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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

#181

Post by [deleted] »

girvo wrote: post #165
georgeorwell wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

I honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.

[deleted]

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

#182

Post by rdl »

georgeorwell wrote: post #162
rdl wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's ok to post offensive jokes/sexual innuendo if you're a woman ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/sets/721576169418... ) or ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 ), just like you can only be racist if you're white ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858 )

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

http://instagram.com/p/W3htw7gaR5/ ?

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

#183

Post by dnm »

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…

Wait, are you saying she was harassed? Because she overheard a conversation in a public place? Nothing I've read indicated that the jokes were directed at her. The impression I got was she just decided she needed to control the behavior of two people she didn't know who said something behind her back (literally).

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

#184

Post by ecdavis »

girvo wrote: post #165
georgeorwell wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

I honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.

One of my favorite discussions of hypocrisy is in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age - a novel which is well worth a read.

> "That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code."

You can read the full segment on hypocrisy here: http://steveedney.wordpress.com/2006/11/08/hypocrisy-relativ...

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

#185

Post by iamtherockstar »

zeteo wrote: post #108
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…

I saw a tweet yesterday that said "We test life in production".

I'm ashamed of companies that don't let their employees make little mistakes. If I made a mistake and the internet decided to DDoS my employer's site, I'd hope my employer thought the internet needed to cool off.

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

#186

Post by geoelectric »

Draco6slayer wrote: post #160
WalterSear wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, sexualized epithets are sexual. It's more productive not to muddy the waters though: it's not like there are only a handful of ways to insult someone.

I don't know. Some words are just attached to each sex, and that's just a part of language. We don't say waitperson over waiter or waitress. Something that is both attached to a gender and insulting is by no means insulting someone for their gender or insulting a gender overall. English is definitely one of the least sexualizing languages of the Romance Languages. In French or Spanish, everything would be attached to…

Well, no, we say server, because server is gender-neutral. Compare steward/stewardess with flight attendant. And some servers will get mighty angry if you call them a waitress.

I don't necessarily think that response is justified when no offense is actually meant. But the point is that there has been an identifiable trend in our language towards moving away from gender-specific terms for roles that shouldn't otherwise have a relevance to gender.

I'd argue this movement is overdue for epithets. I think "asshole," "asshat," "assclown," really anything in the venerable ass family, makes for an ideal gender-neutral epithet. We should use these more often!

Edit: typo

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

#187

Post by georgeorwell »

ericb wrote: post #176
georgeorwell wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

This goes beyond Tu quoque. She claims to have been offended, enough to publicly name and shame these people over their private conversation, but she has publicly made jokes that were far raunchier days before. It isn't about hypocrisy in this case, it is about whether she was really offended. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 I have trouble seeing her shaming behavior as anything more than…

I agree that it looks like she was exaggerating her offense. Hypocritical people often lie to manipulate situations to their advantage, or rather they choose truths to suit them according to the situation. So I guess what I am saying is that there are two questions here, are her hypocritical actions deplorable (yes), and was it sexism (no), but that the answers to the questions don't have any bearing on each other, which is why it's tu quoque to connect them. Anyway, in the end, yes, painful drama.

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

#188

Post by adekok »

georgeorwell wrote: post #180
girvo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.

Yeah, it's a kind of ad hominem, because it says, "This person's arguments are not worth listening to because this person's behavior is not in line with what they are arguing for." But if arguments are rational things with inherent truth then it doesn't matter who says them. Her argument about overheard dongle jokes being sexist is weak enough as it is. The added hypocrisy just makes for sadly entertaining drama / go…

Well, no, it's not an ad hominem. An ad hominem would be to use insults, or baseless accusations. The accusations here are well-based. She has made offensive comments, and gotten upset when others made less offensive comments. That's textbook hypocrisy.

It doesn't matter who said the offensive comments. It's true that they're all offensive. It does matter that he apologized, and she didn't. That shows a profound lack of moral judgement, or an inability to be self reflective, or a hostility for the truth.

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

#190

Post by CyberDroiD »

All I saw was some smart ass jack asses getting busted since everyone has a camera nowadays. Get used to everyone having cameras to capture your jackass behavior.

Funny that these trolls are so defensive after they got busted and photographed. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

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