Film industry naming issues

[Cynthia Harrig]

I am happy to see this conversation happening. We have debated this frequently in the film and television industry.

The use of master and slave in transmitting and receiving signal and timecode has always given me pause. The casual use of male and female for pins and plugs has always seemed unnecessary. I teach at the college level in cinematography and find myself slowing down the conversation to carefully step around those types of terms (not to mention the unnecessary nicknames). I would welcome any respectful and viable suggestions. 

Cynthia Harrig

Advanced Cameras Coordinator

Columbia College Chicago

[Liam Proven]

On 15/04/2021 00:19, Cynthia Harrig wrote:
> The use of master and slave in transmitting and receiving signal and
> timecode has always given me pause. The casual use of male and female
> for pins and plugs has always seemed unnecessary. I teach at the college
> level in cinematography and find myself slowing down the conversation to
> carefully step around those types of terms (not to mention the
> unnecessary nicknames). I would welcome any respectful and viable
> suggestions.

I would respectfully disagree with this.

The way that the terms "male" and "female" apply to humans are not in
any way limited to humans, in which context they are problematic. The
terms also apply in the same way to all other mammals, many reptiles,
some amphibians, some molluscs, insects and other invertebrates... and
in a broader sense to most fish, and quite a lot of plants too.

Terms that may cause offense applied to a human are perfectly reasonable
to apply to animals, for example, aren't they? "This one is brown but
that one is yellow" would be bad for people but OK for Labrador dogs
(i.e. retrievers), no?

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[Mallory Knodel]

Hi,

On 4/27/21 11:30 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 15/04/2021 00:19, Cynthia Harrig wrote:
>> The use of master and slave in transmitting and receiving signal and
>> timecode has always given me pause. The casual use of male and female
>> for pins and plugs has always seemed unnecessary. I teach at the
>> college level in cinematography and find myself slowing down the
>> conversation to carefully step around those types of terms (not to
>> mention the unnecessary nicknames). I would welcome any respectful
>> and viable suggestions.
>
> I would respectfully disagree with this.
>
> The way that the terms "male" and "female" apply to humans are not in
> any way limited to humans, in which context they are problematic. The
> terms also apply in the same way to all other mammals, many reptiles,
> some amphibians, some molluscs, insects and other invertebrates... and
> in a broader sense to most fish, and quite a lot of plants too.
>

I think you've proved the point that a plug and socket design doesn't
equate with male and female, given the breadth of species design that we
find in the wild (basically nothing outside of mammals?). It reflects
least on humans, in fact, where female/male is clearly a grossly
oversimplified binary.

Importantly, plug/socket is simply a better term pair because it
describes the technology, in most cases, clearly. There may be other
uses of male/female that can't be replaced with this term pair, but
that's true of master/slave as well-- context matters when thinking
about replacements.

-Mallory

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Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780

[Beth Hancock]

Cynthia,

You might find some useful ideas on this spreadsheet that the language workstream has created to gather recommendations.

Thank you for your work educating people toward using clearer terms in the film industry.  

Best Regards,

~Beth

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Beth Hancock 

Product Manager

Leadingbit

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[Michael Shomsky]

The obvious problem when anthropomorphizing plugs and pins, is the unnecessary sexualization of these objects; which is not a good reason for displacing useful words like plugs and pins.

As Liam points out many reptiles, birds, and molluscs do not even follow this pattern; it is not ubiquitous. Although, we aren't talking about biology, which is the appropriate subject for terms like male and female. 

  

I think the problem with this discussion is that some of these terms have been established for so long, that we don't question their use. Mis-applying biology to non-biological technology (when using male and female) forces

the user of those connectors to wrongly consider whether or not a sexual act is occuring, this is unnecessary.  I think you hit the nail on the head Cynthia: the gendered terms are unnecessary terms that carry a biological context which in practice create a gendered situation which does not convey any useful information about the connection between those devices.

[B.J. Smith]

Cynthia, some alternatives suggested here include plug and receptacle so you might find those or some others useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_connectors_and_fasteners#Abbreviations_and_alternate_terminology

The use of male and female seems to be deeply ingrained in some fields, but so are many other things that could be done better.

B.J.

[Cynthia Harrig]

My comment wasn't that I thought the phrases caused offense. It was that there might be alternatives. Though given the other terms in common use on sets it's reasonable to assume we aren't ever referring to animals. 

[Jason Keirstead]

Hi all - I do not work in this space whatsoever, but as an avid consumer / prosumer of many of these products I have some thoughts.

One aspect of this issue that should be taken into account is the fact that for many of these cabling standards, which is the "plug" and which is the "socket" is entirely non-obvious to a layperson. I am thinking specifically of the various flavours of coaxial connectors here, which are usually a combination of a pin and receptacle in a single connector - and thus it is non obvious which is the "plug" and which is the "socket", as both the male and female ends of a coaxial cable have aspects of both. As such, "male" and "female" for coaxial are not based on an obvious plug vs. socket connotation, but are simply labels. This makes me question if "plug" and "socket" is a viable option. 

Another important point is male & female ends are used throughout the entire construction industry (it is used in plumbing, in gas, in  HVAC, in framing, etc...), not just in cabling. Proposing a new terminology for cabling while not covering all of the other aspects of the building could be disruptive to communication & not be adopted.

Very interesting discussion...

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[Jo Mackiewicz]

Hi all, I'm wondering whether any of you have made any inroads into changing from "male" and "female" to some other terminology. I'm a professor at Iowa State university and a part-time welder. I'm studying "male" and "female" for connector ends and the (slow) movement away their use. If you have a few minutes to chat, please send me an email: jomack...@gmail.com. Best, Jo

[Mallory Knodel]

Hi Jo,

Likely the use of male/female in hardware will soon be phased out in electrical engineering. I am not aware of any work happening in other standards bodies like ISO, but I can ask and get back to you.

-Mallory

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[Lukas Kahwe Smith]

“ female/male connectors: terms used for describing physical connectors in hardware systems. The terms are sexist and normative, and good alternatives such as socket and plug exist and are already common.”

https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter

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[Erin Balabanian]

 I think I brought this up 1 or 2 years ago and we tabled it at that time, I think because there were industry efforts underway. Perhaps it's time to relook at it?

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[Mackiewicz, Jo [ENGL]]

Hi Erin,

 

Thanks for pointing me to the ACM’s efforts. If you could spare 10 minutes or so to Zoom I’d love to talk to you about the conversations you’ve had about these terms. Best, Jo

 

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Jo Mackiewicz (“mack-uh-which” or “mack-uh-wits”)

Associate Chair for Faculty Development, English Department

Professor and Coordinator, Rhetoric and Professional Communication

Editor, Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Iowa State University, 413 Ross Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1201

jom...@iastate.edu

Latest book: Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge

 

 

[Rich Salz]

You might also find https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/04/nists-inclusive-language-guidance-aims-clarity-standards-publications useful, which includes a link to the NIST document about clarity and inclusive language, and explicitly calls out the connector issue.

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[Erin Balabanian]

What I was referring to was male/female connectors in the hardware space, sorry for the confusion

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