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Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

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Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#211

Post by michaelochurch »

dnm wrote: post #183
michaelochurch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, sexual harassment laws that actually exist are reasonable and conservative. There are a few women who try to sue over dick jokes, and "men's rights" characters who make a big deal out of it when that happens-- just like people blow the McDonalds case out of proportion (short synopsis: McD was in the wrong for bad cup design and serving over 160F/70C, the court assigned her partial blame, and she originally…

Wait, are you saying she was harassed? Because she overheard a conversation in a public place? Nothing I've read indicated that the jokes were directed at her. The impression I got was she just decided she needed to control the behavior of two people she didn't know who said something behind her back (literally).

My point is that she was not harassed. She wasn't even in the conversation.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#212

Post by martinced »

Do you people realize that women, when between women, can be just as gross as men? They talk about guys as "food" and "expendable" things. They really do. Also they typically give way more details about their sexual life to their women friends than man do to their men friends.

The difference is that in the coding world it's something like 90% men. So of course you won't have enough women "teaming up" to make gravvy jokes about men's short appendages or whatever.

What about we stop it?

I was playing tennis with a friend the other day: two men. On the court next to our were four women. My friend was making a few jokes during pauses and being "gross". I can tell you that the four women were doing exactly the same: you can't hear it but they look at you and laugh and you know they're talking about you as meat they're going to eat or something. Because that's what women do when they look at men and laugh between them. Just ask them ffs. They can be really gross too.

Now I try not to make these jokes and sexual remarks: not because somehow I'd try not to offend the other person (honestly women can laugh as much as they want when talking about me, I don't give a frak). No, the reason I don't do this is because I've got a girlfriend and I don't want to be disrespectful to her by making sexual jokes about "wanting to fork other women's little hidden repo" or something.

It would be great if people stopped doing these lame remarks but it would be great too if women stopped playing 16 years old virgins who are never saying anything gravvy about men when between them.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#213

Post by Steuard »

ramblerman wrote: post #31

Without tumbling deep into a flame war, I'd like to ask a sincere question. I have trouble understanding the sexism behind the remarks, and why the instigator needs to apologize (for sexism). People get offended for all kinds of things, nobody can claim a monopoloy on that. ( http://imgur.com/EX5v4 stephen fry quote) - If they would both have been gay and talking about a homosexual topic, someone in that room would b…

Stealing something I wrote on another thread here:

Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".)

So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#216

Post by martinced »

girvo wrote: post #165
georgeorwell wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

I honestly didn't know Appeal To Hypocrisy was a fallacy! Probably one I'm going to continue to make; hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane.

"hypocrisy is the one thing that drives me insane"

Me too because hypocrisy is clearly a form of intellectual dishonesty in itself and I don't want to lose time with intellectually dishonest people. As simple as that.

If someone I know is a torturer and doesn't know I know it and tells me: "torturing people is bad", I'm not going to argue with him. I'm not going to think: "his point may be wrong because he's intellectually dishonest so torturing may actually be acceptable".

No, actually I'd disrespect this person even more: a first time because he's a torturer and a second time because of his hypocrisy.

I've got zero things to learn from such person, no matter how true or wrong their poisonous words are.

There are way enough knowledgable and honest people out there to learn things from.

Please do continue to use it.

F^ck hypocrites.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#217

Post by tptacek »

michaelochurch wrote: post #45

Let's simplify the rules to basic decency. Don't Be a Dick. Oh wait, I guess I can't say that now. Well, fuck me. Whoops, can't say that either. I hope mr-hank gets a huge severance out of PlayHaven. (At-will employment is not as simple as employers like to say it is.) At this point, he has position for something substantial, given that they discussed the termination in the public (disclosing an opinion that he is gu…

In what specific way do you believe at-will employment is likely to be insufficient to allow someone's employers to fire them over a Twitter message?

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#218

Post by prodigal_erik »

cobrausn wrote: post #73
redthrowaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways. All I get from that is that it played a role. In fact, their statement is tacit support of the argument that the controversy wasn't the only factor in their decision.

I agree - there were multiple factors. But... PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. Notice the result of this investigation part. Maybe this guy ha…

A one-day "thorough investigation" is code for "met with our attorney". Every HR department in the US has to regard him as an untouchable; there was no investigation because it doesn't matter what he actually did.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#219

Post by eridius »

georgeorwell wrote: post #162
rdl wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's ok to post offensive jokes/sexual innuendo if you're a woman ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/sets/721576169418... ) or ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 ), just like you can only be racist if you're white ( https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858 )

Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy) is a fallacy, but this annoys me too. The pictures she took at PyCon of her playing a game of Cards Against Humanity are perhaps the most galling: https://www.facebook.com/adriarichards e.g. the one on March 14th where she's holding a card that says, "Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale."

Did she go find random attendees and drag them over to her game and force them to hear her read out her cards?

No?

Oh, I guess it isn't the same thing at all then.

Re: Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost

#220

Post by cheapsteak »

niggler wrote: post #32
pyre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

| For the life of me cannot fathom why PlayHaven | went to the extreme step of firing the dev in | question. | | What he did was certainly wrong, but certainly not | a firable offense. A stern warning from HR | would've sufficed. - The ultra-conservative approach is to distance yourself from anything that could be construed as being supportive of a "boys' club" in tech. - According to CrunchBase, PlayHaven only has 5…

"They could have paid for his PyCon expenses (therefore he was there representing the company), and they felt that he did a poor job representing the company." Doesn't explain why one person is still an employee while the other gentleman was canned. "It's possible there were other reasons they wanted to fire him before PyCon, but this became a good excuse to act on them." I strongly suspect this happened, given the c…

Maybe they decided to only fire the person who made the joke? It would hardly seem fair to fire the other guy if all he did was listen
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