Jon Ronson: How a Tweet Can Ruin Your Life

I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us.

If she feels threatened by an innocuous joke, which seems to be the case, then we need to take a serious look at why that is. What is it about PyCon that can make a woman feel like this, and how can we help?

In my mind she and Hank are both fairly intelligent, rational people. It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that.

> doesn't mean their feelings are right

But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy.

Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this. We are unwilling even to take her feelings seriously, even for a moment. Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?

She chose how to act on the offense she took, and she chose irresponsibly. She chose how to handle the aftermath, and she chose questionably. But she didn't "choose" to be offended in the first place. That's a bridge too far. She was listening to a keynote presentation about women in technology, overheard some sex jokes being made during that presentation, and took offense to the jokes, perhaps especially in light of the context and the timing.

Now, I find her described rationale for the offense she took (fear of violence) a little extreme. But who am I to judge her feelings? I'm not a woman, and I am certainly not the survivor of what sounds like a horrifyingly abusive household. I have no basis by which to speak from those perspectives, and so I can't summarily dismiss them as invalid. That's not my call to make. That's not my place.

I don't agree with her actions, and I find her lack of apparent remorse very disturbing. But I don't presume to set some universal, male-perspective standard for what is or is not offensive to people. I can see how the jokes could have offended any hypothetical women in earshot at the time, and perhaps some men as well. I personally would not have been offended, but I am not every person. My perspective on what's offensive and what isn't is not the de facto norm.

Completely agree, however, that the more mature course of action would have been to confront the jokesters in person, or move away, or perhaps just lodge a complaint with the PyCon organizers. The public shaming was uncalled for, and it had disproportionately drastic consequences for all concerned.

It's not my intention to frame it this way. Sorry for giving you that impression. My intention is to frame this as an invisible problem to us as men.

My intention is to try to help people reflect on why they are so quick to anger about Adria, but realise they are perhaps not seeing a bigger problem.

I say this as someone who initially had similar angry reactions and then took a step back and tried to place myself in her shoes.

> No. It is a programming conference. It is not a forced place to be, it is not torture, it a programming conference. Framing this as some kind of a jungle full of dangers, rapists and murders lurking behind their little laptops, wearing geeky t-shirts is a bit crazy.

I'm not framing it like that. That may not stop PyCon from feeling like that for women.

Let's say there are women who feel unsafe at PyCon. Shouldn't we be concerned about this? Shouldn't we communicate them and try to figure out how we can include them?

Most of what I see in this thread moves to dismiss such women as delusional, because obviously PyCon is not full of rapists, it doesn't matter what women feel, they should get over it.

> Yes she should have.

I think you are taking my quote out of context. I'm not saying she should or shouldn't apologise. I was trying to explain how I could understand, after all that's happened, why she wouldn't feel the need to.

We have made this all about Hank. Probably because it's easy for us to get in his head. But I don't think she sees Hank as a very important figure in her experience of this situation so far. Hank was an oblivious and unfortunate side effect of the exclusion she felt at the conference.

> It wasn't because he had a penis or because he was white.

Software is a male dominated field right now. It is so easy for men who read this article to be angry at Adria and feel sorry for Hank. Just look at the reactions in this thread. That alone gives him a great chance of regaining employment. I'm sure the original HN thread had some guys saying "get in touch, we'll give you a job!"

> Adria on the other hand showed her character and her character is not one I would want on my team. She is manipulative, lacks empathy, likes controversy, and promotes discrimination and sexism.

You've twisted her into a monster in your own head. I wish I could convince you to step back from your feelings for a while, try not to let anger cloud your judgment. I think she was a pretty reasonable person who did something a bit thoughtless out of emotion. It blew up, the employers made terrible decisions, and everyone blamed her.

My entire point in this thread has been that we should examine what makes our field so threatening to women. It's the death by a thousand paper cuts thing — women face so many tiny challenges that seem innocuous on their own, and we are oblivious to all of them.

And instead of deciding to show understanding when situations like this arise, we show blame and demonise the real people involved.

That can only go so far. I rage inside when people don't move over on a long escallator, rage when they cut me off. In my head I call them all kinds of terrible things and so on. But I don't go do anything about, I don't yell at them, don't give them dirty looks, don't do anything visibly. I then forget about. See I got offended, but dealt with it.

As someone cannot just go around taking pictures and publically shaming others because they got offended. One has to have another facility (part of brain) to look objectivly at the situation adn say "I got a offended, but I get a bit irrational about this, I better switch seats, or move over or do whatever calms me down".

What if I had the power to fire the person on the escalator. What if I am their boss? I tweet about and then fire their ass.

Will you defend my feelings of anger and my actions, or will you say "this person is not normal, they are wrong to do what they've done".

> Shouldn't we be concerned about this? Shouldn't we communicate them and try to figure out how we can include them?

Oh I agree. I have a daughter, I would absolutely hate to know that if she wanted to persue the same career these venues would be an unwelcoming place or worksplace harassment is goin to happen and how it will affect her.

But _this_ particular case is not a forum for that discussion. If anything mentioning Adria's case in general and sexism or harrasment undermines and diminishes the cause.

> Most of what I see in this thread moves to dismiss such women as delusional,

In this case nothing promoted that belief more than Adria. That is why I want to distance the discussion about harrasment and sexism away from this case.

> I was trying to explain how I could understand, after all that's happened, why she wouldn't feel the need to.

Ok I see your point. Sorry, I misread that part.

> It is so easy for men who read this article to be angry at Adria and feel sorry for Hank.

Completely disagree. If Hank was Adria and Adria was Hank. This community would be 10x more agressive towards Hank. I am not talking about death threats and other horrible and illegal things 4channers did to Adria. That is absolutely undefensible and criminal. I am talking about a forum like HN or the article we are discussing.

In other words I am convinced this is about injustice. Attaching this to feminism or women's rights in the workplace is what Adria did, but in reality it has very little to do with it, I believe.

> I think she was a pretty reasonable person who did something a bit thoughtless out of emotion. It blew up, the employers made terrible decisions, and everyone blamed her.

Sorry, I got a bit emotional about it. Not because I hate women but because of the part where she wanted Hank to remove his comment about how he lost his job. Let's stop for a while and think about it. That seems like a small hotheaded move, kind of insignificant. But it very significant. It shows something very revealing about her character, which is those things that I wrote -- lack of empathy, manipulation, hyporcrisy. Did you figure out the significance of that request? The significance is that she thought Hank would be using the same tools she was -- presenting himself as a victim. And for her, from the very first moment, it was a about public controversy, about PR, about stirring drama. When she read his response she realized she lost her gamble. This did not look like a bit of thoughless emotion. This was a well thought out operation on her part.

Maybe you can rationalize it or see her side better. But I think I see her side as well.

> My entire point in this thread has been that we should examine what makes our field so threatening to women.

100% agree with that sentiment, but disagree that this particular case should serve as a discussion platform for it.