I've read his responses twice now, and i don't see, in either case, anything that makes me think he doesn't respect women. Can you please point it out? I'm genuinely interested. The guy said like 7 sentences none of which said anything like "i think what is being done here is wrong" (instead, he said "i generally reject trivial doc fixes for X reasons") and is being crucified.

From where I sit, you have to add a lot of implications and subtext to what he said to get anything like that.

IE Do you not take him at his word for why he rejected the changes?

Or do you believe the very act of not being interested in these types of trivial doc fixes, when some of them change gender pronouns, makes him disrespectful of women?

(I've belonged to plenty of open source projects that would reject trivial comment/doc fixes like this when done en-masse, regardless of whether they were to fix spelling or gender pronouns or whatever, so i'm willing to take him at his word)

What am I missing?

But for people who do not consider the related gender issues trivial, it was not a trivial doc fix.

Without inserting any personal views here, crucifying people who appear completely ignorant of a cause, or don't understand the level of concern you feel about something, is not an effective method of advocacy. It's exactly the opposite.

If you don't understand how to be an effective advocate, you tend to hurt rather than help your cause.

Example: This whole thing.

In my opinion, both sides of the debate overreacted, but I am just trying to explain you the viewpoint that apparently feels quite alien to you. Well, if you don't even want to understand that way of thinking, that's fine, too.

Sure, but your description seems to kinda imply that everyone assumes everyone else are passive aggressive assholes :P. Maybe that's the case here, but i would hope not in general :)

So in the same manner, if you don't consider the fix trivial, then everything else Ben did afterwards, seems quite suspicious really. Or if you do consider the fix trivial, then everything than ensued, seems seriously out of proportion.

[1] http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/b/balrogs.html under ‘...And Whether Balrogs Have Wings’

edit: it wasn't that long ago? 16 years ago I was in elementary school. That's like 3 tech aeons ago.

All that original commit did is set off a giant clusterfuck of nerd rage and bikeshedding. No one should ever submit a commit like that. If you want to edit executable code and make those pronoun changes in productive commits, fine. But to make those changes to the pronouns of comments and nothing else is pure unadulterated bikeshedding and shouldn't be in any project.

[0] http://programming-motherfucker.com/

You should consider that just because something isn't important to you doesn't mean it isn't important to someone. A commit like that doesn't measurably hurt you or me, so even if it only helps someone else moderately and in a way we don't entirely understand, it is still net-good. This isn't political correctness; it's objective practicality.

In other words, I'm fine if you don't want to go through and revise your docs to be more gender-neutral — it would be nice, but you should spend your time on what's near and dear to you. But to say that such a change "shouldn't be in any project" is a very different thing. It has practical benefits, even if they don't personally affect you, so opposing it is purely harmful.

This is a perfect example of a group being it's own worst enemy. Alex Gaynor is not the group. The community is the group. If this matters to Alex then he should have bundled it with something that matters to the community like a pull request with changes of utility like a bugfix or feature.

If and only if Alex had contributed something of universal value to the community in the pull request and was still called out by people for that comment change in the pull request would he actually be correct in his accusation of misogyny and gender discrimination. Instead he led an unjustified lynch mob against someone who has contributed far more than him to libuv.

I'm staunchly opposed to the use of pull requests as a soapbox and unjustly crucifying someone who did not deserve it, and judging by the upvotes, I know I'm not alone in this opposition and support of an unjustly persecuted person.

A good litmus test is, "Is there value to the community in having this as a separate pull request when someone is browsing the commit history?"

In other words, if this only matters to me and is part of my own crusade (but one that the larger community is likely to actively object to), then I should keep it to myself.

The change in question here could have been part of a larger commit of changes to documentation and comments, where the overwhelming majority of changes would be considered valuable by the majority of the community.

Hmm... but isn't a lot of the rage toward Ben because he didn't take action on something that some people feel is a big deal while others feel it is not such a big deal?

[0] but people seem to think it is and that I'm opposed. I don't know what I've said to contribute to that illusion.

I read this (from your grandparent comment) as meaning 'discussion of gender/grammatical issues is bikeshedding' - and that to me sounds like you think it shouldn't happen because you don't care about it, which is effectively opposing the idea. If that's not what you meant, I'm sorry for the misinterpretation.

He's also speaking English as a second language.

Then again, if his native tongue also has gendered pronouns (as it appears to do), he should be aware of the issue, not because of English, but because of his native language has the same issue. Well, perhaps his native language user community has not yet started the same discussion, though.

  Have you ever kissed a girl?
  - Bryan

But of course that was long ago.

I don't think it at all appropriate to criticize what was clearly an honest mistake with a call for his employer to fire him. I would expect that of the masses on Twitter and commenting on the PR, but not of Joyent or Cantrill.