Unnecessary gender-specific terms in code

[Alex Valavanis]

Time for me to put on my hippy liberal hat and point out a style error in our code... There are a few places where we use gender-specific variable names for no good reason, for example:

src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:442: father = item1;
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:449: SPDocument *doc = father->document;
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:451: Inkscape::XML::Node *old_repr = father->getRepr();
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:454: Geom::OptRect a = father->documentVisualBounds();
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:466: // duplicates the father
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:503: // Ad the clone to the list of the father's sons
src/ui/tools/spray-tool.cpp:505: // Generates the link between father and son attributes

Conversely, a quick search for "mother", "daughter", "mom", "mommy", "mummy", "mum", "she" and "her" turns up nothing! Why are some of our variables male but none are ever female? Why do they only have male children?

If we want to be an inclusive project that is as attractive as possible to as many different people as possible, we have to avoid this kind of thing. These variables could easily be changed to gender-neutral names. Some simple examples that apply to our code:

dad -> parent
daddy -> parent
father -> parent
son -> child

I appreciate that this may not seem immediately important to existing contributors, but all these little unintentional quirks add together to create the message that "open-source software is a man's place", thus potentially alienating 50% of our possible contributors. Besides, it's a very easy fix!

Further reading:

[1] http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/gender-sensitive-language/
[2] https://www2.stetson.edu/secure/history/hy10302/nongenderlang.html

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Agreed. 100%.

[jazzynico (jazzynico)]

Should be fixed revision 12997.