a bit more edgy but some of the same general points - http://pan.sx/Dongle_Jokes.html
The PyCon Incident
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: The PyCon Incident
#692Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fefe is by no means "most Europeans", though he is quite well known as a ("political nerd") blogger in Germany. His comment on the matter, however, is less that of pointing and laughing and more that of worry, especially considering that there were some mild(er/ish) issues along similar lines in the wake of the 29C3. As a quick and dirty(!) translation of this blog post: http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=afb76b8d "The 'sexual…
> Smaller cons might possibly not admit women anymore LOL? Is he serious here? If so I have to say he is misguided about how cons weigh of priorities. No con could get sponsors while denying admittance to all females.
Yeah, that quote from the blog was a bit scary to me, I do understand feeling feeling uncomfortable of saying the wrong thing, but is it so impossible to keep talk professional at a programming conference that the best option would be to keep women out? I don't think it's exactly a huge sacrifice to ask people to make at a professionally oriented conference.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd go so far as to say that--sex and reproduction being the original design goal of any lifeform--we should treat sexually explicit jokes as something not worth getting bent out of shape about, provided they aren't interfering with the task at hand. A couple of dudes making stupid dick jokes to each other in hall of hundreds doesn't really seem to me to be that big an issue.
That would be an ideal situation in a world that isn't sexist. But since our society is , we have to deal with the consequences of that power imbalance. And a lot of things that should in the abstract be harmless are not in reality. Pretending otherwise is just silly -- or defensive, in the case of a lot of folk in this thread.
Mind backing up either of your points? I pull two things from your post:
a) Somehow a world with sexism can't enjoy a simple dirty joke.
b) We each have a personal duty to avoid dirty jokes due to a "power imbalance".
c) There is indeed some sort of power imbalance worth correcting which is not already being corrected.
d) Some generic abstract thing is harmless, but really it actually isn't ~-=in the real world=-~.
e) Viewpoints not in agreement with yours may be dismissed as silly or defensive.
That's cool and all--would you mind explaining your reasoning?
I don't even disagree with you on several of those points, but as presented you haven't really done anything to aid a genuine conversation.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone takes issue with talking to the PyCon organizers and even having them removed from the conference. The employer made a mistake for sure, but so did your friend. Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.
> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this. I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did. No matter how a…
> elating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability
If the _best_ of her ability is to take a picture, put it on a public forum then tag it with an insult "ass clown" I don't know what to say. Maybe she should lose her job a "developers' advocate"
Re: The PyCon Incident
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 offend…
In my experience, refraining from scatological humor in public settings is an uncontroversial mode of behavior for the most part. I wouldn't call the incident at hand scatological, though, but maybe I'm jaded.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the core of what happened. The problem is it's not the entirety of what happened. We can't use this as an example of the "PyCon system" working, because it's not that - it's some other system where people complain publicly and then PyCon responds - hopefully not purely out of shame (I have absolute faith in the PyCon people and their absolute earnestness, it's just that the ambiguity is there regardless). L…
"The focus on women as opposed to creating an appropriate environment for EVERYONE is a little disappointed." This is one of the "nuances" where I wasn't completely in accord with you. I agree that it would have been better (and made her seem less opportunistic and attention-seeking) if she had made the point that this kind of behavior was unproductive for everyone, whether straight white nerd man-boys, children, wom…
That's fair.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am indeed getting a feeling of discomfort, because I feel some responsibility to challenge what I perceive to be a homophobic comment. I suppose that is similar to what Adria felt at Pycon. Imagine you ended up in a gay bar, and two men were making crappy double-entendres about github repos. If that's scary, you're the one with the problem.
No homophobia is involved. Males are the perpetrators of most of the sexual assault in the world, so in trying to create a scenario that would make you identify with the victim, I used a male perp. You could also try imagining yourself in prison, or in the hands of dirty cops. But those are rare experiences, whereas everybody has gotten caught in the rain, so I started with that.
Because anal prison rape is a fair analogy for a bad dongle joke at Pycon? In all seriousness, how do you think the situation you described is at all similar to what happened at Pycon? Are you saying that Pycon is an event of similar hostility to prison - if the attendee is a woman? Please. This is beyond ridiculous.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty obvious they fired the wrong person here. If someone worked for me and posted inflammatory images/statements about/involving a co-worker they would be the one needing to worry about their job.
Please clarify if it is in fact the policy of the company you work at that employees should be "worrying about their job" based on the contents of their Twitter accounts. If so, please let me know so I can ensure that I never work with you.
Her job title is "evangelist" and her work is to be the public face for developers and to promote Sendgrid to developers. Any sane developer, male or female, will now keep at least out of earshot from her and won't engage in any private communication with her.
Why risk your career to talk to her about the benefits of using Sendgrid? No thanks I'll talk to the reps from Mailgun/Postmark where I don't run the risk of my face getting blasted all over the internet and my career ruined over a misunderstood joke. She's in PR, by posting their faces she must or at least should have known what she was doing to those developers.
I'd have a very different opinion if she was a 22-year-old developer without much media experience who quickly tweeted the photo. But she essentially works as an evangelist (sales/promotions?) and has been featured in The Rachel Maddow Show, NPR, Computerworld, The Associate Press, Inc.com, Black Enterprise, Pioneer Press [http://www.crunchbase.com/person/adria-richards]. She works in social media and she did what she did at least partly for her own publicity.....well it worked but it cost two people their jobs.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this. I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did. No matter how a…
"I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did." That doesn't follow -- you're begging the question. Why is disclosing something public, if well detailed, not irresponsible when it can cause harm (as this situatio…
I don't think it's fair to hold witnesses and reporters responsible for the consequences of telling the truth. The only person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking.
I can't quite understand your last sentence, but if you are looking for people telling women that they are irresponsible for not speaking up, just read the comments on this recent discussion of the Steubenville rape:
http://www.underthegunreview.net/2013/03/18/henry-rollins-co...
There are quite a number of people there telling women that they are morally obligated to speak up when something bad happens.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why did this person's employer fire them? I certainly wouldn't fire anyone for this reason and I would hire someone who made dick jokes for sure. Sorry, what? Two employees go to a conference, on paid time, wear your company's swag, and have around their necks badges which, if this is like other cons, has your company's name on it. Then they say something about big dongles and forking repos -- just gross -- at an…
I don't find that comment "gross" at all. If I fired everyone who said "gross" things at work or at conferences, we'd have no employees, but we clearly have different definitions of gross. I would however, be annoyed if someone said those things to a client. But I bet you wouldn't even bat an eyelash if I made those jokes and sometimes I worry I have gotten into bad habits with my language because of who I am. I conf…
Actually, what I meant by gross was just the idea of these guys sitting around making innuendo within earshot of a public audience. Not the specific joke, do we even know what it was?
Frankly, I have a hard time believing your position is genuine and well-considered. On the one hand, you understand why you wouldn't want employees talking this to a client. But as a walking billboard for your company in front of a random audience whose only unifying trait is an interest in Python, you can't understand why it'd be a problem?
And the idea that you'd have no employees is, um, what? You've never worked in a place where people behave like professional, competent people who err on the side of caution when choosing whether or not to make a penis joke? Let me tell you, there are a lot of places which are able to hire and retain employees just fine.