GitHub Takes Down Satirical 'C Plus Equality' Language 575
FooAtWFU writes "Some clowns and jokers over at 4chan thought it would be a funny idea to put together a web page for a programming language named 'C Plus Equality' as a parody of feminism, dismissing OOP as 'objectifying' and inheritance as "a tool of the patriarchy". But this parody was apparently too hot to host at Github, which took down the original Github repository after receiving criticism on Twitter, prompting a backlash and inquiry into the role of free speech and censorship on Github's platform. The project has since found a new home on BitBucket, at least for the time being." Comments on an article describing the research which sparked the parody call the parody's language "fake," and compare it to the 1996 Sokal affair. (It also reminds me a bit of Jesux.)
While we're at it (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems it was also too hot for Hacker News to discuss [twitter.com].
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Interesting)
Not in California, where GitHub is headquartered. California's constitution says "everyone has the right to free speech" and the Supreme Court of the US has interpreted this to mean that it goes beyond "Congress shall pass no law..." and applies, in some situations, to private entities. The more someone opens their property up to the use of the general public, the more their private property rights are circumscribed by the publics. See Pruneyard vs. Robins. I'm not saying that people certainly have a right to use Github like they way they have a right to pass out fliers at a shopping center or outside a big box store, but to deny that freedom of speech applies to private businesses/property in California is wrong.
Re:Is this within GitHub's mission? (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have any rights. No one has rights. Rights are guarantees. In this Universe, there are no guarantees. Tomorrow, you might be killed by a wild animal. Or perhaps, a meteor might come tumbling down and wipe out all life on Earth, including you. What good were your rights?
As society collapses due to feminism, and we return to a state of barbarism, you will come to realize that your rights never meant anything at all.
Feminism is unsustainable. It collapsed the Roman empire, and now it collapses Western civilization.
- 5th century BC: Roman civilization is a a strong patriarchy, fathers are liable for the actions of their wife and children, and have absolute authority over the family (including the power of life and death)
- 1st century BC: Roman civilization blossoms into the most powerful and advanced civilization in the world. Material wealth is astounding, citizens (i.e.: non slaves) do not need to work. They have running water, baths and import spices from thousands of miles away. The Romans enjoy the arts and philosophy; they know and appreciate democracy, commerce, science, human rights, animal rights, children rights and women become emancipated. No-fault divorce is enacted, and quickly becomes popular by the end of the century.
- 1st-2nd century AD: The family unit is destroyed. Men refuse to marry and the government tries to revive marriage with a "bachelor tax", to no avail. Children are growing up without fathers, Roman women show little interest in raising their own children and frequently use nannies. The wealth and power of women grows very fast, while men become increasingly demotivated and engage in prostitution and vice. Prostitution and homosexuality become widespread.
- 3rd-4th century AD: A moral and demographic collapse takes place, Roman population declines due to below-replacement birth-rate. Vice and massive corruption are rampant, while the new-born Catholic Religion is gaining power (it becomes the religion of the Empire in 380 AD). There is extreme economic, political and military instability: there are 25 successive emperors in half a century (many end up assassinated), the Empire is ungovernable and on the brink of civil war.
- 5th century AD: The Empire is ruled by an elite of military men that use the Emperor as a puppet; due to massive debts and financial problems, the Empire cannot afford to hire foreign mercenaries to defend itself (Roman citizens have long ago being replaced by mercenaries in the army), and starts "selling" parts of the Empire in exchange for protection. Eventually, the mercenaries figure out that the "Emperor has no clothes", and overrun and pillage the Empire.
- humanity falls back into the Bronze Age (think: eating squirrel meat and living in a cave); 12 centuries of religious zilotry (The Great Inquisition, Crusades) and intellectual darkness follow: science, commerce, philosophy, human rights become unknown concepts until they are rediscovered again during the Age of Enlightenment in 17th century AD.
Attempting to apply feminism where it does not fit (Score:4, Interesting)
Feminism, in just about all its various forms, is about relationships among human beings, especially where those relationships concern women and girls. Programming, on the other hand, is about human-machine relationships, in particular about how humans -- who tend to think in very fuzzy ways -- can control and manipulate computing devices that "think" in very exacting ways are are very good at doing what they are told rather than what we want them to do. Feminism is certainly relevant to how programmers interact with one another, but not so much with the programming itself.
Re:Feminist Programming Language (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes you think this 'research' isn't a prank?
This Arielle Schlesinger person doesn't appear to have any social media or web presence prior to a few months ago. There is no link to published articles on or related to the actual "research", either in peer-reviewed journals or on-line forums. There's only a couple of brief blog posts in what looks like a deliberate parody of critical studies jargon ("reifies normative subject-object theory" and "non-normative paradigm").
It sounds like a parody to me. Granted, it's often hard to tell the difference, but one thing that strikes me that the example is rather puny. Yes, it is dense and incomprehensible, but real examples academic writing in the critical theory style go on at great length and detail. The Frankfurt School of neomarxism is very influential in this kind of academic writing, so what you're aiming for is a kind of faux teutonic grandeur.
There's no evidence that the purported research has taken place; nor is there evidence that this person is actually preparing to do research. The very first thing you'd do in this kind of academic research is to assemble a bibliography, yet the post doesn't even bother to drop names (e.g. Michel Foucault, Andrea Dworkin). It strikes me that the post displays little actual knowledge of the field it is supposedly discussing, other than a superficial familiarity with the jargon.
So -- yes. The entire thing appears to be hoax.
The NEVER ending saga of an attention whore. (Score:1, Interesting)
This is due to the NEVER ending saga of attention whore Rebecca Watson.
Intro:
Rebecca Watson runs a website (skepchick.org) which focuses, obviously, on feminism and skepticism, which is not news worthy of itself but she also has a subreddit on reddit, /r/atheismplus that is supposedly atheism+feminism but it's like 99% feminism and 1% atheism, except the "atheism" is actually atheism "lite" aka weak atheism, aka agnosticism. In other words they're merely using atheism as a tool for their feminist agenda.
PLUS the atheism+ crowd also runs /r/ShitRedditSays where they call out certain posts & certain posters and then gang downvote and harass people for things like making vaguely sexist or even merely sexual jokes by calling people rapists, misogynists and the like.
The incident that just won't fucking die:
Rebecca Watson was giving a speech at some skeptic conference and some guy (her direct story) asked her to have coffee with him (NOTHING else happened, no stalking, intimidation, etc) while they were in an elevator and she flipped out, cried sexual harassment, cried RAPE, and generally made a mountain out of literally nothing, a non-incident that other women wouldn't even give a 2nd thought to because most women have to deal with men asking them out all the time. But not Rebecca, for her it seems to be a first. Apparently men aren't even allowed to ask women out for a drink, for example, according to her.
The NEVER ending saga:
Since then, Rebecca keeps bringing up this (non)incident over and over and over, embellishing the story, imbuing it with more emotional pron and just won't let it fucking drop. This has gone on for at least 2 or 3 years now, maybe more-I forget, and she clings to this tale even after all the backlash has turned her into a self-parody of epic proportions. Either she is so stupid that she completely misses/ignores the mockery or she realizes that she will never have another "rape" incident in her life so she has to make this non-rape fairytale work for her because she is (I'll be kind) rather unattractive and it's hard to imagine even a homeless mongoloid with turrets finding her the object of his desires. On a positive note: at least she no longer wears the multi-colored clown wig hair-do.
To fan the flames of her self-martyrdom, aka lust for attention, she has authored articles like "Reddit Makes Me Hate Atheists" and gotten into gigantic public spats with other attention whores like youtube's TheAmazingAtheist, who promptly threatened her with rape (a joke she took seriously) because he's also an epic attention whore and a total worthless dick, and this C+= parody is just yet another step on the long journey thru the hell that is the tortured existence of Rebecca Watson.
If she would STFU for even a minute this would all fade quickly and be forgotten but NO!!! she won't because then everyone would forget she exists and her crappy website(s) would just be a small handful of angry femi-nazi misandrists talking to themselves about hair dye and how much they hate their dads.
Everyone RESENTS Rebecca's 1) attention whoring, 2) rape misrepresentations, 3) attempted high-jacking of atheism for her own personal fame, and 4) they are all incredulous that anyone actually would ask someone on a date who is so physically unattractive, has the personality of fingernails on a chalkboard, and the vibe, look and mannerisms of a desperate inept annoying loser.
And that's why you don't feed the trolls. She has made a joke out of the real suffering of real rape victims, a joke of real atheism, and a taken the "reality show" concept to its most painful, boring conclusion where she thrives on her own humiliation. It is all so sad and pathetic. Please! Make it STOP!!!!
Re:Feminist Programming Language (Score:5, Interesting)
It's how I learned to ace written exams on topics I never bothered to study. :) Truly I should have been called on the carpet for it, but the sharpest people do not end up as schoolmarms.
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit!
It is my firm belief that verbal bullshit should be taught in high school as a semester-long subject. It would lead to a less gullible public, a public more skeptical of their politicians -- because, as everyone knows, you can't bullshit a bullshitter.
I think it was called "rhetoric" back in the day, and it was indeed taught in schools. We need it now more than ever.
Re:The worst thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? It's wrong to say "I don't want a random stranger walking around in my business with a gun"? It's not like it is readily apparent the individual is sane or crazy, properly licensed or just waiting for the right moment to pull it out to rob the place. And that garbage about "it stops other people from robbing the place" is false, because I sure as hell don't want two people shooting it out in my business.
Re:Surely a feminist language would be delcaritive (Score:3, Interesting)
Feminism is a dogmatic ideology which believes gender to be entirely a social construct. It's as anti-science as creationism. It's an offshoot of Marxism which acts as a works union for just women. It uses propaganda based around sex and violence. etc
Women aren't inferior, but they are different to males. Evolution leaves females more likely to enjoy working with people. Males in general preferring working with systems. Differences in computer science are not based around the ideological proposition of feminism, male discrimination via patriarchy (A construct only feminists can see, control the definition of and benefit from.)
Simply: ~80% of females think computers are boring, because they're un-emotive abstract systems.
Recommend:
Original: http://vimeo.com/19707588 [vimeo.com]
English: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp0tg8_hjernevask-brainwashing-english-part-1-the-gender-equality-paradox_news [dailymotion.com]
Re:Given the this community's gender troubles... (Score:4, Interesting)
The feminists being mocked are part of the problem, not part of the solution. A few here have claimed that the brand of feminism being mocked is no longer in vogue, in which case it's merely a parody which misses the target. But if so, why are so many offended by it?
As for the article you cited:
Guess what: tough shit. This stuff is part of geek culture. And it's not inherently anti-female or offensive to women (the article itself admits this). Video games, science fiction, and related paraphenalia are not in themselves any way conducive to a hostile workplace environment to women. And if a "feminist" comes in and under the banner of gender equality demands these things be eliminated, she's just given a bunch of geeks reason to be hostile to feminism... and, unfortunately, perhaps to women as well.
Re:The worst thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not that nobody should ever be offended by a joke. It's that people don't get to have a right to not be offended. If you're not offending someone, you didn't say anything of value. The point of free speech is to cause people to question their deeply held beliefs, which invariably will leads to taking offense, or they wouldn't be deeply held beliefs.
Wow, what astonishing insights you have on offer. Yes, all good humour plays in the region bordering on the offensive, but saying that people don't have right to be offended is plain idiocy. After all, what is the point of offending, if people don't get offended?
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
Re:The worst thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, "offensive" is not the same as "humour" - good humour is when you are able to persuade the "victim" that you are playing, that you want them you to laugh with you.
Human beings are not like that. I wish you could just go up to someone, present a convincing argument that they're wrong about something, and have them say, "you know what, buddy? You're right. I'm going to abandon the position I've held for the last 25 years now that you've shown me my only justifications for this belief are fallacious." Hell, I strive to be that person, I strive to be that open-minded and I know I'm not. I've actually changed my mind on issues I used to strongly believed in, so I'm proud of the fact that at least I can do it. The thing is, it took years before I gradually reversed my position.
When you first make a joke, somebody's going to feel like the victim and be offended. However, if you really are making a good point, ten years down the road and hundreds of similar jokes later they may agree and laugh with you.