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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

#321

Post by Eliezer »

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…

Hypocrisy usually isn't conscious. Why would it be?

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

#322

Post by Tichy »

flyinRyan wrote: post #319
Tichy wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 77 cents on the dollar thing is just a symptom of the same thing, blaming men for all and everything and portraying women as victims (to excert special compensation for women). If you research the paygap issue a little bit, you'll find that it really isn't an issue of discrimination at all (hint: among other things, women chose other professions than men). I admit that I have started to become very angry about th…

Oh here we go. Didn't realize there was a "Men's rights" section on HN. "People just don't understand how hard it is to be a white male!"

Your argument being...?

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

#323

Post by singleuse »

zeteo wrote: post #243
devilshaircut wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)?

She publicly posted without consent a picture and an incriminating comment in an increasingly context of being touchy and wary about gender issues at tech conferences.

Of course this has a significant potential for HR to do PR and distance themselves from their employee in an attempt to save the company image and avoid a potential pro-feminist backlash. Though I agree play haven overreacted, from their despicable business activity it's not that surprising, and past similar experiences points towards this as almost predictable and expected.

But for a dev evangelist, this was highly inconsiderate and irresponsible thing to do, it looks like she didn't care about the consequences of what she did, and got fired over it. Which makes sense too, as explained by sendgrid here: http://blog.sendgrid.com/a-difficult-situation/ she did it all wrong, made her employer look bad, had the opposite effect of what her job position asks for, render herself ineffective at her job in the future, and inadvertently endangered her employer business.

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

#324

Post by pyre »

azov wrote: post #136
pyre wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

  | no such thing as bad publicity
If someone follows through with death/rape threats, I wouldn't peg that as 'good' or 'coming out on top.'

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

#325

Post by super_mario »

niggler wrote: post #96
samiur1204 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, and it just brings to light the pervasive sexism in our industry." Exactly. Which is why I'm happy this is playing out now, because I haven't seen the industry introspect on gender issues in a long time.

I don't think people understand what "sexist" means. There is no prejudice or discrimination based on gender here. Sexist joke would be someone making a joke implying women were inferior programers or belong in the kitchen not at the computer etc. Saying you would like to fuck the hot blonde sitting in front of you is not sexist (just obscene). What the guys at the PyCon said is so out of category of sexist that it's ridiculous.

Besides the larger issue here is should freedom of speech (in the public sphere) include the freedom to offend. One could make a compelling argument that it should.

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

#326

Post by rmc »

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…

There are real problems and whatever Adria just tripped on is not one of them.

How do you know they aren't related? What if women are being excluded from tech events due to the sexual objectification, and what if that's harming their carrer?

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

#327

Post by rmc »

Tichy wrote: post #304
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…

The 77 cents on the dollar thing is just a symptom of the same thing, blaming men for all and everything and portraying women as victims (to excert special compensation for women). If you research the paygap issue a little bit, you'll find that it really isn't an issue of discrimination at all (hint: among other things, women chose other professions than men). I admit that I have started to become very angry about th…

among other things, women chose other professions than men

But why do they choose other professions? Do people pressure them into not choosing better paid jobs? Isn't that a symptom.

Most feminists don't "blame men", but "blame gender roles". It's just most gender roles significantly benefit a lot of men (and harm a small amount of other men).

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

#328

Post by rmc »

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…

The conference had a code of conduct ( https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/ ). Which they almost certainly broke. If you're at a conference as a rep of your company, and break that conference's code of conduct, the company might not like it.

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

#329

Post by rmc »

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…

Of course you can say "Don't be a dick". Just don't treat a conference like a (straight) male's locker room and have all the talk about sex,.

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

#330

Post by flyinRyan »

Tichy wrote: post #322
flyinRyan wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh here we go. Didn't realize there was a "Men's rights" section on HN. "People just don't understand how hard it is to be a white male!"

Your argument being...?

That you're being an idiot. White male is the most privileged thing to be, not some down trodden, exploited minority. Posts like yours belong in /r/mensrights with the other crap. And from your other posts, I think you're much better than this.
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