Software going politically correct

[LWYRUP]

This is a very interesting comment in a thread about reforming language to treat people with respect.  I'm not going to dissect it, I think it's fine to let it stand for itself.

This response.........really does not do whatever you think it's doing. You are demonstrating exactly what Laura and madgey are critiquing.

Among other things, it's incredibly disingenuous to say that this is a thread about "reforming language to treat people with respect." No. It is a thread about reforming language to address longstanding systemic discrimination and privilege (or lack thereof). That is about so much more than respect. Collapsing it into "respect," and then implying that sharply critiquing people with privilege is in any way comparable to using language that marginalizes minority groups, is...incredible.

I am a person with a huge amount of privilege. I hope that if someone observes me wielding that privilege in harmful ways, or speaking in ways that are, at best, ignorant of my privilege -- as we've seen all over this thread -- I wouldn't demand that the person treats me gently in drawing my attention to my mistakes, or that I use their own sharp language as an excuse to look away from the truth of their criticism.

Telling me the truth about how I am using my privilege in the world is more "respectful" than saying things politely, or whatever it is you think madgey should have done.

You think that stating that half of the planet has a brain defect (presumably genetic since it impacts all of them) is defensible? 

Why would you expect someone to engage in respectful discussion with someone who openly states that they do not give a shit about the opinions of others?

How does any of that move the conversation forward? 

Why are you so willing to justify abusive language when it comes from someone who shares your political views, and I'm guessing your gender as well?

The baseline level of expectation should be to treat others as we would like to be treated and if that baseline expectation is openly rejected then there is no hope for respectful communication among people of different backgrounds or opinions and we might as well shut this thread down. 

[BTDretire]

I think this “cleaning up” of terminology is going down a very slippery slope.
Forget about software... While at it - shall we also prohibit Black Monday? Is Black Friday still allowed? And how about “yellow press”?

Would Black Friday be okay since it has positive associations with businesses becoming profitable? Of course, Native Americans might take issue with the color commonly used to represent financial loss.

 And we're offending Martians on market up days!
Or maybe the Martians are above being offended by such things.

[maizefolk]

We know how to think. The issue is that you all don't know how to feel. Men's inability to identify, feel, and process emotions is literally destroying this world and yet you can't let go of your precious privilege of seeing yourselves as the arbiters of reason.

And you make another large mistake, which is that thinking anyone in the rising movement gives a shit about what you think and how smart you think you are compared to us. We don't. We just intend to take your power away and do better things with it.

Pointing out contradictions in what someone else said doesn't make me smart.

Gendered attacks directed at me (attacking the person, not the argument) don't make me wrong.

@mckaylabaloney and @BECABECA from your responses are you saying you agree with madgeylou's description of me?

[OtherJen]

Going by what people want is a trap. Sure, people who are suffering from police brutality just want to be left alone. But once that is realised they will want the next thing. Its like Maslov's pyramid.

Umm, wow.  Those damn uppity minorities, sure, now they think they want not to be shot by the cops.  But give 'em that, and next thing you know, they'll want to not be pulled over for DWB.  And if they get that, they'll be asking to be hired and promoted just like white people.  My God, where will it end?

Right?! How dare they want to be treated like equal humans?

Jesus.

[BECABECA]

We know how to think. The issue is that you all don't know how to feel. Men's inability to identify, feel, and process emotions is literally destroying this world and yet you can't let go of your precious privilege of seeing yourselves as the arbiters of reason.

And you make another large mistake, which is that thinking anyone in the rising movement gives a shit about what you think and how smart you think you are compared to us. We don't. We just intend to take your power away and do better things with it.

Pointing out contradictions in what someone else said doesn't make me smart.

Gendered attacks directed at me (attacking the person, not the argument) don't make me wrong.

@mckaylabaloney and @BECABECA from your responses are you saying you agree with madgeylou's description of me?

From where I was sitting, I perceived you and a couple others continuing to argue in bad faith after it was identified as such. The very reasonable meat of madgeylou’s argument continued to be ignored for 3 pages of this thread, and instead multiple people quibbled over minutia that was completely tangential to the discussion. At a certain point, a reasonable person would blow up, and that’s what’s happened here.

Interestingly enough, madgeylou also likely has a whole lifetime of sexist baggage that she’s dealt with, which very on-topic to this thread, a large percentage of the commenters don’t seem to be able to understand just as they don’t seem to be able to understand the racist baggage that is the context surrounding this whole discussion. So you just see this final exasperated blow up as an out of the blue attack on your gender, but it’s not out of context for her: it’s in context with a lifelong theme of men discounting women.

[edited to remove incorrect generalization that I unsuccessfully tried to clear up in the following response to bacchi but continues to be a source of distraction]

[KarefulKactus15]

It's getting hard to keep up with what's correct and incorrect.

[bacchi]

While there were men arguing in favor of removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from women (madgeylou and Laura). And while there were women arguing against removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from men (you, guitarsteve, and lwyrup). So to generalize: given men argued against removing racist terms while women argued for it, do you think that the reason is that men are better at logic? Or do you think it might be more that society raises men in a way that suppress their ability to empathize?

So you're asking those 3 men posters (do we know that lwyrup identifies as a man?):

1) Are you a misogynist and that's why you're wrong?
2) Or are you wrong because you (and other men) are lacking something fundamental like empathy?

C'mon.

[BECABECA]

While there were men arguing in favor of removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from women (madgeylou and Laura). And while there were women arguing against removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from men (you, guitarsteve, and lwyrup). So to generalize: given men argued against removing racist terms while women argued for it, do you think that the reason is that men are better at logic? Or do you think it might be more that society raises men in a way that suppress their ability to empathize?

So you're asking those 3 men posters (do we know that lwyrup identifies as a man?):

1) Are you a misogynist and that's why you're wrong?
2) Or are you wrong because you (and other men) are lacking something fundamental like empathy?

C'mon.

I’m sorry you took my sincere attempt to explain as a bad faith argument. Your interpretation of my post is not how I would summarize it.

I actually think somewhere in their convoluted arguments, all 3 said they supported at least the master/slave terminology replacement. It’s just that they then went on to spend most of their time picking at whether it’s reasonable for a minority to be offended by exclusionary language that the majority doesn’t feel is exclusionary.

At this point, I think it’d be more useful for a man to chime in, since just as it’s not up to black people to solve white people’s racism, women trying to explain this to men often just ends up like how this just turned out.

[GuitarStv]

And while there were women arguing against removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from men (you, guitarsteve, and lwyrup). So to generalize: given men argued against removing racist terms while women argued for it, do you think that the reason is that men are better at logic?

This is an incorrect characterization of the discussion.  I for one, did not argue against removing any racist terms from software.

[sherr]

While there were men arguing in favor of removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from women (madgeylou and Laura). And while there were women arguing against removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from men (you, guitarsteve, and lwyrup). So to generalize: given men argued against removing racist terms while women argued for it, do you think that the reason is that men are better at logic? Or do you think it might be more that society raises men in a way that suppress their ability to empathize?

So you're asking those 3 men posters (do we know that lwyrup identifies as a man?):

1) Are you a misogynist and that's why you're wrong?
2) Or are you wrong because you (and other men) are lacking something fundamental like empathy?

C'mon.

I’m sorry you took my sincere attempt to explain as a bad faith argument. Your interpretation of my post is not how I would summarize it.

I actually think somewhere in their convoluted arguments, all 3 said they supported at least the master/slave terminology replacement. It’s just that they then went on to spend most of their time picking at whether it’s reasonable for a minority to be offended by exclusionary language that the majority doesn’t feel is exclusionary.

At this point, I think it’d be more useful for a man to chime in, since just as it’s not up to black people to solve white people’s racism, women trying to explain this to men often just ends up like how this just turned out.

I'm a man, and I've already made my views on the issue clear upthread, specifically that there's absolutely nothing wrong with renaming technical terms people find objectionable to be more inclusive, and there is very very very little reason to be upset about such a thing, and that the majority of the push-back comes from at least a position of insensitivity.

I don't think it's helpful to frame the issue as men vs women.

I do think that if you nit-pick someone to death without listening to the meat of their argument that they'll eventually go overboard. I further think that madgeylou is an imperfect messenger who has done that here (edit for clarity: "that" = "gone overboard"), and in the past.

There, something for everyone to hate. :)

[maizefolk]

And while there were women arguing against removing racist terms from software, the most prominent arguments were from men (you, guitarsteve, and lwyrup). So to generalize: given men argued against removing racist terms while women argued for it, do you think that the reason is that men are better at logic? Or do you think it might be more that society raises men in a way that suppress their ability to empathize?

I don't think men were specifically arguing against removing racist terms from software. And I specifically disagree with your characterization of me as making prominent arguments against removing racist terms from software.

Here is a complete listed of my contributions to this thread:

1) In my first post I stated that I have no problem with changing software terminology, and I specifically understood the awkwardness of the master/slave terminology having read nero's story. Source

2) Pointing out black to describe someone who looks like there are from subsuharan africa is a relatively recent change in the english language, and pointing out an alternative solution for a type of birdseed (change the spelling so it looks less like a hurtful word). Source.

3) Pointing out that the master/slave terminology was also used in computer hardware but now abandoned. Source.

4) Stating that I didn't think trying to break the linkage between darkness and fear in the human mind was going to be fruitful. Could we instead change the language itself since there is nothing fundamentally linked about the appearance of a person who would be labelled as "black" in today's America and the blackness of night. Source.

5) Tangental point on how group choices tend to reflect the preferences of the people who feel the most strongly, not the average. Source

6) Disagreeing with a person who called GuitarStv's point about the darkness/blackness being associated with badness in the bible asinine and off topic. Disagreeing with that same person that dissociating black/darkness (as opposed to black when used to describe the appearance of a person) and fear in the human minds is an achievable goal.  Source.

Where in any of those posts am I arguing we should keep racist terms in software code?

[CupcakeGuru]

We know how to think. The issue is that you all don't know how to feel. Men's inability to identify, feel, and process emotions is literally destroying this world and yet you can't let go of your precious privilege of seeing yourselves as the arbiters of reason.

And you make another large mistake, which is that thinking anyone in the rising movement gives a shit about what you think and how smart you think you are compared to us. We don't. We just intend to take your power away and do better things with it.

Pointing out contradictions in what someone else said doesn't make me smart.

Gendered attacks directed at me (attacking the person, not the argument) don't make me wrong.

@mckaylabaloney and @BECABECA from your responses are you saying you agree with madgeylou's description of me?

From where I was sitting, I perceived you and a couple others continuing to argue in bad faith after it was identified as such. The very reasonable meat of madgeylou’s argument continued to be ignored for 3 pages of this thread, and instead multiple people quibbled over minutia that was completely tangential to the discussion. At a certain point, a reasonable person would blow up, and that’s what’s happened here.

Interestingly enough, madgeylou also likely has a whole lifetime of sexist baggage that she’s dealt with, which very on-topic to this thread, a large percentage of the commenters don’t seem to be able to understand just as they don’t seem to be able to understand the racist baggage that is the context surrounding this whole discussion. So you just see this final exasperated blow up as an out of the blue attack on your gender, but it’s not out of context for her: it’s in context with a lifelong theme of men discounting women.

[edited to remove incorrect generalization that I unsuccessfully tried to clear up in the following response to bacchi but continues to be a source of distraction]

+1000

[2Cent]

Going by what people want is a trap. Sure, people who are suffering from police brutality just want to be left alone. But once that is realised they will want the next thing. Its like Maslov's pyramid.

Umm, wow.  Those damn uppity minorities, sure, now they think they want not to be shot by the cops.  But give 'em that, and next thing you know, they'll want to not be pulled over for DWB.  And if they get that, they'll be asking to be hired and promoted just like white people.  My God, where will it end?

Sorry. You missed the point entirely. I didn't mean we shouldn't complain about police violence. I meant that feelings are constantly changing and it would be better to aim for the end goal instead of trying to make a hundred different small fights.

So this is my last post on this particular thread, because I am just flat-out tired of the hubris.  The thing is, you and I don't get to decide for other people what they have the "right" to be offended by.  They have their own lived experiences, full of a thousand interactions every day that we don't even notice* -- because we've not had to.  We don't get to decide how much equality and fairness to divvy out to others, how much they "should" be satisfied with, what kinds of language they think is reasonable.  They are independent humans with the exact same inalienable rights as us, and they get to choose when and how to demand them and to form their own opinions of whether a certain word or characterization is offensive.  And the fact that we seem to consistently act as though we think that we have the right to decide for them -- that we get to be the arbiter of what complaints are reasonable and what are not, based on our own experience and our own rationalized view of how the world should be -- is in fact the ultimate exercise of hubris.**  Guess what?  No one asked us!*** 

So, yeah, you're free to grumble about language changes all you want.  You're free to roll your eyes and argue about slippery slopes and how no reasonable person could possibly be offended in your perfect objective world (and thus anyone who is offended is by definition unreasonable -- nice rhetorical device there).  You're free to continue to use whatever language you want and ignore how that affects some of your fellow humans, or to decide that if it does affect them, that they're just oversensitive, and you're completely reasonable and right, and to continue on doing exactly what you're doing.  And you're free to write it all off as "political correct" (another super-nifty rhetorical device that dismisses the entire argument by implying that the whole underlying issue is completely unjustified and people are going along just because they know they're expected to).  All of that is your inalienable right.  But you don't have the right to control how other people feel about/are affected by/respond to those choices.   


*Example from this week:  sitting in bathroom stall, there's a bathroom attendant and a tip jar, I hear another woman leaving tell her companion to "leave a tip for the girl."  That "girl" was a black woman in her 60s.   

**Yes, I know "privilege" is the word du jour.  But I think hubris is more accurate.  We think we know how someone should feel better than they do, despite having absolutely no insight into their life experience.  It's like racial mansplaining. 

***Which is, of course, the ultimate source of the anger.  See "hubris," supra.

**You say it is not our business what another feels offended about, which is fine. But when those feeling start turning into rules that I must adhere to it means those feelings affects me directly. In that case it is very reasonable to challenge those feelings. Especially when it's not grounded in logic.
***The topic starter asked us. The anger (more irritation actually) on my side comes from people making arbitrary rules for me based on presumed feelings, and labelling me as a racist if I object.

[PDXTabs]

I agree that it feels a bit more problematic when referring to a single person who is elderly.  (I'd happily say "leave a tip for the guy", but probably wouldn't use "leave a tip for that girl").

Boy (and Girl?) have unique pejorative means when used by white folks to describe black folks in the USA. However, no everyone learns this in school. I learned the hard way in life. Which brings up another point which is if you whitewash the past in school you don't actually know how to behave politely in society.

[maizefolk]

I actually think somewhere in their convoluted arguments, all 3 [MM's note: all three were previously specified to be me, guitarsteve, and lwyrup] said they supported at least the master/slave terminology replacement. It’s just that they then went on to spend most of their time picking at whether it’s reasonable for a minority to be offended by exclusionary language that the majority doesn’t feel is exclusionary.

@BECABECA, where did I ever post anything about whether or not it was reasonable for a minority to be offended by any language (exclusionary or otherwise)?

You seem be be judging me quite harshly for an argument I am not, and have not, made.

[turketron]

It's getting hard to keep up with what's correct and incorrect.

I'm all in favor of these changes, but you're not wrong. The question is, how do we respond them? 

"It's getting hard to keep up with what's correct and incorrect, but I'm going to do my best to keep up. I may slip up occasionally, but please know that I'm trying"
or
"It's getting hard to keep up with what's correct and incorrect and therefore I'm not going to try to change at all"

[scottish]

So... my company informed everyone today that we are to remove offensive terms from our codebase.
Offensive terms are : whitelist/blacklist, master/slave and white hat/black hat. I kid you not, that’s the work that we will have to do. When that was announced, no one said a word and neither did I, given how I am not at FI yet. So no clue what my colleagues think of it, but wanted to bring it to this forum. Am I the only one to think that is ridiculous and a disturbing trend?

Do you mean to say that the most important thing your company has for the dev team to do is a massive find and replace effort in your proprietary codebase - code that will never be seen by a customer or user?

Unless you guys are rolling in money, this is a good intention but a poor business decision.

I'd get ready for financial trouble down the road.

[BECABECA]

I actually think somewhere in their convoluted arguments, all 3 [MM's note: all three were previously specified to be me, guitarsteve, and lwyrup] said they supported at least the master/slave terminology replacement. It’s just that they then went on to spend most of their time picking at whether it’s reasonable for a minority to be offended by exclusionary language that the majority doesn’t feel is exclusionary.

@BECABECA, where did I ever post anything about whether or not it was reasonable for a minority to be offended by any language (exclusionary or otherwise)?

You seem be be judging me quite harshly for an argument I am not, and have not, made.

I’m going to try to give you a response, but I’m going to preface with this: please try to hear what I’m saying like you’re an uninvolved third party so that you can assess my perspective without feeling it as a personal attack. This is going to be really hard to do, since in my picking apart the posts to identify where I got this sense, it’s going to feel like a personal attack.

1) In my first post I stated that I have no problem with changing software terminology, and I specifically understood the awkwardness of the master/slave terminology having read nero's story. Source

We started out on the wrong foot. The way you entered this thread by quoting another poster who was complaining about a random over the top word restriction in some performance tracking program they use at work. Instead of saying that this wasn’t relevant, your “parody becomes reality” comment suggested that you thought the post was a reasonably on-topic comment to the thread and to me it implied a comparison: that you agreed that the level of censorship that the thread is about is equally unreasonable. :(

Then comes a joke about unreasonable censorship with the African American- Tie Dinner. To me, cracking a joke in response to discussion about exclusionary language implies that you don’t think a minority’s offense is legitimate. :(

Then you state your support for removing Master/Slave terminology... :)

...but then you finish with a slippery slope argument. :(

So I summed up that post as reluctantly supporting master/slave removal (it wasn’t what you opened with), but not taking minority offense seriously when it relates to other changes like removing whitelist/blacklist or blackhat/whitehat. And although you didn’t explicitly say that you don’t think their offense is valid, you make light of it in a joke and imply that things are going to far. :(

2) Pointing out black to describe someone who looks like there are from subsuharan africa is a relatively recent change in the english language, and pointing out an alternative solution for a type of birdseed (change the spelling so it looks less like a hurtful word). Source.

Your next post is to add to the convoluted side justification for why blackhat / whitehat doesn’t need to be changed because it came about before moors were called black people. This implies that it’s unreasonable for someone to be offended black = bad because the original intention of the term wasn’t racist. :(

But you do recognize that in the case of niger seed, intention doesn’t have to be racist to still cause legitimate offense. :)

So that post was maybe a wash? :/

3) Pointing out that the master/slave terminology was also used in computer hardware but now abandoned. Source.

This didn’t come across to me as supporting the change, just that it had happened. :/

But saying that you hadn’t heard of it for software gave me a sense that you didn’t think it was widespread, implying that it wasn’t a big enough deal to change. I admit that my interpretation might be a stretch, and if so it’d be because at this point my reading was colored by your previous posts. :/

4) Stating that I didn't think trying to break the linkage between darkness and fear in the human mind was going to be fruitful. Could we instead change the language itself since there is nothing fundamentally linked about the appearance of a person who would be labelled as "black" in today's America and the blackness of night. Source.

I viewed this as a generally unhelpful tangent that bordered on disrespectful by proposing a ridiculous solution to rename a color blic. This reads to me as another joke (the use of “henceforth” adds to this feeling) which again implies that you don’t think the minority’s offense is valid and is more worthy of ridicule. :(

If either you or guitarstv were arguing this point in good faith, I would have expected one of you to go on to respond to my post that objected to the general line of argument. :(

5) Tangental point on how group choices tend to reflect the preferences of the people who feel the most strongly, not the average. Source

I can see how you would read this as supportive of changing terminology to remove language that a minority perceives as offensive. But the comment that you elevated from lwyrup was pretty overtly implying that minority feelings are invalid, (saying “what's offensive or not can be made on an objective, reasonable person basis” - by definition that'd be the majority defining what the minority should be allowed to be offended at), and that “the current practice is ‘the most offended person wins.’" :(

In order for your response to negate such negative sentiment that it’s quoting, it would need to be more explicit in denouncing that. As it stands, I see it as much too passive, so to me it implies that you also feel the minorities are being unreasonable but since the majority shouldn’t be too passionate about caring one way or the other, it should get changed. :(

6) Disagreeing with a person who called GuitarStv's point about the darkness/blackness being associated with badness in the bible asinine and off topic. Disagreeing with that same person that dissociating black/darkness (as opposed to black when used to describe the appearance of a person) and fear in the human minds is an achievable goal.  Source.

This goes back to #4 - it feels like you’re arguing in bad faith and deliberately misinterpreting madgeylou to needle her into giving up on this thread. :(

—————————

Ugh. Given how unfun writing out this after action analysis was for me, I expect it’s not much better for you. But are you able to see my perspective on any of these?

I really hope so.

Anyway.... now since I’ve again attempted to respond to your questions, can you try in good faith to respond to my previous response, instead of only the part that I had retracted?

[maizefolk]

BEABECA, thank you for the time to write out how you read my posts. I do recognize that takes a lot of time and work and isn't particularly fun so it takes dedication to do it when it is prompted by a random discussion by strangers on the internet.

Looking my very first post, your interpretation seems to be splitting one idea into two different points. A poster mentioned he or she has a software tool that was insisting on replacing old with experienced in a context that the person who designed the software clearly had never thought of. I thought it was funny because a quarter century ago I remembered seeing the same thing (the replacement of a then offensive term with a nonoffensive term by software that doesn't understand context) being used as a punchline in an old sitcom. I'm not cracking a joke, I'm commenting on how 25 years later a joke from an old TV show is now a reality. And even in the show the butt of the joke wasn't the black actor, it was the computer. Then I expressed support for changing the language, thanked nereo for a story illustrating the problems it created, and ended by saying I hoped we could just fix it and be done and not be constantly changing terminology.

In the second post I didn't say anything about not changing whitehat and blackhat, I was answering a post about the idea of black being associated with english predating the use of black in english to describe a group of people.

In the third post I won't supporting or arguing against the change, people prior to me has commented about where they'd heard the term used, the most common usage it sounds like was in software version control and by the time I was writing code those terms were already gone. IDE cables haven't been used in any computer I've build since 2006. If I had to reach that far back in time to come across the terminology in the part of the computer world I interact with that certainly seemed like a good thing, not a bad thing, doesn't it?

Fourth post. You sounded like you had your mind made up. I don't think that if I'd responded I would have convinced you otherwise, no? I agree the solution I proposed would be quite hard to implement in practice, but I was doing that in part to illustrate that I think convincing people not to be afraid of the dark, and hence not to associate fear with whatever word we use for the color we see when there is no light, is even harder. This is a different point than whether or not we change names in software, it's about the specific idea that 1) the reason the color black and fear are associated in the first place is racism (I do disagree with this) and 2) whether or not it is a achievable thing to break that association in people's minds (my guess is no). I can certainly understand how you'd see this post as unhelpful, but I think there is a difference between being unhelpful and prominently arguing against changing the names of concepts in computer code.

Fifth post. To me your reading of this post did feel particularly unfair. It seems like what you are saying that in this post I did not actively argue FOR change in this particular post (I agree here I was just interesting in the dynamics I wasn't trying to make an argument for or against), and that therefore to you this can across as me being a person arguing prominently against change. 

Sixth post. Here I am lost because I genuinely cannot figure out how these two statements are not contradicting each other. Plenty of people contradict each other all the time, but when a person is contradicting themselves while accusing another member of the community of arguing in bad faith it seems worthwhile to point it out.

Anyway, thank you for going through and writing these out. For the first post I can completely see how what I intended to write was read as something very different by you. From that point is feels like we diverged farther in farther in terms of what ideas I was intending to write and what ideas you took away from what I had written. FWIW, I don't take this as a personal attack and it was interesting to see your perspective. For the 1st, 2nd, and 4th posts I can understand how you'd reach your perspective now that you've explained how you got to that place. The 3rd and 5th are a bit scarier to me because there it starts to feel like saying anything other than constant full throated support may be perceived by people who share your worldview as me being "on the other side."

For the 6th, I stand behind it. People who contradicting themselves from one post to another shouldn't accuse others of being asinine or arguing in bad faith. And using gendered attacks and actively deploying destructive gender stereotypes in one direction weakens the social norms against this sort of bad behavior in all directions.

[ender]

Black hat/white hat comes from old black and white cowboy movies.  Hollywood used the hat designation to quickly show the audience which grizzled white cowboy to root for and which was the bad guy.  White was chosen as white/light has (for thousands of years in European culture) been the symbol of good and black/dark bad (see the bible verses quoted above).  This well pre-dates the modern usage of 'black' to refer to a person with brown skin (I think it was maizeman who mentioned that in Shakespeare's time brown people would have been referred to as 'moores' or 'moorish').

Let's pretend for a moment you are right. The origin of black hat/white hat had nothing to do with racial relations and was entirely separate from race (somehow) in the 1930s when it started showing up in Westerns. The entire entomology of the word is wholly rooted in darkness vs light from Judeo-Christian origins.

Now, it's 2020. Do you:

• Continue with terminology that groups "black" with problems/bad
• Make trivial changes to avoid the negative connotation for the sake of an entire group of people

You can argue a pedantic argument all you want and be right pedantically.

But only you can decide for yourself whether being pedantically right is more important than being respectful and inclusive.

[GuitarStv]

Black hat/white hat comes from old black and white cowboy movies.  Hollywood used the hat designation to quickly show the audience which grizzled white cowboy to root for and which was the bad guy.  White was chosen as white/light has (for thousands of years in European culture) been the symbol of good and black/dark bad (see the bible verses quoted above).  This well pre-dates the modern usage of 'black' to refer to a person with brown skin (I think it was maizeman who mentioned that in Shakespeare's time brown people would have been referred to as 'moores' or 'moorish').

Let's pretend for a moment you are right. The origin of black hat/white hat had nothing to do with racial relations and was entirely separate from race (somehow) in the 1930s when it started showing up in Westerns. The entire entomology of the word is wholly rooted in darkness vs light from Judeo-Christian origins.

Now, it's 2020. Do you:

• Continue with terminology that groups "black" with problems/bad
• Make trivial changes to avoid the negative connotation for the sake of an entire group of people

You can argue a pedantic argument all you want and be right pedantically.

But only you can decide for yourself whether being pedantically right is more important than being respectful and inclusive.

You don't have to pretend.  You can just look it up to find out that what I'm saying is true*!  Nearly any article about black hat/white hat hacking will include this information, as it's very common knowledge.

So, it's certainly not racist.  But whatever.  Several posters have said that as long as we're associating black/dark in usage with negativity, and light/white with good stuff it will make people racially uncomfortable.  OK.  Fine.  Let's pretend that this stretch of logic (and kinda shocking indictment of how intelligent/capable they think the average person who would be offended by this term is) holds.

Why does it only hold in relation to this software term?

If we look at a major source of the cultural phenomenon that they're railing against (the bible) . . . suddenly every kind of discussion is off limits.  It's ridiculous that the only changes people seem interested in making for the problem they have identified are trivial changes in a tiny part of a small field.  What happened to caring about negative connotations for an entire group of people?

Is racial inclusion only worth it if it's trivial?  Or is the fundamental idea (making changes to things that are clearly and objectively not racist in the hopes that this makes people feel better about race somehow) sort of flawed?




*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hat_(computer_security)
https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/black-hat-hacker
https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/white-hat
https://www.walkersands.com/dust-off-your-white-hat-the-olivia-pope-skills-every-pr-gladiator-needs/
https://securityintelligence.com/black-hats-and-white-hats-if-cybersecurity-were-a-western/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_white_hat_symbolism_in_film
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-counterintuitive-history-of-black-hats-white-hats-and-villains
https://www.vaadata.com/blog/the-white-hat-the-black-hat-and-the-ugly/
etc.

[dividendman]

...
Is racial inclusion only worth it if it's trivial?
...

Absolutely not! And I'm willing to put up a few tweets and forum posts on racial inclusion to prove it!

[MayDay]

*Example from this week:  sitting in bathroom stall, there's a bathroom attendant and a tip jar, I hear another woman leaving tell her companion to "leave a tip for the girl."  That "girl" was a black woman in her 60s.   


I am the only high ranking women in my business unit in a very male dominated industry. A couple of men in my unit still say stupid things like "Are the girls back from lunch?" The youngest women on my team is 51 years old.

I think that some of this stems from a lack of a good alternate casual descriptor for women.  "Girls" and "guys" are words typically used in the same way - to informally refer to a group of women or men.  So it's probably not a (or at least not always a) disrespect thing, or an attempt to treat women like children.  Saying 'women' is more like saying 'men' and feels kinda awkward for casual use.  You wouldn't say "I'm going to meet up with the men at the bar", right?  Most people would use guys/girls in that context.

I agree that it feels a bit more problematic when referring to a single person who is elderly.  (I'd happily say "leave a tip for the guy", but probably wouldn't use "leave a tip for that girl").

OMG this right here.

I am a white woman in engineering and this shit happens all the ti.e and you just get beat down. I'm so sorry that saying "women" feels funny to you, to such a degree that you think it's ok to call me a girl?!?!?

Are you fucking kidding me?

It's just constant microaggressions like this that as a white women get so old. I cannot even imagine as a POC how many more they suffer every day.

White men y'all need to come get your cousin because he is embarrassing y'all.

[iris lily]

On its face, the choice of hat color appears entirely innocent.  But its origin is steeped in racism.

It is?  Historically, black has always been used in the west to connote evil.  Black of course, was the colour of mourning so got people thinking of death immediately - so this makes sense but it goes much deeper than that.  The concept of black and white dualism pre-dates the bible, but I suspect that much of what we currently associate with the words comes from that manuscript.  In the book of genesis creation myth, on the first day God separated light from darkness - and continues to use light as a symbol of God and darkness as a symbol of evil throughout.

Note that there is also a huge difference between black as a colour traditionally denoting evil and black as denoting dark brown skinned people.  Honestly, as a kid I always thought that it was kind of racist that we called black people black instead of brown . . . and white people white instead of pink.  White people aren't white, and black people aren't black.  Why are we forcing them into a good/evil structure created more than 2000 years ago?

I have yet to be able to find any evidence that black hat/white hat is steeped in any sort of anti-black (anti-brown?) racism (other than maybe the tangential racism that there were never any black people in old cowboy movies) as you claim here.

Consistent with this, centuries ago, well after the black/light good/evil distinction was embedded in english, if a person from sub saharan africa had suddenly found themselves in England, the word that would likely have been used to describe them was that they were a  "moor" not that they were black.

Good example of this is Othello in the play by the same name.

*An example of this is the word "niggardly," which has zero racial connotations but sure sounds like it does.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly.

Huh, that's interesting.  I had always assumed that 'niggardly' was racially based and have never used the word for that reason.  And although it's apparently not racist, would still not use the word going forward.  To me, it's too likely to be mistaken for a racist comment.  Not sure if this makes me a hypocrite.

Niger seed for birds (finches) has a similar problem (separate deverivation but looks too close written down). Recently it seems like when I buy it the same product is now spelled nyjer seed which seems to solve the problem.

Many plant cultivars use “Niger” in their name. Yes I know it is pronounced
Nyjur.

[NorthernMonkey]

We've replaced Black Lists with Block Lists and White Lists with Allow Lists. It's more descriptive, and if helps build an inclusive organisation. There is a whole mountain of evidence that inclusive organisations are significantly more productive than non-inclusive orgs. Exclusivity leads to productivity leads to profitability, leads to bonus, leads to me retiring earlier. I'm 100% behind me retiring earlier

[AccidentialMustache]

Dropping white hat/black hat from the colloquial use in the hacker community isn't as trivial as it is made out to be. That's become a cultural identity. It isn't a cultural identity I can claim -- I orbited near it but I don't have the mindset to be a proper white-hat/black-hat type.

If a business doesn't want to use them that's one thing. Its largely action without meaning if that's the limit of what the business does -- if it doesn't review its hiring practices, etc.


Possibly interesting tangent: it could have been hacker/cracker, instead of the hats. Those didn't stick, probably in large part due to both whites and blacks claiming it was a derogatory and/or racist term when a school in Florida tried to incorporate it in its name in the 90s. I'm not sure if that'd have been better or worse for terms, but they are at least more accurate.

Also interesting tangent: the good guys wear white looks like it might be less accurate than you'd think, at least in terms of the westerns themselves. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-counterintuitive-history-of-black-hats-white-hats-and-villains And honestly that makes it a much better fit for the computer-security use of the term, because white hat/black hat there are not clear cut good/bad guys. There are lots of shades of grey -- on both sides -- and your good/bad call is going to depend entirely on your point of view.

[GuitarStv]

*Example from this week:  sitting in bathroom stall, there's a bathroom attendant and a tip jar, I hear another woman leaving tell her companion to "leave a tip for the girl."  That "girl" was a black woman in her 60s.   


I am the only high ranking women in my business unit in a very male dominated industry. A couple of men in my unit still say stupid things like "Are the girls back from lunch?" The youngest women on my team is 51 years old.

I think that some of this stems from a lack of a good alternate casual descriptor for women.  "Girls" and "guys" are words typically used in the same way - to informally refer to a group of women or men.  So it's probably not a (or at least not always a) disrespect thing, or an attempt to treat women like children.  Saying 'women' is more like saying 'men' and feels kinda awkward for casual use.  You wouldn't say "I'm going to meet up with the men at the bar", right?  Most people would use guys/girls in that context.

I agree that it feels a bit more problematic when referring to a single person who is elderly.  (I'd happily say "leave a tip for the guy", but probably wouldn't use "leave a tip for that girl").

OMG this right here.

I am a white woman in engineering and this shit happens all the ti.e and you just get beat down. I'm so sorry that saying "women" feels funny to you, to such a degree that you think it's ok to call me a girl?!?!?

Are you fucking kidding me?

It's just constant microaggressions like this that as a white women get so old. I cannot even imagine as a POC how many more they suffer every day.

White men y'all need to come get your cousin because he is embarrassing y'all.

Not sure if this was intended to be addressed to me, but I would not call you or any other woman a girl (particularly in an office environment).  In the story that CupcakeGuru related, there was a woman who was calling another grown woman a girl in the bathroom.

The reason that I mentioned the guys/girls thing as an informal way of referring to people is that I'd typically use the term 'guys' when going out to meet my friends, and my wife uses the term 'girls' when going out to meet her friends.  I don't think my wife intends to constantly microaggress anyone by doing this, but I'll mention the idea to her tonight.

[ctuser1]

*Example from this week:  sitting in bathroom stall, there's a bathroom attendant and a tip jar, I hear another woman leaving tell her companion to "leave a tip for the girl."  That "girl" was a black woman in her 60s.   


I am the only high ranking women in my business unit in a very male dominated industry. A couple of men in my unit still say stupid things like "Are the girls back from lunch?" The youngest women on my team is 51 years old.

I think that some of this stems from a lack of a good alternate casual descriptor for women.  "Girls" and "guys" are words typically used in the same way - to informally refer to a group of women or men.  So it's probably not a (or at least not always a) disrespect thing, or an attempt to treat women like children.  Saying 'women' is more like saying 'men' and feels kinda awkward for casual use.  You wouldn't say "I'm going to meet up with the men at the bar", right?  Most people would use guys/girls in that context.

I agree that it feels a bit more problematic when referring to a single person who is elderly.  (I'd happily say "leave a tip for the guy", but probably wouldn't use "leave a tip for that girl").

OMG this right here.

I am a white woman in engineering and this shit happens all the ti.e and you just get beat down. I'm so sorry that saying "women" feels funny to you, to such a degree that you think it's ok to call me a girl?!?!?

Are you fucking kidding me?

It's just constant microaggressions like this that as a white women get so old. I cannot even imagine as a POC how many more they suffer every day.

White men y'all need to come get your cousin because he is embarrassing y'all.

Not sure if this was intended to be addressed to me, but I would not call you or any other woman a girl (particularly in an office environment).  In the story that CupcakeGuru related, there was a woman who was calling another grown woman a girl in the bathroom.

The reason that I mentioned the guys/girls thing as an informal way of referring to people is that I'd typically use the term 'guys' when going out to meet my friends, and my wife uses the term 'girls' when going out to meet her friends.  I don't think my wife intends to constantly microaggress anyone by doing this, but I'll mention the idea to her tonight.

In the office/work context, I've been increasingly hearing the word "guys" used to refer to a group of all women.
e.g.1. You meet two female colleagues at the water cooler. You join in with "Did you guys see they moved the coffee machine? No free coffee on our floor any more."
e.g.2. You hear two female colleagues laughing. "You guys seem to be having fun!!".

I wonder if this is some kind of new "defensive language" that is very local/temporal for where I am, or if it is/was more widely used?

I've never heard "guy" used to refer to a single female colleague. It's usually the name, or "woman". Generally I think people know not to use the word "girl" to describe a female colleague.

[2Cent]

.....

In the office/work context, I've been increasingly hearing the word "guys" used to refer to a group of all women.
e.g.1. You meet two female colleagues at the water cooler. You join in with "Did you guys see they moved the coffee machine? No free coffee on our floor any more."
e.g.2. You hear two female colleagues laughing. "You guys seem to be having fun!!".

I wonder if this is some kind of new "defensive language" that is very local/temporal for where I am, or if it is/was more widely used?

I've never heard "guy" used to refer to a single female colleague. It's usually the name, or "woman". Generally I think people know not to use the word "girl" to describe a female colleague.

For adult woman the closest female version of 'guy' is lady. While technically it's the counterpart of gentlemen, in practice it's much less formal and can be used casually like, "give the lady a tip".

[RetiredAt63]

The original companion to "guys" was "gals". "Gals" seems to have generally bern dropped.  Not sure where "guys" came from, but "gals"  sounds like a variant of "girls".

[Michael in ABQ]

The original companion to "guys" was "gals". "Gals" seems to have generally been dropped.  Not sure where "guys" came from, but "gals"  sounds like a variant of "girls".

My experience has been that that it's usually "guys and girls". "Guys and gals" only if the speaker is pretty old. However, that sounds weird when referring to a group of adults since boys and girls is usually only referring to children. Gals definitely sounds old-fashioned and fell out of common usage at least a few decades ago.

I grew up in the northwest (US) and guys is our version of y'all. I remember one of my English teachers in high school who grew up on the east coast pointing that out to us - which of course we all thought was the perfectly normal way to speak and everyone else talked funny. On it's face it's a masculine pronoun but it's typically considered gender-neutral i.e. telling a whole class "ok guys, quiet down".

[maizefolk]

I couldn't find a guys/girls vs guys/gals map, but yes "you guys" vs "ya'll" corresponds almost perfectly to whether a state was part of the old confederacy, except for Kentucky (you all), and southern Florida.



(The statement above represents an attempt to provide additional information about a point being discussed in this thread that I personally find interesting. It should not be read as advocacy for or against changing terminology in computer programming.)

[ender]

In the office/work context, I've been increasingly hearing the word "guys" used to refer to a group of all women.
e.g.1. You meet two female colleagues at the water cooler. You join in with "Did you guys see they moved the coffee machine? No free coffee on our floor any more."
e.g.2. You hear two female colleagues laughing. "You guys seem to be having fun!!".

I wonder if this is some kind of new "defensive language" that is very local/temporal for where I am, or if it is/was more widely used?

I've never heard "guy" used to refer to a single female colleague. It's usually the name, or "woman". Generally I think people know not to use the word "girl" to describe a female colleague.

At least one community I'm part of has an auto response to "hey guys" or variants that corrects the speaker with something like:

You're a valuable member of this community, and we hope you'll continue participating. Instead of guys, have you considered a more gender-neutral word like folks? [Please consider editing your message so it's more inclusive of other valuable members of this community]

Personally I see literally no reason to use "hey guys" as a descriptor for the group anymore. I just use "hey everyone" or "hey folks" or another gender neutral variant.

It's amazing how often people use this phrase as a blanket descriptor for a group that includes women. It'd probably drive me nuts if I was a woman being referred to as "guys."

"Guys" is a phase that in my experience, really bothers some women (which because it's literally saying "you men" is totally understandable) while others don't seem to mind and view it more as a gender neutral "hey everyone" phrase.

It's so easy to just say other variants and not deal with this issue. It costs me nearly nothing, especially now since it's an ingrained habit to avoid that, and makes the world better for 50%+ of the population.

[ender]

You don't have to pretend.  You can just look it up to find out that what I'm saying is true*!  Nearly any article about black hat/white hat hacking will include this information, as it's very common knowledge.

So, it's certainly not racist.  But whatever.  Several posters have said that as long as we're associating black/dark in usage with negativity, and light/white with good stuff it will make people racially uncomfortable.  OK.  Fine.  Let's pretend that this stretch of logic (and kinda shocking indictment of how intelligent/capable they think the average person who would be offended by this term is) holds.

Why does it only hold in relation to this software term?

If we look at a major source of the cultural phenomenon that they're railing against (the bible) . . . suddenly every kind of discussion is off limits.  It's ridiculous that the only changes people seem interested in making for the problem they have identified are trivial changes in a tiny part of a small field.  What happened to caring about negative connotations for an entire group of people?

Is racial inclusion only worth it if it's trivial?  Or is the fundamental idea (making changes to things that are clearly and objectively not racist in the hopes that this makes people feel better about race somehow) sort of flawed?

I mean, the answer to your last few hypotheticals are addressed by the rest of your post being a strawman argument.

The only person who seems to be on this crusade about "darkness" and "light" is you. Almost every reference to the Bible or overall dark vs light metaphor is brought up by you.

You keep bringing it up. No one is biting, because these "several posters" you mention actually are more concerned with black vs white terminology resulting in racial stereotyping, while you seem to be hung up on darkness vs light.

It's pretty obvious reading through the thread again that you want to somehow use this as a whataboutism strawman, though, which explains a lot about how you obstinately don't understand the root issue here.

Luckily, someone else said this better though:

This response.........really does not do whatever you think it's doing. You are demonstrating exactly what Laura and madgey are critiquing.

Among other things, it's incredibly disingenuous to say that this is a thread about "reforming language to treat people with respect." No. It is a thread about reforming language to address longstanding systemic discrimination and privilege (or lack thereof). That is about so much more than respect. Collapsing it into "respect," and then implying that sharply critiquing people with privilege is in any way comparable to using language that marginalizes minority groups, is...incredible.

I am a person with a huge amount of privilege. I hope that if someone observes me wielding that privilege in harmful ways, or speaking in ways that are, at best, ignorant of my privilege -- as we've seen all over this thread -- I wouldn't demand that the person treats me gently in drawing my attention to my mistakes, or that I use their own sharp language as an excuse to look away from the truth of their criticism.

Telling me the truth about how I am using my privilege in the world is more "respectful" than saying things politely, or whatever it is you think madgey should have done.

[GuitarStv]

You don't have to pretend.  You can just look it up to find out that what I'm saying is true*!  Nearly any article about black hat/white hat hacking will include this information, as it's very common knowledge.

So, it's certainly not racist.  But whatever.  Several posters have said that as long as we're associating black/dark in usage with negativity, and light/white with good stuff it will make people racially uncomfortable.  OK.  Fine.  Let's pretend that this stretch of logic (and kinda shocking indictment of how intelligent/capable they think the average person who would be offended by this term is) holds.

Why does it only hold in relation to this software term?

If we look at a major source of the cultural phenomenon that they're railing against (the bible) . . . suddenly every kind of discussion is off limits.  It's ridiculous that the only changes people seem interested in making for the problem they have identified are trivial changes in a tiny part of a small field.  What happened to caring about negative connotations for an entire group of people?

Is racial inclusion only worth it if it's trivial?  Or is the fundamental idea (making changes to things that are clearly and objectively not racist in the hopes that this makes people feel better about race somehow) sort of flawed?

I mean, the answer to your last few hypotheticals are addressed by the rest of your post being a strawman argument.

The only person who seems to be on this crusade about "darkness" and "light" is you. Almost every reference to the Bible or overall dark vs light metaphor is brought up by you.

You keep bringing it up. No one is biting, because these "several posters" you mention actually are more concerned with black vs white terminology resulting in racial stereotyping, while you seem to be hung up on darkness vs light.

It's pretty obvious reading through the thread again that you want to somehow use this as a whataboutism strawman, though, which explains a lot about how you obstinately don't understand the root issue here.

Luckily, someone else said this better though:

This response.........really does not do whatever you think it's doing. You are demonstrating exactly what Laura and madgey are critiquing.

Among other things, it's incredibly disingenuous to say that this is a thread about "reforming language to treat people with respect." No. It is a thread about reforming language to address longstanding systemic discrimination and privilege (or lack thereof). That is about so much more than respect. Collapsing it into "respect," and then implying that sharply critiquing people with privilege is in any way comparable to using language that marginalizes minority groups, is...incredible.

I am a person with a huge amount of privilege. I hope that if someone observes me wielding that privilege in harmful ways, or speaking in ways that are, at best, ignorant of my privilege -- as we've seen all over this thread -- I wouldn't demand that the person treats me gently in drawing my attention to my mistakes, or that I use their own sharp language as an excuse to look away from the truth of their criticism.

Telling me the truth about how I am using my privilege in the world is more "respectful" than saying things politely, or whatever it is you think madgey should have done.

If the issue is just that black/white cannot be used as descriptors any more in any context at work (as appears to be the goal here), I have no problem at all with changing "black hat" to "dark hat" and "white hat" to "light hat".  It's still weird (nothing to to with inclusiveness or racial stereotyping), but means the same thing so the damage done to common language is much more minimal.

[RetiredAt63]

Personally I see literally no reason to use "hey guys" as a descriptor for the group anymore. I just use "hey everyone" or "hey folks" or another gender neutral variant.

It's amazing how often people use this phrase as a blanket descriptor for a group that includes women. It'd probably drive me nuts if I was a woman being referred to as "guys."

"Guys" is a phase that in my experience, really bothers some women (which because it's literally saying "you men" is totally understandable) while others don't seem to mind and view it more as a gender neutral "hey everyone" phrase.

It's so easy to just say other variants and not deal with this issue. It costs me nearly nothing, especially now since it's an ingrained habit to avoid that, and makes the world better for 50%+ of the population.

"Guys" was definitely just men when I was growing up and forming my vocabulary.  Now it is pretty gender-neutral.  I always found "folks" a bit contrived, because it wasn't used when I was young.  "Hey people" has always worked well.

I have to always think about things like this because I grew up speaking a very specific and slightly unusual dialect of English - Quebec Anglophone English is a recognized dialect.  Where else could you say "Let's go to the dep*" and be
understood? 

*Depanneur, i.e. corner store

[Kris]

Guys was neutral to me growing up, and I still use it all the time for mixed, men-only, and women only groups.

A friend of mine took strong objection to my use of it as gender-neutral in 1990.

I took her point, but continued to use it. Just not around her.

[MilesTeg]

The original companion to "guys" was "gals". "Gals" seems to have generally bern dropped.  Not sure where "guys" came from, but "gals"  sounds like a variant of "girls".

I use gals in the context of informally referring to a group of women. Typically only in a semi formal environment (work or with people I don't know). I use 'girls' in informal social situations (i.em with friends)

Most of the females in my social group refer to the males in our group as 'the boys'.

Ironically, they only say 'the men' when they are annoyed :p

This all just really highlights one of the most annoying failings of the english language. It would be nice to have a gender neutral plural of you (both formal and informal variants) like the romance languages.

¿ustedes entienden?

[Psychstache]

The original companion to "guys" was "gals". "Gals" seems to have generally bern dropped.  Not sure where "guys" came from, but "gals"  sounds like a variant of "girls".

I use gals in the context of informally referring to a group of women. Typically only in a semi formal environment (work or with people I don't know). I use 'girls' in informal social situations (i.em with friends)

Most of the females in my social group refer to the males in our group as 'the boys'.

Ironically, they only say 'the men' when they are annoyed :p

This all just really highlights one of the most annoying failings of the english language. It would be nice to have a gender neutral plural of you (both formal and informal variants) like the romance languages.

¿ustedes entienden?

Y'all and all y'all. The South took care of this for you. All y'all are welcome. ;)

[RetiredAt63]

The original companion to "guys" was "gals". "Gals" seems to have generally bern dropped.  Not sure where "guys" came from, but "gals"  sounds like a variant of "girls".

I use gals in the context of informally referring to a group of women. Typically only in a semi formal environment (work or with people I don't know). I use 'girls' in informal social situations (i.em with friends)

Most of the females in my social group refer to the males in our group as 'the boys'.

Ironically, they only say 'the men' when they are annoyed :p

This all just really highlights one of the most annoying failings of the english language. It would be nice to have a gender neutral plural of you (both formal and informal variants) like the romance languages.

¿ustedes entienden?

Y'all and all y'all. The South took care of this for you. All y'all are welcome. ;)

And for those of us who do not speak American English?   ;-)   "Y'all" with a Canadian accent would sound very weird.

[MudPuppy]

Y’all’ll get used to it

[MilesTeg]

Y’all’ll get used to it

LOL

[MayDay]

The point isn't to debate regional dialects or whether all women are offended by being called either girls or guys (obviously plenty of wen are fine with either).

The point is the same as the white/black hat stuff- if you KNOW it bothers some people (and you do.... Because I am telling you it bothers me, and I can tell you I'm not the only one) then you stop using it because there are indeed plenty of other choices that don't bother people!

Folks
People
Y'all
Everyone
Team

Etc etc etc

If Sally is bothered by guys and Joe is bothered by black/white and then add up all the other microaggressions, are we really surprised we end up with a white male majority?

The question is: do the white males see any problem with this or are they benefitting from it and conciously or unconsciously trying to keep the status quo going. Not that I'm actually asking that question. I already know the answer.

[GuitarStv]

The point isn't to debate regional dialects or whether all women are offended by being called either girls or guys (obviously plenty of wen are fine with either).

The point is the same as the white/black hat stuff- if you KNOW it bothers some people (and you do.... Because I am telling you it bothers me, and I can tell you I'm not the only one) then you stop using it because there are indeed plenty of other choices that don't bother people!

Folks
People
Y'all
Everyone
Team

Etc etc etc

If Sally is bothered by guys and Joe is bothered by black/white and then add up all the other microaggressions, are we really surprised we end up with a white male majority?

The question is: do the white males see any problem with this or are they benefitting from it and conciously or unconsciously trying to keep the status quo going. Not that I'm actually asking that question. I already know the answer.

So, is it OK for women to call groups of other women 'the girls'?  Or do we need to suppress this as well as a microaggression?  I guess my question is, is 'girls' like the n-word where usage is OK but only depending on your race/sex?

[FIPurpose]

I couldn't find a guys/girls vs guys/gals map, but yes "you guys" vs "ya'll" corresponds almost perfectly to whether a state was part of the old confederacy, except for Kentucky (you all), and southern Florida.

...

They forgot "yinz" for Pittsburgh ;P

[Sayyadina]

It depends who is doing it. I'm another female engineer here, and I will definitely notice if my male colleagues call the group of women in the team "girls". Inside that group, we tend to use "ladies", as in we have a bi-weekly Ladies Lunch, and that's what's on the calendar. I wouldn't be too askance at someone in that group using "girls" to describe it, but I'd be pretty upset for someone outside that group to do so. And no one has, because I work in a pretty good place and my colleagues don't infantelize us.

I grew up using "guys" as a gender neutral term, but it bothers some of the women I work with so I switched to "folks". It's an easy thing to do for their comfort, because I care about them. I certainly notice, now, when the men around me make an effort towards gender neutral terms when I'm part of the group, not because "guys" bothers me, but because it shows that they are making an effort to think about me and to be inclusive with their language. If that was the only action they took, it would feel like lip-service, but it's more of an indicator of the general culture of respect we are trying to foster.

There is never going to be one hard and fast rule (as an engineer, I know how annoying that is!). You can't go wrong asking people how they prefer to be called and trying to follow that. And if they have a different relationship with other people and accept different words from them? That's okay too. It doesn't invalidate the fact that they would prefer specific language from you.

[lutorm]

I hesitate to wade into the emotionally charged debate here, but I'll give it a try. Let me start my saying I do not advocate knowingly using terms that lots of people find offensive, even if you don't mean it that way. I can totally see how someone with personal experience of the institution of slavery would find the uses of the terms master and slave in computing to be glib and disrespectful. There are many such, we should probably not "kick the watchdogs" or "decimate" things either, just to think of a few. These are real terms of abuse that are used figuratively.

However, the argument does cut both ways. To continually be offended by everyday use of language that can not reasonably be construed as having offensive intent can't be defended either. If the entire human society has since time immemorial associated dark with bad and light with good since long before humans with different skin colors ever met each other, interpreting current use of such language as veiled jabs at dark-skinned people does not seem reasonable. There is also an obligation of the offended to learn about the true motives behind the perceived offense.

One option is to argue that biblical use of light and dark for good and evil is because it reflects the opinions of the light-skinned people who wrote it. So I guess the relevant question is whether the creation myths of dark-skinned societies think of dark as good and light as evil? That would in my mind be evidence that the terms are racially biased. But it would also be very surprising to me, because I suspect it reflects day and night, irrespective of the color of people's skin.

[happyuk]

The term Black Lives Matter is deliberately designed to be confusing and manipulative. Of course black lives matter. That's axiomatic. There's probably not a single Mustachian reading this who'd disagree.

But when one criticises the organisation (in Title Case!), the very wording of their name is then used to imply that you're a racist. That's purposeful. Who ever designed this knew what they were doing.

If the name of the organisation was Burn Down America (which I think is far more representative of the organisers' core values) then there'd be little confusion or misunderstanding about what's really happening here.

[FIPurpose]

The term Black Lives Matter is deliberately designed to be confusing and manipulative. Of course black lives matter. That's axiomatic. There's probably not a single Mustachian reading this who'd disagree.

But when one criticises the organisation (in Title Case!), the very wording of their name is then used to imply that you're a racist. That's purposeful. Who ever designed this knew what they were doing.

If the name of the organisation was Burn Down America (which I think is far more representative of the organisers' core values) then there'd be little confusion or misunderstanding about what's really happening here.

This sounds like Jordan Peterson. Is that where you're getting this kind of talking point?

[Wrenchturner]

The term Black Lives Matter is deliberately designed to be confusing and manipulative. Of course black lives matter. That's axiomatic. There's probably not a single Mustachian reading this who'd disagree.

But when one criticises the organisation (in Title Case!), the very wording of their name is then used to imply that you're a racist. That's purposeful. Who ever designed this knew what they were doing.

If the name of the organisation was Burn Down America (which I think is far more representative of the organisers' core values) then there'd be little confusion or misunderstanding about what's really happening here.

This sounds like Jordan Peterson. Is that where you're getting this kind of talking point?

God forbid!