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I still often say trans/tranny when referring to a transmission. It's hard to train those language patterns out of yourself. Not to mention things like master and slave cylinders, hermophradite/mophradite calipers and fittings, gender changers.
Reamers and reaming, bastard files and bastard threads, deep hole drilling, male/female fittings, shafts and lube, prongs, orifice.
Open source has tried to redefine master/slave in things like SPI to controller and peripheral, ie. MOSI/COPI but the rest of the documentation and all of the documentation that came before it still uses it.
Technical language is full of this stuff and is often the clearest way to express something. It is the standard and changing industrial standards is very hard.
It's funny, is changing this stuff performative or does it really matter?
I would say it matters. However, it is likely that new terms being created today will become offensive in the future.
I could see Big Endian and Little Endian becoming offensive if it isn't already considered offensive.
Allowlist/Blocklist vs whitelist/blacklist in software.
A lot of product changed the terms on the front end but the backend still uses it, and our internal tools mostly use it.
Big Endian/Little Endian is a reference to Gulliver's Travels, where there was a society that argued whether to break hard boiled eggs on the little end or the big end. It is pretty much non offensive and would take a stretch to become offensive in the future.
It's also a children's song that I was taught as a child in kindergarten or maybe church. That's what i associate it with.
What's the issue with lube?
You tell someone to go lube the shaft in complete seriousness, and they're going to giggle and pull a, "That's what she said..."
Not a probelm, per se, but it is a good example of just how much of technical language can be perceived as a double entendre. I generally don't realize I've said anything like that until a new kid starts snickering.
This is also part, not all, of the reason there is resistance to changing these things. A good chunk of that resistance is because those using these words have no bad intent whatsoever. It's not even on the radar.
And of course, there are plenty of bigoted shitheads who don't want to change.
I'm honest and not trying to be an ass, but what is the issue with double entendre? And how is it a hallmark of bigots to do so? Isn't "that what she said" a ribbing on that weird boss from the Office?
Nothing is wrong with double entendres depending on intent. My humor and language is about as crass as it comes depending on my audience.
I'm saying that there are so many terms like this, gender and similar is built into english technical language.
Personal experience, hired a black woman when I was running a shop. Half the crew has the maturity and grace of drunk squirrels. I easily pass as het. I say something about a female thread being buggered. Now I've got two knuckleheads in the back giggling even though she gets that I was not being offensive. Still, that sucks for both of us and I want to slap the shit out of the knuckleheads and I feel like shit for causing it.
And we wonder why all minorities are so underrepresented in STEM. It's a minefield.
In my perfect little world, we don't change the terms and instead reduce the dumbass level. In reality, we navigate the minefield as best we can and change the things that cause the most offense.
I feel like "that's what she said" is older than the office, though that definitely (re)popularized it.
The office (US) came out in 2005, and I'm pretty sure I'd been hearing it before then. I could be wrong though, as that was twenty years ago.
Oh yeah, my friends group and I were hitting "that's what (s)he said" pretty hard in the nineties.
Yeah I think part of the joke was Michael had latched on to an existing joke and kept using it in a setting where it wasn't appropriate, especially since he was the manager.
Prior to the office, it was used in Wayne's world gags on SNL (late 80s), and Johnny Carson used it before that (70s and 80s).
Apparently it originated from a British version, "said the actress to the bishop" that was used back in the early 1900s in music hall comedy and army banter.
Though the real joke is pointing out sexual innuendo and double meanings (both intentional and unintentional), which goes back at least as far as Shakespeare but is probably older than recorded history.
Nothing, nor is there any issue with big / little endian, no relation to "Indian", which is a different word with a different pronunciation.
Some of those things do matter, like "black / white" meaning "bad / good" as it affects the way we think about those colours, and "master / slave" is dependent on context.