It seems that the language police have been ramping up their efforts recently on HN. That is extremely unfortunate. Reading comments would be a much better experience if the pseudo-causeheads would at least attempt a rational discourse.
If he'd meant "blogger" generically he could simply have used the word unmodified. Instead, he specialized it by using a gendered term to repeat a common stereotype about a broad class of people. Have you ever heard anyone use a neutral or male identified term in a context like this? Would the point have any way been worse as “No sports-blogger“ or “No photo-blogger”?
As for your attempt to claim that this is somehow due to my not knowing the definition of the term, I would note that your choice to resort to personal attacks rather comically undercuts your proclaimed desire for “rational discourse”.
How about "brogrammer"?
>your choice to resort to personal attacks rather comically undercuts your proclaimed desire for “rational discourse”.
It's actually not ad hominem, since I'm using your own words against you. What you typed betrays latent sexism. I'm not just calling you a sexist without evidence.
Not to mention that HN's readership is not just US based. It is cultural imperialism to enforce US-centric PC notions on a international platform. At the least, it is provincialism.
So are the overwhelming majority of many other types of bloggers - in fact, the unmodified term “blogger” would have carried the meaning equally well. The choice to specialize the term in a highly-gendered manner is unnecessary, particularly when it reinforces common stereotypes and using it adds nothing to the actual point being made. That's why I suggested this was not deliberate: it's so common in mainstream society that many people aren't even consciously using it.
As for your “cultural imperialism“, “provincialism”, those terms have specific meanings which aren't relevant - they are not simply free passes for you not to have to think about topics which make you uncomfortable.
It does: it presents the point in a well understood idiom, something people can easily relate to, not to mention being statistically correct. It also avoids him self-censoring his speech because of what some vocal over-tight prudes might think. The republican right does enough censorship --there's no need for a progressive censorship to pile up on it.
>As for your “cultural imperialism“, “provincialism”, those terms have specific meanings which aren't relevant - they are not simply free passes for you not to have to think about topics which make you uncomfortable.
No, they are perfectly relevant here. You come here thinking that your little PC diatribe applies the world over. It is not.
There are cultures in perfectly modern western societies that view those PC notions with ridicule (of which "So he said mom to imply non-tech-savvy-person? Big f'n deal" is the more polite version), if not frown upon them. Not everyone shares the very protestant hypocrisy of covering their past crimes (e.g racism, sexism) with current guilt.
To project that PC ideology (and to ask to enforce it) to the international HN audience is the very core of provincialism, in the sesse of the George Bernard Shaw quote: "[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature".
I find amusing that you ended it with a quote which more accurately describes your own actions. I hold no illusion that cultures vary or that equality is far from a law of nature – that was rather the point in asking someone to consider how unconscious statements might sound to other people.
No, but it's close enough for our purposes. They main difference is that you have not the power to forbid them. If you had, you might have gone the full way. There are, after all, many politically correct prohibitions in place in a few western cultures that made it into law.
>Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism.
Criticism of the other's _way of speaking_, instead of criticism of their ideas, borders, as I say above, with censorship.
>I find amusing that you ended it with a quote which more accurately describes your own actions. I hold no illusion that cultures vary or that equality is far from a law of nature
Yes, but apparently you still hold the illusion that your (culture's) way is the one that has achieved the more equality, and that the method your culture has chosen to deal with equality is the correct one.
Which is kind of amusing from a culture with, say, an embarrassingly disproportionate percentage of their black population in jail.