I really wish that this whole thing could have ended amicably (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs [by the way, the guy who was fired has already publicly apologized]).
It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore.
I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women.
It sucks...but this is on par with firing a dev who can't program.
I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
People say the same things all the time in companies where women complain about inappropriate sexuality. "What if I say something that offends her?"
Most of us are good, inoffensive people. We are saddled with growing up in a world that is changing. It used to be acceptable to have a topless woman on a calendar in your locker at the factory. Not any more. Men used to take each other to strip clubs for business entertaining. Not outside of Oracle.
We all deal with the fact that we're in the middle of change, and it isn't always comfortable. Just as it wasn't comfortable for people dealing with the acceptance of homosexuals: I think everyone accepts that the word "faggot" is no longer appropriate.
It would be far, far easier for everyone if they just, well, shut up. But these things are hard, and it's up to our generation to carve out new social norms so that our children will reflexively and automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone.
I feel for you, there's absolutely zero wrong with you having and expressing these concerns. My message to you is that we men can come together and support each other and be a generation that others look back on with respect, just as we look back on the generations that broke the colour barriers with respect.
In my opinion, it was a misjudgment, but think about what using Twitter is like.
Something ticked her off. She snapped a picture of it, as she had done dozens of times per day probably. She probably had no idea of the consequences. Even if you have 10,000 followers, most tweets are like that - you like something, snap a pic and share, you hate something, snap a pic and share.
I don't get the sense that she expected there to be such serious consequences. For her, tweeting might have been a reflex action. It wasn't a good decision, but let's be clear about how easy it is to lapse like that.
> The problem here is that the jokes were so innocuous that it would be difficult to tell just what would set her off and potentially get you fired.
That's the thing, depending on your background and experience with sexism will depend on how confused you are about what may be construed as sexist or inappropriate for the workplace. If anything, the whole pycon incident shows the need for more information, education, and formal sensitivity training in the workplace, not firing people every time HR thinks its time for some CYA-style action.
Suffice it to say though that dick jokes contribute to a sexist atmosphere and can contribute to impostor syndrome and are often outright transphobic.
BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.
> automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone.
Impossible. Everything is capable of offending someone. And everyone is offended by something. I would rather strive for a future generation that was not so easily offended.
>> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.
Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lynch mob and she turned it into racism[1]
This happens all the time in public politics, when opposing sides playing gotcha with each other and words like "smart" or "golf" can be reinterpreted as racist insults. But there is a cutthroat world where flinging dirt at your opponent may be your only way to get ahead. Sad to see it invade other aspects of life to.
"lynching" has a very well-established racial subtext in the US... I'm sure this person didn't intend it that way, but she pointed it out and he apologized, all of which seems completely reasonable.
well... he used the word innocently, then she pointed it out she was offended and he apologized for her misunderstanding him... yes, that was reasonable (to an extent). But then, not willing to let it be, she continued to throw race in his face... leaving him not much choice but to continue to defend himself. That is pretty far out there to me.
This is what's commonly known as the ignorance of privilege. It's white people saying, "Why can't I make jokes about black people, when black people can make jokes about me?"
It demonstrates a total ignorance of what it means to be a discriminated against demographic.
I'm confused. Are you saying that just because a person is white they are not allowed to be offended by stuff and not allowed to question the validity of others who are offended?
I don't think Adria represents women in the industry, or anyone other than herself. I feel sorry for SendGrid, PlayHaven, the developer who lost his job, and the fact that this is distracting from the real issues of sexism in technology.
I don't feel sorry for Adria. She represented her company in a grossly unprofessional manner by publicly naming, picturing, and shaming (including the use of "ass clowns" to describe them) two developers. You don't have to be sexist to be unprofessional. I just hope SendGrid has their lawyers ready to deal with the potential fallout of firing her.
Hmmm...'colorblindness' by a privileged group is a refusal to acknowledge the real inadequacies between social groups.
Basically, "I treat everyone the same--I don't see color" (or gender, or sexual orientation, etc.) is a luxury that only exists for some. For people discriminated against, they /have/ to see color, gender, etc., because it's a limiting condition of their social situation.
I see color (and gender, and sexual orientation, etc.). I just don't let them effect how I treat people. But it seems pretty clear that this is a standard only some people are held to.
People really, really oversimplify these situations when they focus on ideas like "feeling offended". Yes, everyone is allowed to feel offended. That's not the point.
The point is that women in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that men do not. Black people in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that white people do not. (Black women get hit by both barrages.) In each case, some of the offensive acts are overt and nasty, but most take the form of countless tiny slights that seem harmless on their own but add up to an intensely oppressive environment.
So yes, everyone is allowed to be offended. But it's really, really unwise to "question the validity of others who are offended" if you aren't subjected to the same continually hostile environment that they are.
Not in the slightest. (Unless you took my "constant" to mean "every second" rather than "multiple times each day".)
I used to think about this sort of issue in much the same way that you seem to (or at least, I made similar comments at times). I was doing my best to be fair and sensible. But over the past year or two, I've read a lot and learned a lot, and I've realized that I was wrong. This stuff is complicated, and if you haven't spent as much time studying it as you'd spend on a couple of college courses, you probably don't understand it as fully as you think. (I certainly didn't.)
You assume that taking offense is always reasonable, or whoever feels offended is always right. Also, playing the emotion card (it hurts my feelings/sensibilities) is a way to excert power and control.
> It isn't always reasonable, being called out for shitty behaviour is step one, step two is either you apologize because you realize you were in the wrong, or you have a discussion and hopefully both parties understand each other better at the end.
The idea that women have a hot branding iron with them where ever they go that they can use to permanently stamp the word 'sexist' onto whomever they like at the slightest offense is utterly silly - doubly so when it reverses the actual power dynamic that women deal with when in a room full of men.
We all deal with the fact that we're in the middle of change, and it isn't always comfortable. Just as it wasn't comfortable for people dealing with the acceptance of homosexuals: I think everyone accepts that the word "faggot" is no longer appropriate.
Nope. That is not it. Men and women joke together freely with innuendo throughout society and most of the time it is not considered a problem. She did that exact thing on Twitter. To somehow say that a physical conference space is sacrosanct in a way that Twitter is not is ridiculous.
I think that if you look carefully, what you see is that what we term political correctness today is in actuality a new label on the old idea of chivalry. It aims toward a norm of social behavior where women are seen to require special protection in a way that men are assumed not to. They can toss away that protection and engage in banter, but men can not. This has been the norm in polite society for at least 500 years. Today, it just has different ideological window dressing.
No, context matters. Just as it is fine to be undressed when you go to bed but not when out on the street, it is fine to engage in innuendo with friends if that is what you and your friends do, or to be crass on Twitter to your followers who presumably opted in to reading your crassness (but not in @replies to people who don't follow you), but not at a professional conference in a public space. Can you understand that these situations are different?
Nope. I don't consider PyCon a "professional conference." Programming is not accountancy, or medicine. "Professional" is a word that people use to lull people into circumspect behavior leaving their basic humanity aside. Sometimes there is a good reason for it but often there isn't. In any case it's not a way of being at ease.
When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church and it shouldn't be. But I'm sure now that I'll never go to PyCon. It's drowning in the crazy.
My sense is that this is largely generational and geographic. There's a strain of political correctness in the California area that is rampant among people in their 20s. I don't see it elsewhere in the US although I have seen it in Canada. PyCon is definitely a California conference.
I'm sure the educational system has something to do with it. It's a trend that rode the general trend in education in the 90s toward making people believe that feeling good was more important than anything and that their sensitivities were positive demands on other people's behavior. That's subsided since then in elementary education so I think this drama may be a blip.
So, you can't read then, and you also can't understand that people who are not exactly like you exist?
When you are with your close friends in public do you 'speak however you like' in such a way that it disturbs those around you? If yes, you are an asshole. The public spaces in conferences are much the same - and in the true Pythonic way (explicit is better than implicit) they even spelled out what the social norms were for the 'public spaces' at PyCon. If you call that crazy, you don't understand Pythonicity.
As for 'profession' - yes, programming is a skilled activity, and being paid to program usually involves being in a workplace with norms of behaviour - hence, a profession. You can say "I still don't consider it a profession", to which my reply is "that's nice; it still is one though".
edit: Urgh, I didn't see your edit when I posted. Your edit actually makes your post more stupid. Oh well.
"I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?"
I'm not agreeing with anything Adria did, but the issue of being labeled as the "tattletale" probably plays a big part in most women's reluctance to report real harassment.
I in fact agree with you and think you are 100% right but I think you are parsing the situation incorrectly. In fact it seems to be Ms. Richards who will cause women to be reluctant to report real sexual harassment.
Let me draw from a past experience of mine involving a female colleague who was sexually harassed. She related the situation to me and I had absolutely no doubt that what was said to her was inappropriate and needed to be reported to HR. I in fact encouraged her to bring the issue to HR. She told me she was highly reluctant to say anything because she was afraid it would affect the perception of her in the office.
This is a real and legitimate concern for women in the workplace today.
But the fact is, the person she, and women like her, do not want to be seen as is Ms. Richards. My female colleague had experienced a real threat in her workplace that was truly hostile. Ms. Richards demeans very real threats to gender equality in the workplace by using a penis joke told in a private conversation to deal real, public damage senselessly. I am greatly concerned for my female colleagues who are lumped into the same "team" as Ms. Richards, particularly in the inevitable case that they do experience truly awful sexual harassment or threat.
This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of this whole debacle. It has simultaneously trivialized sexism & discrimination while promoting the paranoid fear that any minor innocuous comment could end up as a shitpile trainwreck on Twitter.
By calling out a non-thing as a wolf, she has effectively raised the bar on real harassment being reported. Likewise, otherwise well intentioned men will be looking over their shoulder when making even harmless comments, promoting a gender division in the workplace.
I absolutely agree with you that this is potentially the greatest travesty and that the whole thing is a debacle.
I reposted this story on my Facebook and literally the only people who commented on it were my female friends/colleagues in the technology industry. Needless to say their reaction was a collective groan.
It is so unfortunate because - as we agree - sexism is such a huge problem that we are certainly not exempt from. And situations like this dilute the real struggles women face in a male-dominated industry.
I have no problem with Adria richards reporting this to the PyCon organizaers - even if the joke was silly, even if it was not really sexual but anatomical or crude, even if it caused a bit of embarrassment to the joker and his friends to be verbally admonished.
It's a fact that people's sensitivities and thresholds of offense vary significantly, and even an impersonal, non-specific utterance like 'ah, shit' could cause offense in the wrong context. Sometimes the smart and decent thing to do is excuse yourself and tone down your personality a bit for the sake of social harmony. Nobody should ever feel afraid to challenge or report what seems like obnoxious behavior, no matter what the basis of offense. There may be no guarantee of a remedy, but there should be no penalty for expressing one's dislike of what others are saying.
The difference in this episode is doing it a) via an audience of thousands of Twitter followers, b) with pictures identifying specific people, c) some of whom were not involved, but whose names are now inextricably connected to this whole fracas, and whose images will continue to appear in related internet searches for some indefinite future period.
I didn't mean to indicate that I had a problem with her reporting conduct that is in violation of an event's attendance agreement. What I intended to express is precisely the other part of what you said - that the joke was not sexual, but anatomical in nature, and did not target her in as a female (Read the blog post if you haven't already - it clearly illustrates her position on the matter.). This is what I take issue with. That in framing it as an instance of gender discrimination or sexual harassment is a dilution of those terms that is damaging to these problems which absolutely do exist in the modern workplace.
I'm not agreeing with anything Adria did, but the issue of being labeled as the "tattletale" probably plays a big part in most women's reluctance to report real harassment.
But there is a big difference between mentioning something to someone or someone's boss in private, and posting about it on Twitter with a picture attached.
Gizmodo will just summarize mashable. Eventually AOL will decide they should be the #1 search term for 'python' and 'sendgrid' and their content mill will start working those phrases and beat them all.
Then they'll all congratulate themselves for raising the journalistic bar one cheap SEO trick and even cheaper "I can't believe it's not plagiarism" rewording at a time.
I'm honestly curious what this even has to do with women. That's what puzzles me most about this whole incident.
Maybe I'm insensitive or ignorant. I'll admit it if that's the case and learn. Right now, though, I just don't get it. I just don't see how a dongle joke is sexist. It's anatomical. It might have some mild sexual undertone, but there's a huge difference between sexism and a sexual undertone--they aren't the same thing at all.
Maybe if I heard the exact joke it would help. But I've heard just as many penis jokes from women as I have men.
Yeah, I think that's one of the more frustrating parts of this. My female friends make much more crude penis/anatomy jokes. It's almost like she's saying "talking about the penis around women is inappropriate", which to me is more sexist than anything. I think her real gripe was that they were being crude/unprofessional/immature, but she decided to take it in the sexist route for some reason.
you make a good point, he wasn't being sexist at all, in reality she was kinda the actual sexist one saying hey because i'm female, you can't say that.
According to her account, the dongle joke came in a discussion of how the men would like to be thanked for having helped sponsor the conference. Shortly after they were making "forking" jokes riffing off of a conversation that she was in. When she was the only woman sitting near.
If so (I am basing this on her account, so definitely an if here), then the sexual overtone is not that mild, and (rightly or wrongly) she appears to have felt personally targeted. Though in a way that is plausibly deniable.
Does that help you understand why she might have had a strong emotional reaction?
Of course the actual actions she took were the wrong ones to take, and caused the whole thing to go nuclear. But the way our brains are wired causes us, when feeling strong emotion, to skip all of our normal logic and self-control and just react. So what she did was highly unfortunate - definitely not what you want to see from your company's public face - but understandable.
Since you're honestly curious and not just trying to argue: pervasive anatomical/sexual jokes are sometimes (not always) part of a hyper-sexualized environment that some (not all) women find intimidating and alienating and is generally considered to be a form of harassment.
Sure, and that is a legitimate problem that everybody has to face. "How much should I let myself be offended before I speak up about it?"
But that is NOT what happened here. She even said in her blog post that she didn't find the fact that "dongle" and "dong" sound similar offensive.
She decided to try and humiliate these guys over some desire to protect the possible future of some kid whose picture was being shown on stage at the time.
> Sure, and that is a legitimate problem that everybody has to face. "How much should I let myself be offended before I speak up about it?"
For someone in a marginalized group, they hear constant micro-aggression from a large amount of people daily. Each one of those comments and encounters builds that feeling of not belonging and resentment. That is the context in which folks have to deal with this kind of thing, so they are typically dealing with more than just that one incident you hear about.
That's not excuse for snapping and overreacting to the extremes she did. There were avenues for her to express her discomfort and she op[ted for the most extreme and disproportionate option.
This doesn't make sense to me. Tweeting a pic and complaining to pycon staff are not extreme in any way. Blogging about that experience to share information about what kind of micro-aggressions someone may face at a con is not extreme.
The only action she made that was extreme was posting the photo identifying it. Everyone else was OK. Everyone else was great! but the photo was out of line for something so minor, or as you say micro. It would have been a non-story if she hadn't identified them with a photo.
Not only that there 3 people in the photo, she doesn't even identify who it was and i feel for that poor guy on the left who had nothing at all to do with it.
She had no regard for the damage her actions could and did cause others and that makes her far worse then the man who made a stupid joke. he was a unprofessional and immature. She was a bully.
Whistleblower concerns are totally legit, but that assumes the whistleblower follows common-sense normal procedures (e.g., telling the event organizers in private, or even calling their boss). The learning point here is about the manner in which the alleged harassment was "reported" -- trumpeted to the entire world via social media with photos attached.
I completely agree, and we as a society need to learn how to live in a world where a single tweet by an semi-influential figure can cause such a shit storm. How liable are people for actions resulting from a tweet? If someone famous snaps a photo of you, calls you a pedofile, and throws it on Twitter, what are the consequences?
> If someone famous snaps a photo of you, calls you a pedofile, and throws it on Twitter, what are the consequences?
A published false statement that damages someone's reputation? That's libel. Whatever harm is done as a result of the malicious tweet would be repaid to you as damages in court.
But it wasn't inappropriate for the event. Adria notified the goons [or whatever pycon calls them], they came by, talked to everybody, and then nothing happened.
They even amended their code of conduct to prevent what Adria did from happening in the future.
And the CoC is pretty obviously directed at presenters, not people having a pseudo-private conversation with one another.
It was absolutely inappropriate, even if not expressly specified so in the (since amended) CoC. It's easy to know that it was not appropriate to the event: mob justice never is an appropriate first-order response.
And no, it was no more appropriate a response to Adria's behavior. The whole clusterfuck is a direct result of recursive mobbing.
> Adria notified the goons [or whatever pycon calls them]
Also, as I understand how things happened Adria first tweeted the picture (and comment), then notified staff. Your comment seems to imply it happened the other way around and she was essentially forced to tweet due to PyCon staff inaction.
> they came by, talked to everybody, and then nothing happened.
Eh? The guys who had made the inappropriate joke were temporarily removed to a private space, discussions happened, they agreed it was "in poor taste" and apologized, then were sent on their merry way: http://pycon.blogspot.be/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropr... Seems enough happening for an inappropriate but rather tame joke in an overhear-able private conversation.
> And the CoC is pretty obviously directed at presenters
You're high as a kite. Here's the third paragraph of the CoC:
> To make clear what is expected, all delegates/attendees, speakers, exhibitors, organizers and volunteers at any PyCon event are required to conform to the following Code of Conduct
emphasis mine. Note that "speakers" are a separate category from "delegates" (company presence) and "attendees" (private individuals). And the text repeatedly notes all attendees are expected to follow the CoC and may be removed upon breach.
"the issue of being labeled as the "tattletale" probably plays a big part in most women's reluctance to report real harassment."
This isn't just in tech. Some females testified before congress that the same problem was happening in the military, and there the senior officer is given precedence due to his position
"real harassment" I agree, but this is not harassment when she over hears a comment not directed at her. I agree with your point that women might feel less inclined, but frankly they should feel less inclined to overhear a conversation, take offense, take a picture, and post it to twitter.
Which is why claims should should be mediated by a neutral third-parties (HR, court system, etc). Adria went the court of public opinion first and everyone got scorched.
A bunch of sexist loons attack somebody, and the right thing to do is fire her because it proves she isn't a good evangelist anymore? Seems to me that's awarding a really dangerous amount of power to sexist loons on the Internet.
... I suppose I should defend the "sexist loons" label. It would be one thing if people were attacking PlayHaven. They're the ones who made the decision to overreact to Adria's post and fire the guy - a decision she apparently disagreed with. That people got mad at Adria, rather than the folks with hiring & firing power, is, well, weird at best. And if you read the comment threads (like the one on SendGrid's Facebook post), it becomes clear that the explanation for a lot of the weirdness that a bunch of men have deep-seated grievances against "feminists". For people who are saying she deserved to be fired because she linked John Scalzi's post - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... - this is clearly not about free speech or privacy. And the rage level against Adria would be way lower without those people.
While none of us can say for sure what SendGrid's exact reasons were for firing her, I don't think the "sexist loons" are it.
While representing her employer at a conference, she unnecessarily publicly shamed two developers. Like I've said before, none of this should have ever left Pycon.
Then (and what I think was the nail in the coffin) she made her "my employer supports me" tweet. SendGrid had made no comment about the incident, and now she has directly connected them to it.
So now, claiming she has SendGrid's support, in her capacity as a developer evangelist, she has publicly shamed two people in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with.
That is what I think proved she is not a good evangelist anymore.
We don't know what SendGrid told her before she made that Tweet. Absent the firing, I'd have assumed they told her they supported her, and even now I think it's a reasonably likely possibility.
Beyond that, I'm torn between two responses. On the one hand, her post may have been an overreaction, but I don't think its indefensible. If you say something offensive in public, it's not a huge escalation for somebody to post on social media, "hey this guy said something offensive". It's the firing that's the big escalation, and that's all on PlayHaven - it's not like Adria even called for it, let alone had the power to enact it.
On the other hand, I think that's almost irrelevant, because it's naive to believe that SendGrid's firing decision was made on the merits of her actions, absent the context of all the Internet outrage. If they think she can't do her job anymore, it's because a bunch of people "in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with" get really bizarrely enraged when a woman asks them to change their behavior, and SendGrid was feeling the heat. It's not because she demonstrated such bad judgment that a reasonable person couldn't trust her decision-making ever again.
If she was really in a position of power, she wouldn't be fired. Let me be clear: the power to hire & fire is a serious one. The power to call people bad things on the Internet is not, unless people with the first power choose to say "oh, people said bad things about you on the Internet, we have to fire you now regardless of the merits." My argument is that we shouldn't accept that from employers.
In response to the dev on HN 2 days ago, Adria said[1]:
"I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively"
" ... I hope they reconsider, bring you back on ..."
She didn't fire the guy. The most she could say is that she doesn't think he should have been fired over this, and I read that part of the quote (repeated above) as reflection of my point.
She is not sorry for what she said, and that's fine. That's her prerogative. I take issue with people blaming her for the company firing the guy. She didn't accuse them of a felony or other crime. She pointed to what she thought was inappropriate and the employer overreacted.
I'm frankly saddened that the discussion about the employment circles her and not the employer. Few are asking why, if the joke were so trivial (I also happen to think the joke was rather silly and personally didn't take offense), the employer decided to fire him.
> I'm frankly saddened that the discussion about the employment circles her and not the employer.
This definitely shows that PlayHaven does not have their employees backs, but for me at least:
1. PlayHaven is in a tough spot. If they defended their employee, it might look as if they're not being tough on sexism, which the industry is heavily focusing on right now. Perhaps they figured it would be safer to be heavy-handed. Perhaps some form of light punishment (suspension? demotion?) would've been the best approach, but too late for that now.
2. I don't know about others, but I don't expect employers to have my back. The upside of this is that I owe them no loyalty either. In a way, this is already the case. Most employees will leave when a better job comes along. It's certainly to some employers' credit that they protect their own, but it's not expected. (At least not in America. In Japan, this use to be the case, but even so, it's becoming less and less so).
I think the negativity has focused on Adria because she turned a minor complaint into a witch hunt.
>>>> it might look as if they're not being tough on sexism, which the industry is heavily focusing on right now.
Which translates as "we have a political campaign, sorry, little guy, you have to go under the bus, because it is politically expedient to us, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, you know?". Sounds pretty despicable to me. Then again, no reason to expect them to be an island of virtue in the world, they are no worse and no better than many others.
"See you next year." Understood meaning: I am right, you are wrong, you are eating crow; after I publicly bullied you and got you fired, you are not getting away from me.
I'm of two minds here. Normally, I would agree that it's an innocuous thing to say; I mean, I use the phrase all the time at conferences! That said, I am not so sanguine here; between Ms. Richards's bad faith actions (and you may disagree that she dealt with them in bad faith and that's fine) and her non-apology (I think this is fairly inarguable), I think that it's not unreasonable to infer a negative connotation to the phrase. Especially if you look at it from that dude's perspective, where a not-unreasonable reading might be "she started a massive shitstorm over a joke that could offend a hypothetical person and now I'm fired and why would I ever want to see her again?".
FWIW I think that the "See you next year" comment was in response to the fact that he (the guy who was fired) said he will be at pycon in 2014[1] and before stating his side of the story, he said that he defended her position[1]:
"First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position"
Yeah, I read it it the first time it came up. Doesn't really change how it reads to me; IMO at least it becomes so ridiculously difficult to not dig an even deeper hole that comments like that really can't be taken at face value. Maybe he's the rare exception for which it is, but on the occasions where I've had to eat dirt for a screwup like that I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking "man, I hope I see this person again!".
Or maybe I'm the weird one. Who knows? =)
(EDIT: I'd also like to note that that is a pretty well-written apology. It's also, you know, an apology. Which Ms. Richards's is not; hers is more of a "non-apology apology", an "I'm sorry that you X" which we really, really need to stamp out as a "thing".
>> And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women.
Female here. I'm a newbie in this field coming from science -- another male-dominated arena. My takeaway is that while I would not have a problem interacting with Adria I don't think I'd want to work at a place where top male talent is being repulsed by her actions or reputation. As a junior dev, I want to work with and learn from the best team that'll have me. That makes her a liability.
I do wish she'd handled everything differently. Women shouldn't freak when men say man things to other men, and even if you are offended you should just speak up for yourself and say so. This gives everyone a chance to behave properly without escalation. Most guys actually aren't jerks, they just lack self-awareness.
Women in tech should not behave as damsels in distress who cry out for help (to twitter) and need shining knights (pycon organizers) to intervene in minor situations like this. Take back the locus of control and own the situation.
> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same
> room as this person. What if I accidentally say
> something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
I wouldn't feel uncomfortable around her at all, because I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know.
I have quite an off-color sense of humor myself. I joke a lot and a lot of those jokes involve sex, bodily functions, and imagery many might find disturbing.
And yet I have no problem restricting this kind of humor to friendships and relationships where we've established the fact that both parties find that kind of humor funny.
It just honestly doesn't seem difficult to me, and I'm not a genius.
But that is the problem, "I find it very easy to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things to women I don't know." They weren't talking to her or even about her. They had their own conversation and she overheard it and instead of being an adult and turning around to say something she tweeted it and caused someone to lose their job.
I too can keep from saying sexually inappropriate things to women however that is not what happened in this case.
The adult thing to do would be to just ignore it, and not act like people are entitled to live in some comfortable bubble where they get to whine if anyone in their vicinity acts in a way they don't like or approve of.
What about cases where you think it's just you and your friends joking between each other, and someone overhears, takes a picture of you and then publicly crucifies you online?
Yes, and the situation on the conference was reported to the conference staff, the people involved were talked to, and the situation was resolved. Or so, it seems. Then Aria continued her public shaming, and the whole thing escalated.
This hasn't ever been an issue for me. I understand that when I'm seated at a conference, the people around me can hear what I'm saying, and adjust the volume of my voice and/or the content of my speech accordingly.
> ...and someone overhears, takes a picture of you
> and then publicly crucifies you online?
The guy's actions and Adria's actions are two separate things, really.
I'd still be in the wrong for subjecting a stranger to an unwanted series of sexual jokes, whether they handled it poorly or they handled it in a really outstanding way.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. It's okay to say whatever you want if the other person responds poorly?
you've now left the conference, you on the bus/tram/whatever on the way back to the hotel with your friends joking around. You make an inappropriate remark/joke and she overhears. She overreacts, snaps a pic of you wearing your badge/company shirt and tweets it.
The line gets drawn here: it's not good behavior to subject a stranger to unwanted sexual banter. You can change the setting to a bus, or a train, or a tent in the Himalayas.
So your saying anytime in public a penis joke is out of line? So when in public we cannot say anything that may potentially offend someone? I can't say god doesn't exist for fear of offending the religious? i can't say god does exist for fear of offending the atheists?
Why would you need to subject a stranger to your sex jokes or your proclamations about the existence/non-existence of God?
Seriously, you should get to know somebody a little bit before you discuss that stuff. Or simply wait for some kind of indication they actually want to talk about it with you.
Sure, it's true that literally anything you might offend somebody and that you can never totally avoid that. I'm sure there's a person somewhere in the world who has a panic attack every time they see somebody wearing a green sweater. Should we have to somehow anticipate this and avoid wearing green sweaters? No.
Sexual jokes from strange men aren't like that, though. That's not some fringe thing; that's something that actually makes a significant amount of women uncomfortable.
You can respect their wishes or not respect their wishes. Personally, I'm immature enough to enjoy penis jokes, but mature enough to respect that not every woman wants to hear one from men she doesn't know.
I'm not saying its ok to go upto people on the bus and tell them dick jokes or talk about goes existence/non-existence, that just kinda rude.
I mean your having a conversation with your friend and for someone nearby who wasn't participating or involved to be offended and outraged about it, take a photo and post it online like adira did. This is not discussing it with the person, this is discussing it with your friend in earshot of the person.
It is extremely easy to offend this woman. Just look at her twitter posts https[0], she plays every card in the book in this occasion she plays the racism card while arguing that she can't be a racist herself[1].
No, she said she as a black woman cannot be racist towards white people. On an individual level, sure she could be racist towards a white person. However, the social power imbalance is way against her in almost every way compared to white people with institutions enforcing racist actions and policies against black folks way more often and more severely.
Some people use different definitions of those words; and under those definitions, it is not true that anyone can be racist. When they talk about racism or sexism, they are talking about their manifestation in society, which is not an action one individual can take.
In this context, saying that something/someone is sexist or racist says nothing about intention, only the effect of the behavior or social structure. Further, if a behavior does not align with an existing power imbalance in society, it would not be considered x-ism; a black woman who discriminates against white men is not expressing and reinforcing an existing type of oppression, so that behavior would not be considered racist or sexist. (Remember, it's not about intentions, and it doesn't mean that the behavior is ok.)
If you think this sounds weird, please do still try to take some time to understand why this terminology arose.
From the wiki: "Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege."
That i can understand, Its racism. no argument there. So your changing the context of the word so the intent does not matter but the effect does? that's outrageous. Racism is all about the outcome AND intent.
why do all these mental gymnastics just so you can say X cannot be racist towards Y? Why even say something like that? I can't see if having any positive outcome. Its a blanket statement that while maybe true in some situations with your special definition of the word is not true in others. You can find areas of the world where almost any given race has the power/upper hand and are "racist" towards them.
My point is you cannot simply say X cannot be racist towards Y because it can, has and will happen and all levels. Sure you can limit your definition of the word racist and redefine it but really whats the point?
Either at an individual level, a social group level (X friends won't be friends with Ys) or a social/society level anyone race CAN be racist towards another. They may not be in a given situation/area/whatever crazy limitations you wanna make, but there is nothing inherently special about any race making them immune from being racist, we are all human regardless of race and we have to work together to stamp it out and statements such as hers do not exactly help at all. I'm not sure what point she was trying to make, or even you honestly, but it would be better to phrase it in a way that does not use the term racist and redefine it so people can say such inflammatory things. Notice how pretty much no one gets it, most disagree with it and it flames hate? That's not a way to fix racism.
Agreed, but individual's acts of racism don't exist in a vacuum. The aggregate effect those racist actions and attitudes creates systemic power imbalances. This wiki has starting material about the institutional and systemic effects of racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism.
> why do all these mental gymnastics just so you can say X cannot be racist towards Y? Why even say something like that? I can't see if having any positive outcome.
You have to remember that for someone who is black, the institutional racism in the US effects them daily and that such institutional racism is orchestrated by the white patriarchy that is US society. For such a person, what does it mean when a white person tries to call them racist while ignoring the racism that said white person benefits from every day? Often I will see a white or white passing person call a person of color racist when the situation they are talking about is actually caused by the systemic racism that they benefit from.
> You can find areas of the world where almost any given race has the power/upper hand and are "racist" towards them.
That is true, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the context of this discussion. Racism in different societies are not interchangeable in most discussions of racism.
> My point is you cannot simply say X cannot be racist towards Y because it can, has and will happen and all levels
This is not true. Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism against white people in US society. Black people will never be able to create an environment where white people are imprisoned more than any other group by proportion, denied access to jobs, denied access to self determination, target white people with racist law enforcement, have over-representation in government, etc.
> Either at an individual level, a social group level (X friends won't be friends with Ys) or a social/society level anyone race CAN be racist towards another.
Racism at a society level different compared to individual acts of racism. Net social aggregate effects are what racism at a society level look like. Black folks in the US are incarcerated and killed disproportionately in the US, they as a group simply cannot apply that same socially and institutionally backed violence to white people.
> Often I will see a white or white passing person call a person of color racist when the situation they are talking about is actually caused by the systemic racism that they benefit from.
If the actions are racist, it doesn't matter what caused them, they are racist. To say otherwise invites a double standard.
> This is not true. Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism against white people in US society.
Yes it is true. your assuming racist == systemic/institutional. That is not the commonly held or actual definition. It is true that overall in the US Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism. But that's not all racism is, nor is the US the only place on the planet. And systemic/institutional can range from a company to a state to a country.
> Racism at a society level different compared to individual acts of racism.
Yes, but its not the only form of racism, your trying to redefine a word and i can't see what good it does. Prefix it with systemic/institutional, limit its scope and then maybe you can make such statements (as you did your entire post) but alone by its self you just can't.
> I'm pretty sure at some point in your life you've
> made a very mildly off-color joke to a friend and
> someone else overheard.
I'm absolutely sure I have, and shame on me for those times. I was in the wrong.
> Should you have lost your job?
Well, I was definitely in the wrong during each of those occasions. Should I have lost my job? That would depend on a lot of things, such as whether or not I was being inappropriate while attending a conference on my employer's dime.
I agree that it's awfully harsh to lose one's job over a single penis joke. I'm not saying that this guy should have lost his job. It's possible that this was a kneejerk overreaction on his employer's part, and it's also possible that this guy had other issues that already had him on thin ice when this incident happened.
Nor am I necessarily agreeing with how Adria handled this incident. Whether we think she should have handled it differently or not, though, it doesn't change the fact that it's not cool to subject a stranger to unwanted sexual conversation.
Maybe you were just brought up differently, or there is some other cause for you behaviour that is different from the grandparent's. Doesn't make you any better, though.
Personally, I don't have a hard time controlling myself and not saying things. However, I don't want to control myself; I prefer to just say what I feel like saying, and I allow people to disassociate from me if they don't like it. I'm terribly annoyed by people that put words before actions and judge other by what they say. Having said that, if an employer fired me because they would find me unlikable, I wouldn't blame them.
Agreed. It always strikes me as so odd when men say things like, "I have to walk on eggshells around that person, because they're constantly getting offended."
News flash, it's not that hard to not offend people, and men aren't suddenly forerunners of liberal thought because we don't make sexist or racist jokes. I mean, Jesus. Pretend you're speaking to your mother if it's really that hard.
I suspect the person who got fired wouldn't have self-identified as someone who finds it difficult to avoid saying sexually inappropriate things, either.
> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women."
Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
As a woman in tech, I deal with sexism all the time. And it's usually not blatant, "blah blah a woman's place is in the home get out of my office" type of stuff. That's egregious and I would shut that down. It's usually less obvious. Like the guy at a conference I went to recently (with my fiance, Brian) who asked me my name, asked Brian his name, and then proceeded to spend 10 minutes talking to Brian and trying to figure out why he (who is a front-end developer at a startup) was at an entrepreneurial conference.
My fiance: I'm here because of Erica. (points at me)
Guy: Oh. But I don't get it. Why are you here?
Brian: She comes here because she's a successful entrepreneur and likes to hang out with other entrepreneurs. I'm tagging along with her.
Guy: Oh. But you're not an entrepreneur...so why are you here?
This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused.
Or a more recent scenario at SXSW where I was talking to a huge, well-known tech big-wig (founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company) who proceeded to make a flippant, condescending remark about his wife--and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction. Borderline sexist, but definitely unprofessional. What do I do? Do I call him out by name? Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action. I'm horribly disappointed because this is someone I looked up to and hoped to have as a mentor.
These are just recent examples. I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened. Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.
Was Adria's reaction, to this as an isolated event, out of hand? Yes. But when this happens to you every single day--and in her case, multiple times a day!--sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap. I get where she's coming from, even if I wouldn't have done the same thing in her situation.
This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly. It's as frustrating to me as it is to anyone else. The blatant sexism is mostly gone, but the undertones remain. And that makes it harder than ever to gauge what the "right" reaction is as a woman when one of these events happens around you.
Your experiences sound awful and truly disheartening, and I hope we can move towards a better and more inclusive future for everyone.
However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part:
>Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with. However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.' This incident was linked to by extremists on both sides of gender issues, and I believe it's largely that community that was responsible for the worst behavior (many of the most egregious twitter accounts featured imagery that was taken from some of these extremist communities). These extremists on both sides have pre-existing ideological war that's been going on for decades and has intensified over the internet, especially recently, as they isolate themselves in echo chambers like private subreddits and tumblr cliques. Of course, there is some overlap between that and the tech community, but if this topic was only being discussed by people who had previously heard of PyCon, I imagine the tone would be far, far different.
If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.
Plot them by amount of karma and # of days since the account was opened.
As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.
To be fair, she claimed that these people represented the tech community, the responder said that they didn't represent the tech community and you instantly jump in to put the burden of proof on statement 2? Why not statement 1? If we're really calling the tech community sexist because someone got twitter hate after an article was posted on Reddit I'm just blown away at the logic gymnastics one would have to do to arrive at the point you've seemingly just arrived at...
>You are making a quantifiable assertion.
If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.
I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.
zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors.
My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact not representative of HN? Or are they people who have been around for a while, and have made substantive contributions to the community (using karma as a proxy measure)?
You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof.
-Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed.
-Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof.
-You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch.
How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?
No? I said if he wanted to quantify his claim, he could do so, and recommended a course of action. He said he didn't have the time/effort to do so.
All i was asserting was that my hunch was contrary to his. That's the perfect place for an experiment. Given that we don't have any evidence in front of us, we just have his hunch and my hunch. I'm not asserting anything beyond that.
"You are making a quantifiable assertion. If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads."
My problem is simply that you demanded this of guy who disagreed with you, but you did not demand it from anyone who agreed with you. Its about the most biased/unfair way of making an argument possible.
I understand what you are trying to quantify, but I think you may be conflating sentiment.
zevyoura was responding directly to the GP's comment which made reference to use of the word "cunt" as well as threats / wishes of rape (and worse). The assertion being that the tech community was not responsible for some of the most hateful vitriol, none of which (AFAIK) was mirrored on HN.
Assuming that in fact all thread contributions were in opposition, it seems uncharitable to infer that simply because a HN contributor disagrees with Adria's actions that they are also somehow equivalent to the worst offenders on Twitter, FB and the like.
As zevyoura mentioned, there may be overlap - but IMHO this isn't as quantifiable an assertion as you make it out to be.
I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)
Aren't the names of new users shown in green? So unless they already had accounts waiting around then people new to hackers news would stand out pretty easily.
>As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.
Having recently discovered the /r/shitredditsays brigades, I'm not sure I'm comfortable seeing /r/mensrights called out without a mention of /r/srs, they are both equally egregious and antagonistic toward each other. And the pre-existing ideological warriors from either side have attached themselves to these communities just as swiftly as they rushed to the respective defense of each side of this story.
From what I've gleaned, /srs is pretty brutal, but towards the behavior of the MRAs. They are most likely a good mix of men and not attacking MRAs for being men who dare talk out about... the "gynocracy" or something. Your false equivalency is unnecessary and misplaced.
I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed. I do agree that there are problematic elements within the tech community, and HN. I acknowledged this in my post:
"Of course, there is some overlap between [extremists] and the tech community..."
"I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed."
The problem is, unless more mental energy is expended on this topic, it will be repeated. Better to have the full conversation now than to continually punt the issue.
"The problem is, unless more mental energy is expended on this topic, it will be repeated. Better to have the full conversation now than to continually punt the issue."
As much as I support discussion on these topics, it's the internet. Any message board will continue to bring up these issues in waves, as new events occur, as new posters join up, there is not going to be one article where everyone achieves some sort of understanding, now or ever. Set your expectations realistically :)
The problem is that people talking about it on a geeky news aggregator won't change the tech culture, and that similar incidents are to be expected in the future.
> I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with.
There is no way you could know this. People you associate with may be misogynistic or engage in trolling on the internet but they don't tell you or you aren't around to experience it. Bottom line is that the tech community does have issues with misogyny along with the rest of western society, although you are right in that there was a flood of attention from unusual sources for HN (/r/mensrights I'm looking at you).
However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.'
Really? People seem quite willing to ascribe to "feminists" all the negative attributes they can find. Is that OK? Why it OK to lump all feminists into one group but unfair to do it to "tech".
Also, despite what mad conspiracy theory people say, there aren't really many "extremists" on the "pro-equality" side of the gender issue. There are people complaining that they can't make belitting jokes about women at tech conferences. The other side think we should act professionally. One side is extreme, the other is reasonable.,
Case in point: There weren't making belitting jokes about women. Making jokes about "dongle" sounding like "dong" or about "forking the repository" of a male speaker? Where is making fun of women in there? Pretending like something else happened because it fits your narrative sounds extreme, not reasonable.
Often sex jokes and sex discussion in some communities only consist of one thing: men do the fing, women are fed. Treating women are sex sex objects, is a way to belittle and exclude women. (these jokes also affect some men too you know. Gay men are sometimes told they aren't real men because they do something only women should do, namely be the receptive sex partner (sometimes)). As a result many tech conferences have simplified things by banning all sex jokes, since it's often just the one type of sex in mind.
In THIS case (the one we are talking about), the sex joke consisted not in that one thing. There was no women being fed involved. There were talking about the repository of a male speaker. Don't you see that this is exactly the kind of "spreading the humor" that transcends the usual stereotype of a women being fed..? If you think that joke (which was supposed to be a sign of admiration for the guys code and I don't think anyone could misunderstand that part) implies him "being a women" (?) then I think you are reading a lot into it. Which is my exact point: you are not reasonable. You make the facts fit your agenda. You are being extremist.
I'm sorry, but you just threw up two different straw (wo)men here.
It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism. The examples you gave are sexism. If the two guys at PyCon had directed the jokes at Adria while also excluding her, then it would be sexism, but that isn't what happened. She just overheard their inane conversation.
Adria abused her power by escalating this issue to Twitter, and she got abuse thrown back at her. I don't believe she deserves it because nobody deserves abuse, but it's quite clear that it's a tit for tat kind of situation that she initiated. A clear example of her being abusive was that she fabricated the bit about forking repositories being a sex joke - and yes, jumping to conclusions and using the conclusions to humiliate someone is abuse.
As has been pointed out to you, "just snapping" is not an appropriate response to such a minor incident in a professional context. Give a talk or something. From what I've read, Adria is someone who is looking to be the centre of attention in a big drama and she got exactly what she was looking for. Losing her job will only fuel the Joan of Arc fantasies she has explicitly talked about.
In the end, I feel more sorry for Adria than the unknown guy from PlayHaven making dick jokes simply because it's clear she has far more issues to work through, and because this is hardly the end of her suffering. If she wants to blame it on a sexist tech industry she can, but I think she'd do better to look a little closer to home.
> It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong".
It is sexist to create a sexualized environment at a tech conference, because the consequences of that environment hurt women much more than they hurt men; it's a failure to show consideration to women. mr-hank has admitted that he made a sexual joke about big dongles and apologized for it. Making sexual jokes about big dongles is creating a sexualized environment.
More evidence that a sexualized environment existed at PyCon (though I think the organizers were doing an awesome job and it was probably much better than other large tech conferences!):
"First, I came to PyCon with two women colleagues, one of whom was harassed nearly constantly by men, albeit on a low level. Both of them are friendly people who are willing to engage at both a personal and a technical level with others, and apparently that signals to some that they can now feel free to comment on "hotness", proposition them, and otherwise act like 14 year old guys."
It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist. For example, if we were to look at sexual repartee in France[1], one would notice sexuality in normal conversation. Among friends, friends of friends and friends and the significant others of friends, between bosses and staff, etc. It's imbued in their culture. [Some] Anglos tend to see this as archaic and sexist, Gallics see it as part of their culture and don't see the puritanical sexist POV.[2] The truth may lie somewhere in between. I.e. A functioning work environment need not be sterile, one which denies human tendencies.
> It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist.
This all seems like a waste of time. Here's how I think it should work: we ask women what they want ("hey, how about sexualized jokes at tech conferences?") and they tell us ("actually, we really hate it when you do that, probably much more than you realize") and then we stop, because we respect them and it turns out that making sex jokes wasn't actually an integral part of being at a technical conference anyway.
What if we polled all conferences for all language that some attending population feel is off the table? Should lawyers plan to vote to ban all lawyer jokes, even if said by insiders? What about bankers' conferences, maybe have them keep attendees from asking pointed questions about bailouts and fraud, etc?
I don't think people should be jocular and act like college fraternity members all their lives, but at the same time, I think, some times people become overprotective and over reactionary.
I think the minds of people who speak up are in the right place (want civility) but are somewhat in denial about what living in a society is (it does not mean we get to proscribe other's behaviors in minutiae).
What I mean is, I prefer most conversations to be free of vulgarity and expletives; however, on occasion, I think those same offenses can be a relief --it shows me, "You know what, society is still organic and it has its blemishes." It's not all purified and true.
I may be misunderstanding you here, but your comments feel to me as if they're based on an assumption that everyone in society faces more or less comparable levels of offensive behavior. For instance, to my eye, your argument about lawyers only holds water if it's based on the assumption that lawyers (as a group) routinely face a level of marginalization and abuse that women (as a group) do.
In point of fact there's no urgency about banning lawyer jokes, because lawyers are one of the most respected professions in our society (as measured by various surveys about social status, etc.). Through some combination of talent, hard work, and good fortune they have wound up in a group that suffers very little discrimination. When people do make jokes about them they may find it unpleasant, but at the end of the day they're still more or less on the top of the heap.
Women, on the other hand, face a thoroughly entrenched social structure that treats them as less capable and less important than men. There's a recognized problem that many women feel uncomfortable in technical circles, and offensive jokes are a real part of that problem. So every offensive joke about women needs to be understood against that background: it's not a one-time irritation, but part of an ongoing pattern. So attempts to discourage those jokes aren't just "nobody should feel offended, ever", they're one small step that we can take to fix the much larger problem.
> What if we polled all conferences for all language that some attending population feel is off the table? Should lawyers plan to vote to ban all lawyer jokes, even if said by insiders?
The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they have a simple solution of stopping the slope, or at least considering each new idea separately: don't make sex jokes, but do (or not, whatever) make lawyer jokes.
I can think of at least four reasons that making sex jokes at tech conferences might be significantly more problematic than making lawyer jokes, such that we should think much worse of people who do the former. Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't think of these.
* Women are ~51% of the population and lawyers are ~0.3% of the population, so we might pay a little more attention to the common actions we perform that hurt women.
* We already have a problem with women feeling excluded and unwelcome from our tech communities, due to past and current sexism.
* Making sex jokes around women when they're surrounded by a large group of mostly-guys means they have to start worrying more about whether someone might assault or sexually harass them soon.
* Making sex jokes at a tech conference can encourage the objectifying idea that women are there for their sex appeal, and not their technical skill. This is a cultural idea that already exists, so it's easy to contribute to and requires significant effort to combat.
> in denial about what living in a society is (it does not mean we get to proscribe other's behaviors in minutiae).
Following a code of conduct that you'd previously agreed to follow seems exactly like what living in a society is to me.
To me it's not so much a slippery slope argument but rather, what makes one population deserving of an exclusion and another not. In other words, how does one qualify that lawyers are less hurt by language that berates them vs language which damages women, on an individual level.
>about whether someone might assault or sexually harass them soon.
I think that's a big leap. This line of argument could be used to sweep up the loiters and homeless people who act like they might attack someone due to their language and behavior.
> We already have a problem with women feeling excluded and unwelcome
I think the best way to approach that is to start young. In school, drive students of either sex to the possibilities in technology. This will make the eventual males in tech familiar and receptive to eventual women in tech. they should both feel they're both a natural fit, given their disposition.
>Making sex jokes at a tech conference can encourage the objectifying idea that women are there for their sex appeal
I don't agree. The jokes are not the objectifiers. It's the people, both the doers and the receivers. They both have to agree that jokes in question are a manner of objectification for that to have effect.
If you told a lawyer joke in an audience of drug dealers, there is little effect. If it's told by someone who hates lawyers, it takes significance, in American law. A lawyer joke among an audience of Chinese lawyers might fall flat.
>Following a code of conduct that you'd previously agreed to follow seems exactly like what living in a society is to me.
I agree there are basic parameters, but I feel that some people will always be more crude than others and I'm not comfortable saying crudeness is categorically unacceptable.
> What I mean is, I prefer most conversations to be free of vulgarity and expletives; however, on occasion, I think those same offenses can be a relief --it shows me, "You know what, society is still organic and it has its blemishes." It's not all purified and true.
Really disappointed in you for writing this -- as if my argument is that swearing, fun and R-rated movies should all be removed from society. I like those things sometimes too; I am not a prude.
What I don't like is telling someone that they can come to our technical conference and we will talk about technical things with them and not make sex jokes, and then doing it anyway. Going back on that promise (in PyCon's code of conduct) is not "being organic", it's being an asshole.
I think we actually agree that there is a problem. Or should I say I agree with you that there is a problem. What I disagree is that one can, in effect, legislate the problem out. It's like making the kkk illegal, or making racial epithets illegal.
It's not going to get rid of racism and the associated problems. When I was young I used to think 'why not make all these words illegal, that should make half the problem go away?' I now realize I was unbelievably naive. It's not so easy as that. These problems are things which take decades if not centuries to nullify. And I believe the best way is through a kind of indoctrination which starts with early education and pervades through higher ed. Sure, a few people will rebel, but that should be in the very small minority.
"It's not sexist to make a jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism."
I really have to disagree. Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".)
So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)
> Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture".
And? Guys partaking in guy culture, somebody stop the presses.
> So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space.
So it's like a turd in a punchbowl then? Two dudes make a dick joke and now the whole conference is a male space? I would agree with you if it was a conference organizer partaking, or someone giving a talk made the joke, because it would imply some kind of conference dick-joke-sponsorship.
Do you really want to base your analysis on the assumption that that this was the only dick joke anyone made in a public space at this conference? I sure wouldn't take that bet.
The reason this sort of thing is an issue is that there are countless little signals like this in the tech community all the time, and for a lot of women they add up to a significant feeling of "You're an outsider here." It doesn't need to be officially sponsored by the conference organizers to be very real.
She didn't just make a "dick joke" on twitter, but a joke about creating a hostile working environment for somebody she doesn't like (TSA-agents in this case) by the means of sexual harassment.
You seem not to understand words, logic, or evidence.
edit: That is, what you are saying does not accurately characterise what happened at all, and is also not really a point that follows from your previous post. Like, at least have premises, the application of logical laws, and then a conclusion.
Did she not single out two male developers at a conference for something that they said without speaking to them whatsoever? Take their picture and put it on twitter in an inflammatory way? And then get fired by SendGrid for the resulting situation?
No. That isn't what happened at all. (Specifically, she didn't 'single two male developers out'). Also, that characterisation does not match up with your previous characterisation without applying rather more charity than one should be expected to ('provided no evidence/proof while burning them at the stake online' is not the same as 'Take their picture and put it on twitter in an inflammatory way', 'was fired for it' is not the same as 'then get fired by SendGrid for the resulting situation').
So, you demonstrate (at the very least) sloppy thinking.
This makes absolutely no sense to me. Watch how fast my friends stop making gamer jokes when our sports-fan friend walks up. Is that "jock-ist"? Of course not. It's taking into consideration that the topic being discussed isn't likely of interest to the new member of the conversation, and therefore being considerate enough to change the topic. That's not oppression, it's courtesy.
Maybe I didn't make my point clearly enough. I never meant to suggest that there's anything inherently sexist about the existence of such a thing as "guy culture" (or at least, that's an entirely separate issue). My point was very close to what you've said here, in fact: when guys see that they're part of a mixed group, they tend to be courteous and opt for more inclusive topics.
So (and here's the step where I evidently lost you before) what does it mean when guys at tech conferences routinely make dick jokes in public? The clear implication is that they feel like they're in a "guy space" where they don't need to stick to more inclusive topics. And that message gets heard loud and clear by everyone around them: men feel a little more comfortable making "guy jokes" themselves, and women feel a little more like outsiders.
[I was tempted to build a whole analogy based on the question, "Sure, and don't you think your sports-fan friend would feel uncomfortably out of place at PAX?" But while that makes the point, it falls short of the mark, because sports fans haven't been systematically discriminated against by gamers for most of known history.]
Okay, I understand the disconnect now, but I still disagree with you.
First off, you've consistently used the word routinely without establishing that that word applies. This event does not count as a routine. I'm sure that other people have made dick jokes at tech conferences, but 'routinely' strikes me as an overstatement.
Second, 'in public' doesn't really work either. Two friends were sitting next to each other and one made a joke to the other. That's not private, but it's not exactly public either. It wasn't broadcast to the whole room. Adria happened to be sitting close and paying attention to their conversation, but from the best information I've been able to piece together she was not a part of it and it wasn't said with the intention of anyone hearing it other than the guy's friend. That's not making the tech conference a guy space, it's making their semi-private conversation a guy space. That is not a problem.
Third, I shouldn't have engaged your argumentation with a comparison, because I disagree with a fundamental premise that my comparison lent credence to. Sexual humor is not gender-specific. Girls make dick jokes too. That's why I fundamentally find the cries of sexism and misogyny to be ridiculous. Many of my female friends make me look like a Puritan when it comes to the jokes they tell. This should never have become a gender issue, it should have been an issue of appropriate behavior at professional events. Adria made it a gender issue, and here we are.
That could be interpreted to mean women are not individuals, which is probably not what you meant :-)
Fortunately, individuality is not like fire - it won't flicker out and die just because you turn it down a bit sometimes. I'm a guy too, and I find dick jokes annoying sometimes. Depending on the context, I might ask someone to settle down or indicate that I was finding such humor tedious.
Depending on the context, I might do the same thing. What I wouldn't do is act as though I was the defender of a righteous cause and that the guy making the dick joke was somehow oppressing my <minority group>. Dick jokes may be in bad taste, but they are not oppression.
Completely agreed with the fact that sex jokes, jokes about forking or dongles aren't inherently sexist. In fact, without knowing exactly what those developers were saying, from the surface it didn't seem sexist at all, just a tad bit crude. Being a man who's very much upset about the amount of sexism I see in my industry, this is an instance of calling out the wrong thing. I'm also a fan of crude humor as long as it's not sexist, homophobic or racist, which in my opinion, these comments were not.
I think the reaction online to her twitter posting from our community online is also disgusting and a representation of the gross sexism existing in our industry, however. I definitely agree that the vitriol is definitely unwarranted, far more than her anger over the developer's comments were unwarranted.
> "It's not sexist to make jokes about the word 'dongle' sounding like 'dong'."
Is it sexist, or isn't it? You can find interesting arguments both ways. Your opinion is that it's not sexist. My opinion is that it depends on context. From what I can tell, in this context, it was probably not meant to be sexist.
> "The examples you gave are sexism."
Are they? I think they are, which is why I brought them up here. You agree. But there are others who replied to my comment who don't agree that either of those are sexist.
We all have different views on what constitutes "sexism." One person's "not sexist" is another person's "sexist." You can see that even in the comments here. That's why it's so difficult to say what the "right" thing to do is.
People are saying that what the two guys did was not sexist and that Adria's response was inappropriate. So, debate that, rather than introduce other examples. Whether or not your other examples are sexist has nothing to do with whether or not the dongle jokes were sexist, but they were straw men in the context of your original comment. In particular, Adria's response does not somehow become appropriate because you experienced or heard about some other bad things, or because people were vicious to her in the aftermath (they were). All that this does is muddy the water and polarize people.
If you want to have a general wide-open debate on sexism at technology conferences, I guess that's what you'll have, but it will never be as effective as addressing specific issues.
Death threats and the rage of a thousand misogynists is hardly a "tit for tat kind of situation." She may have misunderstood the forking comment, but that does not constitute abuse. Publicly shaming obnoxious behavior may be an overreaction, but it's nothing like the true, actual sexist and racist abuse that Richards has endured.
I sympathize, but your story seems a bit of a stretch. I thought somehow you were going to lead to how he implied you weren't smart enough to be an entrepreneur or something absurd like that.
The last time I innocently chatted up a "taken" woman next to her boyfriend, I was later told by a number of individuals that it seemed like I was hitting on her and it was inappropriate. The allegations totally blew me away because that couldn't have been further from the truth. I was not flirting, I was not touching, I simply asked a lot about her work. I guess old school "bro code" says you shouldn't be too friendly with taken women. Personally, I think it's dumb. Maybe your "perp" thought likewise. And I too would be a little curious why a front-end non-entrepreneur would be at an entrepreneur's conference. Maybe he has some hot new app idea, maybe not.
As for your other examples, though, sorry to hear you had to go through that. With the big-wig, personally, it would come down to how witty of a retort I could come up with, because really, f him. Otherwise, I'd just hold my tongue, which is the safest route, sexist or non-sexist insult alike.
That's the rub these days- don't talk to her and you run the risk of making her feel "excluded", do talk her to and you run the risk of being seen as "flirting".
> The last time I innocently chatted up a "taken" woman next to her boyfriend, I was later told that by a number of individuals that it seemed like I was hitting on her and it was inappropriate. The allegations totally blew me away because that couldn't have been further from the truth. I was not flirting, I was not touching, I simply asked a lot about her work. I guess old school "bro code" says you shouldn't be too friendly with taken women. Personally, I think it's dumb. Maybe your "perp" thought likewise. And I too would be a little curious why a front-end non-entrepreneur would be at an entrepreneur's conference. Maybe he has some hot new app idea, maybe not.
This is actually a common sexist micro-aggression for men, that there interest in a woman is solely due to a desire for sex. It should be noted though that some men do engage in that kind of thing and masculinity through sexual conquest is a big social message for men. That said, that in no way invalidates the parent poster's story and that story and yours go hand-in-hand in describing sexist, heteronormative attitudes society has in general.
It's really easy to judge a situation by itself, but keep in mind most blowups from seemingly tiny incidents are because this happens all the time in all kinds of ways to a lot of women. It's a death by a thousand cuts. I normally don't care about one off dick jokes. It's just that man, it gets really old when you hear it all the time at a conference on top of other women telling you that they also heard dick jokes. Exhausting.
I sympathize with environmental pressure, but strength and fortitude must still be striven for. As a hyperbolic (but real ) example, I would not forgive a soldier who has spent years embedded in Iraq snapping and mowing down a bunch of civilians, but I would understand and sympathize with the situation that would bring him to it (it's a common defense I get thrown at me when debating such things). But yeah, it sucks, for everyone.
By the way, this isn't exclusive to tech. Women [unfortunately] face this in every male dominated field. It sucks, I know.
My girlfriend works in a traditionally male dominated field, and she has to deal with this sort of thing constantly.
But that interaction where the person assumed you weren't a dev[1] is only made worse by things like what has happened here. The signal to the dev community from Adria's reaction to this joke about dongles is that "women are different".
Obviously I can't speak for you, but I can speak for the other women that I know. They HATE that. They don't want to be looked at as different.
[1]: I see this interaction ALL the freaking time, and we usually just make a point of embarrassing the guy that does it. I should clarify, I mean "embarrassing" as in: making a point of demonstrating how wrong the guy who assumed the girl wasn't an engineer is, not trying to publicly shame them on twitter.
When I first got into tech, I didn't want to be viewed as different, either. Even when guys would tell me in very blatant racist/sexist ways that I was different and that that difference made me inferior, I tried very hard to be "just like Mike". But now I say that in all the ways that make me successful professionally, I'm like you. But in some ways, I'm different. And that should be OK. And in many ways, outside of what you do professionally, you tech guys are different from each other, too. And it should not matter. Actually, even within the "professional" realm, there are differences between tech guys - educational background, when you started hacking, how long you've been hacking, professional experiences, preferred technologies - even how you define hacking. Some of you hate footall. I love football. I should not have to be exactly like you to be respected by you.
I would never argue that you have to act like a boy to get respect. That would be horrible.
And I agree that people are different. I was, I'm sure, [partially due to my chromosomes and reproductive organs] raised in a different context than you.
This doesn't make one of us better than the other, it just makes us different from one another.
But what Adria has done here, and why I think it is so damaging to what I consider important is that she cast this as a "women in tech" issue, not a "me in tech" issue.
SHE was [actually, according to her blog not] offended, but she framed it in such a way that implied that the comments were offensive to women not to her -- as if "women" is one cohesive group that is inherently different than men, who dominate the tech field.
I would not have reacted as she did. I would have tuned it out nothing or spoken to them privately. And I know that a lot of women, including me, would have not have been offended at all. But there have been times when I've told guys (that I know) that even though I wasn't offended by what they just said, some women would be. I don't tell them not to say it; I just give them a heads-up.
>>> but she framed it in such a way that implied that the comments were offensive to women not to her -- as if "women" is one cohesive group that is inherently different than men, who dominate the tech field.
This. It's kind of weird to hear people who complain about stereotyping engaging in stereotyping in the very comment they do the complaint, by claiming something is true for all men or women and if it's true for them, it must be true for other people sharing some defined identity aspect with them. I think it would be an improvement if one could say "it was offensive to me" without turning it into a political case that all world must polarize around.
It also happens to men in female dominated fields and social enviroments.
It's not inherently sexist - humans use stereotypes to categorize everything and everyone, and we haven't, as a society, codified how we should navigate these kind of conflicts without butthurt.
No, but males do get automatically suspected of being pedophiles. Companies / daycare / pre-k - 6 have a strong prejudice against hiring males in education. Insurance companies and some parents play a pretty big role in this situation.
I worked for 5 years looking after disabled children and had some parents absolutely refuse to leave their kids if there weren't any female staff members on for the day. That kind of makes you angry. What REALLY makes you angry though is when the female staff support that decision.
Eh, I really really don't think it's gotten worse. I'm not saying it's perfect but if the worst thing a female has to complain about in a male dominated field is someone making a crack about their wife and someone mistaking her boyfriend for the entrepreneur, that's not SO bad.
Try going into a car dealership with your father if you're younger than 25. See who gets talked to.
Try being anywhere and not hearing people bitch about their significant other.
I wish people would stop attributing human nature to sexism/racism. I could go to a beautician convention with my beautiful girlfriend and pretend to be offended when they focus on her, despite there being a decent number of men who are into that. When humans are faced with repeated patterns they get lazy and make assumptions. It's part of what makes us have our intelligence. It's not a malicious disrespect or intentional exclusion (in most cases).
I don't think this is true. If we could somehow compile a list of all the people 4chan has attacked over the years I'd bet we'd see equal opportunity trolling.
What was that incident a while back, where the "security expert" offered a reward for breaking into his site? 4chan took up the offer, succeeded, and trolled the guy relentlessly. Death threats, photoshops, you name it. And he was a _male_ in a male-dominated field.
The fact is the Internet just isn't a nice place a lot of the time.
I don't agres with you, but I'll grant it. So let's say that men don't get rape threats. Are rape threats inherently more worthy of our scorn than murder threats?
No, but they are different. And women get murder threats as well.
Additionally most things posted on the internet by a man is simply a post on the internet. Anything posted on the internet is a post by a woman on the internet.
I believe in the adage: Don't lead with bad unless you want that to set the tone of your message.
I'm not very good at practicing it always. ;-) But hopefully this is a fairly non-offensive summary of my thoughts:
I believe Adria being fired was a sad turn of events. I unfortunately have to agree that I don't see a way for her to succeed in her former role at SendGrid though. If she had other talent to lend in less public areas of the company, then it's a shame SendGrid didn't explore that first. I don't imply that she should be sidelined; it would obviously have to be something that she was excited to pursue, and had a genuine path forward on. Failing that, it's conceivable that SendGrid didn't have such an opportunity available though, and letting people go when there's no job they can perform is sometimes reality at most places.
I believe the dev being fired was unjust. I get the impression that "it was just an excuse", but that's really not fair of me. If it were as cut and dry as "bad joke, you're fired", then that's really inexcusable.
I do think culpability is an important standard, and that it's possible for the conversation to be both sexist and inappropriate, as well as innocent, without harm, and simply innocent. Intent should matter if we're all being decent.
Adria taking a photo and posting to a large list of followers would probably otherwise probably be labelled "creepy" in almost any other context, and I do think that was the greater sin of the two since the intent to harm was clearly present. She's not responsible for firing anyone, and can sleep at night knowing that truth (IMO), but that doesn't make her actions noble.
Adria's (apparently? I think?) made the claim that she wasn't personally offended, but after consideration decided to take a stand for future generations. I saw another comment that said something like: "Attempting to take offense on someone else's behalf is a bankrupt position." That feels true in my gut.
So that's my long-winded intro to:
I tend to dismiss the comments that call out "feminists" (using that word) as having a greater agenda I'm just not interested in. I think most reasonable people filter the obviously bigoted insults.
One thing (as a man) that bothers me is the apparently high level of tolerance for insults in the other direction. "man-boy", "14 year old teen boy". Even inappropriate usage of "misogynist". Many of these comments I've seen by otherwise reasonable, level-headed people that garner a large number of upvotes.
It's very divisive and unhelpful. It's certainly both belittling and sexist in the exact same way that calling someone "a little girl" is.
It makes me wonder if even writing this is a good idea. "Fearful" is certainly a good adjective. How will future employers see this? Or people I respect in communities I belong to? I get bigots. I'm not afraid of them. A popular mob trying to "do the right thing". That scares me a bit to be honest.
>The shame of this situation is that the problems of the industry's sexism will be ignored because of her (perhaps momentary) lack of professionalism.
If it's ignored, it's because people look very hard for reasons to ignore it.
It's not even necessarily conscious; by deciding that there's no problem, you don't have to to feel guilty about not doing anything about it. Our brains are really good at finding reasons to opt for inaction. :)
(The idea/meme that somehow each and every woman has to be a saint to move gender relations forward is pretty pathetic, btw.)
Actually in this case she did have enough time to apologize. It wasn't really as immediate as yelling at the boss.
She issued a general "I hope your employers would have worked with you on this" kind of non-apology-but-I-in-PR-and-had-to-say-something statement response on HN. After a while she did have the opportunity to just say "I was super tired, I made a bad decision, I am sorry about the public post, I will take it down, blah blah...".
First, it was a wise move not to react at your 'hoped for' mentor's remark about his wife.
I will address this to everyone, and not just you: it's not your place to "openly react" to another person's comments about their familial relationships (spousal, parent/child, significant other), unless you are related or are a very close and personal friend over decades.
Family and intimate relationship dynamics are very complex, and frankly no one else's business. Even if it seems one is being invited to "react" through comments made by someone in the relationship, you're not (see exception for relation or very close and personal friend).
Second, sexism can be bad in tech. But it is NOTHING like it is in other business sectors. Sales. Medicine. High finance. Agriculture. Construction. Trades. Had the wisecrack occurred in one of those sectors, I doubt even an eyebrow would have been raised.
First off I agree 100% that the trolls that threaten and slur her on the blog/twitter etc. are morons. I would also like to point out that THAT is what trolls do!
As a footnote: Adria moderates ALL comments on her blog, and allowing these trolls a forum seems a little counter productive as she must have chose to let these comments appear.
It's hard to say, when a blog blows up in traffic it can be really difficult to moderate comments effectively. A lot of times people will turn off comments altogether since the load is too much.
> What do I do? Do I call him out by name? Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action.
Seems like a lot of energy spent on a flippant remark. Those aren't restricted to men saying them about wives/women, either. I don't want to get into some kind of /r/mensrights foolishness here, but have you sat at a coffeeshop and listened to the kinds of remarks women make about their husbands/men generally? It's all over pop culture, go Netflix an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond if you don't believe me.
What do you do? Cross him off your people-I-want-to-mentor-me list and move on with your life.
> The blatant sexism is mostly gone, but the undertones remain. And that makes it harder than ever to gauge what the "right" reaction is as a woman when one of these events happens around you.
If I'm reading this right, you're saying the dongle joke was an undertone of sexism? That doesn't make sense to me. Anatomy != sexism. Unprofessionalism, yes; sexism, no.
"Everybody Loves Raymond" is your evidence here. I'm not interested in arguing the point here, but come on. It's a show by a man, about a man, written by (mostly) men. How is that relevant?
"Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action."
You said it was a flippant comment that was borderline sexist...How about just move on with your life? As a guy, if someone makes a comment that identifies themselves as a jerk I just think, "Hey, that person is a jerk & I prefer not to deal with them."
Harassment is another story but that's not what this is. Also, I wouldn't assume that the psychos making all of these threats represent the tech community. The story has spilled into a lot of media and the most extreme disturbed people don't represent "the community" just like a woman getting offended by a silly pun doesn't represent women in tech.
>"This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused."
You consider this "borderline sexism"? Interesting. As is your use of the word "dude" to describe the guy. Does that mean you don't mind when people refer to you as a "chick"?
>"and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction...[r]ight now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action."
How about not associating with the person anymore? Done. He made a joke you didn't like, about a person you don't even know, and might possibly be an asshole. There are lots of those out there. Move on; you'll be a better person for it.
I don't see any indication that she didn't just shrug it off - that doesn't mean that she can't talk about it or that it isn't a problem. Indeed, it's something that she will have to "shrug off" that most male founders wouldn't even have to think about.
> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly
Yep. Even after the tweeted photo it seems like this could of ended with an apology going both ways. An apology that did actually occur at PyCon from what I've read.
The guys employer knee-jerked with a firing which should have been unnecessary and the ripples of that action have just gone way out of proportion.
I don't think she needed to be fired, and she definitely doesn't need or deserve to be called some of the things that have been said. The people doing so are actively harming any real discussion that is taking place.
Erica, I too am very disheartened by the amount sexism in our industry. As a male feminist who is very passionate about engineering, technology and entrepreneurship, it's hard to see that many of my peers act in such ways. However, sex jokes are not inherently sexist. They are perhaps crude, but don't have to be sexist. From the surface, the comments of these developers seem just sophomoric and crude, but nothing else. I am a fan of crude jokes as long as they aren't sexist, homophobic or racist. I don't think Adria really had a reason to call them out on grounds of sexism, perhaps just on grounds for being annoying. But she certainly shouldn't have done it with their pictures.
On the other hand, the community's reaction to her has been disgusting. It shows exactly the kind of pervasive sexism that exists in the tech industry. We definitely need to call that out and let them know that it's not okay. It's unacceptable to allow this kind of sexism to happen, much like it's unacceptable for the well-known tech big-wig to be so blatantly sexist in front of you to provoke you. You need to call him out, and so do the others who are with him.
Thank you for speaking up. I imagine this is not the easiest time to do so.
> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.
With such a large audience there will always be extreme responses on either side. There will (and have been) DDoS attacks, personal phone calls etc. I don't think those represent the community as much as it represents the general population. Take large crowds of people people. Out of 10000 there will be a number of unstable, vile, and malicious ones to spew hate. It doesn't matter what the issue is. It could have been about vegetables or voltmeters.
I believe most others here are just as upset about those comments and actions as you are. I know I am.
> Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.
I can think of less hostile and more welcome environments too, a smaller conference usually is. I went to a small 100-150 people tech conference recently and it did feel much more friendly, open, and welcoming than something as large as PyCon. I don't think those people were just selected for kindness and sensitivity I think, statistically those few nasty ones just didn't happen to be there.
> I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened.
And that is why I like how PyCon recently has started to address the issue and encouraged reporting of such incidents. I think you should report such incidents and you shouldn't have to deal with it. It is unprofessional and creates a hostile environment. I want to personally apologize (for whatever an anonymous apology from a no-name on the internet is worth) for their actions insensitivity. I wouldn't want my wife, daughter, mom or sister to have to face this kind of hostility and will go out of my way to speak up and help when I can.
However, what the issue at hand is not the reporting but using twitter, her social an PR status, her job title, to do it. She did that first before she did the private message. She claims jokes were offending, she then posts racists and penis jokes on her twitter account. Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of maliciousness. She weighed her odds according to her blog and decided this might play out well -- and it seems like it would have 0 to 100 in just one day. What more could a PR person involved with speaking engagements could ask for.
> sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap.
I can understand that. Adria confessed has has traveled constantly for day before that. She was exhausted. I can see that. We all make mistakes, we are humans. So what is the right thing to do later? Apologize, that is the right thing.
Now let's revisit what happened. There are 2 distinct things she did 1) she reported it privately 2) she slandered someone publicly. There are distinct. I think 1) was what she should have done. And I think 2) is completely un-acceptable. Talk about a hostile environment.
> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.
I wouldn't want to consider those vile comments and tweets as part of the community. They are just sad examples of humanity. Let's ignore them if we can. But I want to highlight one good thing about the tech community -- it doesn't tolerate injustice. Just like you say you experience sexism and borderline sexual harassment often, many in the tech community were "nerds" and have also experience harassment, psychological and physical abuse in schools. Bullying is not and should not be tolerated. Neither should backstabbing. Or taking credit and advantage of others at their expense. I think that what the community has riled up against.
PSF (PyCon) has gone to hide in the weeds on issue 2) save for a quick Github commit. Yes we noticed that. And it is still not cool.
Just like you feel unwelcome because of veiled and open harassment at conferences. I don't think I will feel safe at PyCon until I know they officially condemn public slandering of attendees (Gold Sponsors, none the less).
> She claims jokes were offending, she then posts
> racists and penis jokes on her twitter account.
> Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of
> maliciousness.
Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?
I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.
Twitter has elements of both a public and private space. It's public, obviously, but people read your Tweets voluntarily.
It's not at all comparable to making unwanted sexual comments to a woman you don't know on a bus, or in an alleyway, or in a convenience store, or at a conference.
It's not comparable to subjecting
It's
The difference here is that the jokes/comments were not made to her. She overheard them in the context of a semi-private conversation between two people, and took umbrage at them.
If they had come up and started making penis jokes to her, then it'd be a very different situation.
It's not as obnoxious as if they'd walked up to her and started telling her penis jokes, but on the other hand a person has to assume that the person sitting in front of them at a conference (seriously, they're what - three or four feet away?) can hear what they're saying.
Also, her site is down at the moment, so I can't verify, but didn't she actually converse with them? I might be wrong about that. I wish I could verify it.
I also wouldn't assume at a conference the person sitting in front of me is intently listening in on my conversation...
She exchanged a sentence or two, then a couple min later after she had turned away after they continued the semi-private conversation the guy made the penis joke.
> Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?
No but if they make those jokes and then turn around saying anyone making penis jokes is worth of public flogging I would also be the one pointing out the hypocrisy.
> I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.
Yes. I am getting at hypocrisy. There was an element about her being so outraged at such anatomical jokes. Her credibility is slightly weakened because of her comments on Tweeter. Her credibility is even more weakened based on (what used to be) her job and community position. It more and more starts to point to her taking a calculated advantage of a situation, and also throwing someone under the bus in the process.
She also can't claim ignorance at how publicly broadcasting something like that would turn out for that person. That is what she does for a living supposedly. I think at this point, it would take a very strong argument to convince me this was a quick overreaction and an "oops".
Back up just a second there. As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based background.
> As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to
> twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference
> are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly
> the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based
> background.
You don't think that context matters at all when it comes to a joke?
Do you just speak the exact same way everywhere, whether you're talking to clients, joking with your friends during an alcohol-fueled gaming session, in a locker room, or to your parents?
Or do you maybe think that some subjects are appropriate for some situations but not others?
Personally, I say a lot of extremely off-color things to my (male and female) friends that I wouldn't dream of saying to strangers. Even if I had some evidence that stranger had made an off-color joke at some point in their lives.
You seem to be jumping over the point here. Both the conference and twitter are public venues, and both the jokes are sexual in nature.
You seem to be arguing here that a joke at a public conference is a different situation to a joke posted publicly to twitter - I do not see the difference. Her twitter account is now irrevocably linked to Sendspace's image as she has claimed that Sendspace backs her views, which in turn claims that Sendspace is backing her sexual joke in a public space while also calling out a sexual joke at a conference. This is obviously paradoxical, and is also why I'm asking you to rethink your posts.
> You seem to be arguing here that a joke at
> a public conference is a different situation
> to a joke posted publicly to twitter
I'm sorry. Posting something on Twitter is simply not the same as saying something several feet away from a stranger in person. There are two primary reasons.
One, anybody reading Adria's Twitter account is doing so on a voluntary basis. Adria, on the other hand, did not volunteer to listen to a bunch of sexual jokes from these men she doesn't know.
Two, there's the issue of physical proximity. The overwhelming odds are, of course, that the men at this conference were not a physical threat to Adria. Nobody was arguing they were anything worse than some guys who made a joke at a sub-optimal time. However, please understand that sexual violence is depressingly common in America (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1214_sexual_violence...) and that it's one more reason why we don't subject strangers to unwanted sexual banter, even if that stranger said something off-color at some point in their lives.
Again, I have to ask: given that every woman you know has probably said something off-color at some point in their lives, perhaps publicly, does that give me the right to speak to them in whatever off-color way I wish?
I'd say that no, it doesn't. You say I do?
Or, let's try another tack. Forget Twitter. Let's compare apples to apples.
Do you think you have the right to go up to any female comedienne who's ever made an off-color joke, and tell her off-color jokes? You don't, because she is not volunteering to listen to your jokes in the same way that you did when you listened to her routine. And honestly, I think you probably do know that, and would probably not walk up to Ellen Degeneres and discuss lesbian sex with her even though she has publicly identified as a lesbian on national television.
Everybody has the right to discuss penises, or anything they like, provided participants in discussion willing to do it. If they do not, the preceding history does not matter.
However, in this case as far as I understand (please correct if I'm wrong) the person took offense not for something that was directed at her, but by something that is merely said in her presence, without her being the intended recipient or part of the discussion. Of course, it could still be unpleasant, but for one to expect they'd never overhear anything that they would not discuss personally would be an unwarranted imposition on others. It's one thing saying "don't talk that way to me", and quite another saying "never talk that way at all if I have even remotest chance of overhearing it".
> but for one to expect they'd never overhear anything that
> they would not discuss personally would be an unwarranted
> imposition on others.
If she'd walked by their table in a restaurant and overheard them, or eavesdropped on them by putting her ear up to a closed door? Okay, then they might be able to claim they never could have expected to be overheard.
But they were sitting directly behind her. Literally a few feet away. In chairs that were facing toward her. How could they not expect that their words would be audible to her?
They probably expected that she wouldn't be paying attention to them or just didn't think about her listening in. People talk about all kinds of stuff while on talks or other group situations all the time, and not every time they study the surroundings to see if somebody is listening or not. The point here the talk wasn't directed at her, and while it would be appropriate to point out to the guys that there are in a public space and can be heard, so they should tone it down or maybe go talk outside, blowing it into an incident of systemic misogyny and rampant sexism that is worth losing a job over seems to me way out of proportion. Not every time somebody behaves out of place or rudely it means he is $_-ist, $_-ist and $_-ist and probably loves Hitler. Sometimes it's just people not thinking about what they are doing too much and coming out as an oafs. Pointing it out usually quite enough and no escalation is necessary. Sometimes is is
> blowing it into an incident of systemic misogyny and
> rampant sexism that is worth losing a job over seems to
> me way out of proportion.
I agree: the response was out of proportion. I think literally every entity directly involved in this situation could have handled it better.
However, just because the response was out of proportion doesn't mean anybody needs to defend the men who were sitting behind her, or strain their credibility by pondering how - how? - these men could have possibly known that the person sitting directly in front of them, several feet away, could have heard their sexual jokes.
The point is that they did not intend it to be directed at her and probably were not regarding her as part of the conversation. Human perception is very selective, and you can literally look at things and not see them. There's nothing @-ist in this, it's just how the brain works. Should the guys be more aware when in public places? Yes. This can be handled by a gentle reminder, not by a public campaign. Of course, this does not produce a splashy effect of fighting @-isms and being on the forefront of the struggle for all good against all evil, but it is usually better for everyone involved. Which is the main point of it, and hopefully more people realizing it would be at least a little win in this huge heap of fail.
Ah, but they didn't make any comments to her, by her own admission.
Her story goes like this: She was sitting a row in front of them and they were having a private conversation with "dongle" and "forking" jokes.
It could have been me, making those jokes. Luckily nobody could fire me if somebody went nuts and posted my photo on the internet and tried to publicly shame me instead of asking me to stop doing it in her earshot. But perhaps more importantly, she probably wouldn't have said a thing, because I'm a woman. Who's been laughing over the word "dongle" since 1997.
> Was Adria's reaction, to this as an isolated event, out of hand? Yes.
No. Someone said something sexist in public. She put it out on Twitter. If you don't like that. You better watch what you say in public.
We should back up people who stand against discrimination and support them. SendGrid firing her basically says she shouldn't have stood up for herself. Which is pitiful.
They said a inappropriate joke, not something sexist. There was nothing sexist about it. I repeat, she was not discriminated against. It was unprofessional and out of line, but what she did was far far more inappropriate and unprofessional.
Since when did telling a simple techie joke become sexist? And how did one individual telling another individual privately that joke become discrimination?
Eavesdrop much and then drop a nuke on the people your eavesdropping on? She got what she deserved. She tried to flex her e-peen to see how much clout she had online and that ended up biting her in the ass.
I think her decision to take this to twitter was the completely wrong decision. She is a developer evangelist at one of the most important developer conferences. She is representing SendGrid on all of her public forums.
How does the public alienation of these two guys go towards building critical mass of support for SendGrid? Even if this was sexual harassment what would she have gained for herself or SendGrid by bringing this to a public forum. She has to know that a large number of potential SendGrid users are men who have similar senses of humor.
If she was deeply offended by the comments these guys made she should have spoken to them directly or privately mentioned it to the staff.
>>>> But when this happens to you every single day
But what happens every day? Some people being stupid? That happens every day to many people. There are infinitely many ways of being stupid, and people are being stupid all the time, some frequently, some rarely. Is it really an excuse to "snap"? If I beat up some guy that made a joke I didn't like and then explain that I'm tired of rudeness and stupidity and "sometimes you just snap" - would that be a valid excuse? I don't think so.
> Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
Hey, if you can't shoot the messenger, who can you shoot?
Just because people are talking about the way women are treated doesn't mean that people don't care about or are ignoring how black people are treated.
Your experience does not negate the offenses directed at women, nor does their experience negate yours.
It's unacceptable to treat people like this full stop, whether you're in tech or not.
A) 2nd wave feminism is a zero-sum ideology. Try talking about the education gap in public education or male rape and see how fast it turns into a victim-hood pissing contest.
B) 2nd wave feminists see gender as the most fundamental form of discrimination with economical and ethnocentric discrimination being derivative and secondary. I can see why an African-American individual would be offended by middle class white women portraying their victim-hood as equal in severity to his.
Not that the OP is guilty of either offense but it's cliche behavior in feminist circles.
How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.
I kind of regret the knee jerk posting, because i think camus intent wasn't to convey what i was accusing him of conveying. I think it was just a poor choice of words.
But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color. But that doesn't negate the legitimacy of the offenses that folks have to bear.
But solidarity in the face of discrimination is like one of the most important things for actual equality. If those who believe in equality don't support each other, then we're all really up shit creek.
>How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.
I live next to a women's college and my ex-gf comes from a family of 2nd wave feminists.
>But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color.
That's an understatement. Look at the aftermath of raising rape awareness in America. Majority of the resources have gone to college campuses and middle class white areas. Even though these are the groups of women least likely to be the victims of abuse. Feminists have monopolized these resources to women of their own class and ethnicity.
What you say is very true of mainstream white 2nd wave feminism. However, the heyday of the 2nd wave was decades ago and feminist thought and work (academic or not) has gone much beyond the absolutist kind of advocacy 2nd wavers had/have.
2nd wave isn't the leading edge or majority but it's still a huge part of the ecosystem. Third Wave feminist might not commit to any one framework but they are often perfectly happy to take on the language of 2nd wave feminism when it's relevant to do so. When the stars align, these people take on the language of bigotry.
I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. 2nd wave feminism has problems for sure, but they also got a lot right and and 2nd wavers have helped shaped the state of society today. Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.
If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.
>Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.
>If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.
First and foremost is the double standard afforded to 2nd wave bigotry. The smallest sexist offense incites a twittersphere rabble. Where is the rabble against transphobia taught by 2nd wave professors? Where is the rabble against the blatant misandry? Where is the rabble against anglo-centrism? All I've ever seen is a token effort. If these 2 men deserve to be kicked out of the convention, fired, and shamed then that more than equally applies to the bigots harbored by gender studies institutions. There's no good reason for such double standards.
3rd wave feminists will defend the inclusion of such bigotry through the lense of postmodern relativity but again such inclusion is not afforded to "outsiders" and the distinction between in-group and out-group is arbitrary.
> First and foremost is the double standard afforded to 2nd wave bigotry. The smallest sexist offense incites a twittersphere rabble. Where is the rabble against transphobia taught by 2nd wave professors? Where is the rabble against the blatant misandry? Where is the rabble against anglo-centrism? All I've ever seen is a token effort. If these 2 men deserve to be kicked out of the convention, fired, and shamed then that more than equally applies to the bigots harbored by gender studies institutions. There's no good reason for such double standards.
Misandry isn't a real thing men as a whole suffer from. Works about anglo-centrism have been around for a while, although it was not a prominent part of the white mainstream feminist movement decades ago. If all you've seen is a token effort, it seems like you, like many folks, haven't had a chance to access to various material about those issues. As for gender studies, I don't know what you are even saying since I'm pretty sure bigots exist in every studied discipline and gender studies is not a bigoted discipline.
> 3rd wave feminists will defend the inclusion of such bigotry through the lense of postmodern relativity but again such inclusion is not afforded to "outsiders" and the distinction between in-group and out-group is arbitrary.
In what I have seen and read there is been a big increase in the criticism leveled at the big name feminist academics and writers for their moments and instances of bigotry. Exclusion of outsiders is still a problem and there is a way to go before feminism is actually inclusive or accessible for various communities.
>Misandry isn't a real thing men as a whole suffer from.
Within the halls of gender studies it certainly is...
>As for gender studies, I don't know what you are even saying since I'm pretty sure bigots exist in every studied discipline and gender studies is not a bigoted discipline.
No other academic institution accepts bigot ideologies as an orthodoxy. There's something fundamentally wrong here.
>In what I have seen and read there is been a big increase in the criticism leveled at the big name feminist academics and writers for their moments and instances of bigotry.
I've yet to see any twitterstorm over the horrific transphobia being taught by countless 2nd wave professors. No threats of boycott, no petitions, nothing. Yet, when someone like Joe Rogan mentions transgendered people feminists are out for blood. I'm sorry but the criticism you speak of is a drop in the bucket.
This is one of the interesting things about this pycon story in that Adria Richards is a black woman, experiencing the sexist and racist parts of the tech community. This whole incident highlights the intersection of those things in regards to how the tech community and internet at large reacts to someone who challenges micro-aggressions.
I don't think anyone here is judging the comparative difficulties of various groups of minorities. It's recognized that most minority groups do face discrimination.
A couple of my black friends said they were more sensitive of their race when they would visit their home, and that they felt more at ease in their work and silicon valley social groups than with their relatives and childhood friends. One of them spent her holidays alone, rather than go home, or visit with other people's families because it was too distressing.
IMHO, it was really a class issue masquerading as race but regardless, it sucked. People need to grow the fuck up.
What do you do when you meet a woman at a party who makes an offhand comment about her "worthless son"? Nothing, right? Maybe "That's really rude" and walk away? Certainly no crusade will be mounted. Because: she's simply a bad person[1], and nothing you can say will do anything, you won't change her mind or shame her, and you certainly won't help the son's case, and anyone who knows the woman in question will know she's a jerk already. There's no point. Jerks are jerks. They come in both penis and vagina versions. Many of them are famous.
As for the guy who wouldn't talk to you, here's what you do:
"Excuse me. I'm over here. I run the business." Then smile.
I once did this to a guy who was trying to sell my boyfriend a car… when I was the one shopping. ("Excuse me, I'm the one with the money.") It solves the problem immediately. It causes temporary embarrassment for the lunkhead, he'll stop, and believe me he'll "get it" because he will stop trying to get the handy local man to explain why you/he are there, and you can all move on instead of silently steaming for ages.
It also works when somebody is at a dinner and saying "Women do this" -- you can simply say "I don't." And if that person is a prominent woman tech blogger, and you are me, then she'll shun you for the rest of the event, which works out just fine!
Like I said -- jerks come in all genital varieties.
[1] or maybe this angry mother isn't a jerk, maybe she's "just having a bad day," and "made a mistake," and makes a comment to a bunch of people at a party instead of photographing her son asleep during a test and using her position of power on Twitter to get him kicked out of his university… luckily for her, she's a woman, so she has the option of making a mistake in airing out family dirty laundry and being forgiven(?).
I feel the same way. I think that if she had just apologized early and clearly for her lack of judgement and maybe just called up the company that fired the guy they could have made a deal and shaken hands.
Now she has lost her job at Sendgrid and is almost certainly not going to be able to be a 'evangelist' that anyone takes seriously.
I'm a woman in tech. I think she can continue to function as a women's tech evangelist. Yes, there are women who are furious with her, but there are also plenty of women who have been in her corner, whether or not they agree with how she handled the situation. And for a lot of the women who've been on the fence since all of this exploded, this firing will probably push them into her corner. Loss of credibility as a dev evangelist? I'll buy that to a large degree. Loss of credibility as a women's tech evangelist? Probably not as much as you think.
> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
Think of the backlash against her that happened. Think what she and other women might feel being in a room full of Hacker News & Reddit tech guys, _some_ of whom having made threats.
"I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as $UsernameWhoWasThreateningAdria. What if I do something that upsets him? Is he going to rape or kill me next?"
Your legitimate concern over getting reprimanded is not on the same scale at all to the concerns others might have because of the culture being perpetuated here.
> the women I've talked to about this are furious with her
This doesn't represent the views of all women in tech. What happened to Adria could happen to any of us outspoken women. She didn't handle the situation perfectly, but there's no way she could have known this would unfold in this way. She said she didn't want the guy to get fired and apologized to him. I'm horrified by what happened to her and now afraid the same could happen to me.
None of us should have to be afraid that a tweet like that could get someone fired, provoke threats, or warrant attacks on our companies.
The nature of the attacks against Adria are EXTREMELY misogynistic (rape threats, death threats, people calling her a c_nt, b_tch, wh_re, etc) and many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality. They've also pulled into question her professional credibility and called her an affirmative action hire. They are saying this kind of behavior should be expected from someone with the domain "butyouragirl".
There is a simply an undue level of hatred for Adria which is correlated to her gender, I think in large part because she is an outspoken feminist.
I'm trying to be more outspoken about gender bias I encounter in the workplace, but incidents like this are a terrifying reminder of why that can be dangerous.
I'm not mad at Adria. The larger and more striking problem is how much hatred for women exists in this community and how threatening that feels.
If anything good came of this, it's that these biases are now coming to a head, right out in the open for all to see.
I agree with a lot of the sentiment you've expressed, so I want to share my perspective.
> She said she didn't want the guy to get fired and apologized to him.
She may have expressed sympathy, but she did not apologize. An apology may have gone a long way at stemming this disaster, but that's speculation at this point.
> I'm horrified by what happened to her and now afraid the same could happen to me.
Likewise, I'm horrified what happened to the men involved could happen to me. From everything I've read (which is not all-inclusive), their comments occurred in a 1-1 conversation during a loud presentation.
Moreover, frankly, it was innocuous if vaguely inappropriate. The dongle joke was not beyond the pale. It was not a firing offense, and it certainly did not deserve anyone's face being blasted all over Twitter along with harassment allegations.
Rest assured, we're all quite paranoid as a result of this.
>The nature of the attacks against Adria are EXTREMELY misogynistic (rape threats, death threats, people calling her a c_nt, b_tch, wh_re, etc) and many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality. They've also pulled into question her professional credibility and called her an affirmative action hire. They are saying this kind of behavior should be expected from someone with the domain "butyouragirl".
While I haven't spent much time on Twitter, I don't think it's really fair to draw a line between some of the extreme views voiced there and the tech community. This transcended tech very quickly, and never recovered. My sense is that many of the most vocal contributors to the discussion arrived at it second hand.
> I'm not mad at Adria. The larger and more striking problem is how much hatred for women exists in this community and how threatening that feels.
I may be blind to this as I'm not a woman, but I honestly don't perceive hatred towards women in the tech community.
The Twitter & internet mob response should not be taken to represent this community. It [tech] may be flawed, there may even be overlap, but they are not one and the same.
> What happened to Adria could happen to any of us outspoken women.
Only if by "outspoken" you mean "inept witch hunter with a messiah complex".
> ... many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality.
The chief occupational hazard of the witch hunter is being caught out by one's followers. The disciples possess only the paranoia and lack of mercy drilled into them.
Being slandered on Twitter is far from non-trivial. I too would walk on eggshells in the company of someone with a track record of over-reacting like this.
She made allegations of harassment and alluded to gender issues. Most people accept that "sexism" was at issue here, and she herself doesn't dispute this. There's no sense in nitpicking on minor semantics.
Ok, so tell that to the folk upthread who started using exactly that set of semantics as part of their attack on Adria. ("The joke was not sexist in any way".)
Because Adria is the only person who has the power to shame someone publicly? She's the only one with 9,000 twitter followers, she's the only one with a camera phone, and she's the only one who can upload photos to twitter?
I find the concern of being in the same room as her incredibly stupid.
She's someone with a history of senseless public shaming, and apparently a fair bit of grandstanding [1]
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but what's being discussed here isn't the ability to perform an action but the willingness to do so on a whim.
I don't have twitter, Facebook etc. Even if i did i doubt i would have that many followers because i don't find any appeal in it. I could not reach the audience she did. I do not have the power to easily shame someone publicly.
I think that goes for most people. I would be concerned and i'm female. What if i disagree with her? Its not stupid, its cautious.
Anyone can easily reach the same audience by creating a twitter account and tagging it with something popular. I'm sure there were plenty of people in that conference with way more followers.
You should be more afraid at the veritable brigade of angry internet-goers who were stirred up to the point of DDoS'ing her ex-employer and harassing her. But no, focus on the woman who posted a single photograph on her twitter feed. I'm sure she's more dangerous.
Regardless of her position, what happened in this case, etc. It's just miserable to be around someone with this kind of over-reactionary over-sensitive attitude. I know people like that and it's just not nice to be around. Despite having the most equal relationship possible, my girlfriend goes to get herself a drink and I say "Hey, can you grab me one too while you're in there?" and our 'friend' freaks out like it's sexist. Noooo thank you. I won't be hanging out with you anymore.
"Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women."
And I'm furious with how badly the comments here and elsewhere portray men. The worst are the threats of violence that I've heard that she's gotten, of course. I know that's a minority behavior, but we can't kid ourselves: the people making those threats are only comfortable doing so because they see the rest of the community as being "on their side".
Women (and men!) need to speak up when they see manifestations of the culture that continues to drive women away from tech. Would I have made the same judgement in this case? Maybe not. But we need to find some way of changing the "bro" culture on display here, and I can't really blame her for trying.
"What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?"
If 1) you choose to say something 2) in a public place that 3) your employer considers grounds for termination, I think you should probably be worried no matter who's in the room. I personally don't think that public shaming is the best way to respond to low-level offenses as in this case (but then, I really wouldn't fire someone over it: that seems like 100x as much of an overreaction). Nevertheless, it's unreasonable to expect in this day and age that transgressions in public will always go unnoticed. If you knowingly say something that you deserve to be fired for, it's not the photographer's fault when it happens.
Not sure what subset of women you are talking with, but there seem to be plenty of women (and men! myself included)[1] who are definitely not furious with Adria over this, and instead are standing up with her. I feel bad the guy got fired, but the mass pandemonium and hateful comments being produced by the internet at large is simply disgusting.
I would not have reacted the same way in this set of circumstances -- I feel sort of bad for those dudes wondering why their picture was being taken -- but I am far from "furious" with Adria. I will, on the other hand, never do business with SendGrid.
I worked with a bright, lovely young woman who had taken two terms of Java, with an eye toward a CS degree. One of her professors told her in office hours that she smelled really good. So she was doing marketing. Little creep-outs can have a huge impact, and you will unfortunately find so many of them in nearly every tech setting that if you hang in there, you just get accustomed to saying nothing. But saying nothing is not the ideal course of action, because based on the numbers, lots of women don't hang in there. Adria is right that the little girl on the slide might never make it to PyCon (in a dev role...) if things stay the same.
Imagine if roles were reversed, and lucrative, enjoyable, interesting jobs were mostly held by straight women, and every time you went to a professional conference, you had to endure non sequitur pictures of men in bikinis, and uninformed, under-dressed plastic booth bros, and people assuming you're an uninformed booth bro no matter how you look, and the after-party at a male strip club, and countless unattractive old women chatting you up when you'd rather write code and all manner of little, alienating crap. In this bizarro world, you would likely not believe the sense of relief when another man spoke up about all this stuff that had gone unquestioned.
Your comment about feeling uncomfortable around Adria is ironic, given that feeling uncomfortable is exactly what Adria was trying, however imperfectly, to fix. Unfortunately, the comfort of straight white men has again ruled the day, and SendGrid fired a black woman to preserve it. I hope she finds a truly wonderful lawyer.
>> And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women.
We are now going to penalize people for standing up for themselves? She faced sexist remarks, she shamed them. Good on her. I'm an outside observer and I've never been to the valley but SendGrid comes off as irresponsible and not backing up their people.
> What if I Accidentally say something she finds offensive
Accidentally offensive? Like calling someone a nigger? Or a faggot? And at the same time you make it sound their fault for making you "next".
If you say something. Own up it. Anyone could qoute you. If you're uncomfortable with that you better watch what you say in public.
Whoa, whoa. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiments, but an off-color joke does not equal hate speech. Let's keep unnecessary hyperbole out of this, please.
I don't think anyone would have blamed her if they insulted her, It wasn't an insult, it wasn't directed at her.; It was said to his friend unaware she was listening and she was offended. There's a difference there.
The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak.
And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths.
> What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
Really? How does that work? You trip over a garbage can and a lewd joke reflexively pops out? How does accidental immature behavior work?
Sigh. Can't everyone in question here be a jerk? We have two sexist/innapropriate developers; one stressed out evangelist who overreacted and innapropriately tweeted a photo; one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence; uncounted hordes of almost-exclusively-male internet users with crystal clear (yet routinely undersupported and self-contradictory) opinions about it, and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout.
Good grief. Can't we all just grow up a little? Without exception, everyone involved (and that includes you, and probably half this thread) needs to apologize to everyone else.
Inappropriate yes, sexist no (a "dongle" private joke can hardly be construed as sexist, seriously).
> one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence
> and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout.
Probably less over the freakout and more over the DDOS they've been under since some of the "uncounted hordes" have decided the best response to mob justice was mob justice, SendGrid'd been unavailable for hours.
I've read it several times, just in case the text changed between my visits
> I still suspect this was a firing for many reasons, not just this incident.
And yet the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not come close to hinting that this was not the reason, you'd think. There may have been other reasons, but the timing is odd, why wait until he gets involved in something at PyCon? And even if it happened to be the straw breaking the camel's back it's not like they had to fire him on the spot.
Unless they wanted to milk some views, after all some say no publicity is bad publicity.
I've seen that happen before, so I apologize for my insinuation if the quote was added between your reading and mine.
"the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not at any point indicate this was not the reason"
You can't assume that the firing was 100% due to the issue at hand, and I'm saying that I don't think it was 100%. Other people seem to be acting as if that's the only reason he was let go.
> You can't assume that the firing was 100% due to the issue at hand
Of course not (especially as his colleague was not fired) but in a blog post purporting to "provide some clarity" on "a number of inaccuracies being reported", considering the basic assumption that he was fired for it, you'd think that would be part of the clarity.
Instead the post weasels around with no specifics whatsoever, declaring "a thorough investigation" (of a few hours) but that not "all the factors" would be commented on (none whatsoever were commented on). They've also refused to publish (let alone respond) to a single comment so far.
The sad truth is that grown people acting like children is far more common than you'd expect. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the technology industry.
Whether it's fashionistas, dock-workers, or politicos, people will be people.
In short: childish, immature, vindictive, and petty.
I respect the handling by PyCon staff/volunteers (who didn't kick anyone out, but supported keeping PyCon a welcoming, comfortable environment), but beyond that, I feel like this whole incident has just shown us how bad people can act.
> one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence
> PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.
Do you actually know what the guys said? They made a joke about the word "dong" sounding like the word "dongle".
If this is what you think a frat house sounds like, you are very mistaken. That this is considered a faux pas is more politically correct than any office I've ever heard of.
No, actually they don't have that right. They have the same rights as everyone else, which are to say as they please within acceptable limits and at acceptable volume and thus possibly hear other people exercising those same rights. That is the tricky thing with rights.
As far as anyone has commented everything he said was well within the acceptable rights people lazily call "freedom of speech" (I hesitate to even use the phrase in such contexts for fear of cheapening it). Possibly he was talking while a speaker was talking, which is rude but again does not infringe anyones rights and while that might result in an apology to the speaker or some staff that is pretty much as far as it should ever have gone, had people been mature.
Your understanding of rights appears naive at best I'm afraid.
If you had the empathy or personal context to understand what happened here, how these situations work, and how disempowering the behavior can feel, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. No amount of my arguing with you on Hacker News will change that.
It wasn't argument from authority – it was a response to a question as to whether I knew what these people said.
I do.
And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context. I'm reminded of when McCoy wanted to discuss death with Spock:
"It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference."
...
"You mean I have to die in order to discuss your insights on death?"
For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github, for example. I don't think there's anything constructive to be said to that.
Talk is cheap. If you know exactly what was said then present it for people to form their own opinions. Arguing that you're right adn they're wrong because of something that you know (but won't reveal) is the definition of an argument from authority.
It would be as if I responded to you by saying 'You're wrong. I'm an expert in these matters.'
And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context.
Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean they lack empathy or are incapable of getting the context. On the contrary, I think that person has been at pains to explore the idea in an even-handed fashion, even if s/he has not come to the same conclusions as you. I don't fully agree with that person's viewpoint either, but I don't think it justifies launching personal attacks upon them.
For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github
I am at a loss as to how you arrived at that interpretation. Clearly we are not going to agree about this.
> It wasn't argument from authority – it was a response to a question as to whether I knew what these people said.
For the third time in this thread:
What was said?
>And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context.
No, it's an argument from authority. You have the context, yet are not willing to share exactly what was said. The ad hominem came with the "If you had the empathy...".
Danilo, I want to preface this with a note that I respect the hell out of you and I think you're coming at this from a good place, but I think you're mischaracterizing the argument that disagrees with you (at least, for some people, I don't claim to speak for everybody). From where I stand, it appears that very few people are mad that she said "hey, PyCon, these guys are being annoying, can you send somebody over?". (And that the people who are mad at that look like crazy people.) That's a good thing to do. I, at least, am 100% on board with this.
Here's my hangup. I will under no circumstances claim that privilege is not a very real thing and it needs to be considered; my posting history here will bear out that I'm usually saying it does and needs to be. And I'm not even against public shaming as a concept - sometimes, it's the only tool left in the box. But I don't think that's the case here, and I read the backlash to this situation as people getting pissed because somebody with a lot of social influence decided to use it like a magnifying glass to burn some ants. She has (had) power and she has (had) standing that they didn't. She was able to--and, I don't think it's unfair to say, did--point at them to many, many people, and attack them in a way that they can't even respond to effectively, let alone defend themselves if she happened to be wrong (and there's sufficient churn among the stories going back and forth that that's a possibility that needs to be considered).
That, I do think, deserves an apology. And a real one.
Yes, actually there was. One of the things that she was upset about was what she perceived to be a sexual joke about the word "fork" sounding like "fuck".
What she didn't understand (since she's not a developer, and probably isn't exposed to these things) is that "fork" is a reference to "git fork".
And if you were to read the follow ups from the guys who were shamed over their oh-so-offensive discussion of dongles and code management, you would see that "fork" was an in joke between them. "Fork" in this context meaning a form of flattery.
For instance "Danilo is a good developer; I'd for his repo".
There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git.
no they weren't making sexual jokes. (a) the man has said that his statement about forking was taken out of context, which I'll grant your sensibilities the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he's not telling the truth on that, but then again we shouldn't assume andria is telling the truth, either. so we'll make that one a toss-up then.
Now (b) noting that the word dongle sounds like dong is not a sexual joke. it is a joke, many would say in poor taste, but it isn't sexual in anyway unless your understanding of sexuality didn't evolve beyond age 12 and you still laugh every time the guy at the hot dog stand says wiener.
neither of them should have lost their jobs and this issue has evolved into something else completely. However, there is no denying that what she did was a gross abuse of whatever influence she had and was little more than playground pettiness on her part. They said something that was not in her taste and rather than be an adult and point out to them or to pycon that she was uncomfortable, she decided to publicly shame him. that's just the truth of the matter.
you were asking HOW an accident could occur, not what actually occurred. look, here it is again.
How does accidental immature behavior work?
THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, which you are conflating ex post facto to rationalize a shitty argument you originally made in the heat of the moment.
i'm fairly certain you would just chalk up my (easily) imagined scenario as unfortunate collateral damage to whatever cause you are so zealously defending, so i guess it doesn't really matter anyway
Really Danilo? You don't see anything wrong with what she did? This is OK. Next time you are at PyCon people can take face shots of your, post them online, with stupid childish insults underneath to see like "ass clown".
It is really sad that you don't see why that might create a hostile and unwelcome environment. Notice, not as many condemn her for _PRIVATELY_ notifying organizers. That is event #1, event #2 was that she publicly posted her tweet. That is not OK and it is sad to see you condone and defend that.
PSF has also been hiding in the weeds with event #2. They issued a neutral statement about #1 and then a surreptitious Github update to their policy to include some of what happened.
If this was a groping incident and all they did was made a Github commit, there would be a shitstorm 10x this one. But public face picture posting with insulting tags, for friends, kids, employers, to see, essentially forever is OK.
I've said it before and will repeat myself again, unless PyCon organizers issue a condemning statement I will not be coming to PyCon. It is a hostile environment and I don't feel safe.
Adria had no reason to publicly shame these two guys, that behavior is unacceptable. If she had a problem with their behavior, she should have reported it to the Pycon organizers directly and that should have ended it. None of this should have ever left Pycon.
Adria as an individual, yes. Adria as a developer evangelist? No. Her role is to speak for the company, and no company should resort to public shaming and cyber bullying.
And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages:
I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke comparing dongles to genitals.
She was using her personal twitter account as an extension of her job, which does make her comments 'speaking for the company'. It's part of the role of a tech evangelist.
If she was not comfortable with this, she should have maintained a greater separation between her professional and personal online behaviour.
One of the minor side-problems in this story: social media blurs the line between "personal" and "professional"/"company" communication. If you use your twitter account to network with people working at other companies, in your role as a developer evangelist, your personal account somehow turns partly into a company account.
Side note: She also tweeted "SendGrid supports me", which is a direct claim that her behavior is in line with company policy.
If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths.
Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm willing to bet that going forward more male developers will in fact be "shutting their mouths" when there's a female around.
The dongle remark was less sexual than many jokes on children's cartoons on Nickelodeon or on prime time sitcoms on network television. This is orders of magnitude below "lewd" or "frat house" level. You'd have a hard time getting even far right conservative family groups to get worked up over it.
You're looking at this really single-mindedly though. Yes, there are always repercussions for anything you say depending on who the audience is. The guys who made these jokes within earshot of Adria learned this. Now Adria is learning this after shaming them on the entire Internet.
It kind of comes down to what is a reasonable response, and it seems that's what 50% of the Internet disagrees with. If someone makes an offensive joke near you, we hopefully agree that you can't turn around and shoot that person in the face. We hopefully agree that you can't turn around and punch that person in the face. Calling the conference organizers and reporting them and having them kicked out doesn't seem unreasonable, but going out of your way to shame them on Twitter and a blog does. That just seems like overkill to me. That overkill, at least as I see it, is the thing that perhaps she might apologize for.
The actions that resulted from that were the employers' fault. If she claimed they molested her (which is illegal and can result in jail time) when they didn't, then you have a point. But the comment they made was uncontested and the employer decided, for a multitude of reasons including the recent matter, to let the guy go.
What if the employer was ready to fire him already, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is it her fault that he was on thin ice to begin with?
The difference is the one between negligence and manslaughter. If your negligent actions result in something else down the line, you are still, in part, responsible.
There can, and usually is, more than 100% blame to go around.
She wrote: "I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively." (emphasis mine)
I think that's the most we can expect from her regarding the guy getting fired. She didn't fire him, and she clearly expressed that she didn't think he should have been fired over this.
It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore.
I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women.
It sucks...but this is on par with firing a dev who can't program.