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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#281

Post by jasonlotito »

sergiotapia wrote: post #17

I already sent SendGrid's sales department an email that I will boycott their company and recommend others do so as well moving forward. Where I work we were considering between SendGrid or Mandrill and this incident practically made our choice for us. We cannot and _will not_ support a company that backs[1] a person like this. [1] - https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328

So, just to be clear, you are boycotting a company that employees someone who upholds the code of conduct agreed to by all attendees of pycon, but make no mention of the company that actually fired the guy.

Gotcha.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#282

Post by raphman »

blhack wrote: post #31
ajross wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's cool down a little here. An irresponsible tweet doesn't really constitute a "personal vendetta" (it's not even personal -- as far as I can tell she never knew their names). And while the post was (apparently, I don't know what the evidence here is) the proximate cause, you really can't say that she "got [him] fired", as she wasn't the employer nor did she advocate for his termination. It's just a bad situation…

It went further than that, though. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...

Am I the only one who gets a CloudFlare captcha (from two completely different German IP addresses ) when trying to access the blog?

  Your IP address based on the country, region or network has been flagged by the website owner.
  Completing the challenge above proves you are a human and gives you temporary access. You can ask the website owner to permanently whitelist you.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#283

Post by AnIrishDuck »

revelation wrote: post #175
danilocampos wrote: post #22

Couple pieces to this. First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer. Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here. The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke. From PyCon's code of conduct: "All communication should…

Their code of conduct also states that you may not take pictures of people without their express consent. I don't know why people concentrate on the issue of "who said what", that is such an extremely slippery slope I wouldn't dare going into it as a conference organizer. But taking pictures (and then spreading them to your followers) is a very, very clear no go.

I think this point is key. There's plenty of blame on both sides here.

Yes, these kinds of jokes are immature and this conduct was ill advised.

That said, taking ambush pictures of nonconsenting parties and very publicly shaming them shouldn't be your go-to response. I'd say that response was completely disproportionate to the initial crime.

Far better to throw an (in person) "come on guys, be professional" their way and escalate from there. If that's too confrontational for your tastes, go talk to one of the PyCon volunteers and ask them to step in. I think it's kind of ridiculous that they (PyCon staff) didn't get a chance to resolve this issue discretely and had to hear about it alongside however many thousand other people.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#284

Post by tadfisher »

paranoiacblack wrote: post #247
tadfisher wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we need to remain eternally vigilant of the thousands of years of sexism during our day-to-day dealings? We need to be constantly thinking of the women and minorities in the room before we say anything? How is this being gender-neutral?

You don't need to be constantly thinking of women and minorities in the room before you say anything. But if you say something offensive to women or minorities, they might take offense, surprisingly enough. And yeah, this is the reason for ethnic and women studies classes in the school setting. Understanding a little bit about sexism and racism is a good way to remove them from your lifestyle and speech patterns. > H…

> But if you say something offensive to women or minorities, they might take offense, surprisingly enough.

Possibly. Or, they could be cool with it. Or, they could refrain from passing their judgment to the rest of the world and inform me that what I said was offensive. The thing is, this is less about being aware of women and minorities and more about knowing if there are any people in the room who are easily offended by scatological humor.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#285

Post by largesse »

In fact, the next day she made a phallus joke herself (http://imgur.com/7XGY8wB). This suggests that her motivations may be questionable.

When you read her blog, you notice that she felt that she was taking a stand for other women and for girls who may want to enter the industry. In a way, this is not offense, it is meta-offense. She wasn't offended as much as she was thinking about the effect of the men's actions on others. To me, that is a very real problem. You can not play the sensitivity card on behalf of others. It is a bankrupt position, and as this incident shows, extremely dangerous.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#286

Post by pencilcode »

kanja wrote: post #5

Adria's actions really clearly violated the pycon code of conduct - has there been an official response yet?

Hmm, no. If anyone did, it the guys. As for them being fired, it was excessive but that responsability lies with their employers. Not her.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#287

Post by djcapelis »

revelation wrote: post #263
djcapelis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's an increasingly blurry line between someone's employment status and someone's personal views and I think that should be extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved and generally means our community will be less likely to engage in honest and forthright dialog as people with personal views.

And I think the extent of this is a whole big can of worms I'm not sure I'm in a great position to address as a researcher at a university with surprising levels of freedom to shoot my mouth off and not care what anyone else thinks.

While I personally know plenty of people in evangelist roles and while I consider them friends, I can't say I'm qualified to really talk about where a line should be wrt separating their personal and professional speech. I hope someone who is qualified to discuss it approaches this point, because I think it is worth discussing and increasingly important.

tl;dr: I really hope this discussion continues but I'm probably not the right person to talk about it down this particular wormhole.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#288

Post by rdl »

Based on just this pastebin, I'd be inclined toward crucifying her.

However, after reading her longer blog post (http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...), it seems pretty clear that the guys were in the wrong for a professional setting (as were several others at the conference). Ideally, another person who was less personally offended would have said something (such as a coworker -- if I heard a coworker making potentially EOE/etc. offensive comments, I'd just say "hey, not appropriate, we could get in trouble for that".) and it would have gotten resolved politely. She has some elements of "concern troll" going on, but not unjustifiably.

I have no real problem with people being offensive at social events if they want to be, or at a conference on their own dime (although it's stupid, and if the consequences are their professional reputation, that's their own fault), but if you're identified as an employee of a company or representing another organization, you have to abide by that organization's code of contact.

(Which is why my car has no identifying marks beyond a license plate, and why I never wear corporate logo-wear; I like being able to be an asshole when necessary or appropriate without representing anything but myself.)

Re: The PyCon Incident

#289

Post by ignostic »

The author slams Adria for taking the "cowardly" way out, all while remaining completely anonymous. It takes courage to accuse someone in public. It's a shame the accuser lacks courage.

The author's claim, "You've taken feminism in tech a step backwards" stinks of sensationalism in the same way Adrias closing sentence, "Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard."

Get a grip, people.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#290

Post by sp332 »

sylvinus wrote: post #230
blhack wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went further than that, though. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...

Cross-posting my held-in-moderation comment to her post here: "I calculated my next steps." => I'm sorry but that just feels wrong. You actively tried to harm these guys (and succeeded). I'm pretty sure they weren't "calculating" their bad jokes to hurt your feelings. Instead of an absurdly long post you should probably just have mentioned their bad taste, apologised for getting somebody fired and tried to resolve th…

Thinking before you act is a good idea. As she mentioned, she didn't feel like part of the community so it's not really her job to police the event. Her description of the organizers' reaction seems pretty OK. I don't see how she can be held responsible for a guy being fired, that seems like an overreaction by the company.
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