Live data from Hacker News

Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

twitter.com

311–320 of 704 posts

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#311
What I'll remember from all that: you can lose your job and be publicly smeared and shamed by joking with your friend at a conference. I certainly wouldn't ever want to come at any such conference, at any price. This is political correctness gone completely crazy.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am only a visitor from Reddit on this website and I will likely not post on here again, I felt compelled to make an account and reply to your post. You sir, win the internet award for 3-20-13 for your outstanding writing, cogent points, and social awareness. One does not often see this quality of writing and thoughts combined into a singular document on internet sites, and for making me think at the end "oh m…

Hey, thanks for the compliment and kind words. I appreciate that. However, I must emphatically and proudly express that I do not support the negation and devaluing of women's (as well as ethnic, [other] cultural, LGBT, etc.) rights by way of reactionary countering with a "men's rights" movement. One of the most pressing reasons is that such a movement would likely result in a majority of white, heterosexual male adhe…

I take it back. You clearly would not fit in over at /r/mensrights... which says only good things about you. :)

I can't judge what happened at this convention--wasn't there, don't know what all was overheard, or what people may have said during an interview with managers that might have led to a firing... nor do I know if the firing was indeed some kind of appeasement gesture that really was massively unjust to the guys. So I'll leave it to those more familiar with the events and people to determine whether or not this was a justified firing.

As an aside, and possibly an irrelevant one...in my experience, which I know doesn't count as evidence towards anything, people get away with making crude jokes at the expense of others most of the time. It's rare to see people held accountable for their poor judgment. You've got to be pretty confident of your own untouchability to make off-color jokes in a professional environment when you're surrounded by people you don't know. Maybe these guys didn't do anything like that, and, if so, what happened to them is quite bad. Even if it was just a misunderstanding (they didn't think they were making crude remarks; if they'd had the chance to talk it over with the person who reported them, she'd have seen that she had misheard them and would agree they were blameless), it'd be quite sad that one of the guys got fired because of it. On the other hand, I'd like to live in a world where people don't feel smugly confident that they can do or say whatever they want and the rest of us will hunch our shoulders and take it.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi. Savagedm came in here to sing your praises. I just wanted to let you know--before you graciously acknowledge his adulation--that he represents a large and fairly freaky population of misogynists on reddit who typically congregate in http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/ , and who have an especially sharp hatred for feminists of any stripe (be they ever so humble). The giveaway is > Women frequently engage in behavi…

> Some of your comments suggest you might fit in over there. Then again, maybe not. Absolutely not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410463 Please forgive my apparent failure at explaining clearly enough that I was not attempting to draw some sort of straw man argument that "women do it, so it can't be sexist". That's an inherently faulty and pointless line of argumentation (a case of tu quoque , I believe). My…

Yeah, just saw your reply to our "pal" from /r/mensrights. I was wrong about you--wrong to imply you might harbor misogynist impulses. I apologize for the remark and accept that you, sir, are awesomesauce.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#314
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're an developer evangelist for Sendgrid. I can't believe you have not been fired for tweeting those pictures and getting those developers fired without even talking to them.

Since Sendgrid continues to employee you, I'd encourage any developers using Sendgrid to switch to an alternative like Postmark or Mailgun. Let Sendgrid know why you are switching.

For the record, I agree with you that those jokes were inappropriate, but what you did was orders of magnitude more inappropriate and unprofessional.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#316
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…

Absolutely crazy ! That was a harmless joke gone wrong. Sorry mate.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another visitor from Reddit, I apologize for this comment. While I agree with the original commenter that this case is overblown and shouldn't be called out as sexism, it flows from error and a reaction to a real problem. To suggest that we need a "men's rights movement" to counter this sort of error seems absurd. If this is the level of "hardship" that men are facing, they have little to complain about. Men shoul…

Mmm. Nothing gets the Men's Rights fanatics frothing like the suggestion that they aren't the most oppressed people of all time (OF. ALL. TIME.). So it might help ease their minds to acknowledge that there are a few significant scenarios in which there is actually gender bias that favors women. The worst one is probably child custody. Who says moms are automatically better single parents? I'd say the other bad one is…

While I completely agree with you that it is nonsense in suggesting that men are the most oppressed people of all time. Anyone who supports this is a moron. However, there is some truth in the arguments that people are suggest, if you will please hear me out:

Recently near me, there was a crime committed by a teacher. This teacher had been having an explicit relationship with pupils, namely in sending digital photos of themselves to students. When this teacher was caught, they were obviously stripped of their teaching and arrested (My country, like many others, has a system where personal relationships between students and teachers must be consensual and the student must be over 18, it is also frowned upon if they are in school together). When tried and convicted, this teacher got only a few years in prison. This teacher, as I'm sure you've guessed is a female. Now, what do you think the conviction would have been if that was a male teacher? Much higher than a few years I'm sure, additionally there would've been outrage, yet I only heard about it months after the conviction. Don't you see that there are inequalities in life, positive discrimination? I mean, there are laws that there must be X% of women in the boardroom, but I ask you- what if all male the applicants to the job are better than the female ones? Should then the business lose out on a great candidate because the laws force them to choose the worse one?

Look, I am not a Men's rights activist, I am not completely anti-feminism, I agree that 'the oppression' that many men see themselves under is merely a fallacy. However, it isn't as clear cut as you seem to think. Now, I hope I have suggested some things that would cause you to think, it is highly doubtful that I shall come to this site again, so If I cannot answer your reply then I am sorry, but hopefully my comment will start a discussion that will come to a valid and nonbiased conclusion. Thank you for reading this,

Jabba

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#318

I just happened on this thread, even if a day old. Un-fucking-believable. I'm disappointed nearly all around here. Disappointed in pycon for actually kicking them out. Very disappointed that some would say posting their picture was fine (hint: it was not). Utterly disappointed they lost their jobs over this. I still can't believe they lost their jobs over this. What a sad state of affairs the world is in when someone…

I hope everybody retweets that tweet...with a suitable comment.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of your comments suggest you might fit in over there. Then again, maybe not. Absolutely not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5410463 Please forgive my apparent failure at explaining clearly enough that I was not attempting to draw some sort of straw man argument that "women do it, so it can't be sexist". That's an inherently faulty and pointless line of argumentation (a case of tu quoque , I believe). My…

Yeah, just saw your reply to our "pal" from /r/mensrights. I was wrong about you--wrong to imply you might harbor misogynist impulses. I apologize for the remark and accept that you, sir, are awesomesauce.

Wow, typical hypersensitive Reddit feminist... quick to jump in and spout lies without actually reading the content of the comment you're replying to.

Re: Inappropriate comments at pycon 2013 called out

#320
post #284
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>strawpeople. Are even logical fallacies supposed to be politically correct now? That's hilarious. Googling strawpeople gets me a New Zealand band.

Language policing helps your argument a lot.

In this case it actually does. There's absolutely no need to change strawman to strawpeople, other than the necessary implied injustice that you feel for the fact that the word contains 'man', and therefore must somehow be corrected to contain both sexes. It's a silly changing of nomenclature for no other purpose than to generate a feeling of self congratulatory accomplishment over a wrong that doesn't actually exist, much like the severity of the injustice that you feel is placed upon women in society every day.
Post reply on HN