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[Max White]

Well, post-modernism itself actually has some intellectual merit. The actual philosophical concept is certainly worth a look at... But we are talking about a slightly different creature wearing the guise of postmodernism. I'm not sure what you would call this concept, but its most core characteristic is forming an unfalsifiable belief, and misinterpreting, bending, fabricating or ignoring evidence to suit that belief, and dismissing any critics as heretics communists unpatriotic shills hippies hicks patriarchal jackboots. It is a mindset that seems to be as old as humanity and a defining part of the human condition, but it can be stamped out.

[Reelya]

People are a lot more offended by postmodernism than I expected.

Well, they're sort of like Scientologists, but more "holier than thou" whilst making less sense.

[MDFification]

People are a lot more offended by postmodernism than I expected.

Well, they're sort of like Scientologists, but more "holier than thou" whilst making less sense.

... did you just say that even the most misguided of radical feminists talks less sense than scientologists?
Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

@OP I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a feminist programming language because programming langauges are all gender neutral. Her options are go back in time and prevent men from creating programming languages (although back in the days of mechanical analogue computers, a woman wrote the first line of code) or somehow work out a system that replaces the 1s and 0s with just 1s.
Alternatively, she can blog more, receive attention from fellow feminists and feel good about herself.

But in all seriousness, logic cannot be divided into masculine and feminine categories; logic just is. Ergo, one cannot make a purely logic-based system masculine or feminine; only emotional factors make a system gendered. So unless we're making a comptuer that can feel, it, it's programs and the language composing these programs is gender neutral and neither feminist or, (shudder) not feminist.

[Reelya]

I didn't say anything about "radical feminists". I said "postmodernists" don't put words in my mouth. Radical feminism and postmodernism are not synonyms.

Have you read much postmodern writing? Scientology may be based on some insane premises, but you can at least parse the meaning within the texts.

Noam Chomsky makes similar criticism of Postmodernism and also refers to it as a cult:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

[Max White]

But in all seriousness, logic cannot be divided into masculine and feminine categories; logic just is. Ergo, one cannot make a purely logic-based system masculine or feminine; only emotional factors make a system gendered. So unless we're making a comptuer that can feel, it, it's programs and the language composing these programs is gender neutral and neither feminist or, (shudder) not feminist.

Nope.
Logic is a construct of men and designed to oppress women! You only think it is objective and beyond gender because your male mind has been indoctrinated that way. If you were a liberated women like myself you would understand just how oppressive programming languages are towards women. All the great male philosophers were just imposing themselves and their narrow way of thinking on women and supporting the patriarchy!


You see that sort of thinking? That is what you are going to try and argue against. It walks straight past your argument and attacks you as a person. Have fun with that... Scientology at least understand it is so unreasonable that it tries to hide until its victims are well and truly brainwashed.

[alexandertnt]

I dont think thats how this style of thought goes.

I think its more along the idea that society is male dominated, and that some constructs from this society end up being "masculine" unintentionally because of this, and not this idea that mathematicians and scientists have been actively or intentionally opressing women.

I dont think programming is very "man-ly" though.

[Reelya]

There is actually a stream of thought which is almost exactly like that unfortunately. Read the synopsis and reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Power-Feminist-Reading-Thinking/dp/0415902002

Desperate, lonely, cut off from the human community which in many cases has ceased to exist, under the sentence of violent death, wracked by desires for intimacy that they do not know how to fulfill, at the same time tormented by the presence of women, men turn to logic.

Nye tells us that Frege was insane. Then she reaches the stellar conclusion that 'logic is insane'

If economics was logical necessity for the Marxists, the science of nature was logical necessity for the Nazis. In nature, it was clear enough that the fittest and best survived, whereas dying and degenerate races were destroyed. The applications of logic to action that Frege had promised came readily to hand. If Jews are a mongrel race, they must be exterminated. 'A thought like a hammer' demanded instant obedience to the dictates of logic.

Basically, she links one of the founders of modern logic theory to Hitler. Pure Godwin there. The real link is that he was German, died in 1925, and wrote in his diary that he admired Hitler, and he was clearly anti-semitic himself. But to claim that his theory of logic is therefore anti-semitic, makes no more sense than pointing out that Turing was gay, therefore Turing machines are gay.

[Max White]

I dont think thats how this style of thought goes.

I think its more along the idea that society is male dominated, and that some constructs from this society end up being "masculine" unintentionally because of this, and not this idea that mathematicians and scientists have been actively or intentionally opressing women.

I dont think programming is very "man-ly" though.

You say that, but then you don't have to listen to Germaine Greer get up and talk about how all society has been built to deliberately sexually repress women...


See how easy it is to just bypass somebodies argument and accuse them of ignorance instead of addressing anything they actually say? Most of the time, unless somebody is really making it big and bold for the point of satire, you wouldn't even notice it is happening. People actually do this every day, it is just part of human nature. Don't like what somebody says? Just assume they are ignorant! It works great with modern feminism because you aren't a woman, you can never claim any sort of expert knowledge, and when a woman does disagree with them you can just call them brainwashed. How do you even prove you aren't?
Anyway, yes, there are feminists out there trying to insist maths, science and even programming languages are in some way masculine, and deserving of a feminist counterpart.

[Reelya]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce_Irigaray

she [...] regards E=mc2 as a "sexed equation" because she argues that "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us".

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html

The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity:

'Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders.'

And then we have that professor who said Newtowns mechanics could equally well be referred to as "Newton's rape manual":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Harding
She's said she regrets saying it. But just reading this:
http://www.dhushara.com/book/renewal/voices2/femsci.htm
She's actually said she regrets that people have quoted her on it, not actually saying it in the first place.

[alexandertnt]

I never said people who think that don't exist .

I am saying that the description you gave isn't an accurate general representation of "postmodernism"/"feminism". What you "are going to try and argue against" depends on who you argue with.

[Max White]

Well you did specify that

I dont think thats how this style of thought goes.

Where "this style of thought" is feminists that want to make their own programming language... So that is who we are arguing with.

[alexandertnt]

Thats my point. I dont think someone who wants to make whatever a "femenist programming language" is is necessarily thinks the way you described them.

Postmodernism is about deconstructing and questioning norms, it doesn't necessarily make the presumption that those norms are oppressive or the result of "indoctronation", or anything else you stated.

[Reelya]

But they do exactly think that the norms are oppressive: that's why they want to change them. pure deconstruction may not make value judgements, but someone who wants to "change the system" definitely is.

As for indoctrination: "indoctrinated" "patriarchy" "for the benefit on men". All those go without saying. You are socially conditioned by the patriarchy system which benefits men at the expense of women. That's a prime example of what indoctrination means.

"Patriarchy" which doesn't benefit men and you aren't indoctrinated into would be meaningless.

As for the content of the OP's project :-

it's not just removing e.g. potentially sexist keywords or making sure that open source doesn't have sexist stuff put in there, those are both totally valid and real issues.

The project in the OP is talking about how object orientedness enforces "normative subject/object theory" so they want to create an "alternate way of abstracting" that fits with "feminist subject/object theory". Apparently procedural, logical and functional programming are equally patriarchal, so she's going to "roll her own".  She's also talking about rejecting classic logic, in favor of logic systems where statements can be both true and false at the same time, so this is clearly coming more from the postmodern deconstruction side of things than mainstream feminism.