111–120 of 134 posts
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The difference is in the scale. I bet if you compared their campaign of "going nuclear" on white supremacists it would register but a blip compared to what's going on here. And it IS because she is a woman... and also because she's black. Those two probably each increase the measure of the e-mob response exponentially.
> I bet... > ...probably... > And it IS... Believe it or not, your opinion isn't fact.
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I also don't think Adria overreacted. It was a microaggression. Jokes like that foster the uncomfortable boys club environment that is so inherent to tech. Were the jokes explicitly sexist? No, but in an industry that has more than just a bad track record, stuff like that is not okay. Context matters.
While you don't think she overreacted, I don't think everybody else overreacted. I guess everybody got what they deserved. Happy now?
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That's where I (respectfully) disagree. There are many ways to apply pressure for social change that don't involve identifying and shaming individual bad actors. Even discussing the event in public is fine, (although I'm not convinced that the level of discourse on Twitter is appropriate for something as nuanced as Microaggression), but including the picture feels like an out-of-scale response to what the guys did.
That's the thing though - People always think that calling out microaggressions is overreaction, because they look at an individual incident, and not the whole. At the same time it needs to be clearly communicated that this kind of behaviour is absolutely unacceptable.
How is publishing photographs of the individual offenders in a specific indicdent and a description of that specific incident not both looking at, and encouraging others to look at, an individual incident, instead of some broader problem that incident might be part of?
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The fact that he said anyone over-reacted is not going to help things. That's not to say I don't think there were overreactions all around: I do. But it's been my experience that people really don't like to hear that they're overreacting, especially while they're in the middle of overreacting. They dislike it so much that entire schools of thought are now dedicated quite strongly to the proposition that there is no s…
That's an interesting conundrum that I've grappled with myself. Telling myself counter-productive things like "outrage is a perfectly normal reaction to an outrageous situation". How should you tell someone that they're overreacting?
This is what I found: http://www.pediatricneurology.com/practica.htm
and the most fascinating paragraph from them there was:
'There Is No Such Thing as Over-Reacting
A psychologist I recently met taught me the following: People do not over-react. They react, by definition, appropriately to the meaning a situation has for them. People have "over-meanings," not "over-reactions." When our child blows up over what seems like a trivial issue to us, it may help us to understand that to our child’s mind, this issue must have a tremendous amount of meaning. We could benefit from saying, "Wow, if that’s how it feels to him, we better calmly discuss this," rather than "Wow, he’s overreacting." For example, imagine an ADD child’s tearful screaming over the process of getting dressed. He’s not over-reacting. He is living a tough morning. Maybe that would change our reaction to his behavior. Children’s "over-reactions" are a window into their minds.'
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That's the thing though - People always think that calling out microaggressions is overreaction, because they look at an individual incident, and not the whole. At the same time it needs to be clearly communicated that this kind of behaviour is absolutely unacceptable.
> People always think that calling out microaggressions is overreaction, because they look at an individual incident, and not the whole How is publishing photographs of the individual offenders in a specific indicdent and a description of that specific incident not both looking at, and encouraging others to look at, an individual incident, instead of some broader problem that incident might be part of?
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white men are never sent death threats, are you sure?
What white men never get, and this is just an observation, I have no sides or deep interest in this mess, is a comment like: "this makes me re-think hiring white men, they're not worth the drama". I've seen a few of those around the place regarding Ms Richards.
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> Again, context matters. When a man makes a sexual joke and a woman makes a sexual joke, it's not the same thing because there are different implications to it. My brain cannot even comprehend how you can believe such bullshit. I feel like am living in some kind of satirical novel when these incidents happen and people defend it with these type of statements.
Society treats people differently depending on who they are. Men have certain privileges not afforded to women. If examining situations in a social context, this cannot be ignored. There is a reason this conference was BOASTING about having 20% women attending. We cannot treat everyone as if they are the same if the playing field is not level. In a vacuum, there should be no difference. But we do not live in a vacuum…
This is part of the reason why so called "male privilege" is actually bullshit. There are so many double standards and exceptions negatively effecting males that they are actually at a disadvantage in a rapidly increasing number of areas.
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Again, context matters. When a man makes a sexual joke and a woman makes a sexual joke, it's not the same thing because there are different implications to it. Women are often sexualized and/or objectified, specifically by men. When a man makes a sexual joke, even if he is not directly sexualizing a woman, that can make some women uncomfortable, because of the societal context behind it. Tech conferences already have…
> Again, context matters. When a man makes a sexual joke and a woman makes a sexual joke, it's not the same thing because there are different implications to it. My brain cannot even comprehend how you can believe such bullshit. I feel like am living in some kind of satirical novel when these incidents happen and people defend it with these type of statements.
Now imagine you're a man in the same situation, and two women arrive. They start making sexual jokes. Can you see the difference?
Just like you can tell your boss a joke where someone's getting fired, but you could feel uncomfortable if he was the one telling the joke. Asymmetry of power -- in the gender case, of physical power -- means that context matters.
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> People always think that calling out microaggressions is overreaction, because they look at an individual incident, and not the whole How is publishing photographs of the individual offenders in a specific indicdent and a description of that specific incident not both looking at, and encouraging others to look at, an individual incident, instead of some broader problem that incident might be part of?
That's not the point. The point is we shouldn't brush off these individual incidents as insignificant because they are part of a whole. The problem is not going to get solved if you don't show that you do not tolerate this sort of behaviour, on an individual scale.
It's clearly not your point. But I think its an important point.
> The point is we shouldn't brush off these individual incidents as insignificant because they are part of a whole.
If the significance is because they are part of a whole, then they need to be addressed in that context.
> The problem is not going to get solved if you don't show that you do not tolerate this sort of behaviour, on an individual scale.
You can not-tolerate it by making a private report to conference staff; you can not tolerate it by making a public discussion of the general problem with the specific incident as one of the illustrations; you can not tolerate it in many ways. The argument that something shouldn't be tolerated, even when accepted, doesn't automatically justify every possible response.
I'm still amazed there are journalists reporting that the developers made sexist jokes, and furthermore embarrassed at America's inability to be comfortable with sexuality. The dongle joke was 5th grade humor and the forking comment had 0 implied innuendo. Somehow these privately-told jokes, somewhat sexual in nature, were inferred as sexist, and people lost their jobs because of it! This whole situation sickens me--…
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/03/adria-rich...