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Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

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Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#101

Post by raganwald »

Udo wrote: post #17
anankastic wrote: post #5

So Adria Richards has pulled shit like this before? Seems like she just does most of this stuff for attention... too bad she took it too far this time and bit off more than she could chew.

There is definitely a pattern recognizable from her writing style down to her topic choices and views on these things. Some of these actions also look in no small way hypocritical. However, this discussion is already so extremely loaded with such an insane amount of subtext and misplaced projections done by people who feel reminded of their own traumas, it's hugely unhelpful to launch into a character critique of Ric…

This is exactly how rape trials used to be conducted. The victim would be put on the stand and critiqued about every single relationship she had ever had, with the defence bringing all of her skeletons out in a manner carefully calculated to seem reasonable, fair, and balanced.

I'm fifty. I could put together two blog posts about myself, one of which would make me seem like a saint, the other a demon, and both would be factually correct. Which one you read right after I got into some hot water could seriously skew your feelings about my role in events.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#102

Post by SeanLuke »

I'm interested in a different aspect here than the discussion of sexism and who fired whom at this point. If you're running a blog as a public evangelist for a company, and twitter is part of that public presence, and you emit a tweet which includes a picture of people and criticism of them without their permission, surely this constitutes a violation of commercial use-of-likeness laws in most states, doesn't it?

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#103

Post by michaelochurch »

WalterSear wrote: post #94
samiur1204 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Even though I'm sure Adria has been putting up with tons of real sexism over the years in the tech industry, and that this may have been the figurative straw on the camel's back, this is definitely the wrong thing to focus on. Sex jokes are definitely not necessarily sexist. These guys were perhaps a little crude, and their puns maybe horrible, but they were essentially harmless and at worst, just annoying. W…

Not puns - just one pun. The repo forking was, though informal, a thoroughly unpurient and non-sexual comment that she read meaning into.

Repo forking is kid stuff. Back in my day, we fscked and we meant it.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#104

Post by brador »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #92
smokeyj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moreover, this is not due to some personal flaw on their parts: it's simply how we, as human beings, are built. This. We just witnessed a snowball turn into an avalanch. I know I've experienced this in personal relationships more than once. Emotions make us great and they make us terrible. Which gave me an idea: A bug tracker for relationships. Addressing a problem immediately sounds good on paper, but we often nee…

It was hilarious: http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Beta_Test_Initiation

Who's writing all that content for Wikia (a for profit wiki)? it's starting to rival wikipedia.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#105

Post by samiur1204 »

WalterSear wrote: post #94
samiur1204 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Even though I'm sure Adria has been putting up with tons of real sexism over the years in the tech industry, and that this may have been the figurative straw on the camel's back, this is definitely the wrong thing to focus on. Sex jokes are definitely not necessarily sexist. These guys were perhaps a little crude, and their puns maybe horrible, but they were essentially harmless and at worst, just annoying. W…

Not puns - just one pun. The repo forking was, though informal, a thoroughly unpurient and non-sexual comment that she read meaning into.

She's allowed to be offended with those comments (or single pun), but the method of communicating her offense was definitely not called for.

And honestly, even if it were sexual, it isn't sexist. I think that's a distinction that certainly needs to be made. Calling Adria a c*nt and other horrible things online definitely is sexist though.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#106

Post by sergiotapia »

cheald wrote: post #99
michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

You could just say "Don't be an asshole". Assholes are gender-neutral! :D

As a dolphin I am offended. I'm gonna sic my twitter followers on you.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#107

Post by niggler »

michaelochurch wrote: post #93
niggler wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that PlayHaven probably sponsored his participation in PyCon and he would have been treated as a representative of the company. If they have standards of conduct (probably codified in some employee manual) there are probably contingencies for this exact circumstance which allow them to fire him.

Actually, sexual harassment laws that actually exist are reasonable and conservative. There are a few women who try to sue over dick jokes, and "men's rights" characters who make a big deal out of it when that happens-- just like people blow the McDonalds case out of proportion (short synopsis: McD was in the wrong for bad cup design and serving over 160F/70C, the court assigned her partial blame, and she originally…

"No court would consider him guilty of anything for a joke about a dongle."

I'm not an employee of playhaven, but I'm sure new employees sign employment agreements. Usually those agreements reference standards of conduct and that violations can result in termination. The court would have to establish that the employment agreement is null and void, which is a much harder challenge.

"I doubt his company had a sexual harassment policy that was substantially more aggressive than what the law provides."

What we don't know is if employees of playhaven complained about his banter. If they did, and he was informed and asked to stop, then it's his fault.

"He should be able to get defamation"

He might get defamation from her but not from PlayHaven.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#108

Post by zeteo »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

>I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven

It's interesting that the story is about Adria and mr-hank when, in fact, it should be about their respective companies. There are probably thousands of tweets posted everyday by people who got offended with inappropriate jokes - many of them at work. The real story is about the decisions of the respective HR / management to fire them. Aria didn't overreact more than PlayHaven HR, and she was less affected by mr-hank than by the SendGrid CEO laying her off. These people took the real decisions and they're hardly in the public eye.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#109

Post by danielweber »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #24
[deleted] wrote: post #9

[deleted]

I don't think trying to get all analytic and Freudian about her state of mind is either 1) Intellectually honest (since you most likely don't know anything about her) 2) Useful in the scope of this discussion I'm not at all advocating for or against her actions, I'm too remote from the affair to be judge of anything, but please let's not let it slip on a personal terrain, you're simply putting personal theories on th…

Yeah, if we got rid of everyone from tech that had personal issues, there would be about 2 people left in it. "Having issues" isn't a sin and we should leave that alone.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#110

Post by scotty79 »

cglee wrote: post #59
ramblerman wrote: post #31

Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the instigator needs to apologize (for sexism). People get offended for all kinds of things, nobody can claim a monopoloy on that. ( http://imgur.com/EX5v4 stephen fry quote) - If they would both have been gay and talking about a homosexual topic, someone in that room would b…

Discussions like this seem to always come back to a sense of "fairness". It's not about being fair, but about how situations make people feel. Majority-group members tend to brush away the sensitivities of minority-group members. If you're straight, you can walk hand-in-hand with your spouse without issue. You may even be able to embrace publicly, and kiss, hug and display all kinds of PDA. Gay couples can't do that…

My country has a law about offending religion. Almost whole population is to some degree religious. So not only minorities get offended.

Recently local pop star was tried and sentenced because she said that Bible was written by heavily pissed and baked blokes and some people got offended.

Protecting the offended can be a tool for bullying people that speak their mind or behave true to themselves.

One might think that in this age of intense communication people would grow thinker skin. But Americans got more fragile instead.

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