony of this comment being in a long-winded post on Hacker News is lost, perhaps? You do realize the vast majority of "programmers" aren't building 100% of the time.
Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult, I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias.
18 replies →
> However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people!
Uh, no it doesn't? There are plenty of reasons someone might be a programmer that doesn't have work on github. Maybe their employer has a really restrictive invention assignment agreement and they don't feel like giving them free code. Maybe it's their day job and they do other things with their free time, like paint. Maybe they don't have any free time because they're a single parent or whatever.
>These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong.
EXACTLY THIS. Listen up, white knights, and please--knock it off.
2 replies →
One of the good things about discussions like this, is that it brings out the real dregs of the community. If not for posts like these, I might be naive enough to think the community really is a welcoming place for all people. But then I see things like "group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers" and "now any girl with an iPhone can be one!"
1 reply →
There's male feminists, by the way. I know, mind-boggling for you, absolutely clear to anyone with the empathy of at least a stone.
I can't imagine why this sector predominately consists of men.
I'd like to see you question street cred of all brogrammers with such scrutiny. Like, you know, grant them rights in a community according to quality of their code and what they post on Twitter. Just let me get my popcorn.
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".