Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

amandablumwords.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 395 posts

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

#281

Post by [deleted] »

mlent wrote: post #248
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…

According to the article I read, which could be wrong, the phrase was "I'd fork that repo." In and of itself, harmless, but said in the proper tone (don't know if it was), it would remind me of things that have been said about me . I.e. People talking about how they would do 'x' to me. Totally creepy and disturbing, right? A phrase like that is called a 'trigger'. The same reason you don't say the n-word around a per…

[deleted]

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

#282

Post by dspeyer »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #240
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 )

> 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…

This bit of definition only matters if there's someone involved without power.

Presumably Adria is claiming to be without power. She has the power to get someone fired with a single tweet. She has so much power she's gone mad with it.

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

#283

Post by pbreit »

tptacek wrote: post #254
michaelochurch wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's start with the fact that it wasn't his Twitter message. SendGrid is probably home free on firing Adria Richards, because she did something objectionable-- harassed someone and cost him his job. PlayHaven, on the other hand, doesn't have a defensible cause for firing him. This would be even more true if he hadn't admitted to the comment as Mr Hank. Then he'd have been fired on her hearsay.

It is in fact lawful to fire in the US on hearsay.

In Silicon Valley reputation matters far or than law so the whole at-will thing is rather meaningless.

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

#284

Post by dspeyer »

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…

And, as usual with ad hominems, we must be careful not to throw out too much.

She argues that the joke was offensive. Her evidence was that she was offended. Evidence that her concept of offendedness is flawed does argue against the offensiveness of the joke.

Had she asked three people sitting near her if they were offended, and they had said yes, then she would no longer be a part of the argument and her hypocracy would not be relevant. But she didn't so it is.

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

#285

Post by Shenglong »

Respectably, I disagree with the OP on this entire subject. Yes, the Adria scandal was not constructive to any party involved - but the way it's being analyzed is dead wrong:

When women in this industry are hurt, we’re all hurt.

No. No. It's exactly this kind of thinking that got us here in the first place. It's this kind of thinking that perpetuates the very dissonance inherent in stereotypes. There is so much anti-racism/anti-sexism/anti-everything-slightly-inappropriate recently that some days I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to watch what I say at every turn. I don't want to limit my vocabulary when there are so few English words in the first place. I don't want to change what I find funny because society has all of a sudden deemed it possibly inappropriate under certain situations. So what's the solution?

People need to start recognizing others as individuals--people need to start recognizing themselves as individuals. I'll admit it: I make inappropriate jokes all the time around my friends: every sort of inappropriate joke you can imagine. Why? Because the whole concept of shock humor is poking at things that are obviously not true. Why would people laugh if women actually were bad drivers (I am a terrible driver)? Why would they laugh if Asians could actually all do backflips (I broke a finger trying). If forking someone's repo was actually sexual, why would it be funny? "I'm going to fuck her" surely isn't funny.

The moment we all recognize that people are individuals, and not just subsets of classes, is the moment where all this ridiculousness will go away. Thinking that a blow to one woman hurts all women is as ridiculous as thinking a blow to one Asian hurts all Asians - or a blow to one person in tech who has large muscles is a blow to all people in tech who have large muscles. The association is ridiculous.

I don't know any women in tech. I know people in tech, and some of them just happen to be women.

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

#286

Post by reeses »

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…

"Anyway, whatever, her reputation is kinda ruined now"

I think her position, which was originally extremely weak, has been reinforced by the large misogynistic response. She's a public speaker, and once people forget about her offense, she'll roll this into five years of lunches, keynotes, corporate re-education, and books.

This backlash has given her a level of credibility as an expert on gender-based harassment that she would not be able to attain on her own merits. She needs no academic background after this. She needs no list of petty "I thought of a four year old girl..." stories.

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

#287

Post by rgbrgb »

tfigment wrote: post #272
zeteo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She posted a tweet. Even had she called for his resignation (which she didn't), she didn't have any power to effect it. What about the overreacting HR people who actually fired him over that tweet (knowing about the 3 kids and all)?

Can someone explain why having 3 kids and a wife should change any decision here? Is it somehow more acceptable to layoff someone that is single?

Yes, it is. The reason is that a single person doesn't have other people dependent on their income.

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

#288

Post by ramchip »

tfigment wrote: post #272
zeteo wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She posted a tweet. Even had she called for his resignation (which she didn't), she didn't have any power to effect it. What about the overreacting HR people who actually fired him over that tweet (knowing about the 3 kids and all)?

Can someone explain why having 3 kids and a wife should change any decision here? Is it somehow more acceptable to layoff someone that is single?

It's certainly a much bigger deal for someone with 3 kids to lose their job than for a single person... think about the burn rate and possible consequences of running out of money.

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

#290

Post by mercurial »

unalone wrote: post #264
nsxwolf wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Critical Race Theory, and it's just as valid to question it as it is to espouse it. It's not hard science. 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.

Well, it's an argument that one side does win by default, and that "racism" should be used to acknowledge that power imbalance. "Minorities saying racist things", by this theory, doesn't hold a candle to, say, the fact that minorities are more frequently imprisoned, more often pulled over/searched illegally/beaten by law enforcement agents, more often feared, more often treated with bias in the workplace or dating wo…

In both cases, it seems to work more as extenuating circumstances than as a blanket permission to say inappropriate things to another human being based on his looks. Or in other words, it's not OK to discriminate against somebody else solely for the reason that you are part of a group discriminated against. It just makes you part of the problem.

I think having a definition of racism to be "discriminate against somebody else due to skin colour", as well as a notion of "institutional racism", which is the same thing but on a systemic level, would make more sense than the more academic definition of racism.

Post reply on HN