Is Git sexist?

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SuperNev

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This probably belongs in the off-topic section, but what the heck ...

There's been outrage on the interwebs about "two sexist jokes" gone wrong at the 2013 PyCon. The full details have been reported here [theverge.com] and here [techcrunch.com] among others [Hacker News].

TL;DR
Two guys were talking about "forking someone's repo" as a new form of flattery (which I agree with), and in the same conversation made a childish joke about a "big dongle". A lady (Andria Richard) in front of them overheard the convo, and was offended. Instead of trying to tell them that their jokes aren't funny, she posted a picture of the guys on Twitter.

Both guys got fired at their jobs, and the interwebs have exploded, with Anonymous even chirping in, which got the lady fired too.

My question is really whether Git is sexist? As I mentioned above, I would be flattered if someone said they'd "fork my repo", even if I try get my head in the gutter I can't find how that would be offensive, except that the work "fork" might sound similar to the "f-word". There's been companies using it as "this is forking amazing" (I think it was bitbucket.org).

I do think that the lady took things out of context, I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't know what "forking" really is, and she just listened to key-words so she could have something to entertain her Twitter and Tumblr followers. She is a very active internet activist who's focused on women in programming.

Next time I'm with female colleagues at work I might feel insecure using words like "pulling", "pushing", "merging", "basing", "hard", "blaming" etc without fear of losing my job. e.g. can I "merge my repo with yours?", or even "wanna fork my repo?".

I just think that this activist has done harm to whatever her cause of being a female software evangelist. I do find humour though that it took a DDoS to get SendGrid to "release her" from her duties.
I wanna join Anonymous :)
 
My guess would be, and i'm no maths expert here... that two people simply don't represent the whole community.

Two people made a joke. Get over it I say.
 
A joke about a big dongle between two people overheard by a third and this is how she reacts. Hypersensitive and way over the top. Was anything derogatory or sexists said about women?
 
ponder said:
A joke about a big dongle between two people overheard by a third and this is how she reacts. Hypersensitive and way over the top. Was anything derogatory or sexists said about women?
Click to expand...

It seems like the only thing that the lads did wrong was talk too loud. Eish!
 
Wonder what she would have done if Linus was addressing them and used the term circlejerk like he has before, would she feel excluded?
 
ponder said:
Wonder what she would have done if Linus was addressing them and used the term circlejerk like he has before, would she feel excluded?
Click to expand...

- He would have had to step down from the Linux foundation.
- Microsoft and Apple would have supported her in bringing down Linux, you know, for the "future of female developers" or something like that.
- All the Linux contributors would be outcasts like the The Pirate Bay members, and be termed "sexist men and women".
- Kernel 3.9 wouldn't make it to stable release.
- Google would close the source of their "fork" of Linux (oh my word! I just did a sexist thing, I said the "f" word!)
- We'd be forced to use Windows and Mac.
- The high cost of computers results in inflation sky-rocketing. Ben Bernanke dies of heart attack, Obama can't contain the US economy and US citizens pull a 9-11 on him.
- Zooma faced with mounting pressure, his head torn into pieces (two to be exact) from the stress.
- Patent trolls would pull a Lord of The Rings on us, and no innovation (bread no longer sliced cos someone has a patent on it).
- Schools wouldn't afford to have PCs cos of licensing costs.
- Ubuntu shut-down, Mark Shuttleworth goes to outer space and never comes back, with the Ubuntu phone
- FNB Branches would uninstall Linux cos of the lack of updates, pass licensing costs to consumers.
- Steve would switch back from FNB and blip bank would come with a campaign of "we told you so", irritating the life out of us.
- We'd stop calling code "sexy" in case the PC is offended of the "sexist" comment and does a BSoD every five minutes. Oh my word, we'd be back to Windows 95, only that it'd have live tiles!.
- Elon Musk gets sued for not taking enough women to space. Loses everything and stops supplying the NASA International Space Station.
- Everyone in the ISS dies of hunger, the ISS falls from the clouds, taking out all the computers in the clouds, and half of Russia.
- Google gets "Scroogled", everyone moves to Bing, overall IQ declines to 90 due to the substandard search results, forcing a revision to the Stanford-Binet test (you know, the IQ test thing).
- We become very dumb, move to the stone age, only that stones are hard as heck.
- NASA would be even more underfunded, shut down, and not see VY Canis Majoris (you know, the 7th largest known star/planet in the galaxy) when it explodes on the 01 April 2013.
- 3 light-years later on the 01 April 2016 the gamma rays from the explosion hit our Solar System. Trigger a nuke reaction of the sun. 6 minutes later the world ends.
- Ancient Mayan prophecies fulfilled (think about it, there's "African Time", so what if Mayan Time also runs late, by say ~ 3 years and 4 months, which would put us at March-April 2016)

- The world ends!!!

So no, she would have felt more than excluded and actually caused the end of the world as we know it. Let's hope she's not there when Linus Torvalds utters the term "circlejerk".

Note: If you don't find any of the above funny, please pretend as if you've never read it. My life already sucks, I don't need someone to also tell me that I can't make funny/clever/whatever jokes. I might never have a girlfriend or wife :cry:
 
Last edited:
SuperNev said:
- He would have had to step down from the Linux foundation.
- Microsoft and Apple would have supported her in bringing down Linux, you know, for the "future of female developers" or something like that.
- All the Linux contributors would be outcasts like the The Pirate Bay members, and be termed "sexist men and women".
- Kernel 3.9 wouldn't make it to stable release.
- Google would close the source of their "fork" of Linux (oh my word! I just did a sexist thing, I said the "f" word!)
- We'd be forced to use Windows and Mac.
- The high cost of computers results in inflation sky-rocketing. Ben Bernanke dies of heart attack, Obama can't contain the US economy and US citizens pull a 9-11 on him.
- Zooma faced with mounting pressure, his head torn into pieces (two to be exact) from the stress.
- Patent trolls would pull a Lord of The Rings on us, and no innovation (bread no longer sliced cos someone has a patent on it).
- Schools wouldn't afford to have PCs cos of licensing costs.
- Ubuntu shut-down, Mark Shuttleworth goes to outer space and never comes back, with the Ubuntu phone
- FNB Branches would uninstall Linux cos of the lack of updates, pass licensing costs to consumers.
- Steve would switch back from FNB and blip bank would come with a campaign of "we told you so", irritating the life out of us.
- We'd stop calling code "sexy" in case the PC is offended of the "sexist" comment and does a BSoD every five minutes. Oh my word, we'd be back to Windows 95, only that it'd have live tiles!.
- Elon Musk gets sued for not taking enough women to space. Loses everything and stops supplying the NASA International Space Station.
- Everyone in the ISS dies of hunger, the ISS falls from the clouds, taking out all the computers in the clouds, and half of Russia.
- Google gets "Scroogled", everyone moves to Bing, overall IQ declines to 90 due to the substandard search results, forcing a revision to the Stanford-Binet test (you know, the IQ test thing).
- We become very dumb, move to the stone age, only that stones are hard as heck.
- NASA would be even more underfunded, shut down, and not see VY Canis Majoris (you know, the 7th largest known star/planet in the galaxy) when it explodes on the 01 April 2013.
- 3 light-years later on the 01 April 2016 the gamma rays from the explosion hit our Solar System. Trigger a nuke reaction of the sun. 6 minutes later the world ends.
- Ancient Mayan prophecies fulfilled (think about it, there's "African Time", so what if Mayan Time also runs late, by say ~ 3 years and 4 months, which would put us at March-April 2016)

- The world ends!!!

So no, she would have felt more than excluded and actually caused the end of the world as we know it. Let's hope she's not there when Linus Torvalds utters the term "circlejerk".

Note: If you don't find any of the above funny, please pretend as if you've never read it. My life already sucks, I don't need someone to also tell me that I can't make funny/clever/whatever jokes. I might never have a girlfriend or wife :cry:
Click to expand...

Lol :D

Except those are regular years. A lightyear is a measure of distance, not time.
 
abzo said:
Lol :D

Except those are regular years. A lightyear is a measure of distance, not time.
Click to expand...

Yes, thought about that, was hoping I'd get away with that part :(. It'd only be correct if Canis Majoris was 3 light-years away, in which case its light would be 3 years away, which it's gladly not. Also, the gamma rays would hopefully not bounce off nanoparticles that'd deflect their direction before hitting earth ... :)
 
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