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Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

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Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#121

Post by themightykevdog »

adriarichards wrote: post #27
mr-hank wrote: post #23

Hi, I'm the guy who made a comment about big dongles. First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes…

Hey, Thanks for speaking up, contributing your viewpoint on HN and not attacking me. I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively. For context, I'm a developer evangelist. That means I'm an advocate for developers, male and female. While I hear abou demanding bosses with impossible deadlines for product launch…

You can do just about anything you want, it's the way you do it that matters. You went over the line when you publicly posted their photo, plain and simple.

And your defense of possible misunderstanding is, to be blunt, far short of logical. You don't know that he didn't defend himself to the organizers and that they rejected his defense (unless I've missed something).

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#122

Post by antihero »

colabug wrote: post #91
ThunderMatt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you, because of your actions, made a person lose their job. In this environment that is a near death sentence. And with the seeming recent trend of over reacting conventions you knew full well what was going to happen. ( ex. violetblue's issue that I'm sure you are aware of) You acted irresponsibly, publicly, and should feel bad about yourself. You took advantage of a known community issue and leveraged it for yo…

Death sentence? A little extreme, don't you think? Unemployment is pretty low in the tech sector. In the very worst case (no one ever hiring him again [which is unlikely]), he has the skills to create his own projects/business. I also fail to see what she had to gain by this directly. Best case, she achieves community awareness and growth (which doesn't seem to be happening judging by the threads I've read) and worst…

Ah that's ok then.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#123

Post by antihero »

colabug wrote: post #91
ThunderMatt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you, because of your actions, made a person lose their job. In this environment that is a near death sentence. And with the seeming recent trend of over reacting conventions you knew full well what was going to happen. ( ex. violetblue's issue that I'm sure you are aware of) You acted irresponsibly, publicly, and should feel bad about yourself. You took advantage of a known community issue and leveraged it for yo…

Death sentence? A little extreme, don't you think? Unemployment is pretty low in the tech sector. In the very worst case (no one ever hiring him again [which is unlikely]), he has the skills to create his own projects/business. I also fail to see what she had to gain by this directly. Best case, she achieves community awareness and growth (which doesn't seem to be happening judging by the threads I've read) and worst…

Ah that's ok then. Totally ok to threaten the financial future of someone and their kids because they repeated an old bit of innuendo.

Yes, there are massive issues with women in the tech community, but colossally overreacting to something that isn't even wrong isn't going to help, it's just going to create an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#124

Post by antihero »

colabug wrote: post #91
ThunderMatt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you, because of your actions, made a person lose their job. In this environment that is a near death sentence. And with the seeming recent trend of over reacting conventions you knew full well what was going to happen. ( ex. violetblue's issue that I'm sure you are aware of) You acted irresponsibly, publicly, and should feel bad about yourself. You took advantage of a known community issue and leveraged it for yo…

Death sentence? A little extreme, don't you think? Unemployment is pretty low in the tech sector. In the very worst case (no one ever hiring him again [which is unlikely]), he has the skills to create his own projects/business. I also fail to see what she had to gain by this directly. Best case, she achieves community awareness and growth (which doesn't seem to be happening judging by the threads I've read) and worst…

Ah that's ok then. Totally ok to threaten the financial future of someone and their kids because they repeated an old bit of innuendo and you happened to be in earshot.

Yes, there are massive issues with women in the tech community, but colossally overreacting to something that isn't even wrong isn't going to help, it's just going to create an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#125

Post by antihero »

adriarichards wrote: post #27
mr-hank wrote: post #23

Hi, I'm the guy who made a comment about big dongles. First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes…

Hey, Thanks for speaking up, contributing your viewpoint on HN and not attacking me. I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively. For context, I'm a developer evangelist. That means I'm an advocate for developers, male and female. While I hear abou demanding bosses with impossible deadlines for product launch…

How exactly are forking and dongle innuendos offensive to women? What right do you have to be offended by them other than that you have ears?

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#126

Post by antihero »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #57
Xylakant wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see here is that you snapped a picture and posted it in public - being prosecutor, judge, jury and executor in one person. That's not how things should work out. There's two sides of the story and I think it would have been better if a neutral party heard both sides instead of public summary execution. The guys conduct may not have been appropriate, but IMHO yours was not as well. Had you done all of th…

Sorry but the company were judge, jury and executor, not her. If you report a crime to the police and as a result the person gets sent to prison did you send them to prison? Of course not. She reported something that happened (which the person in question doesn't deny) - that's a reasonable thing to do. The neutral party you ask for should then be the employer who can listen to both sides of the story and work out th…

Thing is, due to (mostly righteous) backlash, companies are running shit-scared. If you associate a company with something that could even be remotely construed as sexist (despite in this instance it not being), they will do everything in their power to distance themselves from it.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#127

Post by alukima »

My first reaction to this was that she was being overly sensitive. As several others pointed out she admits that she played Cards Against Humanity while at the conference and obviously that seems far more offensive to most than dongles and forking.

Any girl that works in a place with a highly skewed male to female ratio has to have a cut off. While working at a game company I let little jokes like this slide because I thought they were funny and they didn't offend me at all. Then it got a little worse and it eventually turned into "Oh alukima is grumpy today, her boyfriend must not have given her any dick last night" and when I told someone no, we couldn't do x "on your period?, I'll just take this up with [male supervisor]." I eventually quit.

I don't think it's like that in every unchecked environment but in the future I will speak up much earlier. I'll probably be called overly sensitive then and I'll probably agree with that. But it's worth to keep it from escalating.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#129

Post by xxxxxxxxxxx »

adriarichards wrote: post #27
mr-hank wrote: post #23

Hi, I'm the guy who made a comment about big dongles. First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes…

Hey, Thanks for speaking up, contributing your viewpoint on HN and not attacking me. I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively. For context, I'm a developer evangelist. That means I'm an advocate for developers, male and female. While I hear abou demanding bosses with impossible deadlines for product launch…

"I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively."

if you're serious about that, promote this petition as hard as you did the damaging photo: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/374/323/889/give-alex-reid-hi...

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#130

Post by ushas »

mr-hank wrote: post #23

Hi, I'm the guy who made a comment about big dongles. First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position. However, there is another side to this story. While I did make a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male, no sexual jokes…

>The sexual context was applied by Adria, and not us.

>She gave me no warning, she smiled while she snapped the pic and sealed my fate.

> As a result of the picture she took I was let go from my job today. Which sucks because I have 3 kids and I really liked that job.

So she took the joke way too seriously and in turn caused you to lose your job. Great way to 'teach' someone to make a joke about dongles, right?

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