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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#431

Post by maxcan »

wpietri wrote: post #191
Joeboy wrote: 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…

Also, would this apply to the large, ridiculously buff guys, very obviously gay guys in my gym (Fitness SF Soma) who regularly leer at me and occasionally hit on me? In my experience all that happens is that when they figure out I'm not interested, they are quite friendly and I get to know more people in my new neighborhood.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#432

Post by reeses »

revelation wrote: post #141
djcapelis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot, in good conscience, ever do business with a company that supports that behavior. I think we need to stop doing this bullshit in general. I'd much rather have our community check each other and shame each other on Twitter than having employers step in and decide that thing X or thing Y is not okay for their employees to say in their personal capacity at a conference or on Twitter. As far as I've heard, Adr…

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.

It's also part of her branding. She consults and her primary web site is "butyoureagirl.com". It's completely appropriate for her to tweet her opinion.

The thing I took from the photo (which I agree was a bit much) was that this woman of color was surrounded by a bunch of white dudes with corrective lenses. There was a man of color farther back, but diversity was not on display.

One of the guys even had a weak smile as if he was thinking,"ohmanagirlislookingatmeandtakingmypictureimayloveher." But I'm assuming he's straight, which is my own lens on the moment.

I hope that her goal was to portray that lack of diversity rather than to shame the two participants in the conversation.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#433

Post by obstacle1 »

djcapelis wrote: post #125
josh2600 wrote: post #72

Why didn't she just stand up and say something in a loud and authoritative voice? Wouldn't that have lent at least as much credence to her words as her tweet did without the permanent public embarrassment? To put it bluntly, Social media is a complicated echo chamber fomenting sentiment into an explosion of mob mentality. Using it for this sort of point reflects negatively on the perpetrator, but also the victim. The…

> Why didn't she just stand up and say something in a loud and authoritative voice? Because it usually just leads to stigma against the person who speaks up and rarely yields actual change since most people just ignore it or rapidly justify it and minimize what happened and then immediately move on with their lives. You'd know this if you've ever had to deal with this type of thing in a room full of men. Turns out, i…

She had a problem with what the men said. A personal problem. Hers alone. So she should have addressed the problem on her own behalf. Had she stood up and said something TO the perpetrators, one of two things would have happened: they would have stopped the offensive behavior, or they would have ignored her and continued. If the former, she wins because the behavior that offends her stops; if the latter, she wins because she can take her complaint to conference organizers and have them kicked out, ending her problem. The latter case has the extra benefit of making the guys look like complete assholes for ignoring her, and would likely gain her sympathy from lookers-on.

Instead we have her comparing herself to Joan of Arc and claiming to have started this passive-aggressive witch hunt in the name of All Future Girl/Female Programmers Ever. It is hard to describe how much this kind of thing sets back tech culture. One step forward...

Re: The PyCon Incident

#434

Post by Domenic_S »

mturmon wrote: post #327
SODaniel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to make sexually explicit jokes in private at a public conference is absolute ludicrous. No question that the offender here is the person posting this out of context and seemingly out of spite.

Remember, they were literally in a crowded auditorium with hundreds of people around them. It's just not private. If you happen to work in California, you should know that this kind of remark, if repeated and unwelcome, would constitute harassment. If the person concerned was in management at a company, that's a problem. As for her reporting method, the conference organizers specifically say they want information in…

> If you happen to work in California, you should know that this kind of remark, if repeated and unwelcome, would constitute harassment.

True, but unwelcome is key. How do you know if a remark is unwelcome? Someone tells you so -- either the offended or HR (whom the offended told). They don't post it on Twitter or blog about it, they talk about it with people in a position to correct the problem.

I know plenty of women who wouldn't feel the least bit offended by a dongle joke -- point being, you can't say "well there's a woman in earshot, better turn on the woman filter."

Personally I believe you should make an honest effort to behave professionally, especially in the presence of folks you don't know, but different folks have different yardsticks for this. That's why you communicate.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#435

Post by djcapelis »

josh2600 wrote: post #338
djcapelis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn't she just stand up and say something in a loud and authoritative voice? Because it usually just leads to stigma against the person who speaks up and rarely yields actual change since most people just ignore it or rapidly justify it and minimize what happened and then immediately move on with their lives. You'd know this if you've ever had to deal with this type of thing in a room full of men. Turns out, i…

I don't think it's ok to just say "she's a woman so she automatically will be crucified if she speaks up". To me that's much more damaging than the initial sentiment of speaking up in the first place and the potential damage therein. I believe that you're perpetuating the idea that women aren't on a level playing field by repeating that point. Whether or not it's true, repeating it does nothing to solve the problem.…

> I don't think it's ok to just say "she's a woman so she automatically will be crucified if she speaks up"

That is in fact not what I said. What I said was more along the lines that you're in a bad position to be giving advice on what women should do when they encounter this situation.

(And for what it's worth, if you were a woman (which I made the assumption from your username that you weren't, feel free to correct me) I would write the same thing except I would say "other women". I don't think it's terribly productive for anyone to spend a lot of time telling someone else how to raise a point in a situation they weren't a party to.)

> I believe that you're perpetuating the idea that women aren't on a level playing field by repeating that point.

I happen to know that women are not on a level playing field in tech and I happen to chose not to pretend like the world is a different place than it is.

> what would you say should've been done if being loud or being quiet have negative consequences?

I think it's important to respect an individual's choice in terms of how they react to dealing with a situation they find problematic.

Which isn't to say someone's actions can't be questioned, but engaging in a discussion of how you think someone that isn't you and who was in a situation you weren't in should have gone about raising a point seems a lot less useful than actually addressing the point they were trying to raise.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#436

Post by [deleted] »

largesse wrote: post #285

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…

[deleted]

Re: The PyCon Incident

#437

Post by mkr-hn »

This situation is packed with a lot of cross-talk, strawpeople [1], and derailing exaggeration. I don't know how to unravel it when everyone is so primed to get up on soapboxes and opine about things they don't understand.

[1] I used this word back when I thought feminists were a bunch of idiots. It sounds better to me. Get off your soapbox.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#438

Post by xymostech »

mturmon wrote: post #341
rhizome wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact, if you read her blog post about all of this, she recommends the same thing: What has to change is that everyone must take personal accountability and speak up when they hear something that isn’t ok. It takes three words to make a difference: “That’s not cool.” However, she appears to have not followed her own advice. I think it probably would have turned out differently if she had, though.

The conference organizers ask you to not handle it yourself: see https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-i... , where it says: "Report the harassment incident (preferably in writing) to a conference staff member" If she had asked them to quiet down, it could have turned into a pissing match. Or maybe they would have complied. You never know how it's going to play out.

It does say in the code of conduct that you shouldn't handle it yourself. Also, due to "offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces" I'd agree that what these men were doing was against the code of conduct.

However, she did report it to pycon. She tweeted about: "Can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I'm in lightning talks, top right near stage, 10 rows back". She also says that she "began to contacting the PyCon staff via text message".

What she didn't have to do is take pictures of them without their permission and post their pictures on her public twitter feed. That is the part that steps over the line in my opinion.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#439

Post by jetsnoc »

Didn't she violate the spirit of the PyCon 2013 Code of Conduct? Here's the relevant quote from the CoC: "Note: Public shaming can be counter-productive to building a strong community. PyCon does not condone nor participate in such actions out of respect."

We're trying to build a strong community here.

I personally think she handled this poorly and should be dealt with by the PSF for live tweeting images of attendees and shaming them. She too violated the Code of Conduct. I don't think she should be allowed to attend next year. I'm concerned I will see her next year and she'll misunderstand or misrepresent a comment of mine!

Re: The PyCon Incident

#440

Post by moistgorilla »

jasonlotito wrote: post #281
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.

It has nothing to do with the code of conduct considering that very code says that you are not supposed to take a picture of someone without their express permission.
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