But you do?
Or do we live in a society where whoever is the most offended gets to make the rules?
> 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?
Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions? (I can't call all this let's-see-gender-issues-in-everything crap anything else than a stupid fashion that hopefully goes away soon)
Also, the joke is about the man pages. Not woman pages (though those exist in Emacs). I suggest we burn Unix and derivatives (and Emacs, this sexist bastard) on the stake of gender issues.
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...).
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.
Whether or not you choose to go ahead with something that will offend people is up to you, but you don't get to choose whether it will or won't affect people.
[0] - http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html
I don't even know what that is. Outside the bubble of HN I doubt most people have even heard the phrase.
"Bro" for most people references dumb fratboys. Maybe it's a word that's offensive to fratboys, but I can't see why a woman would ever find it offensive.
But I want to use it, it looks like a great tool. Forking it just to use a different name seems unfair and waste of everyones resources.
> Are you suggesting that people should refrain from publishing things that are contrary to mainstream fashions?
It's not about mainstream "fashion", but about a certain cultural neutrality. I don't ask for this neutrality when you publish articles, essays etc., but when you write tools (or name tools for that matter) I greatly appreciate a mindset where you care about the vastly different context people might come from.
> Also, the joke is about the man pages. Not woman pages (though those exist in Emacs).
But - as said before - man pages have nothing to do with men and everything with manual. To underline the point: I didn't get the joke until I read the third Hackernews comment. I just don't associate man pages with gender.
As a bit more extreme example, imagine a command line tool called "aryan". Sure, the name in and of itself might not be offensive, strictly speaking, but it's definitely something that would, and should, be frowned upon. The word has some important connotations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Statistics_...
1. I'm surprised that you don't know what "brogrammer culture" is, but that's okay. The point, though, is that for a lot of other people (particularly women) it is a familiar thing and it makes them feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. You may not have had that experience, but part of having empathy for others is respecting that their experiences are still legitimate even if yours has been different.
2. It's been a lengthy discussion here, so maybe it's not repeating myself too much to say again that "offensive" really isn't an accurate characterization of the objections here. Plenty of people who have wonderfully off-color senses of humor might still consider this inappropriate. The issue isn't "this makes me feel offended", it's "this makes me feel excluded". That's a really important distinction.
(And to tie this in with point 1, even if you personally do not experience this sort of thing in a way that feels like it's excluding people, it's important to listen when substantial numbers of other people tell you that they do have that experience.)
If you don't want or care to examine your thoughts and actions, that's fine, but getting all high and mighty about it by invoking Kipling and comparing them to marauding Vikings is just silly.
"What does 'curl' do?"
"Does what it says on the tin page."
$ tin curl
# get the contents of a web page
curl https://news.ycombinator.com/I personally find it EXTREMELY offensive that you assume women have such delicate sensibilities that they wouldn't find this funny or simply see it as a joke. What do you think they are children or mentally incapable of processing wordplay? In this context, "bro" is an obvious pun on "man", what more needs to be said about this?
I don't know a single woman who would feel excluded by this but know plenty who would find it offensive that a random white knight is getting offended on their behalf and creating a huge fuss assuming they are weak little creatures that don't have the basic social skills to process this as a joke.
Am I also supposed to be offended because I'm not American and the word "bro" is so specific to the American frat boy culture and doesn't exist anywhere else in the world? Should I get upset and walk out of the room in indignation every time my American coworker calls me "bro"? Am I supposed to feel excluded by that? Would you like to get offended on my account as well?
Get real man. It really takes a mind of special caliber to even connect something like this with gender issues and I'm sure most women would agree.
It was very much a culture that women did not fit into. And female programmers I knew tended to get put into CM and documentation roles, despite being very good programmers in their own right (better than most of the men in at least one case). And a guy that doesn't drink or want to go hit on chicks together with the boss as a wingman (because they're gay, in a relationship, or just don't enjoy that scene) didn't fit in either. The term may be a Silicon Valley thing, but the phenomenon is not.
The fact that you did it in some round-about passive-aggressive way makes you look even more of one. You see how this just goes around in circles?
Look, I think giving up is the wrong tact so I can politely disagree with his viewpoint - we should make an effort not to be dicks - but I certainly get what he's saying.
And in my opinion, this stupid bike-shedding about OMGGG!!! He called a project "Bro!!!!" is definitely an example of this.
People with too much time, and nothing useful to do.
Guys, somebody made an effort to contribute to open-source - and if you actually knew anything about the history of OSS, you'd know this isn't the first name that's caused some small group to kick up a stink.
I mean, jeez, "git" - I didn't even see the issue until somebody pointed it out.
Or MongoDB - I thought that was stretching it, but no, there really are people offended by that.
The list goes on.
Basically, there will always be somebody, out there on the Internets that will get offended.
What I do see a problem with is just assuming that everyone trying to do their part to moderate culture so as to be more inclusive is just an Internet whiner. That's just anti-social and it perpetuates the problem of sexism in hacker culture.
Actually, it's not even exclusionary by itself. Which is probably why so many people can't recognize this issue. It's the fact that I wade through DOZENS of these types of things every day, and they all add up.
You can't force people to give up every single piece of their identity and what makes them different in order to fit this new politically-correct bland mold of people who all act and think the same so that no one feels "excluded". As humans we are different, diverse, have different types of humor depending on the geography, age, gender, subcultures etc. Being able to cope with that is part of being a mature, well adjusted person.
All this PC "let's-all-be-the-same-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya" crap is getting tiresome. It goes against everything that makes us human, different and unique. If that's the world you want to live in - fine - keep going with your crusade and feeling indignant every time someone shows a trace of uniqueness and being different. I for one refuse to live in such a suffocating colorless world. I love being different from other people because everyone is more interesting that way, and yet at the end of the day I can still find a way to relate to others.
The world owes us nothing. If you decide to take away positive aspects from your daily experiences, that's what you'll get. If you decide to feel miserable and angry when people don't act the way you want them to act, then sadness and misery is what you'll get.
Since I know that some blockhead is going to try to strawman me, I will preempt that by saying that I don't believe we should start calling black people "niggers" or take away women's right to vote. Just saying that if people manifest their diversity in a way that's not harmful to others, there is no reason to get upset.
You must lead a very privileged life.
I am not "miserable" or "angry." I was trying to let you know why women have a problem with this type of thing. Nowhere did I say everyone should be the same. But usually, there is a balance to the "jokes". To use your example from your time in Asian (or rather a parallel one, because an Asian in America is not really opposite to an american in asia): an Asian man in Africa would be treated differently. Just as an African man in Asia would be treated differently. In tech-related fields, women are treated differently. Everywhere. There is no anti-parallel universe (in tech) where women actually have the advantage, where women are making "sis" jokes about other women. That is the difference. We are, to use your analogy, white people living in Asia except there is nowhere else to live.
This might have something to do with the fact that 99% of the time, they ARE internet whiners.
This is why no one wants to be associated with feminism anymore. An over fixation on censorship and a staggeringly low amount of self-awareness.
I think that's what's changed for me is the recognition that we're all imperfect, we're human, and sometimes we'll offend people by accident but that doesn't excuse us from trying to change things for the better once we realize we've offended someone. The reason I'd argued that "you're going to get offended, deal with it" was because I felt that if I didn't believe that, I'd be on the hook for every possible minor offense I might cause, and there's no possible way that I could know of or predict all of them beforehand. But eventually I realized that that's not what people are asking: they just want you to understand that from the POV of someone marginalized, such comments are exclusionary, and to do your best not to make them in the future. It's not about censoring every possible utterance you might make in the future, it's about self-censoring this one.
Nobody's asking you to give up your identity. But the thing is - is being able to use the word "bro" such a core part of your identity that avoiding it means giving up your identity? Could you just avoid it as a favor to the people out there who feel bad when they hear it?
This comment pisses me off. Living in a foreign country and being marginalized is completely different from being a woman in the tech field in a first world western democracy. I get reminded of the fact that I'm different literally every time I leave my apartment and deal with another human being, whereas for you it happens when you open HN and see a joke about bros or something to that effect. I have literally been denied housing multiple times on the account of not being a local and that fact wasn't even hidden from me. Do I care? Not really, I just went elsewhere and sorted it out. As I said, you can't change people but you can choose who you deal with and how you perceive the world.
>We are, to use your analogy, white people living in Asia except there is nowhere else to live.
You are literally complaining about something that is a first world problem and completely blowing it out of proportion. People like you give female and minority tech workers a bad name. What employer wants to hire someone who is going to cause a shitstorm and potentially threaten with lawsuits every time someone cracks a well meaning joke. I for one would now be very wary of hiring you for the fear of you not tolerating other people at the office, or even worse, suing me and my company. Good job sister. You sound like tons of fun to be around.
I would avoid it if it was a slur that belittles other people. So no. If you choose to be offended by a word that young men in North America men use to fraternize, it's your problem. I'm not even American and I really couldn't care less when my American coworkers call me "bro".
Let's say I find dogs offensive and dog owners alienating. Is it reasonable for me to ask the society to be more mindful of my feelings and make people stop walking dogs while I'm out? No, and I think we can agree that a person making such a request would likely be borderline mentally ill, or at the very least, unadjusted to living in the society. So where do we draw a line between mental illness and a simply asking not to be excluded? If everyone's opinion is equally respected, who is the authority that decides what's reasonable and what's not? Let me guess, you? Because it furthers your purpose right?
In fact, I've just remembered we have a git branch at work called "bro". Makes me realize the dire implications of a simple joke like that - we could potentially get sued by an intolerant employee. No wonder companies have started looking for culture fits these days, it's become very risky and expensive to hire people who are different because there is a good chance they will sue over frivolous reasons. Not saying I am like that, but can you see where I am going with this and how this mindset is actually damaging to minorities? Can you see how many employers would just choose to not hire a minority person simply because they are afraid of the implications? This way of thinking does MORE DAMAGE than good. Does what I wrote make sense?
PS - this sort of thing is ingrained in everything technology related. Not just in HN articles about bros.
Anyway, I'm not offended. I can see why some other people would be. My purpose with this comment thread is just to explain why and how my opinion has shifted over the past year, and possibly provide a different perspective. What you or any bystander chooses to do with that information is up to you.
Part of the happy programmer's life is, being socially excluded and building a potentially successful life for above social considerations.
Of course not, I never said that. I don't support discrimination in any way. I love different people and all the diversity living in such a society entails. I love living in such a vastly different world and interacting with different people on daily basis, even if it sometimes causes misunderstandings to happen. I am just asking everyone to check their emotional baggage at the door and act like mature well adjusted individuals and stop pretending that well meaning cultural references/jokes/memes are the same thing as discrimination/racism/sexism etc. There IS a difference. Let's stop acting intentionally obtuse and conflating these things.
> Is your argument that we should have more discrimination, or just that we should turn a blind eye?
You are attacking a strawman. I neither said that we should have discrimination nor that we should turn a blind eye to it. I hate discrimination with a passion. But I am equally against people who think they can fight discrimination by forcing everyone to hide any signs of cultural identity. Do you realize that those things kill diversity worse than any discrimination? Do you have any idea how harmful it is for diversity, creativity and the society as a whole when everyone starts acting the same in fear of being labeled a bigot/racist/sexist? Blatant discrimination and your way of fighting discrimination have exactly the same effect of suffocating diversity - they just happen to be placed on the opposite sides of the spectrum.
Anyway, I'm done having a discussion here because no matter how reasonable I am trying to be here, you are still sticking to your extremist attitudes and failing to see my point. Good luck.
To me, that sounds a lot like you "not really caring" about "prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or category" which is the wikipedia definition of discrimination. So I'm not seeing the strawman here.
Alienating people by having extremist attitudes is surely not doing you any favors in terms of getting more accepted.
It helps to keep a sense of humor about things. No one is being discriminated against. The man created a Linux command line tool and did a word play on the original name. If you find this offensive and exclusionary instead of seeing it as a clever pun, you've got serious baggage. Over and out.
Oh gosh, you're commenting on HN, you obviously should have some data to back your opinions with? Right?
Thank you for not making it.
> but comments like this really make you sound like one. You're basically saying, "I refuse to even try to live harmoniously with others because they're just going to keep demanding shit from me."
That's not what I meant, though it might have sounded like this. Please, consider it in the broader context of this thread.
I'm not refusing to "even try to live harmoniously with others"; if you knew me, you'd probably find I'm a very tolerant and cooperative person. The thing I refuse to is to live in a world where I have to weight every single word I utter, lest someone, somewhere, will feel offended because of ever-growing list of reasons.
Feeling offended is first and foremost the decision of a person which feels offended. There are things that are meant to be insulting, and it is good the society combats them, but then there are things that are just plain neutral until someone decides to pick a fight over them. I strongly believe this is the case here. What I refuse is to be a part of culture that is mostly defined by things you can't say.
People here talk about inclusive culture. Unleashing a gender shitstorm over a program name is not a sign of inclusive culture, it's a sign of culture that tries to weed out all diversity instead of celebrating it.
As for Kipling reference, it was literally one of the first things that popped into my mind when reading comment threads here - that we allow people to be offended over little, meaningless things, and therefore they'll find more things to be offended about - for karma, feeling of self-importance, mistaken belief that it matters, or whatever reason they're doing it for.
You should ask yourself why this is. Would that be the same for an outsider who is trying to find her way around programming?
You don't associate man with gender because in your mind is associated with documentation. The usage of it in that context for X years has superseded the default association with gender. Eventually the same will happen for bropages. Either way, newcomers do not have the luxury of this association so will have to deal with the gender reminder from man and bro pages. Would you be in favor of eliminating the term man pages in favor of making programming more welcoming to women?
You need to reevaluate your perspective.
There are people starving to death, dying of cancer, mass riots in the Ukraine as we speak and this is to you, I quote, "literally the worst part of my day".
I'm trying to consider it in the broader narrative of the social struggle of women. What you may consider a harmless statement of opinion, in fact looks like a callous dismissal from the stance of privilege.
> Feeling offended is first and foremost the decision of a person which feels offended.
This reminds me of people who say that being gay is a choice. Sure a gay guy could choose to sleep with only women, in the same way I could choose to eat unsweetened shredded wheat for every meal. It's still a crappy thing to demand someone else do.
If your wife, or someone you care for, got really offended at something you said, would you then tell her that getting offended was her choice and she shouldn't do that?
> Unleashing a gender shitstorm over a program name is not a sign of inclusive culture, it's a sign of culture that tries to weed out all diversity instead of celebrating it.
I don't consider myself a class warrior. The last thing I need is to glorify myself by trying to fight someone else's battle. So you won't see me participating in the shitstorms, or throwing any.
I would take note that people are getting very offended whenever project names refer to a culture of exclusion, whether I feel it's being perceived so or not. And then not perpetuate it. Someday we might be able to use 'bro' in the context of a tech project, that day is not today. So just pick something else. As a white male I know I'm used to this already, the day I got slapped in class for daring to utter the n-word was the last time I used it without thinking carefully.
But I would be loathe to be dismissive of other people's struggle, either. I don't need to throw my unhelpful opinions and observations into the mix as to the ugliness of the proceedings.
> As for Kipling reference, it was literally one of the first things that popped into my mind when reading comment threads here - that we allow people to be offended over little, meaningless things, and therefore they'll find more things to be offended about - for karma, feeling of self-importance, mistaken belief that it matters, or whatever reason they're doing it for.
Why do you feel that these things are little or meaningless? That doesn't even make sense in light of the reference. The Vikings certainly weren't little or meaningless. Kipling was saying to society, "you should not be so soft, fight back against the Danes for your dignity."
By not paying off the Danes, the nation is inviting war and destruction. What really are you risking?
Well, no. ^^
I just looked up `man` in the book I learned basic Linux usage from and the section is labeled "Manpages" and before the first "man" occurs the abbreviation is explained: "You can look up these manual pages with the program `man`." (Translated from German). Not being a native speaker I didn't even associate it with men before.
> Either way, newcomers do not have the luxury of this association so will have to deal with the gender reminder from man and bro pages.
They can if they are introduced it correctly: "Hey how does Y work? - Take a look at the manpage - The what? - The manual page. Let me show you…". And this abbreviation can totally be justified in a context where even "move" and "list" are shortened.
> Eventually the same will happen for bropages.
Possibly, but the bad joke will always stick. Heck, you can't even explain where the name comes from without explicitly invoking this association.
Maybe the divide in our community also partially originates from different associations with `man`. Even if bropages didn't have any gender issues I would still think its not a good name, because (as said before and before) for me man pages have nothing to do with men. Possibly if I would "get" the joke I would be more reluctant to give the name up.
Language doesn't work that way actually. Associations persist long past the point of it being "explained" in a different way. Associations are not logical, they're more emotional than anything. You may not experience it the same way because of english being your non-primary language, but the association is real to native speakers. I remember very clearly when I first learned of man pages (as a native speaker) the association with "male" was real and made the term awkward to me. After 15 years its just documentation now.
But you offer tacit support to exclusion, which is not exactly better.
Huffington Post: "Few Identify As Feminists, But Most Believe In Equality Of Sexes" Telegraph: "Just one in seven women describes themselves as 'feminist'" Jezebel: Quotes from privileged, mostly white women, talking about how they don't need feminism. (btw, Beyonce and Lady Gaga had radicalized since this article)
Not sure how the posted links are to prove that "no one wants to be associated with feminism anymore". But it's ok, take your time, I'm still very interested.
Btw, this is a phenomenon is certainly not any more common than in other professions .. watch any television show about cops, lawyers, bankers or doctors .. it's just our culture.
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?
2) They certainly can, but in this culture it's not uncommon for guys to come back on Monday bragging about the "chicks" they banged, or tried to bang. And that's the sort of language they use. It's crass and classless, and off-putting to many people (not just women, but as they're the group specifically being denigrated it's even worse for them).
Fact remains: feminism is a dying movement. For good reason, and good riddance.
>Quotes from privileged, mostly white women
Does exceeding a certain number of privilege points negate the existence of your vagina? Aren't all women supposed to be helpless victims of The Patriarchy (TM)?
2) I've never heard my friends who are girls complain about getting in free without cover to nightclubs/bars when guys had to pay cover, and they are well aware of why this is happening.
This is a culture that most people buy into without question .. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just our culture. If you want to change it, then say that's what you want to change, don't go after hackers who, in my experience, are far less into this culture than other demographics.
But what women is going to go out with the team of 5-6 guys to do that?
Of course that begs the question, would a lot of these problems be lessened if there was simply more women?
You can hardly ask guys to stop forming friendships based on things that will often exclude women. It's going to happen. It's a problem when women find their careers suffering because of it, or when they don't get a chance to form friendships they can enjoy at work. Yes, they can be friends with men, but it's going to be harder when it's a bunch of guys who want to go do things that a bunch of guys do.
While this is of course true, I do not believe that what offends other people should dictate our actions. There is someone out there to be offended for everything you could imagine. Implying that homosexuality is OK or that the universe is billions of years old will offend literally millions of people in the US alone. Implying that women should be allowed to go to school or marry who they want is offensive to plenty of people in the wlrld too.
It would be ridiculous to cater to those people's sensitivities! And I feel that it is silly to worry about things like the word "bro".
It's not about whether or not you find it offensive or exclusionary. It's about whether or not many others would reasonably find it offensive and/or exclusionary. And it asks so little of you too. It's such a small consideration to choose a name that wouldn't contribute toward reminding women that technology/software is a "man's world."
Let me say it for you then: It's bad.
>If you want to change it, then say that's what you want to change, don't go after hackers who, in my experience, are far less into this culture than other demographics.
"Other people are worse, so these guys are okay."
Yeah, no. Maybe the reason that so many of us are going after hacker culture first is because it is a culture that we are a part of and one that we would like to see make positive changes on these issues first.
I know that's lost on a lot of people here, but it's pretty important when considering things like this.
But it does. Every day. You'd have a pretty hard time if you had absolutely zero filter on what you said to other people and absolutely no concern for other people's feelings.
>It would be ridiculous to cater to those people's sensitivities!
You're comparing religious suppression of women and homosexuals to creating a conducive and friendly environment for women in technology. These are literally the opposite things.
It's like saying "we can't have laws against killing people just because we find it morally reprehensible! some people find allowing gay people to live morally reprehensible! any law at all just puts on a slippery slope toward executing homosexuals!"
>And I feel that it is silly to worry about things like the word "bro".
Again, it has nothing to do with what you find silly or frivolous. This isn't about you. Until you are truly able to understand that, you're never going to get anywhere on truly understanding issues like this.
We are also part of the larger culture. The strategy of going after the use of the semi-word "bro" is going to be entirely ineffectual in reaching the outcome you want.
Reasons:
1. Women are equal participants in the larger culture you claim to abhor. This goes back all the way to childhood, the sports kids play, the clothes you wear, the toys they get etc, who asks who to prom, etc.
2. Failing to participate in that larger culture (i.e. buying girls drinks etc) means you will not realize the benefits of being cool or popular.
3. Even the tiny % of people who are hackers decide to forgo what they had never really had a lot of (popularity, acceptance etc), the effect on society as a whole will be minimal.
These tactics will simply not achieve anything, other than breeding resentment.
Congrats to us, we've paid forward the insults, instead of making a better space.