Such a big deal over trivial things - Just change the name if you want to, it becomes a big deal because they made it seem like a big deal by long winded comments. Its a library name change, not freeing of the slaves.
Both sex and gender have quite specific objective meanings. Gender is clearly the correct term here. We're not talking about determining sex (male or female), we're talking about determining gender (masculine or feminine or whatever) from a name. On that basis, the proposed rename makes sense. (The whole sex / gender thing is one of my language pet-peeves. Ask me about "male toilets" sometime ...)
But: this is also completely ridiculous (using the term precisely). It's on a par with putting 'trigger warnings' in University-level course material. If as a society we can't deal with the word 'sex' in a library name, we are fucked (using the term ironically). It feels as though we are descending back into some sort of parallel-universe Victorian prudery. The last time this happened, apricocks became apricots, haycocks became haystacks, and a hundred years later everyone was laughing at the stupidity and childishness of it.
How did feminism become the new prudery? Perhaps that's a question for sociologists rather than a pull request discussion thread, but it's probably worth investigating.
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Both sex and gender have quite specific objective meanings. Gender is clearly the correct term here. We're not talking about determining sex (male or female), we're talking about determining gender (masculine or feminine or whatever) from a name. On that basis, the proposed rename makes sense. (The whole sex / gender thing is one of my language pet-peeves. Ask me about "male toilets" sometime ...)
But: this is also completely ridiculous (using the term precisely). It's on a par with putting 'trigger warnings' in University-level course material. If as a society we can't deal with the word 'sex' in a library name, we are fucked (using the term ironically). It feels as though we are descending back into some sort of parallel-universe Victorian prudery. The last time this happened, apricocks became apricots, haycocks became haystacks, and a hundred years later everyone was laughing at the stupidity and childishness of it.
How did feminism become the new prudery? Perhaps that's a question for sociologists rather than a pull request discussion thread, but it's probably worth investigating.
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