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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#261
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

> That feeling of discomfort? The way your heart speeds up as you start wondering if you're safe? Women feel that a lot.

Then I get out of the bar. Or look for some nice company (maybe talk to the bar man or find a woman in the bar?). Problem solved.

> The jokes aren't what's offensive. It's when jokes sexualize a professional context in a way that makes women feel unsafe.

Feel unsafe about what? Their safety? Those guys made two harmless dick jokes while sitting in a room with countless other people. They may not even have recognized that there was a woman in front of them. Further they were making fun about a body part a woman doesn't have. So your analogy doesn't hold.

If I want to tell a blasphemous joke, do I have to take into account that someone could feel offended and fear for their safety because this joke could mean that I want to harm religious people?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#262
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

I live in SF. I am immune to feeling remotely discomforted by actions/sights/conversations like that.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood correctly, Adria is not another employee, but has the role of developer evangelist. In that role, your twitter account is very much an extension of your job.

> In that role, your twitter account is very much an extension of your job. I'm not sure I agree with you, but I think this is an interesting point in the debate and wanted to acknowledge that even though I don't have a snappy response for you at the present time. Hopefully other people engage this point. It seems worth talking about.

Maybe what you are getting at is "are we okay with jobs where your personal social media account is a job function?". I personally think no, but at this point, we can't put the "social media" genie back into the bottle, and it is only going to get worse with products like Glass.

Many journalists nowadays have a twitter account because of their work, and news websites syndicate from their personal accounts.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#264
post #7

I would also like a response from Sendgrid here. Somebody they sent to a conference, who was representing their company there, went on a personal vendetta against somebody and got them fired. That's awful, and I join the people I see online right now in saying that I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. --And to how far Adria has set back womens' rights here-- The c…

This is a truly astonishing incident. What does it say about our society when an innocent joke (albeit "offensive" if taken out of context, as it clearly was) between two friends can be abused to tarnish someone's reputation? The abuser in this case (gender irrelevant) should be punished, and the victims deserve just compensation for the damage that this person has done.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#265
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

That is more a reflection on your personal insecurities than anything else. Two men, gay or otherwise, having a private conversation, probably don't know you exist and are almost certainly not planning on raping you.

I have lived in parts of the world where there was a high chance of being attacked and needed to be aware of my surroundings at all times. Being followed or approached late at night by a group of potentially hostile individuals makes my heart race. Some gay guys making a private joke would not.

I might even take it as a compliment (despite not being gay myself) but I do understand and accept that many men and woman would not find it appealing.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#266
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as "a women in tech" (god i hate even saying it like that lol) i totally agree. i think what she did was absurd. It wasn't even a lewd or offensive joke. Maybe its my social group but something like that would even cause any of us (more women in tech) to even bat an eye. If it was bothersome in anyway it was they were so loud she was paying more attention to them and they private conversations and not the speaker. Sh…

Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.

That "these jokes are sexist or offensive to women" was an axiom (in the logic sense) in my parents' religious household. It's incredibly confusing to see good and respectable people (like your friend) so eager to debase themselves with this humor.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

If you wanted your scenario to be equivalent, you should have had the men making jokes about the size of their dicks. If the two men at PyCon were making jokes about how virgin vaginas were the best, I don't think they would be getting the outpouring of support that they seem to be getting from the tech community. You're very bad at crafting illuminating tales.

I wasn't trying to sketch an equivalent situation.

He said he couldn't understand why the jokes were a problem. I tried to help him understand. In particular, to viscerally understand the experience of being unsafe, and how a joke can contribute to that.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#269
I 100% agree. I think we need to enforce fair and strict rules for both genders instead of going soft on one and going hard on the other just because they're from gender 'x'. I think if someone is wrong, they are definitely wrong, irrespective of their genders. And as for Adria's case, I can tell you honestly that she adds 0% value to the women community - There are many people who use feminism to make things fair for them, then there are people like Adria who just use feminism as a personal weaponry to take down people against whom she's had personal vendatta. I think females like Adria who add no value to both communities - Male or Female should rot in hell (considering the fact that she got men with kids and children and wives to support fired, stranded)

Re: The PyCon Incident

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously suggesting the code of conduct applies to PRIVATE conversations between TWO people who obviously know each other? It is not like they meant to offend somebody. I am assuming they weren't talking loudly but rather meant to converse between each other. How I talk to my buddy is no ones fucking business. How about you tell your friend of of those an American, a Russian and a German walk into a bar joke…

If it were private, it wouldn't have happened with people nearby to hear it and the photo wouldn't have depicted dozens of people surrounding.

So you're saying "private" is not in fact, well, "private". I grew up as a kid on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in Eastern Europe, where as it happens walls had ears and "private" was not in fact "private". To see this stuff repeating 25 years later in the free world is scary.
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