$10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013 • Hacker News Board

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#91

Post by pekk » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

SeanDav wrote: post #58

pekk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to understand how you could think that Adria Richards is representative of all "women in tech". It's also hard to understand why you take Adria's incident as such a severe personal affront to yourself that you not only seem to want PyLadies to bite the dust, but "a part of [you] would be quite happy if [you] never saw a female in tech again." Even a sane and moderate person can see in this post a suggestion…

I am trying not to get personal here, but you are guilty of just the sort of discussion that I find both embarrassing and narrow minded. By narrow minded I mean you are deliberately cherry picking individual points out of context and trying to imply something negative or even the opposite of the original post. For example you say: > " a part of you would be quite happy if you never saw a female in tech again. Even a…

You chose this.

You chose to drag the Adria incident (unnamed) into an unrelated thread, perpetuating the toxic discussion (the one about Adria's incident) that you claim not to want to hear about. But you weren't responding to someone else here. You went there first. And you set the tone.

You chose to open with 'I actually don't quite know what to think about "Women in Tech."'

You chose to say that a part of you doesn't want to see women in tech at all. You didn't, for some reason, choose to reflect on whether this was rational or needed to be said publicly.

You chose to say that you don't want to see articles "like this." Though this article isn't about anything offensive at all.

You chose all of this. Neither your words, nor their inflammatory meaning, were made up by anyone else. Then you chose not to rethink or climb down from any of your inflammatory remarks. And you chose to respond to correction by escalating and getting personal.

That attitude is the real problem that created the Adria mess. You are the same kind of person you are complaining about. And it has nothing necessarily to do with "women in tech."

Please stop the oversensitive, resentful whining about others and take responsibility for your own choices.

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#92

Post by pekk » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 6:58 PM UTC

gcb0 wrote: post #70

amix wrote: post #44

PyCon had 500 women out of 2500 attendance. Gave away over $100,000 in financial aid. Gave away 2500 Raspberry Pi's. Thought kids to code. Raised $10,000 for the PyLadies. Gave permission to publish amazing online videos etc. And then you have these 3 idiots (and more online idiots) that steal the spotlight and everybody focuses on them. Sigh. Let's focus on the positive stuff!

and promoted sexism, twice. affirmative action is wrong. always. that's the reason racism/sexism/etc exist in the first place. everyone who feels superior donating to those causes are misguided egoistics.

Affirmative action is not the reason racism exists. For example, slavery was a violently institutionalized form of racism. I am pretty sure slavery did not begin due to affirmative action.

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#93

Post by king_jester » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 6:59 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #46

pekk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an acceptable excuse for publicly saying that you wish women would not be in tech. It definitely doesn't make it any more rational to want to punish all women because you feel personally offended about the stupid actions of one person, which did not actually affect you in any way. If this pattern of feeling irrational resentments and using them to justify inflammatory public behavior is "just being honest…

I read it as a lament that an unhappy situation had provoked unhappy thoughts. The unhappiness of the thought serves as evidence of the unhappiness of the situation. But I agree that we should move on.

So he is unhappy because he feels bad about women not wanting to be in tech? How exactly is that reassuring to women who know that this person takes a position that women do not belong in a space that should be open for everyone and that this person will probably end up enforcing that attitude (or at least others who share the same thinking and don't have an issue enforcing that attitude).

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#94

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 6:59 PM UTC

obviouslygreen wrote: post #43

pekk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an acceptable excuse for publicly saying that you wish women would not be in tech. It definitely doesn't make it any more rational to want to punish all women because you feel personally offended about the stupid actions of one person, which did not actually affect you in any way. If this pattern of feeling irrational resentments and using them to justify inflammatory public behavior is "just being honest…

Then people just shouldn't say what's on their minds? That's not a very good attitude to have if you want to gain any understanding at all of the actual state of the industry in terms of who believes what. Suppressing opinions doesn't get rid of them, but it does make them almost impossible to change, because you now have no idea not only what people think, but who holds opinions you consider worth challenging.

[deleted]

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#95

Post by king_jester » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:01 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #84

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the previous controversy had no real winners Sadly, I have to disagree. The hordes of abusive misogynists scored a big victory in their tireless efforts to terrorize and deter women from working in tech or, indeed, speaking publicly at all.

That's a one sided over-simplification of what actually took place.

How so? We know women as a group have a hard time accessing and existing in tech spaces already for a variety of reasons, so why wouldn't some of the reaction that was misogynistic be a deterrent?

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#96

Post by stefantalpalaru » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:01 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #49

pifflesnort wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's pretend I'm at that shop with a large recruiting budget, and a $10k check is only an e-mail to accounting away. I also just watched a massive blow-up and bad press around Adria Richards, PyCon, and this issue in general. I'm naturally wary of my company being connected with or supporting these virulently negative forms of misogyny and feminism of which the entire donglegate episode seemed to spring. What would…

Do you know anything about PyLadies? What led you to believe that PyLadies is about "virulent feminism" or is masterminding provocations?

Maybe he knows what Lynn Root did at last year's EuroPython[1][2] or how she complains about being only asked to talk about women issues[3] but when she got a spot in the lightning talk section she canceled it blaming the last day's "drama"[4].

[1] http://www.roguelynn.com/words/really/

[2] http://www.roguelynn.com/words/a-memorable-europython-for-th...

[3] http://www.roguelynn.com/words/my-un-talk-at-djangocon/

[4] https://twitter.com/roguelynn/status/221217138688536577

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#97

Post by illuminate » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:02 PM UTC

jaibot wrote: post #75

gcb0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and promoted sexism, twice. affirmative action is wrong. always. that's the reason racism/sexism/etc exist in the first place. everyone who feels superior donating to those causes are misguided egoistics.

That's just wrong as a matter of historical fact. I feel fairly confident in asserting that race-based slavery constitutes a form of racism, and predates affirmative action by several centuries. This is...almost certainly trolling, right?

Nope. Plenty of sincere MRAs in tech.

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#98

Post by illuminate » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:03 PM UTC

SeanDav wrote: post #13

In the light of what happened at PyCon with Adria Richards and the whole internet explosion of nastiness and short sightedness from all sides I actually don't quite know what to think about "Women in Tech" I saw so much hate that I was ashamed to be a male and in tech, yet I also saw so much narrow minded reporting and deliberate distortion of events from many so called feminists and feminist activists (not all femal…

People often seek out excuses to confirm preexisting biases and prejudices. Sexism, racism, etc.

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#99

Post by mnicole » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:04 PM UTC

pifflesnort wrote: post #68

mnicole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just saw a person screw up, should I base my decision to fund an entire gender's disadvantage on a single person's irrationality?"

I don't see how one can reasonably equate funding of a one specific organization with the concerns of "an entire gender", without knowing more about what that organization does with those funds.

If your assertion is that PyLadies would use these funds to encourage that type of behavior, that seems counter-intuitive to their purpose (plus on their CoC page, it outlines that photographic harassment is not allowed, among many others). If you are genuinely interested in what they'd do with the money, you should contact them instead of making the suggestion that women should stay where they are, alienating those of us already working here and furthering the logic that they shouldn't even bother.

I don't have a problem with honesty for honesty's sake, but it doesn't change the fact that it's hurtful, if not the exact opposite thing to do right now. If we had an equal balance of men and women in this field, we'd have seen this whole thing go down differently.

Re: $10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013

#100

Post by edmccard » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 7:05 PM UTC

obviouslygreen wrote: post #43

pekk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not an acceptable excuse for publicly saying that you wish women would not be in tech. It definitely doesn't make it any more rational to want to punish all women because you feel personally offended about the stupid actions of one person, which did not actually affect you in any way. If this pattern of feeling irrational resentments and using them to justify inflammatory public behavior is "just being honest…

Then people just shouldn't say what's on their minds? That's not a very good attitude to have if you want to gain any understanding at all of the actual state of the industry in terms of who believes what. Suppressing opinions doesn't get rid of them, but it does make them almost impossible to change, because you now have no idea not only what people think, but who holds opinions you consider worth challenging.

>Then people just shouldn't say what's on their minds?

Well, there's "shouldn't because someone said so" and "shouldn't because it's counterproductive." So maybe not?

>Suppressing opinions doesn't get rid of them

Refraining from expressing them certainly helps prevent them from spreading; there are a lot of opinions about women, blacks, etc. that I would have never formed on my own if I hadn't heard them all the time from my father while I was growing up. One of the things that helped me to grow out of those opinions was simply to not repeat them, _especially_ if I was around people who might have reinforced the opinions by agreeing with them or "defending my right to have them".