What just blows my mind, is that Adria keeps referring to this as an issue against females. The comment (as clarified by the terrible perpetrator elsewhere) was about a part of male physiology and not directed towards any person, male or female. She just keeps repeating how this is some sort of female issue. I frankly don't see the connection. I do see how some puritanical folks could be upset, because you know, sex is terrible. I could see how the humor is crass. Adria didn't rescue some poor downtrodden female in distress, she took a sexual innuendo that offended her and blew it up publicly.
She mentions a few times playing cards against humanity at Pycon. http://instagram.com/p/W3htw7gaR5/ I'm not sure how "mecha-hilter", "dead babies", "afterbirth", or "eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bakesale" are less offensive than "big dongles". I guess I have to trust her as a the "Joan of Arc" that she is.
I will be honest with you, she scares the crap out of me. Who's next? What's the next juvenile comment that ends someone's job with a publicly posted picture? I don't want to work with her - how do I know my picture won't end up on twitter with some "This guy was talking about mounting his scsi" caption.
This isn't activism, this is emotional terrorism.
As an aside, I feel like the women in tech might misunderstand a lot of us - which is nothing new, who DOES understand us. We didn't grow up the jocks, the cool kids, or the prom king. We larped. We played D&D. We played MUDs. We sat up late coding. We were the dorks. We got wedgies and swirlies. Our chocolate milk was constantly taken by bullies. We got knocked out cold in dodge ball. We were tread on for most of our lives. I think coming into the tech world with the attitude that men need to be stood up to and knocked down is just going to come across to many of us as the same bullying attitude we grew up with. I think if most women in tech sat down with just about any neckbeard I can think of, they would be amazed at how friendly and awesome we are. We are not "the man" you're trying to overcome. We're simply people, who program, and we are happy that other people are entering the field. And really, we don't want to be crass or offensive. We are actually well known for our extremely awkward social skills. Just pull us aside and ask us kindly not to do that - you'd be surprised how nice we want to be.
But what do I know, I'm no longer an engineer, I'm just a (male) housewife. My (female) partner is the software engineer.