Software has apparently become some sort of social cause, instead of an engineering discipline
I liked this.
My patience with this constant caterwauling about it is at its end.
I didn't like this, because it implies that the problem is the caterwauling. You then go on to make it clear that the problem is that people can't handle the industry or the culture, not the industry or the culture.
Well, the correct way forward is for everyone to suck it fucking up and start acting like adults, including respecting each other. Some of that includes being less dramatic about problems, but there is also a HUGE responsibility to eliminate those problems in the first place.
Absolutely nobody should be losing jobs over dongle jokes, but then again, nobody should be making dongle jokes. This isn't an either-or blame situation, just an observation that everybody wins if we don't make dongle jokes.
Let's start with a base assertion: Human beings are wired and programmed to reproduce.
Yes? Everybody agree? Assuming I didn't lose anybody there.
Onward: tricky business about sex, particularly from men (who I think are programmed in a much more culturally-unfriendly way when it comes to sex; multiple partners, ogling, and so forth), is unfortunately going to happen. Kind of like farting. It's noble that most of us can keep it under control in the workplace. Guarantee that even the quietest, most reserved, shy, never-an-HR-issue male employee, even ones who openly fight for feminist causes here, has occasionally looked at cleavage and thought, "boy, those are great tits." Equally so if the man is gay, just the opposite gender that produces that reaction. It happens. Everybody does it. Women do it too. You are programmed to admire the reproductive and aesthetic traits of the gender(s) that arouse(s) you. You shouldn't be ashamed of it.
Nothing so far has been controversial, I hope. I might have lost a certain group at the end of the last paragraph. Let me finish quickly while they start typing:
It's unreasonable to expect both men and women, biologically, to completely suppress sex in any form whatsoever. That culture expects us to is, I think, a bug in culture(+). There is something broken here on both sides of the gender divide, and I don't know that we understand as a culture how to fix it. Through some horrible perfect storm of social issues among the average programmer, I think we just see this problem amplified to the moon and back. I've been to construction sites. Visit one sometime. Talk to the workers.
I feel like for countless years culture has been at war with humanity. We shame sex across the board, we shame farting and burping, we shame natural odors, we shame hair in certain places for certain genders, we shame vulgarity, we shame picking our noses... the list goes on and on and on. Where's the culture that understands its members are human beings with flaws?
Maybe, just maybe, I feel like political correctness and attempting to 'fix' human beings has done more harm than good. Maybe we're acting appropriately and reacting inappropriately. Fair point?
(+) The source of this bug is a patch committed by a religious working group, and that patch should be reverted, but that's an argument for another time.
'suck it fucking up and start acting like adults, including respecting each other.'
Agreed.
'nobody should be making dongle jokes'
What have we come to where I can't sit with a friend and shoot the shit about dongles? I can tell you that some of my best 'that's what she said' moments were in the midst of another woman, who had some of the best of all.
I liked this.
My patience with this constant caterwauling about it is at its end.
I didn't like this, because it implies that the problem is the caterwauling. You then go on to make it clear that the problem is that people can't handle the industry or the culture, not the industry or the culture.
Well, the correct way forward is for everyone to suck it fucking up and start acting like adults, including respecting each other. Some of that includes being less dramatic about problems, but there is also a HUGE responsibility to eliminate those problems in the first place.
Absolutely nobody should be losing jobs over dongle jokes, but then again, nobody should be making dongle jokes. This isn't an either-or blame situation, just an observation that everybody wins if we don't make dongle jokes.