On Friday, October 9, 2015 at 6:08:47 AM UTC-4, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
>
> No, it's the sexualization specifically. If we had named the language
> "James", people would not be joking about how they were spending late
> nights with James or commenting on how attractive James is. Perhaps it's
> our bad for picking a feminine name, but I still like the name and hope
> that I don't come to regret it. It makes me wince every time someone refers
> to Julia as "she" because while that's fairly innocuous in itself, a
> majority of the time the next statement is something that makes me
> uncomfortable. And if it makes *me* unconfortable, then it's guaranteed
> that it makes others feel unwelcomed and like outsiders – which is not ok.
>
I think Sisyphuss might actually have meant "genderization", not
"sexualization"
(I'm not sure if English is Sisyphuss' first language, which might explain
it).
There is a big difference, and in many languages, it is not even possible
to avoid assigning a gender to a word.
Lua, for example, is a feminine noun (A Lua, the moon).
You can't even talk about a language in those languages without using
either masculine or feminine pronouns.
("El idioma" or "La lengua" or "El lenguaje", for example).
Even in English, certain types of things are generally referred to with one
gender or the other - for example, people generally use the feminine pronoun
for boats, ships, and sometimes cars.
Also, just calling something beautiful is not necessarily "sexualizing" it.
I could say that I find Scheme's sparse syntax is beautiful, for example
(and I have said just that in the past!).
In English, beautiful is commonly used for things, not just women, so
doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of sexualization.
Given that it is impossible to NOT genderize in many languages, and that
the Julia community is international, where English is not the
first language of many speakers, I think maybe the Julia Community Standard
should be updated.
>the programming language is not a person and does not have a gender.
I think this should not be Anglo-centric, and would instead be clearer as
follows:
"the programming language is not a person and should not be
anthropomorphized".
Also, I don't think that sexualizing would not happen if it had the name
"James" (people being people, after all).
The jokes might be less (because our society unfortunately tends to
objectify and sexualize women more than men, and also because unfortunately
there are many more men than women programmers), but they'd still happen.
The jokes about a straight/bisexual woman or gay/bisexual man who spends a
lot of late nights with James would still happen... like I said,
people are people, and they *will* make jokes and bad puns if there is any
opening for such.
(it could even be a straight guy or lesbian woman - if Julia were named
James, I'm sure I'd have been the brunt of many jokes about how I must be
really be gay, from all the nights I've been spending with James).
I think the important points would be to
1) *gently* remind people to not anthropomorphize Julia
2) remind them that in English and other languages where possible, neuter
pronouns should be used
3) point out that *real* cases of sexualization are not considered
acceptable in public forums about Julia.
Carlos, I want to apologize for making an issue of this at the risk of
> alienating or shaming you – that is absolutely not the intention and I hope
> it doesn't have that effect. For what it's worth, I don't think that your
> comment was meant maliciously and I wish I didn't have to say any of this.
> But standing by our community standards is too important not to say
> something.
>
The sad thing here is that it seems that Carlos very good points on naming
have been lost, because of a single line:
>are mostly courting her because of how beautiful she is
which in Spanish would probably not be an issue, because the "her" and
"she" are simply how you have to say it
(and Carlos' first language might also not be English).
Scott
