this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?
I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?
There is nothing political about acknowledging peoples' existence.
Existence? Because somebody used a wrong pronoun?
You're right, words are meaningless and language has no bearing on society at large. after all, fuiebt eidiowb rhe efifo quifopim.
There's a big difference between negating the existence of people and what happend in this case, i.e. somebody writing a comment (only visible to him and other developers) using the male form.
Disclaimer: I'm not a software engineer or anything, and while I can usually figure out how to install something from git, that's as far as my understanding of the platform goes..
Was it an unnecessary edit? Sure, maybe. Hell, could have just been someone trying to get a reaction (mission accomplished). That does not mean that the edit was incorrect in any way (gramatically, syntax-wise, etc.) or political. It's just someone being annoying.
But it's only political, if you agree that trans people should not exist (or I guess just that you are woefully ignorant on the subject of gender).
The hyperbole here is insane. My trans friend’s Japanese parents are supportive of him, but they have some trouble with pronouns. If you’re not a native English speaker and learned the standard pronouns, then I think it’s just naturally too confusing. Pretty much all of them are translating in their minds in real-time.
Can you really not understand that we're talking about two completely different situations?
Language is extremely powerful. This is all part of the erasure (an integral part btw).
Hmm I don't think you really understand what happened.
The developer wrote a comment (not visible to the end user) using the male form.
A random person opened a pull request without any useful changes, except for changing that comment from "he" to "their".
The developer rejected that PR because it's politically motivated and it doesn't add anything else.
Right, except that's not politically motivated, and is a useful change for people reading the code, both for women and non-binary people.
Calling pronouns "political" is the dogwhistle they always use
I know what happened. Is it a stupid, unnecessary fix? Sure, probably. But that doesn't mean it's political. Trans people simply existing is not a political issue.
They refused to use the right pronoun. One is a mistake. The other is a choice.
They refused to accept a PR from a random person with just one single word change for a string that only the developer himself is seeing.
I think the developer has all the rights not to accept such a PR which adds nothing to the program. And I think people that really care about gender inclusivity should stop focusing on this useless nitpicks, which makes inclusivity appear like made up by a bunch of trolls.
It's pretty telling to focus on the dev's right to reject inclusivity while simultaneously rejecting and deriding everyone else's right to judge them for that.
And if it was such a useless change, why didn't the dev reject it for that instead of saying it was "political"? He's the one that declared the word itself, not the utility of the change, was the problem. Calling everyone else "trolls" for pointing that out is just disingenuous.
Don’t think we should be scared of the word “political” or “ideology”.
Yeah, that too... Everything is political if you want to really get into it. People just want to be able to ignore it until it directly affects them.
Indeed. It’s a privilege to be able to stay inside your little circle and say “we don’t do politics” or “ no ideology here”.