The most seemingly trivial design decisions in a software project can show who is not present as part of that project. And the absence of people in minority groups can result in decisions that exclude people in minorities from joining, in a feedback loop of self-reinforcing exclusion.

Git is a distributed version control system that has gained increasing popularity over the past few years, especially in free and open-source projects, despite a user interface widely regarded to be user-hostile. While most of the issues with git’s user interface are equal-opportunity annoyances, there is one that is specific to trans people who change their names, people who take or drop their spouse’s surname on marriage or divorce (who in Western culture are usually women), and the overlap between the two groups. Megan at “A Megahbite of Feminism” shows how the design choice to make the committer’s name and email address part of the data that determines the unique identity of a given commit can have a negative effect on women and trans people:

To try and put it simply, the author of a commit is tied in to the identity of the commit itself. If you change the author, it’s treated as an entirely new commit. Anyone who has grabbed a copy of your original commit and made subsequent changes on top of it finds themselves orphaned from the history of the project. To use a crude analogy, it’s like you rip the trunk of a tree out, while the branches are magically left hanging in the air, connected to nothing and isolated.

Of course, it’s not that the designers of Git tried to make it difficult for committers to change their names. It’s likely that most of them just didn’t think about what would happen if a developer needed to change their name retroactively, because most of the people who have worked on Git are cis men. They aren’t expected to change their names if and when they get married or divorced, and having cis privilege, they don’t need to change their name to something more consistent with their gender. Nevertheless, the inability to change one’s name retroactively without disrupting others’ work can mean that trans people — particularly trans women, who are likely to face harsh social stigma in any space where their trans history is known — will have to cease to contribute to their projects when they transition.

What other seemingly innocuous software design decisions contribute to exclusion?

Update: I’ve had to moderate a lot of comments for ‘splaining. When replying, avoid arguing from authority and keep in mind that other people have had experiences that are real even if you haven’t personally experienced them.

Second update: I’m continuing to moderate comments that are condescending or dismissive, because comments like that aren’t constructive and don’t create a useful discussion. Please familiarize yourself with our comment policy. Particularly, note that anonymous comments (those with an email address that can’t be tied to a consistent identity, such as anonymous mail services) are not permitted here.