[__float]

Hm. I'm willing to bet your response would have been taken more seriously than his (hint: it wasn't) if you hadn't taken his tone and reduced it to the point of swearing so much.

If it is such an important issue, perhaps treat it a bit more professionally.

[sp332]

"Professional" comes across as dispassionate on the internet (and often face-to-face as well). Swearing is one way to express emotion in text.

[Aaronontheweb]

Coming across as irate and unbalanced, which the author's swearing did in this instance, does nothing but detract from his / her point.

You can be assertive and "professional" without sounding like a shriek.

[mbreese]

I agree. The original post was a trite little comment that a) didn't match the tone of the book excerpt (which seemed pretty evenhanded) and b) was illustrative of the exact attitudes that can make women in tech feel marginalized.

The only acceptable response is to forcefully smack it down. I thought pnmahoney's reply was exactly the right tone.

[lclarkmichalek]

This is a pure tone argument that is completely useless to this discourse here. The comment brings up a point that everyone has been ignoring, the fact that most of us will be discussing this from a position of privilege, and most of us do not have first hand experience of being in a workplace which has a culture that does not favour your gender. Dismissing his argument for the inclusion of profanity is rude, stupid and incredibly condescending.