Sexism in the Ruby community: how does the Python community manage it?

[Roy Smith]

In article <2013101623133337485-owenjacobson at grimoireca>,
 Owen Jacobson <owen.jacobson at grimoire.ca> wrote:

> * SexMachine (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SexMachine/0.1.1 - an 
> attempt to detect the gender of names, which… well, ask the nearest boy 
> named Sue - or girl named Leslie)

I'm not sure what you're objecting to here.  Is it the name, or the 
functionality?

As for the name, I guess different people have different reactions, but 
I (as a male) find this only mildly offensive.  I can see why some 
people might have a stronger reaction to it.  Perhaps not the best name 
one might have come up with, but certainly not anywhere near the list 
you cited.  I would not have picked the name myself, but I also would 
not want to see us go so far as to forbid something with that name from 
being listed on pypi.

As for the function, guessing gender from names is important in the 
advertising world.  Everybody knows that some names are ambiguous.  And 
that sometimes names that you would think of as unambiguously associated 
with a particular gender are used by the other.  And a zillion other 
ways the guess can be wrong.

Still, it's worth real money in on-line commerce and advertising to know 
(even with a certain degree of uncertainty) somebody's gender.  So it's 
not surprising people are writing tools to guess that from names.  Nor 
do I think it's inappropriate.

Full disclosure: I work for a company which makes money selling on-line 
advertising.  If we can provide accurate gender information to our 
advertisers, we can charge them more per impression.