Comment by allannienhuis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allannienhuis | Hacker News Reader

I find it hard to believe how people in our industry today can be so ignorant of the issues around the use of machismo terms like that used in the title of the post. I believe that the author was just trying to be witty and was probably not intending to offend anyone. But his offhand use of the "when men were men' phrase is terribly offensive to many people.

Just to be clear: this isn't about simple 'political correctness' - trying not to offend anyone. This is about fixing a broken culture in our industry.

This industry has the potential to be completely egalitarian - silicon can't determine the gender of the people who wrote the code, and keyboards aren't particularly better suited to men's hands. Yet we've managed to build an industry that is completely dominated by men. That's a travesty and a waste, and deserves explicit effort to undo the damage. That means using inclusive language at _all_ times, even if it doesn't seem 'natural'. The fact that language like that seems 'natural' or 'innocent' to some people is a horribly broken and heartbreakingly wrong state that needs fixing.

Who would be offended by this? It seems to me the only thing that could be offensive is the implication that modern men aren't as tough as in the past. Is that what you mean?

Some people just need to find things to be offended by.

Yeah, except that the absence of women is a huge and embarrassing black mark on our industry. Just because you personally are too big of a cretin to give a shit doesn't mean everyone has their head up their ass. GFY.

The phrase uses maleness as a reference to something better or great. 'real men' are used as example of 'great'. It has the same effect as 'throw like a girl'.

I'll admit to being sensitive to the topic. I'm mostly surprised that given all of the attention that the barriers to women in the industry has been given over the last number of months, people still use language like this. My point is that we _should_ be sensitive to this issue. We should think about the women engineers that are on the margins, perhaps experiencing harassment at work or online, and consider how they would feel reading yet another 'manly man' reference to being a great developer.

I think the phrase actually is comparing modern men to men of the past. My interpretation is that it's teasing softer men that their grandfathers were tougher than them.

Doesn't seem to me like it says anything about women. I'm forced to conclude that this is a hot button topic for you, and isn't something relevant to the article or discussion at hand.

Yeah, I usually say "when men were men, women were women and furry little green aliens from Alpha Centauri were real furry little green aliens from Alpha Centauri".

And no, this isn't sarcasm - it's a mouthful to say, but it's fun and shouldn't offend anyone. The short "when men were men" should also be completely innocuous but I don't need the kinds of people who get offended by it polluting the comments on my posts.

Hm... I agree that it's not the best title, but if anything, it's offensive to (modern) men, in effect countering their domination of the industry.

Parsing the sentence to only consider the modern vs traditional cultural reference (things were better in the past) is completely ignoring the point that it is using maleness to define good or great. The phrase is just an idiom, I'm pretty sure the author isn't _really_ trying to say things were better in the past, or that modern men are really weaker or whatever. It's just a turn of phrase that makes for an arguably witty headline. The point I'm trying to make is that things like this reinforce the male domination of the industry and push women away when we really need to be overtly trying to do the opposite.

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