Forking and Dongle Jokes Don't Belong At Tech Conferences

It was a social failure by the guys who kept on making annoying and unfunny jokes (I think it actually starts with this obnoxious "thank me! thank me!" stuff).

It was a total benevolence failure on part of the author who seems exceedingly gleeful about her well-calculated coup.

It's a failure of society in general to think that "sexualized" environments somehow attack the expected chastity of women. Or that chastity is a virtue in the first place.

It's a failure of taste to think those kinds of comments are actually funny - or even sexual for that matter, and that equally-as-annoying non-sexual comments should go unpunished.

It's a failure of the geek community in general to create an environment where a constant battle is being waged between men and women, that certainly includes obnoxious and harassing behavior of groups of men, but it just as well applies to women who are constantly on the prowl to detect sex stuff.

This whole thing: totally unnecessary from all sides. Instead, we could just code in peace. But as I see it nobody is making an effort to actually question the factors that led to this totally predictable and depressingly recurring disaster. Everybody is just pouncing on the scandal. This energy would be better spent by employing a healthy dose of introspection.

However I am aware of the fact that many of my gender are incredibly offensive to women and that after a long week with many conferences and in all likelihood having to suffer many comments and jokes that really warrant a calling out the sensitivities are heightened.

Unfortunately calling a tasteless joke about a big dongle sexist draws attention away from the real offenders and validates the believes of die hard sexists that this is drama about nothing.

I'd rather have people concentrate on stopping things like http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Flashbelt_slide_show instead of twitter shaming someone who made a joke among his friends, that was not thought for the ears of the OP.

- The conference organizers set a very inclusive mandate that was, perhaps unwittingly, violated.

- The blog post author was justified in using social media to alert the organizers that their mandate was being violated, but this probably could have been done privately with a similar effect.

- It is extremely unfortunate that the violator's employers fired him. That is a big overreaction on the employer's part.

- The individual outcome here of the guy getting fired sucks, really badly, but that was not the blog post author's decision to make in the first place.

- If this helps people think twice before speaking in a public place, that's a good thing. The community will become more inclusive as a result.

I think that this is not about political correctness but about fostering an environment that allows everyone to feel comfortable. Perhaps the general short term trend will be to overcorrect by being extremely polite and reserved, but when the community embraces women and the community is evenly split between males/females/other this will eventually fade into history as we collectively reach a tone for public conversation that embraces as many people as possible while still maintaining emotion.

This isn't just a tech problem. The whole world is figuring out how to communicate with each other anew. There are gay people, ethnic minorities, people who identify with an uncommon gender, recovered drug addicts, people who have had family members die, vegetarians, etc. who will all take offense to certain remarks that were par for the course some time in the recent past. This is inevitable as the world embraces diversity and myriad forms of identity.

I suspect things will work themselves out in time, and the world will become more tolerant, while allowing people to poke fun at each other in a way that doesn't take things too far for the majority of each minority.

Her response and the resulting actions may seem harsh as an isolated incident, but they reflect her frustration with the countless times that she would have ignored such statements.

In the context of an event that prioritises diversity and equality - such that it has achieved 20% female attendance - the behaviour of the gentlemen involved represents exactly what the organisers are fighting against.

The best response to this story would be for readers to reflect and to realise how unintentionally alienating the macho nature of code communities can be.

The larger picture here is not Man vs. Woman. The issue is that we are members of a subculture which projects an image of immature and offensive behaviour. Behaviour which offends other races, ethnicities, ages, abilities, religions, sexual orientations AND genders.