dana danger

I’ve avoided posting anything about Matt Aimonetti’s CouchDB presentation and the resulting uproar, but a friend of mine asked me what I thought about it, and I’ve decided to post the email (with minor edits) that I sent in reply.

This episode is incredibly upsetting. The presentation was merely stupid, but Aimonetti’s response to people’s complaints was just mind-boggling. He seems to think that the problem is that (a) feminists are offended, and (b) feminists didn’t avoid the presentation. [See Noumena's comment on Feminist Philosophers.] He can’t even articulate why people are upset. He keeps using the words “offense” and “offended,” words that are essentially meaningless and betray a complete lack of understanding, when he should be using words like “objectified” and “thoughtless.” His apology was totally insincere, and it was obvious that he only apologized to get people off his back. (Not that I can completely blame him for that. Having the entire Internet shouting at you is pretty unpleasant.) I’ve seen zero effort on his part to engage in any sort of critical self-analysis.

Our culture objectifies women and values them first and foremost as sexual creatures. That is a fact. It is not a matter for debate. And people like Aimonetti are part of the problem, not because he made a mistake and made a stupid presentation–he’s as much a victim of this culture as anyone else–but because he refuses to take an honest look at himself and his actions.

I’d like to add to this a comment about David Heinemeier Hansson’s response, in which he wrote, “I don’t think we’re doing anyone a service by activating the WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN police and squash [sic] all other sorts of edges and diversity in the scene.”

David, sexism is not “edgy.” In fact, it’s probably the least edgy thing there is, right up there with bell bottoms and arranged marriage. If it’s edges and diversity that you’re after, you can start by retracting these statements, encouraging Aimonetti to think about why people are outraged, and appointing an official Rails Feminist–someone with credentials. Now that would be edgy.

What if we separated the religious and civil aspects of marriage into distinct concepts? The word “marriage” could be redefined to include only its religious aspects, and its relationship with the state could be severed. The concept of marriage as understood by the state would no longer be referred to as “marriage.” Instead, a religiously neutral term like “civil partnership” would be the only term used for civil and legal recognition of relationships, same- or cross-sex. By separating these concepts, religious groups would remain free to define marriage according to their canon, and the state’s services—no longer associated with religious institutions—would be available to all of its citizens.

This solution wouldn’t be acceptable to everyone, of course. Same-sex marriage has also been opposed on the grounds that it would “obscure certain basic moral values,” that same-sex relationships “are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage,” and that “society owes its continued survival to the family, founded on marriage” (Ratzinger, 2008). Separating marriage from the state wouldn’t address these concerns, however valid they may be. It might also be too late to “put the genie back in the bottle;” that is, the relationship between religion and the state might be unbreakable from a political standpoint. People in cross-sex marriages might view the renaming of their relationships as a reduction in status, and religious groups would undoubtedly fight to retain their political privilege. Any attempt to separate marriage and civil partnerships must account for these substantial political obstacles.

Nonetheless, separating marriage as we know it into two distinct concepts is the only solution that honors both of the two primary conflicting viewpoints. There would be no distinction between couples on the basis of sexuality, thus avoiding the problems posed by civil unions. Equality would be guaranteed by a unified civil institution, as it is in the handful of states that have legalized same-sex marriage. There would be no religious component to civil recognition of relationships, thus negating the religious argument. Finally, religious groups would retain ownership of the word “marriage,” allowing them to define it however they please without interfering with the rights of people with differing beliefs. Followers of religious groups would retain their ability to be married in the eyes of God, and their relationships would be recognized by the state.

I made the switch from TextWrangler to TextMate about a year and a half ago, shortly after I landed a job doing Rails full-time. At the time, TextMate had some features that made TextWrangler and its older sibling BBEdit look old school in a bad way. In particular, I was drawn to TextMate’s project drawer, snippets, automatic balancing of strings and parenthetical expressions, and—I admit it—its cool factor as the preferred text editor of the Rails community. TextMate felt fresh and slick, just like Rails.

Unfortunately, this freshness means that TextMate has some major problems that older editors solved a long time ago. Foremost, TextMate’s find-and-replace is horrific. Searching large or multiple files takes an absurdly long time. Regular expressions are supported, but their syntax isn’t colorized. Second, TextMate chokes on large files and projects. Switching TextMate to the foreground when a large project drawer is open causes it to spinlock for about a second. I know: “What? Jane, that’s like, almost a mile!” But trust me, one second of lock-up is an eternity when I’m ready to start typing immediately, especially when it happens over and over again.

Third, although TextMate prides itself on being Mac-only, it is probably the least Mac-friendly windowed editor I’ve ever used. It overloads some common Mac keyboard shortcuts, some of which go back to the early days of the classic OS. For example, ⌥⌘W closes all windows in every Mac application ever written, but in TextMate, it toggles soft wrap. Many of TextMate’s other keyboard shortcuts are pure insanity, requiring finger gymnastics the likes of which I’ve never experienced on the Mac. The shortcut for switching to plain text mode comes to mind: ⌃⌥⇧P. And then you have to select “Plain Text” from a contextual menu. Some very basic text editor features, like word count, are only accessible by running files through shell commands.

In other words, TextMate combines the power and flexibility of a GUI with the ease-of-use and performance of Emacs. Now, none of these problems are intractable and I’m sure they’ll disappear as TextMate matures. In the meantime, I need to get work done, and there are already some very good, mature editors for the Mac that don’t suffer from these problems. But, oh, that project drawer… those snippets… can I bear to part with them?

Turns out I don’t have to. The latest version of BBEdit adds projects and clippings. Its find-and-replace has been best-in-class for years, and was my single greatest regret about switching to TextMate. BBEdit knows how to rewrap comments. It handles wide, multi-byte characters (日本語) properly, and it doesn’t break the Mac’s international input systems. It’s been around forever, so it fits in very well on the Mac. It’s mature. Yes, it’s expensive, but I will happily pay good money for a grown-up text editor that does exactly what I need—including staying out of my way—exactly when I need it to.

So I’m sorry TextMate, but we have to part ways. You’re cool and pretty, but you have some growing up to do, and other editors have learned your tricks. Hopefully you can learn theirs some day.

Carol Queen in Real Live Nude Girl:

My friend Will Roscoe once told me his theory of homophobia: Straight people, he said, are jealous of us, because we have a sexual orientation and they don’t. In our sexual otherness, we have to learn to talk about sex; it defines us in a way it doesn’t define heterosexuals, and in the process of becoming a community, we learn comfort with the language.

While I don’t agree that this has anything (or at least anything significant) to do with homophobia, I do appreciate the insight into sex-positivity.