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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

> Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology that I’d just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the replies asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive (which of course is besides [sic] the point) or tried to explain to me why it actually wasn’t a problem.

> So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:

Of course I understand no responsibility to 'prove' anything and can guess the comments weren't written well - but I think there may be a genuine misunderstanding and miscommunication here, or maybe it's even a BrE/AmE thing, because 'to grope' around for something (often blindly in the dark or similar) isn't at all sexual, typically not even an animate thing you'd be groping for (e.g. a light switch) - and I'm fairly certain that that usage isn't by analogy to sexual assault.

Or am I just repeating what's 'besides the point'? I don't think it is, words can have multiple meanings, be used in foul ways, but still be usable fairly and legitimately. 'I coloured in a picture' isn't 'gross'? My 'garden hoe' is fine?

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"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper

I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for women to make.

As she says, original intent doesn't matter a ton. If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. Because what I care about is getting my point across. When I see instead strident defense of language that's bothersome to a historically marginalized group, I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change. A change I'll note the dig maintainers made back in 2017, so it's not like they care.

>I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change

That's easy to wonder when you're the one asking for the change. It's awfully convenient that "intent doesn't matter", as that puts the burden of action on the speaker/writer. If intent did matter, then the listener/reader would need to consider what the other person is trying to say and adjust their interpretation of the words accordingly. But since it doesn't, all that matters is that someone took offense at a particular word, and so it is the writer who needs to correct themselves.

Here's an example of why intent doesn't always matter:

In the Star Wars universe, the kind of music that Max Rebo plays is a lot like our Earth jazz. But they don't refer to it as jazz.

They call it jizz.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz

I'm not sure what you want me to conclude from this. Yes, "jizz" is indeed a vulgar slang in English. By a different etymology it is also the fictional name of a fictional musical genre that's similar to real jazz. By yet another etymology it is also the behavioral characteristics of a bird that enable a birdwatcher to identify it. It would be entirely correct to say "look at that jizz, that's definitely a golden-crested pygmy goose". Someone else listening in might be confused, but that's their problem.

Words have multiple meanings. To ignore this and require that everyone just uses those meanings that you personally are aware of is an unreasonable request.

Sure, and nothing is stopping you from saying that Max Rebo is a jizz master—go crazy! I'm just noting that despite (presumably) there being no vulgar intent behind the term, it doesn't change the fact that most people will read "Max Rebo is a jizz master" and immediately think "lol jizz."

Regardless of whether your intentions are pure, if a certain term instills certain associations in your audience, you can either change it to remove the association or live with the consequences of not doing so. But it's not the audience's fault that "jizz" has an existing meaning that's cemented in their minds, and your newfangled space jazz probably won't supplant that.

The Star Wars universe is fictional. Do you honestly believe that the author from our universe who came up with this name was not aware of the (Earth universe) meaning of the word 'jizz'?

When did I say that, and how is it relevant if they knew it or not?

You said 'by a different etymology'. It's not a different etymology if they knew and were referring to the other meaning.

That's not how etymology is determined. The etymology of a word describes the reason why it's spelled or spoken the way it is. "Jizz" was chosen because it sounds like "jazz", but different. We can infer that the person who chose the word meant to convey that jizz music is like jazz music but different.

We can suppose that if the slang for sperm didn't exist that the writer would definitely have chosen "jezz", "juzz", or "jozz" instead, but personally I don't have any evidence to make that claim.

It's hard to believe you're not simply trying to satirise the people jvns complained about, who repeatedly pretend to believe that an obvious choice of words to make a sexual joke was not chosen for that reason.

I guess I'm just less confident than you in my ability to read people's minds. But I do find it funny that we're arguing about intent when the initial point was that it didn't matter.

> “Jizz” was chosen because it sounds like “jazz”, but different. We can infer that the person who chose the word meant to convey that jizz music is like jazz music but different.

“Jizz” in English is etymologically closely related to “jazz” in English, which some sources also attest to having a (historical) slang use identical to that of “jizz”, so, while you are absolutely correct about the point of choosing the word, that point is quite compatible with the person doing so of being aware of the slang use of “jizz”.

A separate question that further complicates this is whether the writer was aware of that etymological connection.

Some accounts of the etymology of Jazz claim that they have the same root

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)

jism -> jasm -> jass -> jazz and jism -> jizz

Though none of us were there and nothing is conclusive, so I guess who knows

As a frequent writer, I think most of the burden lies upon the writer because they are the one choosing to put things in front of an audience. Yes, I think readers also have an obligation to not be, say, willfully obtuse. But if they're approaching something I say in good faith and have a bad reaction that I didn't intend, I think that's mostly my problem. My good intent may explain how I got there, but I'm still going to try to change how I write so that I have the effect I am seeking.

So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how dare anybody consider the feelings of women", I do have to wonder at their motivation. Do they also pen strident defenses of writers any time something is misunderstood? Or is there a more particular pattern to their vigorous reactions?

And perhaps I should add that if I focused on my supposed good intent to the exclusion of changing, then I'd have to question what my intent was. Or, putting it differently, the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by correcting anything that is out of line with my intent. If I instead make it about my hurt feelings, I'd think that a better indicator of my deeper intent.

>So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how dare anybody consider the feelings of women"

If Vanessa makes a complaint and I say "okay, but why should we care that you don't like it?", am I saying that we shouldn't care women don't like it, or am I saying we shouldn't care that Vanessa is the only one who doesn't like it?

>the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by correcting anything that is out of line with my intent.

I mean, it's your writing. You can do whatever you want. I'm saying a) it's unreasonable to demand that others change what you don't like just because you don't like it, and b) it's not unreasonable for others to ask you to defend your request for changes.

Very much agreed. The principle of charity is an important virtue when reading things online, and only the audience is capable of bringing that to the table.

I have on a number of occasions misread a statement as its opposite (skimming over a 'not' or forgetting important context, perhaps). That might offend me to the point of making an argument, and I think it would be crazy for me to expect an apology rather than a "I didn't say that, you argumentative prick".

That's the extreme case, where the error is unquestionably my own, but there's a vast gray area where I might default to a less than charitable interpretation of someone's words and they haven't done anything wrong. For example, if someone were to describe my word choice as gross[1], I might take that as a personal insult. Putting the responsibility on the writer to account for every possible interpretation from every possible audience member is a great way to abolish good writing altogether.

[1] Using this example not to go after the author here in particular, but to avoid using a more divisive example that's not already part of the conversation

> If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it.

If original intent doesn’t matter, your audience shouldn’t differentiate between writing which is intentionally offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well assume you are malicious. That’s not the world I want to live in.

It’s also not the world we do live in. English is the most widely spoken language on the planet, and its speakers come from all sorts of cultural and educational backgrounds. They don’t have the time or the privilege of knowing about every term which can potentially be offensive.

My point isn’t that we shouldn’t change “groper” to something more inclusive. My point is that in practical terms intent does matter.

It's more that intent was irrelevant than any intent should be presumed.

Word meanings drift and we update as we go. That doesn't mean the previous author was evil; it means they were writing in a different context and the context is defunct. Especially for a living document like the documentation of a still-used tool, modifying word choice to avoid unintended negative connotation is wise.

Please note that you went from my "doesn't matter a ton" to "doesn't matter" period. That's a straw man. If you'd like to argue with something I said, I'd be glad to engage. But not with a cartoon of my point.

> But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper

The first (and the only non-slang one) definition of that is "a person or thing that gropes".

Context matters, as in "groping $person" versus "groping $object". You cannot sexually touch domain information, so that couldn't possibly be the meaning.

I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes - that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that was the case in the 80s.

--- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually relevant ---

I did click through to the Mastodon link from the OP and had a look at the "dudes in the replies demanding that i prove [...]" - the replies were largely supportive, apart from 2 "dudes" saying they hadn't considered the sexual-assault meaning before now & weren't sure if that was intended BUT still strongly agreeing that it should be removed, and 1 other dude (possibly non-native English speaker?) surprised that such a sexual-assault-related interpretation existed and asking for further context (not "demanding proof"). That's all followed by a lot of extremely confrontational replies from the OP assuming bad faith in every case.

Julia is a fantastic tech writer, & I'm sure I'll continue to read her blog regularly, but... this isn't a great look. Asking for the manpage to be changed is perfectly reasonable but the ad hominem really wasn't needed here.

Said the posts were deleted.

>A few dudes in the replies (who I think by now have all deleted their posts) asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive…

ah, well spotted. I'll edit.

Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend.

Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the author has lost some credibility with me.

I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a dictionary site which only contained the definition she found offensive. If you put "define: grope" into Google, the non-offensive definition is the first one listed:

Grope (verb) 1. to feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands.

Which was why I latched onto this aspect in the first place - sexual groping has always been the minor definition in American English for at least the past 30 years. It's at least somewhat disingenuous to completely ignore this fact and focus only on the maximally offensive possibility.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope

Blocking people for "just asking questions" is fine - such questions are more often than not wolf-whistles, especially in conversations involving sexual abuse. But I did find her language in the replies odd - the level of bad faith assumed seemed inexplicable.

> in American English

fwiw, the author doesn't appear to be American and it's entirely possible that your minor definition is their major one

> So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:

When I read the Mastodon thread, this jumped out at me as well. A couple of the guys who raised the point clarified that they fully agreed that the removal of “groping” was a good thing, but by that point, the author wouldn’t be able to see the clarification.

I’m really torn on this. I fully support people’s choices to set boundaries and block abusive behavior. At the same time, “I disagree with you so I’m going to insta-block you and not even give you a chance to clarify” seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse.

But having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger.

I don’t know what the right balance is, and it’s likely very personal and contextual, but I’ve personally started to only engage with conversations if I’m willing to deal with all of the likely categories of response (barring obvious abuse). Disagree=block seems to increase polarization and seems counterproductive in the long run. It also seems like a good way to reinforce my own blind spots, even if it turns out that I’m “right” some of the time.

> insta-block [...] seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse.

> having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger

Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to.

I am moderately mouthy on social media. I get a much, much smaller level of pushback than similar women do. When I do, the level of respect is higher, and I almost never get my credentials questioned. But I regularly see women with much stronger credentials get those inspected and/or dismissed. Just yesterday I saw a woman with a relevant PhD getting talked down to by some random guy. And then when she made a separate post about her frustration with reply guys and how she was thinking about leaving Mastodon, some different random dude told her to "get a live".

Historically, we spent thousands of years keeping women in "their place". That was partly legal, but mostly social. We've solved the legal stuff in the US, but only recently. (E.g., states only started to outlaw marital rape in the 1970s, and it wasn't fully outlawed until 1992.) It should be no surprise to anybody that the social mechanisms did not magically evaporate the moment we passed some laws. And I think one of those social mechanisms is the disproportionate negativity women get from men when they are not in "their place". When they have the audacity to act like they know things and have valid opinions just like men do.

If you want to read more on this, Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of misogyny" is a very careful examination of the mechanisms and their effects. If you're looking for "the heart", I think that's a good place to continue your search.

Sorry, but how is anything of what you've said an example of "putting women 'in their place'"? Do men not have their credentials questioned or their opinion dismissed online, or is it misogyny purely because it's men doing it to women?

As I already said, it happens to women disproportionately. If you'd like to learn more about when exactly it's misogyny, again, read Manne's book, the heart of which is precisely defining the term.

I'd like to know how they arrived at the conclusion that it happens disproportionately.

I personally arrived at my conclusion through, as I explained, long observation of social media. If you'd like to understand the contents of a book, well, there's a common solution for that.

I don’t question the disproportionate impact of bad behavior towards women.

> Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to.

My point was that more broadly speaking, online discourse is fundamentally broken in most popular social spaces. Most people have abandoned discourse and refuse to have hard conversations. I’d argue that in most cases, this is counterproductive behavior. I’m also not saying this is the only thing broken - there are a myriad of systemic factors, and degrees and kinds of brokenness. Bad behavior towards women is also at the toxic core in my view. I don’t see this as either/or.

Dialogue is all we have available to change minds, and this broad erosion of communication is deeply worrisome. I’ve been beating this drum for some time.

When I first read the thread, I didn’t realize the author was a woman. The point of my comment was that:

1. I, too, noticed the pattern the parent comment mentioned

2. While I really dislike what online discourse has become, I have empathy for the author and can understand why especially women get sick of the bullshit and just block people

And that was my point about how personal and contextual decisions about these interactions are. That in this situation, I get it, but that it highlights the brokenness of the web. For what it’s worth, I’m increasingly convinced that the best move is to stop playing the social media game entirely.

I appreciate the book recommendation. As a person who views misogyny as a major problem and unacceptable behavior, and has spent a decent amount of time exploring the subject, do you have an elevator pitch for the insights in the book? I add to my (long) reading list cautiously, and I guess my question is: if I’m already fully convinced that this is a problem and take it seriously, will I still find value in reading?

> Most people have abandoned discourse and given up on having hard conversations.

I agree that the lack of hard conversations is a problem, although I'm not sure how much people have given it up versus just never did it at all with strangers, whom computers now thrust them in virtual proximity to. But again, I don't think the problem is with the people blocking. I think it's with the propagandists and the purposeful jerks. I think blocking is a fine response to encountering somebody who is not only uninterested in reason, but will be a pain in the ass as they try to silence any opposition to their views. Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd. [1]

> do you have an elevator pitch for the insights in the book?

I think the book's value is mainly to people of an analytical bent. Her goal is partly what philosophers call ameliorative, meaning she's trying to sort through the many things that get called "misogyny" and come up with a productive definition for it. As part of that, she gives both a useful theoretical structure (especially valuable to me is her framing of misogyny as the enforcement arm of sexism, as well as her look at who is "owed" what and how people behave when those expectations are violated) and a lot of nuanced examinations of examples. I had no problem spotting open misogyny, but there were a lot of more subtle, stochastic examples that I only saw as a pattern after reading her book.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steven-crowders-change-my-min...

> Life's too short to waste time on the "change my mind" crowd.

I held this view for a long time, but anecdotally, people who disagree with me in person are generally willing to have a good faith conversation about it. I rarely encounter the "change my mind" (with no intention of doing so) type of individual outside of popular social media platforms, and don't think the attitude is as prevalent as Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/etc would lead us to believe. Over time I've come to believe that there are really two versions of this crowd:

- People who generally mean well but are aligned with groups that propagate questionable or bad ideas. These people will change their mind, or at least expand their understanding of other views, but are often discarded as hopeless due to their association with that crowd.

- People who do not mean well, do not engage in good faith, and intentionally foment discord. I believe this is a small percentage who have been enabled by the megaphone that is the Internet, and their bad behavior locks the first group into a dangerous situation.

I generally won't engage with this latter group, but I do think there's value/importance in leaving behind well-reasoned arguments for people from group 1 who find discussion threads later. I generally don't believe I'll change the mind of the person writing the comment in that moment, but think the comment is still important for the reasonable-but-unsure people who encounter it later, for the future training of LLMs, etc. In the marketplace of ideas, I think continuing to spread good ones is important.

I may be too idealistic/optimistic, but I tend to think "life's too short" will turn into "the world is no longer livable" if taken to the extreme. I'm not preaching that others should do the same, and I don't really know what the right answer is or if taking this stance is helping. I still think quitting social media is probably the best solution, but I don't think it's a solution many people are willing to consider.

Thanks for sharing the additional info about the book. This does sound interesting/useful.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "'change my mind' crowd" I'm referring to is absolutely your group 3, or what I referred to as "the propagandists and the purposeful jerks". They're people acting the same way that Sartre was criticizing here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-that-...

Or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew#Bad_faith

And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper.

Yes, to the extent that you can use a bad-faith actor to show something to a broader crowd, they can be useful. I do plenty of that here. But a) on social media, that's rarely the case, in that few see arguments down in the reply chains, b) any actual points they have will get discussed by more persuadable interlocutors, and c) one can find and address those points without platforming or elevating the jerks in question.

So if you want to engage with the jerks as part of your own personal quest, go for it. I sometimes do. But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online, and that people who have a block-on-site strategy are making good and reasonable choices, especially when they are the regular target of historical inequities that you and I don't face.

> And I'll note that he was writing well before on-line discussion. The problems run deeper.

I don't question that. My point was that the Internet magnifies it. It's far easier to encounter that type of individual now than at any other point in history.

> But I say again that blocking bad-faith actors is not, as you claim, the heart of why discourse is broken online

To be clear, this was not my claim, and I should have made that more clear. My point was that the instinct to block and the default assumption of bad faith is at the heart of the problems (and as I acknowledged, it's just one of many). My point was that people block other people without even considering whether the question was in good/bad faith, and assume bad faith based on the existence of any disagreement. You can find this happening from all ideological viewpoints across social media. When it's antisemitism, it's obviously bad behavior.

It's why places like HN still have pockets of decent discussion. Assuming good faith is encoded into the rules, which often reveals that disagreements are caused by an incomplete understanding of the other, rather than actual bad behavior. I couldn't have raised the points I raised in this thread on a place like Twitter without getting lambasted by people claiming I hate women, or support groping, or somesuch.

I'm all for blocking bad-faith actors and I do my flagging duty here when needed.

I don’t think it’s worth worrying about or changing your writing style. I’m tired of these people who blanche in the face when you write something in a way that isn’t how they expect and where they are haunted by the possibility of a double meaning in what you said. “Smoking a fag” for instance is a perfectly British phrase that will have an uncultured American clutching their pearls and groping around for any kind of downvote or report button.

If you’re scared, don’t read anything. Reading is scary and dangerous.

There is a difference between:

- What I meant to say.

- The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of).

- The impact of the words I use.

Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on.

Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings.

In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.

I fully agree that there are often clear distinctions between intent and impact, and that people should become more aware of this distinction and of the impact of their words.

> In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.

I’d be more careful with this though. Ideally, this needs to look more like mutual respect/trust, and both parties are ideally:

1. Considering the impact of what they’re saying

2. Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when something doesn’t sound right, and talking about it when things seem misaligned

Caring about impact is important. There’s also a failure mode here that results in complete communication breakdown as one party tries not to upset the other.

Communication is intrinsically a shared experience, and both parties bear some responsibility for how things are interpreted. As long as both parties engage in good faith and communicate about confusion, everyone learns/grows and it’s a self solving problem.

I agree with you, and chalk it up to people projecting their own warped views onto otherwise innocuous things.

There's a lot more interesting things in Julia's post than relitigating this specific example.

That's why it stuck out to me I suppose - the rest seemed like solid advice, and this a misunderstanding that was treated not really in the spirit of some of the other points.

Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in that context could be fine ("grope around").

But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning.

It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.

I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when it's a human assailant either though?

And 'dig' is a tool that searches (or 'digs') for certain information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits!

I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to me.

I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (& learnt from) her writing on many occasions.

It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity notwithstanding.

The non-sexual meaning was almost certainly the intended one (because the sexual meaning makes no sense at all in that context). I think we can give the original developers a full pass and assign no blame. It may still be a good idea to change it (and, indeed, they have done so; it's just that Apple retains an older version for licensing reasons).

Language evolves. I definitely associate "grope" more with sexual assault than trying to find a glass of water in the dark. It's understandable that the document could evoke discomfort.

The "they're just words" argument/defense is certainly never an acceptable response. It's one thing to go on a witch hunt and extrude connotation where there is none, but that's not what this is. Instead, use this as an opportunity to understand others better and learn to be more empathetic.

Indulging someone's hypersensitivities is not helping them, it's harming them.

Ehhh... that's pretty black-and-white.

It's definitely possible to hurt someone by indulging their hypersensitivity, but it's also possible to hurt someone by completely ignoring them when they tell you "what you said hurt me."

Like engineering, communication in hard situations isn't about following rules legalistically - it's about understanding the nuances of the situation and your tools well and making the best judgments you can admit the different tradeoffs you're balancing in a given moment.

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