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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#911

Post by vacri »

neya wrote: post #838
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…

Update: Someone has created a change.org petition to have Adria fired. I think it's only fair that she is fired, considering the fact that she put two innocent men's lives at stake. https://www.change.org/petitions/sendgrid-please-fire-adria-... Also: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/374/323/889/give-alex-reid-hi...

Lives at stake? Please get a grip on your hyperbole. One man was fired, and we don't know whether or not he was already skating on thin ice before the event. Richards is guilty of hypocrisy, not reckless endangerment of life.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#912

Post by JPKab »

Joeboy wrote: post #142
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…

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.

It wasn't offensive. I see a lot of cases of ACTUAL, OFFENSIVE sexism on HN. This isn't it.

This is an attention addict using whatever means at her disposal to get attention, without a thought as to the cost to those she uses as pawns.

We all have encountered both males and females that are real victims, and we have also all encountered people who pretend to be offended for attention.

I use to work in the deep south, and down there, the classic "always offended for attention" group are (ok, I'm stereotyping, but its true) are a subset of white, evangelical Christians. They will make a point of becoming offended at ANYTHING, just to show superiority and get attention from their chosen peer group at the same time.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#913

Post by tapan_pandita »

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…

It was completely in her right to turn around and tell the guys to shut up or bring it to the attention of the organisers. However, I don't think that was her intention at all. Her intention was to gain more mileage out of this. She took an issue about a couple of guys being immature and made it a sexism issue.

Based on her previous tweets (the now famous penis joke that she made, a picture playing cards against humanity), I find it difficult to believe she was offended by a dongle joke. I think she saw an opportunity to use this to further her online cred and that's what she did. Her blog post is the less about the incident (and indeed less about tackling sexism) and more about herself (i find the part about the girl in the picture particularly PR-ish). It was a typical PR move that got blown out of proportion.

This in no way justifies what followed on twitter, which was definitely sexist and misogynistic and very unfortunate. IMO this has pretty much pushed back much of the progress made on tackling the real sexism issues in our industry. Seeing a fellow developer get fired over something so benign (at least for most men, it would seem benign) leads to mistrust and political correctness in dealing with women in the workplace (which sucks!).

Re: The PyCon Incident

#914

Post by fingerprinter »

eridius wrote: post #750
fingerprinter wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to let your comment slide until I saw your followup 'downvote' comment below. > The fact is, the way language is interpreted by the listener is far more important than how it was meant by the speaker. This is absurd to the point that I call Poe's Law. Nearly ALL language can be "offensive" in some way shape or form. Someone saying they are "offended" literally means nothing. Intent matters. A lot. Now, co…

Thank you for replying. As I said, I didn't want to take sides. My comment was purely addressing the idea that, because the speaker did not intend the comment to be sexual in nature, that means it was a "fabrication". I do agree with you that the appropriate course of action was to speak to the two men and ask them to cut out the comments. That said, I disagree with your absolutist position. Yes, anything you say cou…

> The point is whether it could reasonably be considered offensive by a reasonable person.

See, you didn't say that the first time. You said "the way listener interpreted the language was far more important". No caveats, no stipulations. Simply adding the word "reasonable" changes nearly everything about what you said. Doesn't make it more right, just makes it less wrong ;)

> And yes, I'd have to say that saying "I want to fork his repo", followed up by "large dongle" phallus jokes, is a reasonable candidate to be considered offensive by someone.

By someone, not by most reasonable people at a pycon conference. Even so, I'm sure a single reasonable person (which Adria has NOT shown herself to be, btw) might get offended by that. So I'll ask. So what? Is personal offense now the benchmark by which we judge what one can and cannot say?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#915

Post by mistercow »

psionski wrote: post #848
mistercow wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's right. A privately run conference asking attendees to behave professionally around other attendees is exactly like the KGB, and is a sure sign that we are sliding downward into totalitarianism.

Of course it is! Either you're free to say anything or you're not free at all. There's no relativism here.

You are free to say anything, and the people who run the conference are free to ask you to leave.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#916

Post by _ak »

jasonlotito wrote: post #857
moistgorilla wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/ Where does it say anything about someone's expressed permission? Doing a search on the page for several words did not bring up anything remotely close. Permission isn't even used.

"harassing photography or recording"

Re: The PyCon Incident

#917

Post by hogu »

I wanted to comment on a argument that is common in many of the comments. Equality doesn't necessarily mean treating people the same. This is because the same policy or action can have different impact on different groups. For example, without maternity leave, women would have to choose between career and having children, whereas while paternity leave is great, most men could have children and keep their career without it. Arguments made should take this into account.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#918

Post by hazov »

wpietri wrote: post #661
hazov wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rape paranoia, if you feel that's fine then good for you, as I see it it's no better than racial profiling.

Sorry, which part is rape paranoia? As a guy, I'm not worried about rape. It very rarely happens to adult men. But that's the problem I'm trying to draw attention to here: a guy's intuition of what is an inoffensive sexual comment will be very different than a woman's, because they face very different risks of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

I wrote both posts in hurry yesterday, now that I read your points (I read whole threads of your posts) I generally agree with you, I think that maybe elaborating my points would be a bit tedious. I also think "rape paranoia" was too harsh a world, as you made me realize, I'm almost 6.4 feet tall, I generally do not know what is to be harassed..

So saying basically about it. Yes I agree with you, women have much more to lose in the situation you described, I do think your initial example was poor, and having good gay friends who suffer because of that made me reply with anger.

Sorry for that.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#919

Post by Karunamon »

paranoiacblack wrote: post #764
jcc80 wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> did something you don't agree with

Let's get one thing straight right now, this isn't just "behavior I don't agree with", I think this kind of crap should be a criminal matter with prison time and/or huge compensatory fines involved.

Barring that, if there is any justice in the world whatsoever, Adria will lose her job as well.

Think about it. Some jackass caused someone to lose their job for no good reason.

That's a blow that would put many of us in a very bad place.

>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?"

I've seen very little of the first sentiment and a great deal of "this person overreacted". Yes, by women too. I don't think the average conventiongoer now needs to watch their back to see if any women are around before making a joke in good faith.

How we fix this? How can any person know in advance if something they're talking about is going to offend some random who might take huge and extraordinary steps to ruin your life?

I'd argue we fix this by making an example of anyone who misuses their power like this. Maybe then the people who like to call a mob to pitchforks will think twice if their target is really deserving of mob justice based on the context of a possibly insensitive fucking joke.

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