Language and Communication

Intro

• Gender-neutral Technical Writing: TechWhirl
• Bias-free communication: Microsoft’s writing guide

Unconscious and implicit bias

• Managing unconscious bias – Facebook
  • A series of videos on recognising unconscious biases which you have and suggestions on how to counter them.
  • Split into multiple sections:
    • Series introduction
    • First impressions – if you aren’t sure about watching the series, watch this one; it will get you thinking about your own biases which you may not have thought about before.
    • Stereotypes and performance bias
    • Performance attribution bias
    • Competence/Likeability tradeoff bias
    • Maternal bias
    • Business case for diversity and inclusion
  • The content is very well presented and the videos can be watched independently of one another.
• eLesson: Unconscious Bias – Microsoft
  • More of a corporate approach, which may be boring for some engineers, but there’s some good content.
  • This is mostly focused on meetings rather than the many other forms of collaboration which we use.
  • If you are a manager then this is probably a better option than the Facebook one.
• How To Remove Gender Bias From the Hiring Process: Inc.com
• Implicit Association Test - Online test to score unconscious bias
• You Don’t Know It, But Women See Gender Bias in Your Job Postings - ERE.net
• One Simple Skill to Curb Unconscious Gender Bias: Crucial Skills
• /Fay-lee-nuh/ on Twitter: “Tweeps! I managed to convince my department that we need implicit bias training. Who do I bring in for this? Half a day, in Delft, paid.” This tweet has some great resources in the replies.
• Curbing implicit bias: what works and what doesn’t But here’s what does work

Privilege

• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is – Whatever
• Contempt Culture

Racism and White Privilege

• What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege: On Being
• Anti-racism resources by Sarah Sophie Flicker, Alyssa Klein
• Holy shit, being an ally isn’t about me! by Real Talk: WOC & Allies
• Becoming Upended: Teaching and Learning about Race and Racism with Young Children and Their Families by Kirsten Cole, Diandra Verwayne
• Mike Wedderburn: Black Lives Matter is a cry for help, not an attack on white people: compelling rebuttal of White Lives Matter

Problematic Words and Phrases

Substitutions and Alternatives

A number of authoritative sources are now advocating for more careful word choice, and avoiding those that are unclear, rely on a background not everyone may have, or can cause pain to others. Some useful lists:

• ACM’s Words Matter initiative
• INCITS Inclusive Terminology Guidelines has a link to the latest PDF from the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards.

Metaphors

Some words and phrases in longtime use in software development have associations that are uncomfortable or painful for some people. When the people hurt by a word or phrase are under-represented, such words can become commonly used despite being hurtful. As we learn to be more welcoming and inclusive, that can include adjusting our language to avoid words with historical connotations that cause pain.

What’s more, such uses are almost always metaphors, and not all members of our industry share a given set of cultural references to draw on for such metaphors. Maybe you’re familiar with cowboy movies in which the good guys wear white hats and the bad buys wear black hats: someone who grew up on a different continent from you, or 40 years after you, may not be.

Master

The word master has painful connotations for many people, because of its use in slavery. It is therefore important to avoid using it. Even when the historical use for it is not related to slavery, it’s still important to avoid using it, because of the pain it will cause some of your users/readers.

• Let’s dump master-slave terms: they’re vague, horrible, and we’re better off without them
• Avoiding ‘master’ in version control
  • Aliasing branches in git

Guys

• Kate Gregory: Thoughts about “guys”
• When is “guys” gender neutral? I did a survey! - Julia Evans
• Guys and dudes: language: a feminist guide
• The First Rule of DevOps Club - Bridget Kromhout
• Clare Macrae on Twitter: “Throughly fed up with current speaker at #AnsibleFest referring only to male audience and collaborators - we are not all guys”
  • Stacey Eady on Twitter: “Even the #tokengirl on the panel was an afterthought #AnsibleFest #fail #closethegendergap”
• ‘Ladies’ Is Gender Neutral – Alice Goldfuss
• Language Matters: Stop Using “Guys” to Address Mix-Gender Groups – Subfictional Studios
• single word requests - A gender-neutral, informal alternative to singular ‘guy’ - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
• Gendered Language: Feature or Bug in Software Documentation? by Tim Chevalier: Model View Culture
• Scott Hanselman on Twitter: OSS Devs: @keeleyhammond and I are teaching a class on “The Squishy Side of Open Source.” Give us links of GitHub threads gone BAD and GOOD!
  • There are some useful replies.
• Why you should use gender-neutral language in the workplace: Inside Job
• The Problem With ‘Hey Guys’

Illustrations

We communicate not only with words, but with images. If your talk, blog post, article or tweets all feature able-bodied white men, you might not know where to find anything different. Here are some starting points.

• Black Illustrations: Beautiful illustrations of black people for your next digital project
• Where To Find Free Stock Photos With People of Color: 7 sources of inclusive imagery
• Women Coding: Images at Unsplash
• Stock photos of women of color in tech, now free to use.: By #WOCinTechChat

Glossary

Some behaviours are so common in response to diversity efforts that they have been named and categorized. Knowing that a particular line of argument or way of talking to you is common may help you resist it, and deal with it more confidently.

Mansplaining

• Mansplaining - Wikipedia
• What Is Mansplaining? The Origins (And Misuse) of the Term

Paradox of Tolerance

Being inclusive doesn’t mean allowing everything, especially intolerance and rudeness: this is the “Paradox of Tolerance”.

• Paradox of tolerance - Wikipedia
• Tolerance is not a moral precept

TERFs

TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

• TERF - Wikipedia
• A Response to J.K. Rowling: video rebutting anti-trans comments by the well-known children’s author

Untitling

In the words of Dr Nisreen Alwan:

I’m fed up of people not introducing me by my titles in public forums. I am a Dr (medic & PhD). I’m an Associate Professor. I worked hard to gain these titles & I don’t give permission to omit them. Just because I’m an ethnic minority woman doesn’t mean that I’m just ‘Nisreen’!

• Time for a new word to describe omitting professional titles: Untitling. - Tweet by Amy Diehl, Ph.D. @amydiehl
• Why we use women’s professional titles less than men’s - Article from the BBC

Whataboutery

Whataboutery is an arguing approach that asks “what about” some other thing to derail conversation.

• What Is Whataboutery, and Why Does It Plague Discourse?