"to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense "
That's great. But that's not what Ben said. He said he rejected it for being too trivial for a pull request.
If there was a typo in the docs (e.g. "f*cktion" instead of "function") would he have rejected a patch for being "too trivial" as well? Which is worse: a typo or misogyny? (rhetorical question)
I have no reason to suspect that he wouldn't treat your hypothetical patch any differently than he did this one. I think this has very little to do with his opinion of women, and it seems a bit of a stretch to assume he hates women based on this.
I'm not a git expert. I wonder didn't the guy who accepted the commit kind of offend the guy who had already publicly said he wouldn't merge it? If so, reverting the commit would much likely be about something entirely different than pronouns.
Suppose the merger had merged the commit before the discussion, would it also have been reverted? I rather doubt it (not knowing any of the people involved, though).
I think with Joyent's conduct today libuv is 100% more likely to be forked than it was yesterday. Accusing a committer of lacking empathy in an official blog post is not cool.
That dehumanizing attitude is extremely common in first-world "social justice warrior" circles.
They consciously and deliberately use shaming and bullying tactics to intimidate others into silence. They acknowledge this constantly, especially on Twitter when their bullying victims ask why the "social justice warriors" are being so cruel.
Their answers are typically something like, "We need everyone to know that being a fucking asshole like you will mean everyone will mock and hate you."
These activists are quite literally bullies. It's extremely important that we continue to stand up to them.
That's great. But that's not what Ben said. He said he rejected it for being too trivial for a pull request.