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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#221

Post by [deleted] »

Joeboy wrote: post #142
katbyte wrote: post #117

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.

[deleted]

Re: The PyCon Incident

#222

Post by wonderyak »

dmishe wrote: post #128
wonderyak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to conduct themselves with at least a bit of decorum and that affected 'free speech' very little. Manners, common sense and general pleasantness seem to have been completely forgotton.

>Manners, common sense and general pleasantness seem to have been completely forgotton. I would agree with you here. In my idealistic image of the world, she would told them to please shut up because it's not good of a joke, they would say sorry and that'd be all. Actually I think she advocates this point on her blog, but only in aftermath

It used to be called 'being a grown-up'. Somehow being a man-child became not just acceptable, but celebrated.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#223

Post by natmaster »

wpietri wrote: post #191
Joeboy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

"You worry they're talking about you..."

I may not be an expert on human anatomy, but I think women don't have penises? So your analogy does not apply to this situation.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#224

Post by orf »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #51
blhack wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I've been thinking... It's also pretty unprofessional to wear jeans to work, and beer after 4:00pm on Friday is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Also the schedule that the developers keep is really unprofessional. If one of the accountants tried to show up at 11:00am, they'd be fired! I also saw some pictures of one of our devs at Burning Man last year. He was wearing some sort of black, canvas skirt, and…

Starting a 'nerf war' at work is entirely unprofessional, and I hope to never work with someone who is so childish as to think that's reasonable workplace behavior.

I would hate to work where you work. Workplace nerf fights are pretty fun, team bonding on the cheap you could say.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#225

Post by run4yourlives »

wpietri wrote: post #191
Joeboy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine this situation: You are walking down the street. It starts to rain, so you duck into the nearest business, a bar. You order a beer, and realize that you have stepped into a gay bar. The table behind you starts making jokes about how virgin anuses are the best. They are pretty big guys, leather daddies. You worry they're talking about you, about your anus. You worry. That feeling of discomfort? The way your he…

Wait, joking about a body part that women don't have isn't offensive but makes women feel unsafe?

WTF?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#226

Post by wpietri »

angersock wrote: post #199
wpietri wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not in private. Their mouths were, what, two feet from the ears in front of them?

Do try and see past the simple physics of the situation--it's clear that they expected any leakage in their message passing to be ignored.

I agree they had that expectation. But that's the problem.

There are situations where they'd know it's not ok to make sexual jokes. They would not be making these jokes at a funeral, or at a niece's dance recital, or over dinner with their grandmothers.

Note also that they were in conversation with Adira seconds before they made the joke, so it's not entirely clear to me that they could even reasonably expect that they be ignored.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#227

Post by ErrantX »

What's confusing to me is that it is unclear exactly what comments were made. Something about "forking" repositories and big dongles. It would be much easier to take a "side" if this were made clearer.... (one reason I'm not outright defending Adria here is that she is very specific in some details in her post, but when it comes to the actual jokes made she appears deliberately vague).

What's wrong with lewd comments, in ''general''? Men and women make them all the time, even in professional contexts. I had to suffer a summer working in an office with 90% female staff and some of the conversations there.. well, I learned a lot! One woman there spent a substantial amount of time lecturing me (aged 17) about how men could benefit from using feminine hygiene products to keep our junk smelling nice. And, yes, I've been in offices where I've cringed at some of the comments made by guys in the presence of girls.

The point is: in specific lewd behaviour isn't good, and perhaps these guys were crossing the line by having their jokes in such a public venue.

But the heat here is ridiculous, from both "sides". And is really rather detracting from core gender issues.

Every industry has sexism issues. I've worked in a few different jobs and seen this; and it works both ways. Some jobs are hell for women, some are hell for men. It's a broad societal issue that isn't helped by witch hunts, either against these guys or against Adria.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#228

Post by lizzard »

kalethrowaway wrote: post #55

Why wouldn't she approach them directly? This is such a weird interaction.

Because people don't respect those requests and just joke more, get hostile, mock us. It is not about personal publicity. The fallout from reporting incidents like this (or documenting them at all in public) is extreme. It isn't good for the reporter.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#230

Post by sylvinus »

blhack wrote: post #31
ajross wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's cool down a little here. An irresponsible tweet doesn't really constitute a "personal vendetta" (it's not even personal -- as far as I can tell she never knew their names). And while the post was (apparently, I don't know what the evidence here is) the proximate cause, you really can't say that she "got [him] fired", as she wasn't the employer nor did she advocate for his termination. It's just a bad situation…

It went further than that, though. http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...

Cross-posting my held-in-moderation comment to her post here:

"I calculated my next steps." => I'm sorry but that just feels wrong.

You actively tried to harm these guys (and succeeded). I'm pretty sure they weren't "calculating" their bad jokes to hurt your feelings.

Instead of an absurdly long post you should probably just have mentioned their bad taste, apologised for getting somebody fired and tried to resolve this issue as peacefully as possible instead of blowing it up.

No, the future of programming wasn't on the line yesterday. Yes, you made yourself heard but in way that (so far) has only done harm to this community.

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