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.)
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.
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.
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.
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".
But you offer tacit support to exclusion, which is not exactly better.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.