this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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The problem was more the fact that the devs viewed using anything other than 'he' as political, not the presence of gendered language itself. The devs themselves made a big deal about changing it. The way I see it, it's not even about trans people. How about just women? Is including women in software developent considered political? One would hope not, but here we are...
I wouldn't read too much into it. Using "he" instead of "it" is a mistake that a person might make if English is not their first language. It's pretty easy to imagine that someone working on a browser would not be interesting in messing around with the pronouns in their build instructions. They made an error, and they didn't think the error was important (which in itself was another error). But it is fixed now. Surely no harm done. They were not actively trying to impede anyone's progress or deny anyone's rights, or even say anything negative about anyone at all. They simply made a mistake in their use of pronouns in their build instructions. The mistake is now fixed. And although its fair to take it as a 'warning' that maybe there are objectionable views lurking in there, it certainly is not evidence of such views. I really don't think it's fair to hang this mistake over them. I'm sure that pretty much everyone in this thread has made worse mistakes throughout their lives. I know I certainly have.
I get the mistake. Wouldn't even call it one tbh, just an oversight. But when someone points it out normally one doesn't reply with "don't force your political views onto me" as if non male devs was some weird "woke" concept. A simple "whoops, missed that" would have been perfectly fine and everyone would've moved on. With that said, having followed the whole debacle I can say it could have been handled better by both sides.