Re: [PATCH] docs: update coding guidelines to be more inclusive

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 18, 2022, 03:02 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfsog512t.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <220217.86a6epiyii.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

>> Maybe the motivation behind this change is a misunderstanding that
>> somehow the original of what this patch touches says that "male" and
>> "female" are the only two possible values of "gender", but I cannot
>> read it that way even when I squint my eyes.
>
> Isn't that exactly what it's saying? I.e. for the purposes of the
> English used in our documentation there's two grammatical genders "he
> ran the program", "she ran the program" and gender-neutral "it/they ran
> the program".

Yes, for the purpose of the language, there are only two grammatical genders, "male", "female" (and "thing"). But my point was that the documentation was not making any non-technical value judgement like "genders outside these two are forbidden".

What I found problematic with the rewrite is that by moving from more concrete examples ("avoid 'he' and do not assume 'male'") to a more abstract wording ("avoid gendered pronouns"), it would burden non-natives disproportionally more, and I do not see a clear benefit to offset the downside.

I do not think it adds anything to discussion to repeat what was already said, so I'll refrain from commenting on the other two changes in the patch, but they posed the same problem to me. I cannot convincingly answer with "yes" to the question "does it overall help inclusiveness? really? how?"