Re: SV: Diversity and offensive terminology in RFCs

[Evan Hunt <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 12:09:06PM +0000, Anne-Marie Eklund-Löwinder wrote:
> That said, I can't really see how the term "Man-in-the-middle" can be
> offensive.

I think the issue with "man-in-the-middle" isn't that it's offensive,
per se, but that the unnecessary use of gendered terminology tends to
reinforce mental biases.  In my lifetime in the US, we've largely shifted
from "fireman" and "mailman" and "stewardess" to "firefighter" and "mail
carrier" and "flight attendant" for similar reasons.  "Man-in-the-middle"
carries with it a subtle, unnecessary suggestion that the clever indivdual
between Alice and Bob is probably named Carl not Carol.

I confess I don't know whether there's a widely accepted non-gendered
term for it, but I would certainly use one if I knew it. Avoiding bias
neither hurts nor costs money.

-- 
Evan Hunt -- [e-mail]
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.