Indeed - I find Ryan Singel's attitude to be completely and utterly baffling. From his Wired post:
"Soghoian suggesting that if Quinn Norton ever wanted to write about about encryption tools in the future, she ought to “step back, take a deep breath, and pull the power cord from your computer” isn’t just rude and obnoxious, it’s border-line sexist"
Out of context, I can't really see what he's getting at. In context, the idea it's 'border-line' sexist makes no sense at all. Singel has chosen to infer sexism under the mis-guided impression it's targeting one of his writers, but in fact the quote is pretty clearly intended to be read as a criticism of all technology journalists.
"Borderline" anything does not make any sense to me. It seems to be nothing more than a way to call somebody something with plausible deniability, I guess to protect against libel/slander suits?
The way I see it, being "borderline" to something means that it is "close" to something, but not actually something. I guess an octagon could be a "borderline" circle? The issue here though is that if you are pointing out that something is "borderline sexist", you are basically saying "it is not sexist, but it is close to it". What the hell does "close to sexist" mean? Is being "close to sexist" wrong? If yes, why isn't it just called "sexist"?
"Soghoian suggesting that if Quinn Norton ever wanted to write about about encryption tools in the future, she ought to “step back, take a deep breath, and pull the power cord from your computer” isn’t just rude and obnoxious, it’s border-line sexist"
Out of context, I can't really see what he's getting at. In context, the idea it's 'border-line' sexist makes no sense at all. Singel has chosen to infer sexism under the mis-guided impression it's targeting one of his writers, but in fact the quote is pretty clearly intended to be read as a criticism of all technology journalists.