Indeed I was going to post on behalf of my colleagues for whom English is
not a first language, and whose native language assigns *almost everything*
a gender, but Scott said it well.
To summarise, when translating from a language where everything has a
gender it is common for he/she to remain referring to objects that in
English do not commonly have genders.
The community standard has the best intentions, but in these circumstances
it must be applied with common sense and sensitivity to avoid appearing
intolerant of those for whom English is not their best language.
Cheers
Lex
On Saturday, October 10, 2015 at 2:37:28 AM UTC+10, Scott Jones wrote:
>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
