<story><title>The Power of a Pronoun</title><url>http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spindritf</author><text>&amp;gt; while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn&amp;#x27;t be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as professionalism and empathy at Joyent?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LeafStorm</author><text>&amp;gt; On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it&amp;#x27;s not the use of the gendered pronoun that&amp;#x27;s at issue (that&amp;#x27;s just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that&amp;#x27;s not an attitude that Joyent tolerates.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not opposing the use of the word &amp;quot;he,&amp;quot; they&amp;#x27;re opposing him saying &amp;quot;no, go away, I don&amp;#x27;t see any reason someone could take offense&amp;quot; when the issue was pointed out instead of &amp;quot;thanks for the patch.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Power of a Pronoun</title><url>http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spindritf</author><text>&amp;gt; while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn&amp;#x27;t be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? And how do you square it with calling someone an asshole in the next paragraph? That passes as professionalism and empathy at Joyent?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cdcarter</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s crazy.&lt;p&gt;The whole event reads to me like Ben was having a bad day and rejected a minimal patch, and then it exploded and he was grumpy. I imagine that on a normal day, a good F&amp;#x2F;OSS leader would accept patches that improve or make the codebase more consistent, even if they are fairly minimal. That&amp;#x27;s how code grows.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m giving Ben the benefit of the doubt that he was in a mood, which is why he behaved as a bad project leader. If this became a regular occurrence, then there&amp;#x27;s a problem.&lt;p&gt;Ben&amp;#x27;s behavior isn&amp;#x27;t about the gendered pronouns. I think it&amp;#x27;s great that the project is committing to using appropriate language. But I don&amp;#x27;t think this is what made this incident occur.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: removed some poorly chosen words that didn&amp;#x27;t reflect the point of my comment.</text></comment>