Re: Make primnodes.h gender neutral

From: Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz>
To: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Make primnodes.h gender neutral
Date: 2016-03-17 21:17:30
Message-ID: 56EB1EEA.60409@archidevsys.co.nz
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On 18/03/16 09:41, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On 03/17/2016 01:36 PM, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
[...]
>
>>
>> (*) I'm probably going to be expelled from the project for saying this,
>> but I very much doubt that female coders stay away from PostgreSQL just
>> because some files say "he" in comments rather than "she" or "he or she"
>> or "one" or "they". They probably have different reasons for staying
>> away from the project.
>
> Wanna bet? There is a very loud movement about this. We can either:
>
> A. Start fighting about it
>
> B. Just fix it, it doesn't matter anyway and it doesn't hurt the
> quality of the code or the documentation
>
> JD

I strongly think that gender should not be mentioned unless it is
relevant - as constructs like 'he or she' are clumsy and distract from
what is being commented on, not to mention that some rare people are:
neither, both, or ambiguous (from research I did when I read a rather
curious article).

Other than 'one', 'their', 'they', &' them' - there are role specific
references like 'user', 'developer', & 'DBA', ... that can be used where
appropriate.

I tend to prefer the term 'Gender Appropriate' rather than 'Gender
Neutral', as sometimes mentioning gender IS very relevant!

Cheers,
Gavin

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