181–190 of 1001 posts
I don't get it. Are there folks amongst us that really so socially inept that they think its ok to make a dick joke at a conference regardless of context? Its a professional conference and that is not professional behavior.
I think all of us would agree that technology has a sexism problem. However , the environment in 2013 and the way, as a whole, it seems that we have gone about countering it is roughly equivalent to napalming six city blocks to get rid of bedbugs in an apartment. (Edit: On reflection, a better analogy would be napalming New York City to eradicate bedbugs. I am aware of the scope of the sexism problem.) This little sa…
I've said this elsewhere, but:
The pot smoker was a few feet from me in an informal conference late one evening. I don't think anyone complained that pot was smoked at all. They complained that it was smoked inside a crowded room.
I would've been as personally annoyed if someone lit a tobacco cigarette in the same close quarters. It stunk. Badly. I also imagine that PyCon _had_ to say and do _something_ lest they get a reputation for condoning illegal substance abuse in the middle of open sessions.
Note: I'm just a bystander, a regular attendee like everyone else. I didn't report or complain about the pot smoker even though it reeked. The reaction of everyone around me wasn't anger, but sheer disbelief that someone would be that stupid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nobody is claiming that Adria is lying The linked pastebin says "the "forking" reference turned out to be a fabrication".
If this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 is indeed a comment by the person who lost his job, then it does not seem to be.
Couple pieces to this. First – the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer. Next – let's talk about this red herring of "sexism." Making a phallus joke might be sexist depending on context. Or it might not be. Sexism is not at issue here. The individual in question concedes that they did, in fact, make the joke. From PyCon's code of conduct: "All communication should…
"the fact that this guy's employer made a kneejerk reaction is no one's fault but the employer." Exactly. Let's direct our questions first at the employer. What she did wasn't exactly the coolest thing in the world, but she wasn't the one who fired the guy -- his employer did. I also dont get the sense that she wanted to really punish the guy; rather, she wanted to call out the practice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this. I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did. No matter how a…
This is not about her being a woman. This is about responsibly dealing with a situation. "Exactly the manner she did?" No one has ever been asked to disclose a photo with faces on Twitter to 9k followers. The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.
Of course it isn't, but the dynamics at play that happen in these cases are relevant and erasing them as if they don't exist is some kind of "well those don't make my argument stronger so I'm going to ignore them" nonsense.
Look at the photos in http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...
You can see that the two guys are in very crowded presentation room surrounded by other people. Their conversation, unless whispered, would be clearly audible by many people around them.
Given that context, I think the outrage in this (bravely) anonymous pastebin posting is way over the top. Maybe Adria could've handled this better, but her disgust and frustration are entirely reasonable.
Why are you anonymously using Pastebin? I'd prefer if you posted it on your own blog with your own name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
as "a women in tech" (god i hate even saying it like that lol) i totally agree. i think what she did was absurd. It wasn't even a lewd or offensive joke. Maybe its my social group but something like that would even cause any of us (more women in tech) to even bat an eye. If it was bothersome in anyway it was they were so loud she was paying more attention to them and they private conversations and not the speaker. Sh…
Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women. They might be offensive to people raised in some cultures / subcultures, and they don't sound like they're great jokes in any culture, but nobody ever told me about the meeting where women decided knob jokes were offensive. In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.
I agree its a decency issue and not a sexism one.
First of all, the forking one, according to the guy who said it and considering he is not lying (why would he, his explanation makes sense) it was simply refering to a code repo fork nothing wrong with that or am I the only one who thinks that?
The "dongle" joke may not be the most correct thing to say I will agree on that, but seriously I can't see a problem with it considering it was not directed at anyone just a "private" conversation, I even know women who could laugh at some kind of joke like that, what is wrong with it? I fail to see any kind of sexism in it, (sexual innuendo yes, I can see that).
Now here comes what bothers me most, adria actions, taking the picture and posting it online I seriously have a problem with that (public attack is definately NOT the right way to handle the issue), and even worse for me is her attitude, "being a hero" "feeling like joan of arc" (not exact quotes im writing it from memory) and even more hypocritical is claiming others can't do any kind of sexual joke because if offender her, and then tweeting this https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
Before I continue I want to say that I am in favor of gender equality. But this reaction does not help at all, makes me think twice before adding a female member to my team, no matter how skilled she may be (and I think like me more will think about it) so as you can see its not helping at all with equality.
And more unrelated to the specific post but something that can be related to the feminist movement, I can't really understand why but some women only claim equality when it is useful to them, when its not they claim to be weaker than men, that does not sound right. One simple example from my country (cant really speak for others) in the army men have to cut their hair, women don't, if asked those women will say they want to be treated equal, but when asked to cut their hair like men they will refuse.
One last thought why are the olympics separated in female and male, why are sports like football (soccer for americans) separated too? Are we not supposed to be equal?
I already sent SendGrid's sales department an email that I will boycott their company and recommend others do so as well moving forward. Where I work we were considering between SendGrid or Mandrill and this incident practically made our choice for us. We cannot and _will not_ support a company that backs[1] a person like this. [1] - https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328