Why Ruby?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:ier8i4$1db8$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 12/21/10 4:02 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> On 21/12/2010 21:24, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 12/21/10 2:38 PM, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>>> On 13/12/2010 15:49, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>> On 12/13/10 9:11 AM, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
>>>>>> On 12/13/2010 09:08 AM, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>>>>>> Yes I am :-)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Since you were the Descent author, I wonder how you feel about Ruby's
>>>>>> lack of static typing. In the video, the speaker bashes type safety 
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> "having your balls fondled at the airport", that is, security theater
>>>>>> that doesn't accomplish much.
>>>>>
>>>>> By the way, I couldn't stop cringing at the distasteful, male-centric
>>>>> sexual jokes that the talk is peppered with. Wonder if there was any
>>>>> woman in the audience, and how she might have felt. And this is not a
>>>>> ghetto rant - it's the keynote of a major Ruby conference! (And I'm
>>>>> definitely not a prude.) Am I alone in thinking that this is not what
>>>>> our metier should evolve into?
>>>>>
>>>>> Besides, the argument in favor of dynamic typing is one of the most
>>>>> disingenuous around. C is a language for consenting adults that gives
>>>>> you that kind of freedom. If we took the speaker's arguments to their
>>>>> logical conclusion, Ruby would be a language for people who don't care
>>>>> about correctness, despise efficiency, and have contempt for
>>>>> modularity.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ah, hold on a second. I agree the talk was rude and unprofessional (not
>>>> that it was meant to be either), but I disagree it was sexist or
>>>> offensive to women. Looking at the comment in question, "having your
>>>> balls fondled at the airport", it's simply something that you cannot
>>>> convey with anywhere the same meaning in a gender-neutral way ("having
>>>> your gonads fondled at the airports"?... "having your genitals fondled
>>>> at the airport"?... "having your crotch fondled at the airport"?...)
>>>
>>> You presuppose there's a need to stick with the original metaphor. There
>>> are many good metaphors to use, and there are a lot of good jokes around
>>> the "porn scanners".
>>>
>>>> For better or worse, "balls" has become a metaphor for braveness,
>>>> boldness, power, recklessness, (or a combination therefore), and has
>>>> even been applied to women some times ("does she have the balls to do
>>>> that?").
>>>
>>> There are a lot of actually good jokes around that topic. I think this
>>> one, for example, is not gross at all: when describing the shortcomings
>>> of iterators, I mentioned "you have to have a pair to do anything". I
>>> delivered that with a straight face and it was really interesting to see
>>> the audience slowly getting the doublespeak and starting to laugh with
>>> various latencies. I am subjective but I think that one is firmly on the
>>> opposite side of a thin line than the "fondled balls" joke.
>>>
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>
>> I forgot part of my argument actually: Just as the "balls" metaphor has
>> that meaning, conversely, "being grabbed by the balls" means kinda the
>> opposite: being subjugated, dominated, restrained, kept-under-control,
>> emasculated, etc.. So I think the "having your balls fondled at the
>> airport" is a direct allusion to that metaphor, which goes in line with
>> the talk's general theme of anti-authoritarianism.
>> So yes, I am presupposing there's a need to stick with the original
>> metaphor. (in order to convey the subjugation meaning/allusion.)
>
> I'd almost agree had the word "fondled" been absent :o).
>

This is what makes me question the existence of anti-female sexism in the 
joke: Replace the word "balls" with either "breasts" or any slang (or 
non-slang) term for female genitalia. Maybe replace the speaker with a 
woman, too, I don't care, either way. Or keep the word "balls" and make the 
speaker a woman. Any combination, whatever. Would that make it offensive to 
men? Maybe I'm just really weird as far as men go, but I honestly can't see 
how it would be. I certainly wouldn't take offense to it, no matter how you 
arranged the male/female-ness. But I can certainly imagine people that would 
still wave an "offensive to women" banner.

So unless I just have a really bad grasp of human behavior (and knowing me, 
I very well might), what we have is a situation where references to any 
gender-specific body part is offensive to...women and only women. Which 
triggers the "Reductio ad absurdum" flag in my mind.