ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

Normally the Ubuntu Women mailing list is a quiet one, but it saw some action overnight. In fact, the overnight activity is the only action in the Ubuntu Women archives this month. The discussion reminds me of a topic I brought up in June about using the terms guys, girls, gals, he, she, and they.

To see the full topic thread, it's best to visit the Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/272826

If, however, you don't want to read through the 28+ comments in the past 12 hours, here's my summary of the discussion:

Some folks are bugged by the term "Ubuntero," which led to Ubuntu bug report 272826:

The term "Ubuntero", which is presumably of Spanish derivation, is only applicable for male contributors. A female contributor should be called an Ubuntera, which is impossible currently as a contributor is not asked his or her sex.

I suggest introducing a question about a participant's sex in the profile, or substituting "Ubuntista" which is applicable for a man or a woman.

According to the Ubuntu Community page, Ubunteros (aka Ubuntites) are Ubuntu activists. This Ubuntero name has been used for the past few years, but now there is discussion about changing it to Ubuntista, or another gender-neutral word.

Another suggestion is to allow female members to use "Ubuntera," but that doesn't sit well with some community members – male and female – who don't think announcing one's sex is the answer, either. Sarah Hobbs wrote, "Honestly, I have more of a problem having to declare a gender, or use a full name, than being called a made-up word, with possible male-overtones."

Leigh Honeywell offered insight into the issue of gender-neutral language, and recommended Douglas Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language" and "The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing," by Casey Miller and Kate Swift. She later clarified that "... 'non-sexist writing' is the technical term for wanting to do the Right Thing when it comes to gender in writing, not any sort of accusation that there was sexism involved in the selection of this name in the first place."

Miia Ranta suggested that changing the term now would cause a public outcry that "... would by far surpass the loudness of the wails of the people annoyed by the current term." She agreed that it would have been better to come up with a gender-neutral name a few years ago. "Unfortunately the current scientific research hasn't given us the ways for time travel," she added.

Colin Watson points out that the topic was discussed in the past. "The gender issue came up, but basically this was Mark's call and we ended up deciding not to go down the rabbit-hole of asking for people's gender (which I agree is problematic for all kinds of reasons)," he wrote. He refers to a December 11, 2005 IRC discussion about changing "Ubuntite" to "Ubuntero."

Clytie Siddall favors the term "Ubuntista" and wrote, "Having to declare your gender is not only uncomfortable in some situations, it can be actually dangerous."

Mark Shuttleworth commented on the bug, saying, "Ubuntero wasn't supposed to be gender-specific, but for many people it will feel that way, and it seems silly to keep ourselves in a position where we have to explain that all the time."

Matthew East says that the "Ubuntero" status is useful because it indicates that an individual has signed the code of conduct in Launchpad. "I agree that it is inapplicable to Launchpad members who do not participate in Ubuntu, and therefore it could probably be implemented in a different way, although I can't immediately think of a good one," he says.

Melissa Draper argued that identifying oneself as female online could be an optional field. "For those of us who are (and please pardon the revolting terminology) 'thick-skinned' enough to put up with the crap it entails, it might help to at least reinforce that there are females in the midsts and make them less of a novelty when one is 'found'," she wrote. Melissa pointed to an article by Whitney Butts, "OMG Girlz Don't Exist on teh Intarweb!!!," in which the author discusses her adventures as a female in a World of Warcraft IRC channel.

Of course, there's no global solution, as Myriam Schweingruber points out. "I don't care if I'm called an Ubuntero or Ubuntista at all, got used to been called 'un pharmacien' in French where the official female counterpart simply doesn't exist. Of course the -o/-a endings are relevant to Spanish, Italian or whatever Latin based language, but what about Japanese? The -o ending is female and the -a ending is male," she says.

It's only 9:30am where I am, so I suspect we haven't heard the end of this overnight/early morning discussion. This might call for another cup o' Joe. (Or should I say "Jane"?)

Comments