Last week, Elad Maidar wrote a fairly short but readable opinion
piece[0] illustrating some long-standing social problems in the Ruby
community, ending with a very specific call to action around naming
conventions for Ruby projects and gems. To save you the trouble of
scrolling to the bottom of this post and clicking, here's the relevant
bit:
What is missing you ask? I think that there is no consideration in
women when it comes to gem naming convention, here are a few gems that
i found in a 5 mintues search on Rubygems.org to demonstrate why women
and other groups probably feel uncomfortable when trying to get into
the Rails community:
* retarded
* bitch
* hoe
* womanizer
* recursive_pimp_slap
* miniskirt
* childlabor
* bj
* sex
* fuck
* rape-me
* therapist - yeah, It passes as a double meaning - but still.
* shag
* db_nazi
* and ass
While some of you may think this is a righteous callout - I think that
as a community we need to strive to be as appealing as possible, there
is nothing cool about naming your gem “fuck” or “retarded” and we as a
community - need to stop this from happening as much as we can.
Read the rest, it's pretty good.
(A number of the named gems have been pulled by their authors.)
It occurred to me to go digging around pypi - arguably[1] the Python
community's equivalent to gems - to see if I could find similar
institutionalized sexism.
The good news: the specific examples Elad called out are STRIKINGLY
absent from pypi. By and large the published python packages are
inobjectionable. Well done, "us", in as much as there is an "us" to
congratulate.
There are a few examples of the same sort of bad decision-making that
are, I think, worth discussing:
* SexMachine (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SexMachine/0.1.1 - an
attempt to detect the gender of names, which… well, ask the nearest boy
named Sue - or girl named Leslie)
* sexytime (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sexytime/0.1.0)
* pep8nazi (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8nazi/0.1 - do we shove
non-PEP8-compliant authors into "showers" now?)
So, two questions:
1. What social biases and problems *do* we unwittingly encourage by way
of community-tolerated behaviour? Where, if not through the conventions
for naming, do we encourage sexism, racism, and other mindlessly
exclusionary behaviour?
2. What kind of social pressure can we bring to bear to _keep_ Python's
package naming conventions as socially neutral as they are, if and when
some high-profile dirtbag decides this language is the best language?
How can we apply the same pressures to other parts of the Python
community?
3. How can we reach out to the Ruby community and help *them* get past
the current crop of gender issues, and help them as a group to do
better next time?
I'm very much on the side of education, tolerance, and social
consequences, not administrative fiat or organized retaliation. I think
Elad's call for the Rubygems folks to unilaterally drop libraries is
misguided, but well-intentioned, and I don't think the same sort of
call towards Pypi to drop "unacceptable" library names is a good idea
either. However, I think it's hugely important and hugely beneficial
that we welcome as many folks into the Python community as possible,
and do our best to foster an environment where people can succeed
regardless of who or what they are, and recent evidence suggests that
that requires ongoing conversation and engagement, not just passive
acceptance.
So, how should we be more awesome?
-o
(For some additional context, and why I think passive acceptance isn't
good enough, see
http://iangent.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier-why-attack-on.html
.)
[0]
http://devandpencil.herokuapp.com/blog/2013/10/09/being-an-asshole-does-not-make-you-awesome/
[1] as in let's not have a packaging or language mudfight over it,
please? Pretty please?
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