My assessment? Get fucked, Ladybird. I don’t want to trust my web security to people who think like this, especially since web security is very political and will only become more so as the Trump administration continues.
A few days later, someone pointed out an issue in SerenityOS where a new contributor offered to update the documentation to include gender-neutral language instead of always assuming the person building the project was a man. Kling rejected it with the statement: “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
…Kling and the Ladybird project doubled down on rejecting active inclusion in the name of being “apolitical.” Others tried to explain that rejecting inclusivity is inherently a political decision.
If you’ve watched enough of these things play out, it’s usually the doubling down that causes a lasting split, more than the original disagreement.
So not some kind of JK Rowling transphobia or even stock republiQan misogyny as much as a fairly tone-deaf executive position on documentation that became a thing.
Making documentation gender-neutral is not radical or ‘political’ other than it’s trying to reflect the reality that more than just men use and create code. It seems like Kling thought his project was under threat of takeover by some radical pansexual furry anarcho-collective (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and said something stupid like “documentation isn’t a place for political debate” which, is sort of true and also not relevant to the change requested.
As the article states, the real issue is the doubling down. That’s not good.
After reading this, in particular the “The Facts” section, my understanding is: he got pulled into making a political statement about gender and he didn’t want to get involved with that.
Yet again, that “crowd” didn’t like Ladybird’s refusal to play, therefore that “crowd” does what they’re known best doing: cry high and loud on the internet playing the victim.
In a sense, that “crowd” shoved their political agenda down his throat, and that’s the only thing I personally find reprehensible here.
Refusal to make a “political” statement is very much political when the politics in question is about acknowledging non-men exist. There is no politically neutral choice when there are two options who are both political.
It isn’t totally false; the claim that the use of the generic masculine is the result of or may have been informed by sexism is based on the fact that it hasn’t always been that way.
Here is a more nuanced and better take:
The generic masculine in modern English is a recent development, as you noted: English used the non-gendered “they” for groups of people and hypothetical/non-specific individuals until prescriptive efforts arose to make it more like Latin. (You can find lots of traces of these prescriptive efforts in modern English: “don’t split infinitives” and “don’t strand prepositions” are similar rules imposed to make English more like Latin, which are still taught in schools but most people don’t really follow.)
This article appears to be pretty even-handed.
My assessment? Get fucked, Ladybird. I don’t want to trust my web security to people who think like this, especially since web security is very political and will only become more so as the Trump administration continues.
TL;DR;
So not some kind of JK Rowling transphobia or even stock republiQan misogyny as much as a fairly tone-deaf executive position on documentation that became a thing.
Making documentation gender-neutral is not radical or ‘political’ other than it’s trying to reflect the reality that more than just men use and create code. It seems like Kling thought his project was under threat of takeover by some radical pansexual furry anarcho-collective (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and said something stupid like “documentation isn’t a place for political debate” which, is sort of true and also not relevant to the change requested.
As the article states, the real issue is the doubling down. That’s not good.
After reading this, in particular the “The Facts” section, my understanding is: he got pulled into making a political statement about gender and he didn’t want to get involved with that.
Yet again, that “crowd” didn’t like Ladybird’s refusal to play, therefore that “crowd” does what they’re known best doing: cry high and loud on the internet playing the victim.
In a sense, that “crowd” shoved their political agenda down his throat, and that’s the only thing I personally find reprehensible here.
Refusal to make a “political” statement is very much political when the politics in question is about acknowledging non-men exist. There is no politically neutral choice when there are two options who are both political.
That’s totally false.
One can write using the generic masculine form without making a political statement.
This is not even close to not acknowledge there is non-men in this world.
What you are putting forward is absurd. No one is saying that only men exist anywhere in here.
It isn’t totally false; the claim that the use of the generic masculine is the result of or may have been informed by sexism is based on the fact that it hasn’t always been that way.
Here is a more nuanced and better take:
Source
It was a trivial change to some documentation. The fact that he chose this hill to die on says a lot.