[dgrnbrg]

What do we do about less overt sexism? For instance, there's a popular developer who writes useful plugins named after genitalia and sex acts. I find his code useful, and I've asked him publicly and privately to choose nonsexual names for his code, but he and his users see nothing wrong with this. Even consider the "weinre" project that's on the frontpage right now. "Get your weinre out"?!

His assertion is that it's not sexist if his projects are called "testicle" or "foreplay", since those words aren't intrinsically sexist. How do we, as a community, emphasize that sexuality and development can't mix if we want women to feel comfortable, given that they're currently a minority?

[cllns]

If they're open source, you could fork them with better names. You could even set up an rsync type script so it's always up to date. This could nudge him in the right direction. This would fork discussion in that community, forcing everyone to use two names for a while. But it's probably worth it.

[h2s]

Are you talking about Tim Pope, whose work includes vim-foreplay, vim-scriptease, vim-eunuch, vim-speeddating, and hookup?

[dgrnbrg]

I am talking about Tim Pope. I have forked his code and renamed it, but instead of the community helping me, I've received a lot of negative feedback about "fragmenting the community" for trying to maintain and evangelize a non-sexist version of the plugin. It is difficult to continue in the face of so little support, but I believe in what I'm doing, and all of my male and female developer friends agree with me.

[h2s]

I think you're right that it's a less overt form of sexism, but I support what you're doing and I hope one day this clicks for Tim and he sees what a minor concession this is and what a positive thing it would be.

I'm a Vim user myself, and a big fan of his work. It's not nice to mention his name in a thread like this, however tangentially related. But given the topic, I thought for once it might be forgiveable to err on the side of those without male privilege.