Query: Is TW Male, Female?

[@TiddlyTweeter]

English is largely non-gendered for things (a door is neither male nor female); though there are exceptions: Ships are female ("Good luck to all who sail in her!")

I often wonder: is TiddlyWiki male, female, hermaphrodite or trans?

Perhaps Jack the TW cat is Jackie?

I don't think its an entirely mad query. Metaphorical mental models do play a part in conceiving what one works with.

[PMario]

imo __it__ evolves over time and the content defines it. ... OR it is, what _you_ want to make it.

-m

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao PMario

How could one disagree with that? Its true. But I'm not sure that is the whole story.

Humans function never without affect (I mean, you are not an abacus) and gendered inflections of meaning are interesting and often in play. Though they are largely implicit in English--rather than explicit in the way they are in languages like Italian.

So your idea is for all options?: Jack, Jackie and Jackie-Jack?

Just thoughts
Josiah

[TonyM]

I do not recall the word, I heard recently in Star Trek. It means a species who does not only reproduce asexually, but can become either sex according to environmental needs.

That's what TiddlyWiki is. 

A Ship Wiki may be feminine, and a mens boxing club wiki masculine (yes I know women also box)

:)

[@TiddlyTweeter]

TonyM wrote:

I do not recall the word, I heard recently in Star Trek. It means a species who does not only reproduce asexually, but can become either sex according to environmental needs.

Vilix'pran's species? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vilix%27pran%27s_species

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Sally Potter's rendition of ORLANDO, Virginia Woolf's tale of a person that changes gender many times over many centuries is interesting and suggestive. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MorOaD61KUI Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRFbanBfadU

Regarding development work on TW, and without being a reductionist, I'm kinda also interested that "feminine" & "masculine" might still mean something on average different.

Best Josiah

[Thomas Elmiger]

Well IT is able to reproduce itself, so it might be a hermaphrodite (both at the same time).

🐌

Cheers,
-t

[Alex Hough]

It's more like a plant I think... i miss the fracalVeg.jpg from the old days of TW.

Ferns, sunflower heads -- the fractal or fractal like nature of TW sure

As a guidance for gendered language, I think it should be La TiddlyWiki, Die TiddlyWiki -- feminine. The useful buds are on the female plants in hemp family, so...

The cultural arround TW seems too gentle to be associated with testosterone led behavoirs of male animals 

Alex

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/bfbf2aa3-48aa-4e57-8373-0649ff8dec96%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[JD]

Somebody mark this as complete because I think we have a winner 😁 

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Let's wait and see what at least one woman thinks. Unless you are one :-)

JD wrote:

Thomas Elmiger wrote:

Well IT is able to reproduce itself, so it might be a hermaphrodite (both at the same time).

 

Somebody mark this as complete because I think we have a winner 😁 

[passingby]

For me it is a female, based upon its name, which according to my mother language(panjabi), should be treated as a female because it ends with an / i / sound. It would have been a male for me if it would have ended with an /a/ sound. This is a general rule with some exceptions.

[Jed Carty]

I really don't feel like this sort of discussion helps make a welcoming or inclusive community.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jed

I will happily stop doing stuff like this IF I can grasp the objection.

I really can't see it. If anything your message messes a perfectly fine thread with a negative.

But PLEASE explain what is the problem?

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Its a wonderful language. ਮੈਨੂੰ ਸੱਚਮੁੱਚ ਇਸ ਨੂੰ ਪਸੰਦ ਹੈ.

[passingby]

On Saturday, July 7, 2018 at 12:05:47 PM UTC-6, @TiddlyTweeter wrote:

Its a wonderful language. ਮੈਨੂੰ ਸੱਚਮੁੱਚ ਇਸ ਨੂੰ ਪਸੰਦ ਹੈ.

 Nice! It would be ਮੈਨੂੰ ਸੱਚਮੁੱਚ ਇਹ (this) ਪਸੰਦ ਹੈ. Google translator is a bit off the mark there, but even so, its nice :-)

[@TiddlyTweeter]

lol. we are not yet in the real 21st century. It is coming..

[Jed Carty]

As enlightening as it is to see people's perceptions of what it means to be 'female'/'female'/'hermaphodite'/'trans', they all come across as prescriptive. If I don't show the 'male' or 'female' qualities described, am I not 'male'/'female'?

If I say that I am female, but I don't fit any of the 'female' qualities described here, am I going to be accepted as female by the group? What about the 'male' ones? If instead I display the 'male' qualities described, am I going to be treated differently than if I display the 'female' qualities?

If I am a male and my name is 'Jackie', am I going to have to spend the entire time wondering how that affects how the others in the group think about me? If the question is important enough to be asked and answered then it certainly seems like it would have some effect.

And then when the question being an uncomfortable one for people is brought up, the response is that the only way something is going to be done about it is if a good enough explanation can be given.

This is not an isolated incident. This happens in every group where something like this comes up. After the 10th or 100th time it seems rather hopeless and there is no reason to actually answer the question because in a month/six month/year/whatever the same thing will come up and the same explanation will be demanded.

So if you are someone whose gender is routinely questioned by people, how much effort should you have to put into making other people actually treat you as a person? Does the responsibility of making a group a friendly and inclusive place fall on the people who lack friendly inclusive places? Should they have to explain every time something happens?

Questions like this also beg similar questions. Is TiddlyWiki NT? ND? If tiddlywiki has a gender, does it have a sexual orientation? Why would any of those questions be any less reasonable to ask than if it has a gender?

If you want an enlightening experience, you should ask if people think that TiddlyWiki is bipolar, and then remember that everything someone says in response is what they think when they hear that I am bipolar. Or dyslexic. And then there will be innumerable reasons why "oh, well it wasn't about you", just somehow the generalisations are about the mythical "bipolar people who aren't present".

These are hardly academic questions, when I saw this question here, I seriously considered just leaving the group. The only reason I am answering you is that you have been nice in the past, and I think that you genuinely don't understand what the question implies. If I had been feeling bad today I would have just left.

The tech community in particular is very bad about things like this, and it is much much easier to just leave a group that has problems than try to explain every time.

[passingby]

Guys this topic is just a fun topic about finding out a gender of a piece of software. 

If I don't show the 'male' or 'female' qualities described, am I not 'male'/'female'?

I hope this does not imply that TW is actually one of the genders and that it may not manifest the gender outwardly and therefore we by branding it a gender, are doing injustice to it? 

And if this thread is being interpreted as being in favour or disfavour of any gender then this is mistake too, because if anything TW google group is by far the most friendliest group I have ever come across. Not even once has religion, race, gender or sexual orientation has been topic of conflict over here. I have been visiting this group off and on for more than 10 years I think.

Everybody is welcome here.

[@TiddlyTweeter]

 passingby wrote:

Guys this topic is just a fun topic about finding out a gender of a piece of software.

 
That was my intent. I think it is interesting. It highlights use.

I never intended someone would get offended. They have my apologies if I did wrong.

[Thomas Elmiger]

My statement was about a piece of software and about snails, that in my/Wikipedia‘s perception qualify as hermaphrodites. 

If anyone felt offended by this or misinterpreted this as a statement about my perception of humans I am sorry. 

Everyone is welcome here. 

-t

[@TiddlyTweeter]

Jed

My intent was to explore themes liked you raised. I think they are interesting. I don't see the problem.

You will have to tell me the problem because I really can't see it in your interesting EXPLORATION.

Best wishes
Josiah

[JD]

I don't want to invite misgivings, but I definitely see TW as genderless... Maybe because outside of biological definitions I am finding it hard to define what "gender" is... and so, especially in this context. 

I am hard-coded biologically as one of the two, but in so many areas I don't fulfill the socially-defined role. And I think TW is like that as well. If I'm defining gender to its most base, biological sense... then TW has reproductive organs that can't be classified as either male or female, and it can reproduce on its own. Hermaphroditic asexual reproduction, yeah :) 

While grammatically, I think genders in languages like Panjabi and French, belong to unassuming, harmless classification.

Maybe let's drop anything beyond that. Whatever schools of thought envelope "gender", I hope won't get applied to TW. 

-JD

[TonyM]

Jed,

Personally, I think you are making a lot of valid points, and it is good you put this argument, and participants be aware of this. I differ in so far as I do not think in this case there was serious risk of unfair gender stereo types, and people should react if their was. In some languages masculine and feminine is attributed in somewhat arbitrary ways and English does this in a number of cases. Sometimes it is a matter simply knowing what or whether to use he and she, feminine or masculine forms that exist as part of many languages. Fortunately when "gendering" inanimate objects, we will not be imposing on a person our judgement, when it is they who have the right to be addressed as they wish. True, trying to select a gender for tiddlywiki may make people stray into gender stereotypes, and thus unfair or sexist statements, but I, you and perhaps others may call this out if we see it.

I was involved in building a social enterprise network from 2000 to 45,000 within a large organisation and what we found was rather than moderating, unless very offensive, it was better to mediate - when in the conversations and thread you see people objecting to inappropriate language of many kinds what remains in the threads a lesson to those who would behave badly. 

This is in fact what you and I have just done, and I hope others learn from it.

I am pleased to see your words and others reasonableness here and once again this community gets a tick.

Best wishes

Tony

[Jeremy Ruston]

Thanks everyone for your contributions to this discussion. I'm grateful particularly for Jed for taking the trouble to respond so eloquently and personally to Josiah's questions.

The fact is that gender is one of many controversial topics that just shouldn’t need to be brought up in the context of a community about TiddlyWiki. It’s clear that Josiah’s motivation in opening the topic was just to explore an idle thought, and he didn’t intend to cause offence. But, it is the responsibility of all of us to be aware of when we inadvertently offend people, and when it happens we need to accept what has happened, and take steps to learn.

This group is for talking about TiddlyWiki, and the members of the community don't necessarily need to have anything in common beyond interest in TiddlyWiki. Everyone can see that we are geographically and linguistically diverse, and so it's not much of a leap of imagination to think that we'll be diverse across every other dimension as well. The minimum requirement for working with TiddlyWiki is a smartphone or tablet, and we're now at the point that means that most of the population of the planet is a potential TiddlyWiki user, regardless of where and how they live.

As I say, I’m grateful for how graciously everyone has behaved. Perhaps we might try to make something positive about the incident by starting to think about whether we should adopt a written code of conduct. It’s pretty standard for projects these days, and I’ve been thinking for a while we should open it up for discussion.

Best wishes

jeremy

1. We endeavour to respect each others differences, and not to cause offence
2. When we do cause offence, we apologise and try to learn how to avoid it in the future
3. We do not question whether the person reporting the offence was justified in doing so
4. 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to tiddl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/ce61aa1b-2ee7-45ce-866c-9a6674f24f18%40googlegroups.com.