Some people are just surrounded by constant drama...mostly drama created out of thin air. Its a useful trait to have if your surname is "Kardashian".
Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
131–140 of 395 posts
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#132Without 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…
Adria stated they had been talking for a while, indicating there were previous comments. PyCon determined the guys had said something offensive. So, either PyCon lives in fear of Adria, or other people also found the comments to be overtly sexist/sexual. Unless PyCon publishes an investigative report, I doubt we will get the entire story. If you personally don't find the things they said offensive, that's fine, but t…
Wrong.
http://pycon.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappr...
" The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied."
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#133Earlier 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.
not to mention piping those tty's...
(I just had to, I'm sorry guys)
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#134I am just gobsmacked...I can't believe I just read something so thoughtful and well-reasoned...this whole thing should end with this article marked "End Of Thread".
Very much agreed. Whether or not I agree with it, it's very nuanced and avoids the kind of "laying blame for the purpose of laying blame"-type of argument that has dominated any discussion of this absurd series of events. This is a great article with which to start a discussion, not end one. Hopefully the tolerance for less nuanced and more reactionary discussion will abate. I wouldn't put money on it, but I can hope…
I would say it's worth reading even completely outside of this whole circus; "Assume people will be reasonable until they are not." is very wise.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#135Aside from the personal stuff between her and Adria, I think she has a good grasp of the situation. (i.e. I agree with her) However, I find one thing troubling:
> Adria reinforced the idea of us as threats to men, as unreasonable, as hard to work with… as bitches.
(From here addressed to Amanda, should she be unlucky enough to stumble upon this thread) I don't believe you should be worrying about whether what you do reinforces someone else's preconceived notion of your gender. Do you really think someone who already sees women as uppity b-tches would suddenly change their tone just because you don't adhere to their stereotype? No, they're going to write you off as an exception. "No no, you're not like them! You're one of the good ones!" But as soon as you do something they don't like? "What a fucking b-tch. This just proves women don't belong in tech. etc etc"
However, I'm a guy. I don't really have the right to tell you how you should think about your own oppression, much like how no one has the right to tell Adria how she should have handled calling those two guys out— aside from doing something illegal, which posting a photo on Twitter most certainly is not.
I guess what I'm saying is that I agree everyone lost, but one person lost a hell of a lot more than anyone else. That guy whose name we still don't know? He's gotten job offers. Play Haven, the place that actually fired him? Unscathed. Adria? Constant harassment, rape and death threats, and now presumably fired from her job while her former employer is being DDoS'd. All because she posted a picture of some guys on Twitter.
Think about that the next time a thread comes up about the sexism women face in the programming community. You can't write it off as a bunch of trolls this time, because a lot of the backlash was directly from HN.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#136"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. This is something I’ve worked on a lot. It’s much better now than 10 years ago but there are some things that send me over the edge." http://but…
I've tried to keep a pretty neutral opinion of her. It just seemed like she made a misjudgement. This is the first post (Amanda Blum post) to reasonably say something that makes me question that a bit. Now, combine Amanda's post with this info and it's just possible that Adria hasn't suffered enough of a negative response to her past actions (and maybe even benefited from them a bit in blog traffic, etc), so she didn…
She is a PR person.
When the dust settles, SendGrid, PlayHaven, affected developers, women in tech as a group, and our industry as a whole will end up with some reputation damage and setbacks in the struggles on equality front.
But Adria personally will probably benefit from her newfound celebrity status in one way or another. There's no such thing as bad publicity, that's the most likely lesson to be learned [again].
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#137Let'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…
> There is horrifying sexism in the comments that have been posted over the past 24 hours,
So long those posts get down voted, the community is actually dealing with the bad comments.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
"They could have paid for his PyCon expenses (therefore he was there representing the company), and they felt that he did a poor job representing the company." Doesn't explain why one person is still an employee while the other gentleman was canned. "It's possible there were other reasons they wanted to fire him before PyCon, but this became a good excuse to act on them." I strongly suspect this happened, given the c…
> Doesn't explain why the other gentleman was canned. Which other gentleman got canned?
Poorly worded. One person, identified as "Andy Reid", was not fired but the other person was.
Editing parent to reflect the clarification
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#139Without 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…
Your analogy seems to reverse about halfway through. Not being able to make lewd jokes because the majority would find them offensive doesn't seem to apply, here. If, instead, you mean that being offended is, itself, something that you can't do without causing the majority to feel offense, if you're in the minority (as Adria was), I think that this analogy may be stretching too far, or going too meta, or something. :)
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 jok…
I'm not saying that getting offended is the right response, I'm just saying she has the right to be offended. I get offended by people walking slowly in front of me. They're not doing anything horribly wrong, I'm just annoyed. Again, I understand her being offended, but do not excuse it, as you say.
I'm questioning whether she was offended at all. She certainly has the right, but her actions before and since (ie at previous speaking events, comments on her twitter feed, mishearing an innocent comment as a sexual one) beg the question.
And yes, sadly this is relevant, because, as much as we all have the right to decide when we are offended and not, there will always be people, consciously or not, who will game the system.
And you aren't offended by people who walk slowly in front of you - you are annoyed.