Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out • Hacker News Board

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#161

Post by drridta » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 12:53 AM UTC

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…

If I would be Mr Hank I would go and sue Adria as she took a photo of him and distributed it without his consent. This is a serious privacy issue. I would like to read her post after she gets fired in a similar way because of a photo. I'm sure she would feel the pain.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#162

Post by stubiz123 » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 12:56 AM UTC

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…

Adria thinks she won something here, she doesn't give a damn she destroyed someone's career over a simple sexual pun in a private conversation that she wasn't apart of nor was it directed towards her. I wish you luck in finding a new job where the company will actually try to defend their employee against such sensationalist nonsense masked as equality.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#163

Post by zshprompt » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 12:59 AM UTC

selenamarie wrote: post #156

[deleted] wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Unclear on why you are explaining the internet to me.

Sorry too bummed out about the situation to parse your previous.

Everyone is applauding Adria for her courage, but taking someone's photo and posting it on twitter is not speaking out. I know that turning to someone and saying "what you said is offensive to me" or reporting them to the staff is not easy, but nevertheless it was the correct course of action. She smiled and took a picture of those guys. She never even bothered to give them a dirty look. And now all these women and men are praising her as a hero.

Worse it appears that some assumptions on her part are not correct. Even worse, her own previous blog post states:

"Because of my experiences growing up, I have triggers. This means that I’m always scanning for danger; for situations that seem like something from the past that could hurt me. When I recognize something that matches, I can overreact and feel intense fear, anger or anxiety. "

her blog name is butyoureagirl.com. What does that mean? "you don't expect me to do all this do you?".

Now she can go write a book, while this guy lost his job. This is so sexist and so unfair and so ironic.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#164

Post by eggsbox » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:14 AM UTC

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…

Agreed that Adria had every right to feel offended. There is no place for humour in public.

You are not the first person though to be caught telling dongle jokes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#165

Post by beigelightning » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:17 AM UTC

It's interesting how Adria attaches the importance of dealing with these men since they were sponsors, but then when dealing with it went completely from her personal platform. As SendGrid, her company is a sponsor, shouldn't she have run her response/reaction through the proper channels? This of course had an effect (hopefully short term) on the comment maker, but I think Adria will find in the long run she just shot herself in the foot in the tech space as far as further employment is concerned.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#166

Post by truthbetold » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

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…

You need to take legal action. You made a joke which hurt someone's feelings.

They turned around and made a post which is causing you harm.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#167

Post by prodigal_erik » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

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…

He has been fired for cause. Best case is the victim (whose real name we should cease using in this affair) wins a ruinous lawsuit for long-term damage to his career, and Adria Richards is blackballed by the industry as vindictive and profoundly unsafe to have any kind of interaction with. But we know that nothing is going to happen.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#168

Post by dontmindme » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:25 AM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #44

adriarichards wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

"Prosecutor, judge, jury and executor [sic]...public summary execution." Um hello? NO ONE IS DEAD. Please stop for a moment and try to recognize just how ridiculous you sound.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#169

Post by dontmindme » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:35 AM UTC

bobthecrusher wrote: post #151

adriarichards wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fuck you, you eavesdropped on a private conversation and then published ONE COMMENT TAKEN COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTEXT on the internet, hoping for a lynch mob to form.

How, exactly, was it a private conversation? Do you not understand how social interaction works? And are you so flagrantly ignorant that you like to throw around the phrase "lynch mob" without knowing what it means, or do you really think that repeating part of a public conversation is similar to gathering a mob to murder someone?

Must be nice to lead such a sheltered life that you can so easily hallucinate about lynching.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#170

Post by kanja » Wed, Mar 20, 2013, 1:35 AM UTC

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #132

johngalt wrote: post #95

Time for the bigotry test: Lets reverse the genders. It's a woman making the sexualized comments to a friend, and a male attendee eavesdrops. Then he takes a picture her without her consent. Immediately posts said picture online. She loses her job. What would the response be?

No, you need to go back a bit. First set up a society that massively favours women for a few millennia, seeing men primarily in terms of sex and procreation, THEN do your experiment, ensuring that there are still a good few people around who still see the world in that way and are happy to both express that view and use it to guide their actions. Otherwise you're only doing the very, very end bit. Seriously, you can'…

Such a bullshit argument. "no you see, it's ok to be a bigot because of the context!" Such crap - it really sickens me to see people arguing in favor of bigotry and hate because they feel they can get away with it.