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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#761

Post by bluehat »

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…

As a lady I can clearly say this isn't how that situation makes me feel.

Your post makes me feel ashamed though, it assumes a lot about women, that it is probably pretty offensive to homosexuals, and that it is written in an absurd and illegible color which makes me wish you more completely were unaware of how to use a computer.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#762

Post by wpietri »

devilshaircut wrote: post #659
wpietri wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not personally insecure about it. Because my risk of sexual assault is tiny. My point is not that gay people are bad: they aren't. My point is that to understand why women are uncomfortable when things suddenly turn sexual, you have to put yourself in the place of a potential victim of sexual assault.

Your exploitative example of walking into a gay bar is a disgrace. Assuming the record of events are true, the men in question at Pycon were making a joke about penises, not harassing a woman as stated in your analogy. They are two totally different things. Your failed attempt to appeal to homophobic tendencies does not qualify as an argument.

First, I wasn't making an analogy.

Second, there was no harassment in my story. The person at the bar interpreted the comments as about him. But as I was writing the story, I imagine they were talking about something else entirely, and didn't notice him.

Third, I was not attempting to appeal to homophobic tendencies. I was attempting to create a legitimate scenario where an average guy might feel afraid of sexual assault. I couldn't tell the story with straight women; men rarely see women as physically threatening. And I obviously couldn't tell the story with straight men, because a straight man wouldn't feel a risk of sexual assault.

If you've got a better story to help give a guy a visceral fear of sexual assault, I'd like to read it.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#763

Post by bluehat »

Joeboy wrote: post #258
wpietri wrote: post #191

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…

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.

Can we start a gay bar where people make github repo forking jokes or all the drinks are named in such a scheme? I'd love to go to this bar.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#764

Post by paranoiacblack »

jcc80 wrote: post #758
paranoiacblack wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd argue that calling someone a "colossal fucking idiot of the highest caliber" because they did something you don't agree with is hyperbolic and pollutes the discussion. I'm merely teasing that logic so that other people can understand that offense is relative and thus their anecdotes about how they wouldn't be offended or understand anyone for being offended are red herrings.

Unfortunately, it seems to be winning the argument here with several proposing boycotting and swearing against using SendHub in the future if they don't fire her. All the while people seem to think that the problem here is "women are sensitive and don't like dick jokes, we better watch what we say," instead of asking, "how do we fix this?"

Re: The PyCon Incident

#765

Post by wpietri »

devilshaircut wrote: post #689
wpietri wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am seriously saying that I have talked with people who have been made uncomfortable by sexual jokes in non-sexual contexts, and that they have told me that part of their discomfort came from fear. Fear that they were in a situation where sexual harassment or sexual assault was a sudden possibility.

Are you claiming that in the incident in question, a conclusion that she was in imminent danger of sexual assault is what motivated her to say these things? It seems beyond far-fetched but assume that is how she felt at the time. This does not exempt her from us thinking critically about whether or not that is a fair - much less: rational - conclusion. What in the context of the situation as it has been described wou…

> Are you claiming that in the incident in question, a conclusion that she was in imminent danger of sexual assault is what motivated her to say these things?

No. I am not saying that.

I am trying to say that sexualizing a professional, non-sexual context can trigger legitimate fears.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#766

Post by tom399 »

blhack wrote: 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…

Adria tweeted that SendGrid supports her.

"Hey @mundanematt, it's clear from the last 24 hours you're a bully. @SendGrid supports me. Stop trolling."

Re: The PyCon Incident

#767

Post by [deleted] »

devilshaircut wrote: post #707
wpietri wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Thanks for the civilized reply. I understand you don't get it. I'm saying that's partly because you don't have a visceral fear of sexual assault. You also probably don't have much experience with unwanted sexual advances. And you've probably never been sexually harassed. You also may not have experienced being a visibly different minority in a situation where that raises your risk of unpleasantness or violence. I…

Your invocation of some obscure situation where you would feel legitimately threatened in a sexual way has nothing to do with the reality of what happened. It's true that women can be put into sexually threatening situations. It's patently false that what happened at Pycon is an example of one.

[deleted]

Re: The PyCon Incident

#768

Post by jamesaguilar »

cupcake-unicorn wrote: post #692
jamesaguilar wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not even scary to me. It's just outlandish and misguided, and demonstrates that his opinions are not firmly grounded in reality.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#769

Post by tom399 »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #668

I canceled my SendGrid in response. http://cl.ly/image/412O0S0Y003y I can't really consider developing for a company whose own evangelist might get me fired one day for something similarly trivial.

I hope you told them why you canceled.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#770

Post by tom399 »

vor_ wrote: post #318
songzme wrote: post #157

This is blown way out of proportion. Adria has the right to post what bothers her on her blog. It is her blog. Read it and get over it. No one should get fired over this, and Sendgrid does not have to respond to something this trivial. If playhaven really fired Mr-Hank over this, then it's probably a shitty place to work anyways. I work in a place where no matter what mistakes I make, TokBox will always have my back.…

Nobody's arguing Adria doesn't have the right to post what bothers her on her blog. Just as much, the community has the right to vocalize their disagreement with her actions because of their potential consequences. On Twitter and elsewhere, many women have been criticizing her, not just for her overreaction to a type of humor they themselves use, but also because of the backwards effect on gender equality in tech thi…

Because she seems to play by a different set of rules than what she holds others accountable for.
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