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Programming It's funny.  Laugh. Your Rights Online

A Software Project Full of "Male Anatomy" Jokes Causes Controversy 765

An anonymous reader writes with the story of a Github user's joke repository that is causing some controversy. "There's no question that the tech world is an overwhelmingly male place. There's legit concern that tech is run-amok with 'brogrammers' that make women programmers feel unwelcome. On the other hand, people just want to laugh. It's at that intersection that programmer Randy Hunt, aka 'letsgetrandy' posted a 'project' earlier this week to software hosting site GitHub called 'DICSS.' The project, which is actual free and open source software, is surrounded by geeky jokes about the male anatomy. And it's gone nuts, so to speak, becoming the most trending project on Github, and the subject of a lot of chatter on Twitter. And, Hunt tells us, the folks at Github are scratching their heads wondering what they should do about it. Some people love DICSS ... and some people are, understandably, offended. The offended people point out that this is exactly the sort of thing that makes tech unwelcoming to women, and not just because of the original project, but because of some of the comments (posted as "commits") that might take the joke too far."
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A Software Project Full of "Male Anatomy" Jokes Causes Controversy

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  • by sribe ( 304414 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:21PM (#49314523)

    Actually find the male anatomy to be hilarious...

    • Re:Normal women... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrBigInThePants ( 624986 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:46PM (#49314705)
      Not if they are a true feminist / he4she / she4she / .... fuck it I cannot keep up anymore.

      Basically what is happening here is that anything remotely male specific in the workplace is being banned because some hugely overly sensitive person with neurotic tendencies (and no, it does not have to be a woman) might potentially get offended - even silently or potentially. So even if no one has said anything or there is no obvious actual problem, then action MUST be taken at all costs.

      So the answer is to corporate-speak style whitewash everything in existence and berate any man for ever having an opinion on any subject ever.

      Yes, I am being tongue in cheek here to some extent but there is a sensible limit somewhere to all this...
      • Re:Normal women... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:54PM (#49314757)
        Some people need to get over the ridiculous notion that they have some kind of "right" to not be offended.

        Which is actually Article II of the Bill of No Rights [friesian.com].
        • Re:Normal women... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:13PM (#49315525) Homepage Journal

          Is anyone actually offended? TFA doesn't mention any specific people who claim to be, just that the project might be controversial. Might be... Looks like click bait, a manufactured controversy where there is none.

      • While i agree that the world should not have to make itself safe for overly sensitive people, does anyone really think a project named "DICSS" is remotely professional? Do you really want to be associated with DICSS? I understand it's open source, not for pay, etc. but maybe it can have a socially acceptable name, and everyone can just call it DICSS.

        I'd hate to go on an interview and someone asks me for a cde sample or something, and I tell them to go look at DICSS, that my contribution to DICSS is quite su

        • The decision on whether it is a good/sensible/professional/appropriate name has NOTHING to do with the discussion. That is for the people in charge of the project.

          This is about a related 3rd party bringing down the hammer on a project because they feel they have the right to interfere because someone somewhere might get offended about a currently hot topic.
          • I understand, and those people are playing politics, and anyone with a brain realizes that they've set themselves up to lose badly. The question is whether going for the kill really benefits anyone. The best possible resolution is for the project leads to just change the name already, before further drama ensues.

            The rational outcomes of this effort are this:
            - Github would sensibly decide it is not going to be the censor police for project names, content, comments, submissions etc. This isn't misogyny, somet

        • by pbhj ( 607776 )

          Can I maybe suggest that either you don't contribute to this project then or if you choose to that you don't put it on your CV?

          There, problem solved.

          Some people don't care what other people's definition of "professional" is.

        • In fact the only purpose I can see to this name is to make bad jokes.

          Or, it's an acronym for

          Directly injected CSS

      • Basically what is happening here is that anything remotely male specific in the workplace is being banned .

        This is why in my neighborhood, the PersonPerson delivers person every day, and drops it off in the person person.

        Finally a truly gender equal solution to the sexually offensive "Mailman delivering the mail and dropping it off in the mailbox".

        Millions of women turned bulimic over that injustice.

    • Re:Normal women... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by waveclaw ( 43274 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:22PM (#49315581) Homepage Journal

      Where are the "Female Anatomy" joke projects?

      Or is reminding people that humans have sexual organs somehow denigrating women?

      I mean, it is sexist by definition. Being based on sex and all that. But when can we, in a world of transgender and homosexual people, stop abusing sexism to mean 'only hurtful to women?'

      Really, can we at least get a show of hands of the number of gay men offended by this low-brow dick joke project?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:21PM (#49314527)

    Since when is it the task of others to make one feel comfortable? Do alcohol jokes make recovering alcoholics uncomfortable? Do displays of wealth make the poor feel uncomfortable? Do candy aisles in supermarkets make dieters uncomfortable? Do dogs make victims of dog-attacks uncomfortable?

    Why do women constantly get to claim they feel uncomfortable and expect the world to rush in and see to it that reality meets with their expectations?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The truly funny part is that women wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers until there was money to be made.

      It was the domain of men not because of exclusivity but because it wasn't remotely sexy or interesting to women. Neckbeards and geeks tinkered with computers in the evening because they were 'into it'. And likely because they weren't going to get laid anytime soon anyway.

      And then suddenly the field was the place to be. The money was flowing. The industry had sex-appeal. And just as suddenl

      • by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:42PM (#49314675)

        How many women studied computer science in the early 90's?

        I was at University from 1985 - 1990. Most of my undergrad CompSci TAs were women.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Yeah, Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] totally got into computing for the dolla dolla billz.

        Oh wait, no she didn't. Your argument relies entirely on ignoring the fact that from birth until college, women are explicitly and forcefully discouraged from going into STEM fields. They're sexually harassed when they do make it over the hurdles and then called liars, cheats, and interlopers when they make it and ignore the bullshit.

        This is an amazing comment because in your argument about how women are just in it for the money you act

        • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:00PM (#49314789)

          That's a lovely cherry you picked. But your statement is really just outrageous. "Explicitly and forcefully discouraged"?? LOL. You're like a parody of feminist propaganda. Next you're going to tell us that the reason women have their own chess tournaments is that male chess grandmasters harass them.

        • by Kartu ( 1490911 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:17PM (#49314877)

          Look. Regarding that "forcefully discouraged" thing I keep hearing.
          I have two kids, a girl and a boy.
          The boy is younger.
          Most toys he got earlier were his sister's.
          And, mind you, I bought a lot of "boy" toys for my daughter (actually the first toys she got were "boy" toys, because "why on earth would we force "girly" stuff on hear" I said, but she got full range of em).
          So lot's of cars and other machinery.
          She played with cars now and then.

          But my boy is simply obsessed with them. He has piles of toys to choose from, all kinds of them, but "Car" was one of the first words he learned.

          I'm pretty sure out there somewhere someone is explaining that women are underrepresented in auto sports, cause, you know, "they are forcefully discouraged".

          Here is, what I want to tell you: just STFU, ok? Cause MEN AND WOMEN ARE simply DIFFERENT!!. Nobody bans any sex from anything, but some disparity in some areas is more than natural.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:47PM (#49314707)

        Use to be that programming was woman work. But who cares about history when there is a rant to be made.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:33PM (#49314943)

        http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

        I'd encourage you to listen to the story as well.

      • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:33PM (#49315289) Journal

        The truly funny part is that women wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers until there was money to be made.

        Why you stupid sonofabitch.

        https://www.women.cs.cmu.edu/a... [cmu.edu]

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) * on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:25PM (#49315601) Homepage Journal

        The truly funny part is that women wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers until there was money to be made.

        That's sexist. Generalizing the motives of 50% of the world's population, 3 billion people. Worse still the generalization is a negative one. No, women couldn't be interested in computing, they are only in it for the money.

        This is exactly what women are complaining about. It's no bullshit, you just demonstrated it.

        How many women studied computer science in the early 90's? I'll tell you because I did: Basically none.

        Either your memory is faulty or you were quite unlucky: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/di... [ed.gov]

    • by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:40PM (#49314657) Homepage Journal

      Please, it isn't "women". It's a professional elite that gets "offended". People who consider themselves to be "leaders" and "moral guardians" and other such happy horse shit. People who are somehow "better" than all of us barbaric heathens. The dreamers and lotus eaters of society. It's their JOB to be offended. Some of those persons are female, to be sure, but there are a a couple billion normal women in this world who can find this crap slightly humorous, and/or just ignore it. A large number of women just groan over the stupidity, and move on with something important. Mostly, they don't really CARE about men's juvenile conduct, any more than WE CARE about their silly cosmetics, feminine hygiene, and shiny baubles.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Deadstick ( 535032 )

      Well, see, there are some people who don't feel they have to be dicks just because it isn't forbidden by criminal codes.

      Some of those people even get laid once in a while.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:54PM (#49315413)
      and appropriate social behavior. You don't have a right to be a douche nozzle anywhere you want. Whoops, just did it myself there, didn't I? See how easy it is? Then again, it's about your forum and understanding your audience. On /. the phase douche nozzle is highly appropriate. On the forum of a popular open source project, or even my favorite retro gaming podcast's [theretroleague.com] site? Not so much.

      The trouble is, there are a _lot_ of folks who never learned tact, and blurt out whatever the hell enters their mind when ever it does; often just to get attention of any kind (good or bad).

      So yeah, the world doesn't need to rush to meet their expectations, but a certain amount of civility at certain times/places is definitely called for.
  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:25PM (#49314555) Homepage Journal

    She keeps wanting me to write a new operating system called PENIX.

    It's not so much a brogrammer thing as a controversy between us low brow folks and snooty people who pretend that our dick jokes and fart jokes aren't hilarious.

    • by pspahn ( 1175617 )

      There's the newish game called Besiege. There's a video on you tube of this giant robot someone built. It has fire coming out of its anatomy. It's fucking hilarious, but it's also pretty bad-ass.

      I just don't get people that don't think it's awesome (my grandmother excluded).

  • They can try project CNDY 4$$

  • by BlueTrin ( 683373 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:26PM (#49314571) Homepage Journal

    I feel like that it is borderline in this case, it is not a commercial product but an open source project, you may not agree but shouldn't they be able to run their own project how they want ?

    Does this infringe some kind of law in the US ?

  • by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:27PM (#49314579)

    Should github be involved? We could ramp it up and pretend the project was actually hateful, instead of not being that at all. When should github care? If they are an open source repo, shouldn't they be that?

    Here's an emulator for Nintendo hardware. It's safe on legal grounds (even though console companies have lawyered up and taken down some emus by threatening the authors):
    https://github.com/dolphin-emu [github.com]

    Here's an archive of "hacking tools". While almost everyone reading this post will understand the context of "hacking", and the fact that these are completely innocuous, would you put that past everyone in the world?
    https://github.com/Gexos/Hacki... [github.com]

    Remember, some people consider "hacking" to equal "a crime done to people that should be result in life in prison". Even among those that are a bit smarter than that, you could EASILY argue that labeling something a "hacking tool" is "encouraging people to commit a crime" or somesuch- there's a reason the crack pipes at the flea market are not labelled as such, and have a sign saying that if you call them that, they'll kick you out.

    You could argue that the above two projects, along with MANY others, are offensive or encourage illegal activities. You may not agree, but the argument could be made.

    If someone is concerned about some cock and balls jokes because some section of the population (certainly not "women" and not really even "feminists", but likely "people who professionally get offended about bullshit to honk their own horns"), I will point out that **there's already a ton of projects that would offend fucking SOMEONE**.

    This shouldn't be a story at all.

  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:30PM (#49314591) Homepage

    It's one guy with a juvenile sense of humour. I don't get why people are making a big deal of this.

  • by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:30PM (#49314595) Homepage Journal

    People who are offended by the project can just ignore it. Don't use it if/when it becomes a finished product, either. You're free to boycott, after all. You are even free to ask other people to boycott the project. You are NOT free to try to bully these juvenile delinquents into bahaving as you believe they should behave.

    Hey, ladies and germs - you can't have it both ways. Just because you are offended doesn't justify cyber bullying, or any other kind of bullying.

    In short, just grow the fuck up, alright?

  • On being offended (Score:5, Insightful)

    by poet ( 8021 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:38PM (#49314643) Homepage

    http://theshake.com.au/wp-cont... [theshake.com.au]

    People need to lighten the hell up.

    Yes, we should make women welcome in FOSS. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy a good laugh at the same time. We all need to stop with this BS #activistmorality

  • Uptight cultures (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cafe Alpha ( 891670 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:45PM (#49314697) Journal

    A little dirty humor "is controversial" in the United States and probably would be in, say, Iran. But there are cultures that consider talking about sex totally harmless. I know that's a foreign idea in a country where you can lose your job or, conceivably, end up in court or even prison for making a harmless joke at the wrong time or in front of the wrong person. Cultures that aren't so uptight are superior to ours.

  • Worked for a company several years ago, where the lead programmer in a project (a superstar by all accounts and someone who was responsible for pretty much 25% of the company's codebase) was discovered to have used non-PC names for all his local variables. They were surprisingly apt, and hilarious, but definitely questionable in the current political environment.

    For example, he would have code like this to represent the most significant and least significant words of a 32-byte unsigned int:

    hungLo = wor

    • by wiredlogic ( 135348 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:18PM (#49314879)

      Remind me again what "wellHungLo" was supposed to represent?

      I wouldn't consider someone who wrote code like that a "superstar". He sounds more like a cowboy coder who couldn't give a shit about code maintenance after he moved on to something else. I would have complained about his shitty naming and if management was too scared to fix such a massive fuckup then you're better off working elsewhere.

  • Maybe the DICSS project is juvenile and crude, but ignore it if you don't like it. None of Github's business.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    More power to DICSS ! Give the middle finger to the Femi-Nazi-Maoists !

  • by Idimmu Xul ( 204345 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @02:58PM (#49314783) Homepage Journal

    is it really news that a subset of people hate men and wish to eradicate gender? the more airtime these people get, the more they get to push their agenda and market themselves. so you hate the penis and have no sense of humour, great. stop complaining and go get some therapy.

  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:12PM (#49314845)

    For the record, I'm a man who works in IT. I don't know enough about this project to take a stand one way or the other, but I do know that crap like this is why the IT profession (if you can call it that) struggles for respect. I see this sort of stuff all the time, and it's frustrating because I really thought we were beyond the stereotype of "asexual nerds living with Mom in the basement." Not everyone in IT has a juvenile sense of humor, but oh boy, those who do can sometimes make workplaces pretty uncomfortable. And no, I'm not easily offended, but it's not exactly the most professional interaction when you have to listen to someone talk about their adventures at the strip club in detail. Not the content so much, but usually it's because the people saying these things just make you think, "eww, gross." If I was a woman, I would sure select myself out of an environment like that.

    For everyone who is going to respond to this in a "Fuck you, I can say and do whatever I want" fashion, can you please explain why it is so difficult to refrain from inappropriate jokes in an office environment? Does anyone in a work situation really need to hear about what you'd like to do with the hot new intern, etc.? I've worked both in "normal" office environments, and environments where behavior like this is tolerated or encouraged. Normal workplaces are a lot better in my opinion.

    Same thing goes for overt sexual harassment -- I often wonder why we need to watch HR's presentation over and over again on this subject, then I see real issues in the news that I just can't believe. I wouldn't even think about saying/doing some of the stuff some guys are accused of, and it just amazes me that this goes in in 2015. I know there are a few people who develop a "rockstar" aura and can be untouchable in the eyes of management, but it would seem to me that unless you are the sole author of a company's core money making product, or an executive, you can't get away with this stuff anymore.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:50PM (#49315033)

      > can you please explain why it is so difficult to refrain from inappropriate jokes in an office environment?

      A project on github, put together by people who are not being paid, is not an office environment.

    • That's an important point. I'm less likely to offended at jokes that are directed at oneself, or one's own sex. I'm also more likely to be offended by a questionable joke *if I don't know them that well*. That's why people should refrain from them in a professional environment and why they're asked to do so.

      One of my best buddies has a Chinese background, and there are "you must know kung fu" jokes that I could say in his presence. He knows me well enough to know I'm making fun of the racism of it. I

    • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @03:57PM (#49315089) Journal

      I see this sort of stuff all the time,

      Been a C/C++ developer for 25yrs, in my experience this stuff is very rare in working code.

      Normal workplaces are a lot better in my opinion.

      I can only assume you have never worked in a male dominated blue collar job, such as a mechanics workshop, garbage depot, or a building site. I did that sort of work for 15yrs before moving to a white collar job. The first thing I noticed about working in an office was how polite most people are, the boss even says please and thank you. The second thing I noticed, the walls aren't covered with posters of semi naked women.

      Thing is, TFA isn't about workplace behaviour, it's just some junk someone posted on the internet with the express purpose of becoming (in)famous for 15 minutes.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:01PM (#49315109)

      As someone who has worked in more than just the IT industry...

      Your argument (TL;DR): IT is not respected because of "crap like this" and extrapolate to sexual harassment in the workplace.

      1. It is humans across all industries that do this. IT is actually one of the better ones. Try working as a construction worker or in a law firm or hedge fund, or a flight attendant.
      2. I used the word humans in point 1, because it is not just across industries, it is BOTH genders. Women objectify men all the time as well.

      3. Your leap from harmless juvenile jokes to overt harassment is a lovely slippery slope fallacy. Juvenile humour (especially self mocking humour) and gender bias are quite independent of each other. Both women and men make dick jokes. If you don't know any then congratulations on having such a mature social circle, you must be proud.

  • by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:46PM (#49315367) Homepage
    This is a hard topic which should be discussed at length!
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      This is a hard topic which should be discussed at length!

      Unfortunately society has gone soft on the issue and discussion has fallen short.

      It's been a proper cock up.

  • by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:51PM (#49315391) Homepage
    I was told a story of a technical draftsman, who specialized in farm equipment for a very well known company. He literally placed a scrotum (where's Waldo style) in all his technical drawings. The guy was so good that instead of reprimanding him or some other such punishment, they actually assigned a person to find and remove the scrotum from each drawing before sending them out.
  • by barlevg ( 2111272 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @05:41PM (#49315717)
    Or are people just hypothesizing that women will be offended? Because I didn't see a single tweet expressing outrage. This strikes me as "brogrammers" trying to pick a fight where there is none. If anyone is actually offended by the comments, they could always fork the project, rewrite the readme, and change the method names to things that are gender-neutral In other words, they could neuter the project.
  • by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Sunday March 22, 2015 @09:13PM (#49316799)

    When it comes to unprofessional language in commercial, scientific, and engineering endeavours, there seems to be two assumptions people make:

    1. All women are offended by the sorts of words and phrases used by 9th graders in their daily speech.
    2. No men are offended by the same sort of language.

    Both assumptions are incorrect.

    Now, in most situations, I think that people should be able to say what they want. You can talk about body parts in naughty ways, and you can say all manner of insulting things (right or wrong) about anybody's religion. Basically, anything short of threatening to kill people. And if people get offended, they can shove it. I think that the proper and polite thing to do is to make sure that someone who doesn't want to hear what you say isn't forced to listen -- that to read what you wrote or hear what you said requires some positive action on their part, so if they don't like it, it's their fault for seeking it out.

    However, in a professional setting, it's time to act like an adult. Discussions of sex and insults about religions are out of place, not because they're *fundamentally* inappropriate, but because they're accepted as inappropriate for professional and public settings. I'm sorry. I don't care how much you and your pals get a kick out of jokes about Jews and dead babies, people shouldn't have to listen to it at the office.

    So, then there's this ambiguous situation with FOSS projects. Is this play time or work time? It's kinda both. People do it for fun, but if you don't want to make it a public thing, then you don't put it up on github. If your objective is to get public participation in a technically-oriented project, unprofessional language is out of place. If you want people to take FOSS in general serious, then unprofessional language is out of place. Linus Torvalds didn't publish the source code to Linux because he thought it would be hillarious or an asshole thing to do. The purpose was to attract people into a development community around the project.

    In general, I object to certain subject being out in public where it's shoved up everyone's noses. Nude beach? No problem, because you have to travel there to see it. Nude parade down my street? That depends on the purpose, but there are many ways in which human nudity can be a good thing, for artistic, educational, or scientific purposes. (In general, I wouldn't be offended unless it was just really tasteless.) What about people in the nude parade having sex while they travel on floats down my street? No fucking way. I'm not a huge fan of Islam, and I think that its adherents deserve a great deal of criticism, constructive and otherwise. On the other hand, I would find it unacceptable to have to a parade whose purpose was to shout anti-Islamic hate language for everyone to hear. Speaking of screwing in the streets, that's one of the things that bothers me about gay pride parades. Standing up against oppression from bigots who hate you for a perfectly natural thing is good (homosexuality is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom). However, this does not require that your presentation be so hypersexualized that I can't take my kids to see it. (Honestly, we just dont need sex in the streets. Gay people are as normal and weird as any other subset of the population, living their lives, working jobs, etc. Connecting "gay" with "hypersexual" in a public event gives people the wrong idea.)

    The bottom line is that people need to learn to be considerate and have some professional decorum. If you're going to do or say something that might insult someone, do it in a principled way as a means to be constructive. Do it because you DO give a shit, not because you don't. This applies to FOSS projects as much as to any other situation.

    Although I wouldn't necessarily say you have the "right" to be an asshole, it's vital that you have that freedom. Consider obscenity laws that restrict porn to certain venues. Those may or may not have some value, but laws that try to cu

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