I've heard from many women in the last few days that they are, in fact, made uncomfortable by the overt sexualization that happens in programmer culture. This comment on MetaFilter [http://www.metafilter.com/126184/Furore-over-sexism-being-ca...] made its point in a way that was particularly uncomfortable for me:

> Oh let's even forget code and the "fork" jargon and whatnot. Let's talk about hardware engineering. Male connectors? (those are connectors with sticky-outy-pins) Female connectors? (those are the ones that are receptacles for sticky-outy-pins) Genderbenders? (those are adapters you use to make one gender connector into a different one) You "mate" those connectors, of course. You might screw them. If you work in the underwater world like I do, you might have penetrators. Now you get to mate penetrators! lol! Sometimes if you don't have something mated to the penetrator you have to hack a way to make it waterproof just for a quick test so, guess what you put on the penetrator? A condom! (I am not joking, I have put a lot of condoms onto penetrators in my time, they are excellent quick cheap waterproofers) Also, did you know that in Australia, the world "flange" is slang for a woman's genitalia? Guess how excited I was when I found out I (female) had given 30 minutes of training to a bunch of Australian military men including discussion of mating the flanges on our equipment to put some things together?

> The tech world is full of "hilariously" sex-related terminology. When you first learn about it, you get a Beavis and Butthead heh-heh-heh phase to go through. Then you stop thinking of it as pervy and you forget it has a meaning outside of the work you do until someone has their Beavis and Butthead moment and giggles at you, usually in the middle of something you're trying to be smart and professional about. Most of the terminology I think was dreamed up by people (mostly men, because that's who was in the industry) who thought it was hilarious and now that there are women in the industry it's even MORE hilarious that they have to learn and use those terms regularly.

> I'm a woman in engineering. I'm one of the "cool" girls. I swear and I laugh at dumb inappropriate jokes and i proudly wear our (old, from startup phase) company shirts that say "when size matters" showing the different sizes of our phallic-shaped equipment. But I swear and I laugh and I wear that shirt in the small group of friendly coworkers with whom I am very socially comfortable. When I get the Beavis and Butthead chuckles from those I am not friendly with, it is tiring as all fuck. I don't care about the etymology of the word. I don't care how well-known the word is in the industry jargon. I don't care. What I care about is when I am using the professionally-accepted jargon, someone is giggling at me going "heh heh you know what that sounds like you're saying" because it is immature, distracting, and undermining to me when that's what people are paying attention to when I speak.

> No one invented "Fork me on GitHub" to be pure and virginal about it. Someone was going heh-heh-heh. And now it's "industry accepted." And now we all have to put up with everyone in their heh-heh-heh moments.