Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The PyCon Incident

pastebin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: The PyCon Incident

#751

Post by groby_b »

darkarmani wrote: post #734
groby_b wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait - being treated with professional courtesy is a privilege women have? Why did nobody ever tell me? Sex jokes have no place in the work place. Period. No matter the gender of the narrator or the audience.

> being treated with professional courtesy is a privilege Did any of the people involved act with professional courtesy?

Quoting from the post I replied to

> women want to be equal, but they want to keep certain privileges. They want to be accepted by men in tech as equals, but be spared sex jokes

So, according to that, being spared sex jokes is a privilege that women enjoy. It also happens to fall under professional courtesy. Hence my comment.

None of that is directly related to the people involved.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#752

Post by mwetzler »

mamoswined wrote: post #249
katbyte wrote: post #117

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…

as "a women in tech" (eeew) I also agree. It's like people don't know the difference between misogyny, which should be unacceptable, and bawdiness, which is a matter of taste. She must be really sheltered. 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.

I'm surprised by the "eeew" attached to being a woman in tech. Is there really that much stigma with saying "I am a woman"? I get that we all just want to be technologists and not "female technologists" but it's a red flag that people use this kind of mitigating speech when sharing their views.

It's unfair to assume Adria is "sheltered". In fact she has dealt with a great deal more than most of us, from domestic abuse to foster care. She has overcome immense barriers.

Please don't be quick to judge people as sheltered or oversensitive. Many people, or their loved ones, have experienced violence, abuse, sexism, racism, and other hardships that most of us couldn't imagine. What is offensive to one of us may not be obvious to the rest.

Adria is being physically threatened and having racial and misogynistic slurs thrown at her over this incident.

It breaks my heart to see so many rallying against her at a time when she really needs our support. Some truly horrific things are happening to her as a result of this tweet, whose consequences she could have never intended or imagined.

You don't have to agree with her views and her actions to agree that no one in our community deserves this.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#753

Post by mturmon »

xymostech wrote: post #438
mturmon wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Agreed. What she did was sub-optimal.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#754

Post by groby_b »

eyko wrote: post #680
groby_b wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not commenting on the "getting fired" part. That's a tricky decision, but keep in mind the people in question were there as "Evangelists". Which means you really want to watch what you say. If you spoke about the cool Mexican restaurant during the presentation, I'd sure as hell call you out on it. But it's still different from the jokes in that it doesn't make anybody feel excluded. Sexual jokes do - they signal…

> Which means you really want to watch what you say. This is what makes politics a comedy central. There's no honesty anymore and everyone's words are calculated as if you're walking on eggs, lest someone feel offended. There is nothing offensive in what I've read so far (dongles, forking) and, seriously, these complaints are beginning to sound like religious zealots complaining about how atheists are offending them…

I don't know which article you read, but the one I'm referring to had a person in a professional capacity, as representative of their company, at a conference.

If you are a spokesperson for a company - and that's what Evangelists are - then, while you're at a professional event, your words should reflect the stance of your company, not your own. That's what you get paid for.

I wouldn't consider this a firing offense (unless it's not the first time), but I wouldn't consider it a career enhancing move either.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#755

Post by anigbrowl »

ceol wrote: post #716
katbyte wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well i could be a smart ass and say a world with face recognition & the internets. Or just point out that in the photo https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464/... you can clearly see both their badges (with names) and their are wearing their companies t-shirt. Also she really should have cropped it because the poor man on the left is going to be mistaken for the one of them now.

"Alex" something? I can't read that. And I think their company might have more than one bearded guy on staff, so it's hardly obvious.

Yeah, but I can, and I found him in 30 seconds. And that's the guy who was not fired, and who may not have anything to apologize for. As best I can tell it was the person sitting to his left that lost his job.

It's disingenuous to dismiss photos as anonymous when it's so easy to either crowdsource or reverse-engineer someone's identity. If you weren't aware of how easy it is, then I politely suggest you're a little naive.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#756

Post by mturmon »

rdtsc wrote: post #615
mturmon wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please be kind and indicate where conference organizers ask you to: 1) post the picture on a world wide forum (twitter) 2) contact them via public channel (twitter) Thank you

Other commenters here noted this before you did, without the false courtesy.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#757

Post by rdl »

mwetzler wrote: post #738
rdl wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear that "crucify" in the context of online discussion means "excoriate in discussion", not track down and nail to a physical cross. :)

Normally I would agree with you but I heard someone on HN posted her address and said they were going to "slit" her. The situation has escalated quite a bit and includes actual violent threats against Adria.

Yeah, I thought about it a bit more and was going to edit to say (textually) crucify, but it was past the edit window.

I really don't understand WTF is with people. Some guys were mildly to moderately objectionable, to the point where I would have glared or asked them to grow up, and "counseled" them if they worked for or with me. Hypersensitive person goes nuclear in parallel with using appropriate channels (for whatever reasons one may wish to ascribe). Conference responds entirely appropriately. (shitty) employer overreacts. None of this warrants threats of physical violence or anything. And the way to address someone who you may feel is hypersensitive and overreacts to alleged sexism is NOT to actually be sexist and harassing toward her.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#758

Post by jcc80 »

paranoiacblack wrote: post #552
Karunamon wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tweet and a blog post that named and shamed two people, personally, in what I believe to be the biggest example of blowing something out of proportion in recent memory. So if I get this right.. Someone says a joke that offends you, in earshot, but not to you, and you take this as your opportunity to photograph them, get them kicked out of a con, fired, pilloried in public? And then you take to your blog to defend y…

Hmm, ever hear of slippery slope arguments? Because there's clearly a limit to the situation you're describing and clearly offense is relative. So, since you didn't specify any level of severity, let's assume the joke that offended you was about harming someone or themselves. I mean, people say things like "I want to kill the guy the wrote this" or "oh god, this makes me want to kill myself" jokingly. Would it be oka…

You're polluting the discussion with all these hypotheticals. Stick to what actually happened.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#759

Post by mkhattab »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #582

Wow, if half as much attention and thought were put into how to fix real problems with sexism in the tech community instead of on pissy temper tantrums (on both sides), think how much actual progress we'd be able to make.

You're right, if only if it was just pissy temper tantrums. But a person, with a wife and kids, lost their job and quite possibly their livelihood. You could say that it was ultimately his fault for making such jokes but as many have already pointed out this incident does a disservice to women in tech by alienating male developers.

Don't know what else to say. This entire incident seems surreal to me.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#760

Post by jcc80 »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #512
djcapelis wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am super thankful I never went to your school and I really wish we didn't inculcate kids with views like that.

Why? As a member of an organisation, you represent it, willingly or not. It's no different in the "real world", as this case highlights. What do you find so repulsive about it?

The simplest way I can explain this to you is that for various reasons some people enjoy conforming, others don't. And, this case highlights different things about the "real world" to different people.
Post reply on HN