Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
241–250 of 395 posts
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#242Without 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…
Any crude comment relating to sexuality would fall into this category. I am not attempting to justify the response here, just explaining the rationale.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I hope you are referring to the men and not Ms. Richards. Because her "little mistake" resulted in the firing of a decent human being with a wife and 3 kids.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#244Without 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…
If you assume that all women are Victorian-era pearl-clutching girls for whom anything remotely sexual is scandalous, it makes a lot more sense. The subtext is "women must be shielded from the world". On the other hand, for people who have actually met women raised, say, post-1940, it's pretty bizarre.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#245Earlier 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 )
> just like you can only be racist if you're white ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858 ) I see people post this a lot without understanding the point of what she's saying. Adria subscribes to the belief that "racism = prejudice + power", which is basically to say that, yes, black people can be hateful towards white people and yes, racial discrimination does occur within the black community, but RA…
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#246Earlier 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 )
> just like you can only be racist if you're white ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858 ) I see people post this a lot without understanding the point of what she's saying. Adria subscribes to the belief that "racism = prejudice + power", which is basically to say that, yes, black people can be hateful towards white people and yes, racial discrimination does occur within the black community, but RA…
One could argue it gives minorities license to say as many racist things as they want to and claim it isn't racist. It's an argument constructed so that one side wins by default.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
No, an Ad Hominem is an argument against the man (well, person), as its name says. It's any argument that tries to invalidate an argument by attacking the person who said it. In fact, insults are not necessarily Ad Hominem fallacies, and the accusations don't have to be baseless to be fallacies.
To further refine the point (possibly what you meant in your penultimate clause), it's not ad hominem when the attack on the man in question is germane.
If I say "I am a good candidate for US President", and you say "You don't even know how many US States there are", it's an attack on me ("the person", that is the arguer), but it's totally relevant, and thus not an ad hominem attack in the sense of the logical fallacy.
To bring it back to the case at hand, if someone says "Adria's wrong that it's offensive, because if she says that then she's a hypocrite, because she says offensive things", that's tu quoque (and yes, ad hominem). Murderers are not incapable of identifying other murderers!
But for one thing, ericb makes a good point that hypocrisy is suggestive that she might not have been genuinely offended, which plays some role in this story.
Moreover, hypocrisy plays a complicated and not-entirely-fallacious role in circumstances where we disagree about acceptable behaviour. If Adria's claim is that double-entendres are inherently unprofessional behaviour, but I disagree, one basis for disagreement is to cite community standards, and Adria's own behaviour seems likely to be behaviour that she will accept as not-abhorrent. She could argue "yeah, it was repugnant of me to do that, just as it was repugnant of this man to make a dongle joke", which would mean she was a hypocrite, but the hypocrisy would not affect her argument (unless some other part of her argument required her to assert that she's a virtuous person). Or she could argue that only privileged groups can offend (as she apparently has about racism, much as this argument disgusts me), and insofar as she was persuasive about this, she might evade the accusation of hypocrisy and also the impact on her argument.
I assert that it's a sign of mental laziness to hold hypocrisy as a great evil, in general. I think evildoers who think their transgression is evil are less evil than evildoers who think it's just fine and facilitate it in others. Even though the former are hypocrites and the latter are not. (And if, at some point, I accuse someone of hypocrisy, it will make the preceding statement by me no less true!)
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#248Without 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…
A phrase like that is called a 'trigger'. The same reason you don't say the n-word around a person of color, because you don't know what kind of experiences that person has associated with that. Same for rape, because you could have a victim or a rapist nearby and you don't know how it will affect them (harming or reinforcing them, respectively).
Gender, race, sexuality, and many other topics make people feel very strongly, and sometimes can cause people to dwell on those bad experiences and have the same feelings of angry/inadequacy/self-loathing/whatever that they did at first. My perspective is: I don't know how this really charged term has affected the lives of the people around me, so...maybe I'll wait to make the joke? Or I won't make it?
The dongle thing is silly to me, and the "forking" thing was immature. But that's how I could take offense at that statement. Hope that clears it up? Just my perspective. I don't know if that's how Richards felt...if she didn't, I don't know what the sexist overtones could be either.
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#249Wait... what? is that sexist? or ironic? I can't tell anymore these days. Should I be offended by that?
Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost
#250Without 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…
Stealing something I wrote on another thread here: Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".…
It doesn't mean we actually think it's offensive or understand why anyone would be offended.. honestly I find it kind of baffling, but nevertheless, I will watch my tongue around unfamiliar women just in case. The other thing is that the potential outcome from offending a woman is much worse than offending a man. I would hate for what I said to be misconstrued as sexual harassment, and it could potentially lose me my job if it was (as it has done for an unfortunate developer in this case).
As far as "one of the guys" goes.. I think that's a perhaps unfortunate way of phrasing a well intentioned message: you are someone we are happy to relax around. My girlfriend is a female developer and quite happily refers to herself as one of the guys and doesn't see it as a problem or sexist. What she does find a little annoying is having to reassure men that she won't be offended by their non-harassing sexual innuendos in order for them to relax around her.
There's probably not really an absolute solution to this.. people take offense at different things. It's nearly impossible to offend me, but other people are offended by the colour of the sky.