Re: [PATCH] am: counteract gender bias

From: Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>
Date: Jul 7, 2016, 12:49 UTC
Message-ID: <20160707124943.GA22668@glandium.org>
In-Reply-To: <d54f8f8b32ecc024eb3a58dd42ef9f855f8e2cb9.1467892022.git.johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

On Thu, Jul 07, 2016 at 01:47:19PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Since d1c5f2a (Add git-am, applymbox replacement., 2005-10-07), i.e. for
> almost 11 years already, we demonstrated our disrespect to the pioneers
> of software development like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Margaret
> Hamilton, by pretending that each and every software developer is male
> ("his_tree"). It appears almost as if we weren't fully aware that the
> first professional software developers were all female.
> 
> We know our field to have this unfortunate gender bias that has nothing
> to do with qualification or biological reasons, and we are very sad
> about the current gender imbalance of the Git developer community.
> 
> Let's start changing that by using the variable name "her_tree" for an
> equal number of years out of fairness, and change to the gender neutral
> "their_tree" after that.

You make it sound like the decision to use "his" was conscious and on purpose. I doubt that was the case, especially 11 years ago, when these issues weren't as publicized. Let's not attribute to malice on part of the people who wrote those lines what can be attributed to linguistics.

Mike