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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

#111

Post by Draco6slayer »

niggler wrote: post #67
xoail wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt if there was any other case than the controversy. I doubt that the dev was any where incompetent. I say this simply because of the dev's interest in attending a conference and his company sponsoring it to him using forking and dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals of a good developer and he being happy at his job. I feel that Pay Haven responded in a most defensive way by simply firing him an…

" him using forking and dongles in a sentence... those are simply good signals of a good developer" Pray tell, how does a plebeian joke about dongles signal that a developer is good? "dev's interest in attending a conference and his company sponsoring it" And as for his presence, it's not uncommon for a company to send a key developer and a friendly coworker to conferences, especially when it is far away (so he may j…

I would say that using technical terms in a joking way is definitely a sign of enjoying one's job, and enjoying one's job is definitely a significant data point as to gauging whether one is good at it. If you can talk about your job without criticizing it and laugh, I would say you enjoy what you do and therefore that you do it well.

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

#112

Post by onemorepassword »

So what we know now is that Adria Richards' issues are not just with sexism, offensive behavior in general or gender equality, but that she has an ideological agenda that goes well beyond that.

Her issues with pornography are ideological, in that they aren't shared by many men and women who would take issue with sexist behavior or gender based discrimination. However, like many ideologues, she doesn't make that distinction herself.

And what is also typical for ideologues, she doesn't have any issues with saying or doing things that disproportionately harm people who disagree with her, because they are "the enemy". They're not interested in change, they are interested in winning.

These kind of people will do more harm than good when it comes to fighting sexism in tech. They will actually alienate a lot of women.

(I do however find it inappropriate and borderline sexist to call her a prude. Being against pornography doesn't make you a prude, just like enjoying pornography doesn't make you a sexist pig.)

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

#114

Post by niggler »

ghaff wrote: post #98
niggler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where do you draw the line on sexualisation at a tech conference?" I hope that this discussion helps us get closer to a good answer to that question.

For example, take this pic from LinuxCon last year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitmason/7987595846/ (To be clear, I took this pic because I found it funny, not offensive. I suspect some might find it offensive.)

I don't understand that ad TBH. If they are trying to get males to purchase tee-shirts, wouldnt you want to show a male wearing the tee-shirt? I understand the idea of selling for sexuality, but most retail companies advertise men's clothes with men.

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

#115

Post by Udo »

raganwald wrote: post #101
Udo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This line of rhetorics is exactly the reason why I said that a character critique is unhelpful here, so I'm not sure what your point is but I'm choosing to interpret this as agreeing with me. ;)

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

#116

Post by ghshephard »

michaelochurch wrote: post #103
WalterSear wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm curious - did you consider whether mentioning the name of that filesystem check utility in a public forum might be considered inappropriate? I'm really (honestly) not judging either way, I'm just curious as to whether you checked yourself before posting?

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

#117

Post by Draco6slayer »

samiur1204 wrote: post #105
WalterSear wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is insulting a female inherently sexist? I wouldn't call someone a sexist if they called me a dck or a son of a btch. Obviously the response here is sexist, but calling somebody bad names is not sexist, regardless of their gender.

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

#118

Post by WalterSear »

samiur1204 wrote: post #105
WalterSear wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is she?

She published this joke about sexual humiliation from the same conference:

https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages:

http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png

I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation to thousands, and then, at the same conference, got offended by overhearing joke conflating dongles to genitals.

I agree with you that resorting to sexual slurs is immensely counterproductive and makes one look stupid, but I can also understand why angry people would reach for them, since this is in the line of the discussion. Understand, but not excuse.

Still the point stays - you don't make penis jokes and then get offended by penis jokes.

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

#119

Post by Semaphor »

samiur1204 wrote: post #90
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…

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…

> What we should focus on is the terrible response from the tech community towards Adria.

I still believe (hope?) that those horrible things posted are not from the tech community but rather from a few random trolls and groups like militant mens right people.

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

#120

Post by Torgo »

YooLi wrote: post #86
redthrowaway wrote: post #22

I think the most interesting part of this post was a simple observation that I, for one, hadn't seen elsewhere: We don't know why PlayHaven fired the dev in the first place. Sure, the controversy undoubtedly played a role. But we don't know if the dev was on the ropes, if he wasn't pulling his weight, or if his boss simply didn't like him. This may have been a gross overreaction, or it may have been the straw that br…

By the same token, we don't really know why SendGrid fired Adria. The post mentioned that SendGrid failed by not immediately making a statement (or forcing her to publicly apologize), then over-reacting by firing her too late. But we really don't know what was going on at SendGrid behind the scenes. Maybe they were trying to work with her and she wouldn't change her position, or maybe they just didn't know what to do…

For the last three HN threads I have seen people casting aspersions on the guy who was fired, that maybe there were other factors at play. Now it comes out from someone that knows Richards that she is a bit of a difficult person herself. Maybe there were more factors at play in her firing than simply this event. Of course who knows, but it's fun and easy to cast aspersions!
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