Not everyone is familiar with the battle of gender inequality in tech and the fact that some people find gendered pronouns exclusionary.
This was a perfect time to help the cause and educate developers, but instead Alex chose to be hostile because they didn't understand.
This is the comment I believe hurt everything the PR was trying to do: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29537...
We need to remember that the Internet is a global community and not everyone we deal with has english as a first language, Ben being from The Netherlands most likely speaks dutch first which has its own gender language issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Dutch_grammar
It's so easy to condemn others, isn't it? There are many possible motives for Ben's actions, sexism being only one of them. Moreover, convicting someone and giving them the "committer's death sentence" on such flimsy evidence ought to give anyone pause.
Demands for strict orthodoxy aren't the way to navigate the path of righteous inclusion. When a minor situation blows out of proportion you make sure to clearly state policy, set the people who did something wrong straight and make sure that everybody is on the same page. You use heavy handed tools like bans, firing, or removal of contributor privileges when it becomes clear that someone is set on wrong doing despite warnings and clarifications. Punishment at the hint of political incorrectness just leads to an environment of fear.
Rejects a pull request, project lead overrides his rejection, Ben goes out of his way to attempt to revert it.
Please list some reasons other than sexism why he would go to such trouble.
The singular "they" dates back to at least the twelfth century.
Assuredly. But assailing associates with company assets is embarrassing, too.
Name calling——especially vulgar name calling——is unprofessional.
I blame Dick Cheney. But at least he didn't know he was miked.
1) Every employee is an ambassador of your company's brand, and Tech already has a sexism problem to begin with.
2) It's not about the pronoun so much as it's about Ben re-rejecting a patch that Isaac, the project lead, had already accepted, solely on the grounds of pronoun genders.
#2 really has no other explanation than sexism; and when his behaviour is conducted in public on the internet, where the "Joyent employs bigots" meme has potential to go viral, that'd be cause for concern for any employer.
Now, I like to think that had Ben been a Joyent employee the author of this pieces would have had a standard "we have concerns with your conduct" meeting with Ben before reaching for the banhammer but we don't really have any way of knowing.