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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2024 14:35:48 +0200
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On 08/04/2024 09:47, Muttley@dastardlyhq.com wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Apr 2024 06:04:16 -0400
> Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>> If acknowledging the existence of female developers makes you
>> uncomfortable, you're just going to have to learn to deal with that
>> yourself.  I'm not going to adjust my language to cater to your
>> insecurities.
> 
> If my insecurities you mean acknowledging reality then fine. The thing about
> people like you is (and I don't believe the 50% thing, sorry) is that you
> would never use a male pronoun if talking about nurses or pre school teachers
> who are heavily biased towards women.
> 

What makes you so sure about that?  Are you assuming that because /you/ 
are sexist, everyone else is?

It is a fact that some professions have a heavy gender bias.  Yes, most 
programmers are male, and most nurses are female.  It is even reasonable 
to say that for some tasks there are statistically relevant biological 
differences that justify a bias (in the same way that you can say men 
are, on average, taller than women, even though some women are taller 
than some men).

But is it a good thing that there is such gender bias?  Usually not - it 
is usually best to have a mix in all practical ways (genders, race, 
nationality, age, etc.).

Being inclusive in the language used is not likely to make a big dent in 
attracting people from poorly represented groups in a particular field - 
but using non-inclusive language does make a difference in chasing away 
those that venture in.  Worst of all is people like you who actively say 
that women programmers are so abnormal we should ignore the possibility 
of their existence!

Some people write "he/she".  Some people alternate gender pronouns, or 
pick randomly.  Some people use "they", or try to avoid using pronouns 
at all in their wording.  These are all fine.  It is also entirely 
understandable that some people just write "he" because they don't think 
about it at all.  But I can't understand the mentality of someone who 
actively tries to work against inclusive language.  We are not talking 
about some kind of quota system that you might feel is unfair, or even 
requiring you to change /your/ language - we are talking about someone 
who used "she" in reference to "a normal programmer", and that has got 
you throwing a fit.

And for the record, I would use he/she/they for nurses or pre-school 
teachers if I did not know the gender of the individual.