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SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

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Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#501

Post by jack-r-abbit »

kyle_wm wrote: post #497
Proleps wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these things are hard >> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along. Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lync…

"lynching" has a very well-established racial subtext in the US... I'm sure this person didn't intend it that way, but she pointed it out and he apologized, all of which seems completely reasonable.

well... he used the word innocently, then she pointed it out she was offended and he apologized for her misunderstanding him... yes, that was reasonable (to an extent). But then, not willing to let it be, she continued to throw race in his face... leaving him not much choice but to continue to defend himself. That is pretty far out there to me.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#502

Post by s_baby »

king_jester wrote: post #468
s_baby wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd wave isn't the leading edge or majority but it's still a huge part of the ecosystem. Third Wave feminist might not commit to any one framework but they are often perfectly happy to take on the language of 2nd wave feminism when it's relevant to do so. When the stars align, these people take on the language of bigotry.

I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. 2nd wave feminism has problems for sure, but they also got a lot right and and 2nd wavers have helped shaped the state of society today. Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished. If you want to talk about the specif…

>Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.

This is still true today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly#Views_on_men

>If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.

First and foremost is the double standard afforded to 2nd wave bigotry. The smallest sexist offense incites a twittersphere rabble. Where is the rabble against transphobia taught by 2nd wave professors? Where is the rabble against the blatant misandry? Where is the rabble against anglo-centrism? All I've ever seen is a token effort. If these 2 men deserve to be kicked out of the convention, fired, and shamed then that more than equally applies to the bigots harbored by gender studies institutions. There's no good reason for such double standards.

3rd wave feminists will defend the inclusion of such bigotry through the lense of postmodern relativity but again such inclusion is not afforded to "outsiders" and the distinction between in-group and out-group is arbitrary.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#503

Post by WalterSear »

rmc wrote: post #352
WalterSear wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want her to apologize for inappropriately publicly shaming them, and the actions that resulted from that.

Yeah, it's better if women don't speak up about the sexual jokes at conferences

Tweeted from the same conference:

"@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint"

Joking about sexual humiliation is less offensive than whispering 'dongle' in a crowded theater?

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#504

Post by Tichy »

alxp wrote: post #494
Tichy wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that taking offense is always reasonable, or whoever feels offended is always right. Also, playing the emotion card (it hurts my feelings/sensibilities) is a way to excert power and control.

> It isn't always reasonable, being called out for shitty behaviour is step one, step two is either you apologize because you realize you were in the wrong, or you have a discussion and hopefully both parties understand each other better at the end. The idea that women have a hot branding iron with them where ever they go that they can use to permanently stamp the word 'sexist' onto whomever they like at the slightes…

Yeah, utterly silly, just like dongle-gate.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#505

Post by smsm42 »

Proleps wrote: post #428
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these things are hard BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along. > automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone. Impossible. Everything is capable o…

> these things are hard >> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along. Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lync…

This happens all the time in public politics, when opposing sides playing gotcha with each other and words like "smart" or "golf" can be reinterpreted as racist insults. But there is a cutthroat world where flinging dirt at your opponent may be your only way to get ahead. Sad to see it invade other aspects of life to.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#506

Post by mc32 »

cjbprime wrote: post #482
georgeorwell wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you just threw up two different straw (wo)men here. It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism. The examples you gave are sexism. If the two guys at PyCon had directed the jokes at Adria while also excluding…

> It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". It is sexist to create a sexualized environment at a tech conference, because the consequences of that environment hurt women much more than they hurt men; it's a failure to show consideration to women. mr-hank has admitted that he made a sexual joke about big dongles and apologized for it. Making sexual jokes about big dongles is creating…

It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist. For example, if we were to look at sexual repartee in France[1], one would notice sexuality in normal conversation. Among friends, friends of friends and friends and the significant others of friends, between bosses and staff, etc. It's imbued in their culture. [Some] Anglos tend to see this as archaic and sexist, Gallics see it as part of their culture and don't see the puritanical sexist POV.[2] The truth may lie somewhere in between. I.e. A functioning work environment need not be sterile, one which denies human tendencies.

[1] http://www.parisvoice.com/books-on-france/581-la-seduction-h... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/europe/01iht-letter0...

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#507

Post by jlgreco »

scarmig wrote: post #434
doktrin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Next to what? Adria didn't fire anyone... Being slandered on Twitter is far from non-trivial. I too would walk on eggshells in the company of someone with a track record of over-reacting like this.

Who's being slandered, exactly? They did tell the sexist jokes, right?

As far as I can tell the jokes were anatomical, at worse sexual. I find myself unable to bend my mind into seeing them as sexist.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#508

Post by smsm42 »

blhack wrote: post #319
RougeFemme wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first got into tech, I didn't want to be viewed as different, either. Even when guys would tell me in very blatant racist/sexist ways that I was different and that that difference made me inferior, I tried very hard to be "just like Mike". But now I say that in all the ways that make me successful professionally , I'm like you. But in some ways, I'm different. And that should be OK. And in many ways, outside o…

I would never argue that you have to act like a boy to get respect. That would be horrible. And I agree that people are different. I was, I'm sure, [partially due to my chromosomes and reproductive organs] raised in a different context than you. This doesn't make one of us better than the other, it just makes us different from one another. But what Adria has done here, and why I think it is so damaging to what I cons…

>>> but she framed it in such a way that implied that the comments were offensive to women not to her -- as if "women" is one cohesive group that is inherently different than men, who dominate the tech field.

This. It's kind of weird to hear people who complain about stereotyping engaging in stereotyping in the very comment they do the complaint, by claiming something is true for all men or women and if it's true for them, it must be true for other people sharing some defined identity aspect with them. I think it would be an improvement if one could say "it was offensive to me" without turning it into a political case that all world must polarize around.

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#509

Post by [deleted] »

Aloisius wrote: post #95

I can't help but feel that if I, as a male, had posted the same tweet in response to some obnoxious guys behind me making situationally inappropriate comments and I was in her shoes as an evangelist at the time, no one would have batted an eye. Granted, I probably wouldn't have written a long blog post about it, but I've certainly talked to event organizers in the past about obnoxious people before and had them eject…

[deleted]

Re: SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas

#510

Post by samiur1204 »

ericabiz wrote: post #217
blhack wrote: post #20

I really wish that this whole thing could have ended amicably (perhaps with Adria apologizing to the devs [by the way, the guy who was fired has already publicly apologized]). It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore. I wo…

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women." Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling…

Erica, I too am very disheartened by the amount sexism in our industry. As a male feminist who is very passionate about engineering, technology and entrepreneurship, it's hard to see that many of my peers act in such ways. However, sex jokes are not inherently sexist. They are perhaps crude, but don't have to be sexist. From the surface, the comments of these developers seem just sophomoric and crude, but nothing else. I am a fan of crude jokes as long as they aren't sexist, homophobic or racist. I don't think Adria really had a reason to call them out on grounds of sexism, perhaps just on grounds for being annoying. But she certainly shouldn't have done it with their pictures.

On the other hand, the community's reaction to her has been disgusting. It shows exactly the kind of pervasive sexism that exists in the tech industry. We definitely need to call that out and let them know that it's not okay. It's unacceptable to allow this kind of sexism to happen, much like it's unacceptable for the well-known tech big-wig to be so blatantly sexist in front of you to provoke you. You need to call him out, and so do the others who are with him.

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