I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? [LWN.net]

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 28, 2009 20:32 UTC (Fri) by Skud (guest, #59840)
In reply to: I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome? by coriordan
Parent article: FSF to host a mini-summit on Women in Free Software

I'd suggest putting a "code of conduct" or "guidelines for participation" or something somewhere moderately prominent on your site -- perhaps on the front page and/or in the sidebar menu. In it, explain what is and is not OK. If you say "sexist comments" people won't know exactly what that means, so you might want to say something like:

"Comments that denigrate or ridicule women or any other minority group, or which suggest that members of that group are not or cannot be members of our community, are not permitted on this wiki."

Wrt the thing about inclusive language (him/her and the like), I believe it's important, but there are a few ways to go about it. These days "him/her" is not unusual and most people will just skim right past it -- it appears in eg. forms you fill in all the time. People could also say "they" as a non-gender-specific singular; though people will complain that it is poor grammar, it has been used in English ever since Shakespeare. Another option is to rework the way sentences are framed so that it avoids the pronoun (though this can lead to the passive voice, which some people dislike). A final way is simply to switch it up a bit: use different pronouns in different places, with an approximately 50/50 ratio.

More frustrating to me personally is the sort of language that that says things like "we all know computer geeks love pictures of sexy women" which, while not using the male pronoun, definitely sets up the assumption that "computer geeks" are male (and heterosexual). An example from this comment thread is the "women hate geeks" comment a while back: setting up a false dichotomy with "women" on one side and "geeks" on the other as if there were no such thing as women geeks. To me, this stuff is more insidious when it comes to making us feel invisible and unwanted.

The final thing is to take complaints about sexist comments/jokes/pronouns/whatever seriously. What you need to say is something like, "If women say that something said here denigrates or excludes them, we will believe them and take them seriously, and change it." In a difference of opinion between a man/men and a woman/women over whether something is sexist or not, you need to give the woman the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, what you are saying is, "We don't allow sexist language except when we really want to," and that is not a strong or welcoming message.

Anyway! I am rambling.

I am thinking of putting together a wiki page on the Geek Feminism Wiki that lists projects that have a code of conduct that prohibits sexist behaviour. If I create it, and after you've set up your CoC, I will add your project to the list.

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I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 22:05 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

And oh *god* is it annoying. I had to search-and-replace the things before I could read it.

You cannot invent new pronouns on the fly. You just can't. They're one of the most stable aspects of any language, and resist change strongly (as indicated by the fact that you can see the bones of PIE in English pronouns even now, despite their radical changes due to Anglo-Norman influence on Old English, and that the things are still inflected at least 750 years after everything else lost inflection). The creation of new gender-neutral pronouns has been attempted over and over by people who dislike or don't know about singular they. It's failed every single time, and always will.

(Or, rather, you *can* invent new pronouns on the fly, if you don't mind throwing landmines in the ease-of-reading of all your readers. I can confidently assert that they will never be commonly used, and will always annoy and confuse readers. So don't do it, OK? We have a gender-neutral pronoun, even if it is rather annoying to use.)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 29, 2009 23:46 UTC (Sat) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

And it's silly too, given that singular they works /just fine/ :)

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 30, 2009 1:01 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Let's not get carried away.

Singular they can lead to ambiguity. Relacing "he" with "they" breaks this sentence:

"If the crowd doesn't leave the owner's office now, he could be stuck there all night."

And it can also change the tone. No problem in formal writing, and I use it in that situation, but just like using "one" changes your tone (and is likely to offend in informal settings), using third-person "they" can be inappropriate in some settings.

The problem has no perfect solution. Stallman tried to help by propagating the "Per/pers/perself" suggestions of the gender neutral language movement, but it didn't take off.

I'm convinced. Where can I mention that women are very welcome?

Posted Aug 30, 2009 2:17 UTC (Sun) by hypatiadotca (guest, #60478) [Link]

"The crowd could be stuck there all night if they don't leave the owner's office now."

Presumably the owner is known to be male or female anyway, but a 3-second look at that sentence told me how to rephrase it in any event. It does get easier once you start writing for neutrality on a regular basis.

It's even a plural "they" in this case :)

I've mentioned it else-thread, but Miller and Swift's "Handbook of Nonsexist Writing" is really a fantastic resource on the topic. I refer to it on at least a weekly basis.

The one word I haven't found a decent neutral version for is "handyman". "Fixer" just doesn't have the same flavour to it, and "repair person" is just meh.