I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for at least a couple actual examples of this change helping people feel better about participating in technology. In the absence of such, it all feels very performative and, dare I say, a cheap way to score good PR for participating organizations. I don't think it really hurts anyone to an extent that it should be opposed, but neither does it really help, until proven otherwise.
> However, I am Dutch and can say that these cultural sensibilities are far outside of just the "American" one.
Are they? Does the master/slave terminology also have very negative connotations in your culture? I thought it was almost exclusively an American thing due to their historical circumstances.
I would suggest looking up what the Dutch did in relation to race equality in history and how we were involved in a lot of slave trade, sometimes even to the US.
I would say you have a point with saying it's performative, and I don't have anything to counter that. However, perhaps your energy could be spent looking for someone that is actually offended by this to counter your own perspective?
Kinda Karl Popper style of disprove your own theory?
> I would suggest looking up what the Dutch did in relation to race equality in history and how we were involved in a lot of slave trade, sometimes even to the US.
I am aware of the history, but that's not enough to give the words themselves emotional charge and significance. The reason this is so for Americans is that the consequences of slavery and racial segregation are keenly felt right now - it's not just an abstract wrong committed on people long ago and far away. As a point of comparison, I'm from Eastern Europe, and the word "slave" is derived from "Slav" - but this is effectively ancient history with little bearing on the present, and so the word doesn't carry any emotional charge or special meaning.
To put things differently, is there a segment of the Dutch populace for whom the words "master" and "slave" signify that kind of viscerally felt injustice, as they do for black people in the US? This isn't a gotcha question, I genuinely don't know, and these kinds can be arbitrary and irrational. For Poles, "slavery" is abstract, but "forced labor" brings up some major traumas from around World War 2, for example.
> Kinda Karl Popper style of disprove your own theory?
I was hoping someone would do it for me in this thread. :) Might still happen, if not, I might have to do some digging.
> I am aware of the history, but that's not enough to give the words themselves emotional charge and significance.
I disagree. Nazis, soviets did a lot of crimes against humanity and in certain countries symbols of those regimes are banned, also speaking positively about it also is banned by claiming it dismisses all those crimes.
It’s not required for that word to be relevant NOW in order to be somewhat negative/avoided.
I think it applies also to master/slave stuff: it attempts to normalize those terms by dismissing history of those words. Also - if we forget shortly that we are used to master branch in git: why word “master” is right choice for it? for me “main” makes sense.
> However, I am Dutch and can say that these cultural sensibilities are far outside of just the "American" one.
Are they? Does the master/slave terminology also have very negative connotations in your culture? I thought it was almost exclusively an American thing due to their historical circumstances.