Adria Richards, PyCon, and How We All Lost • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by georgeorwell » Sun, Mar 24, 2013, 9:29 PM UTC

dspeyer wrote: post #389

georgeorwell wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I actually just didn't realize you were talking about probabilistic logic, because I'm used to propositional logic. If there is no way to determine S in the absence of A, then yes, A matters. However, we have a reasonable accounting of the facts agreed upon by both sides, at least as far as the dongle joke is concerned. Given that, a post mortem evaluation of the joke by a large group of people is a much better w…

I always use probabilistic logic for real-world questions. Certainty is just too rare. I understand and agree with your analysis except for one point: as I understand it, the exact text of the joke has not been published, sadly preventing post mortem evaluation.

Well, mr-hank said it had something to do with "a big dongle joke about a fictional piece hardware that identified as male", and Adria corroborates that less specifically with it being a joke about a "big" dongle.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont...

However, if that description isn't enough (it is for me), I'd much rather accept Adria's oversensitivity and injustice-seeking behavior as applicable character flaws. As opposed to her hypocrisy, those things really do make her a bad judge of what is and isn't sexist, because they generate false positives.

Her hypocrisy is also galling because of her response to the events, but that still doesn't affect her claim that she took appropriate action, because it's a generic claim about any woman in that situation, and doesn't rely on any of her character flaws.

Okay, that is as refined as it gets for me, I think. I did come to see how I was implicitly accepting an ad hominem argument without realizing it (the one about oversensitivity), so thanks again.

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

#392

Post by davver » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 3:30 AM UTC

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…

"I think we should care more about women earning 77 cents on the dollar"

This is a faulty study and its well known. Why even cite it?

"unfairly hard time recovering their career progress after maternity"

They lost skills and their market value is lower. You can't force people to pay them more then they are worth.

Someone has to actually raise children. The under the table immigrant nanny that's watching the kid is taking a break from her self-actualization career too. This is a cost people just have to deal with.

---

I find your self flagellation going a little far. Nearly all the people in your industry are men. They are men because they are generally nerds that feel they need to go into a boring profession because it pays more and providing for women is their only way to get a mate. Women, who have natural value as the evolutionary bottleneck, don't have to do the shitty jobs. That's why they shy away from the boring, dangerous, or tough jobs men do for the sole reason that they pay more.

Women that are good programmers will do as well or better then the men. I've never seen a good woman programmer (or anything) get held back just for being a woman. Women who are bad programmers will still be kept around to add some diversity. And women who don't program or have any discernible job skills at all will get HR/PR lady jobs like Adia.

Adia forgot she was the token, she was getting a paycheck to do nothing to shuffle some paperwork and make the employment statistics look good. Or maybe she knew it all too well and that was what really pissed her off. Of course it didn't piss her off enough to learn how to program and get a better job, but it did piss her off enough to blame some imaginary patriarchy keeping her down.

The stuff your complaining about in the corporate world applies to men just as much. They just put up with it more because they HAVE TO. Because men are a disposable gender and always have been.

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

#393

Post by jurassic » Mon, Mar 25, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

Crake wrote: post #382

rmc wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

among other things, women chose other professions than men But why do they choose other professions? Do people pressure them into not choosing better paid jobs? Isn't that a symptom. Most feminists don't "blame men", but "blame gender roles". It's just most gender roles significantly benefit a lot of men (and harm a small amount of other men).

Men have to earn enough money to support themselves and their potential spouse if they want to attract a mate, or even just generally be considered not a complete and total failure. Women can just marry someone after college and make the husband pay off all of their college loan debt for their women's studies major or whatever. Men have to choose more carefully, because they're the ones who have to pay off whatever d…

> Women can just marry someone after college and make the husband pay off all of their college loan debt for their women's studies major or whatever.

> Women have far more options with career paths these days, and very rarely have to worry about money.

That's some first class trolling there.

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

#394

Post by Crake » Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 2:42 PM UTC

jurassic wrote: post #393

Crake wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men have to earn enough money to support themselves and their potential spouse if they want to attract a mate, or even just generally be considered not a complete and total failure. Women can just marry someone after college and make the husband pay off all of their college loan debt for their women's studies major or whatever. Men have to choose more carefully, because they're the ones who have to pay off whatever d…

> Women can just marry someone after college and make the husband pay off all of their college loan debt for their women's studies major or whatever. > Women have far more options with career paths these days, and very rarely have to worry about money. That's some first class trolling there.

Not trolling. I've seen my female friends do this many times/seen my male friends have to do this for their gfs/fiancees/etc. People have really different standards of what's acceptable based on a person's biological sex. Again, note that it's something that's not a given in gay relationships, because they don't usually follow heterosexual cultural scripts. I wish people would study it more because I think it's potentially a really interesting way to investigate heterosexual gender roles and norms.

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

#395

Post by linkn2 » Sat, Mar 30, 2013, 6:04 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #326

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…

There are real problems and whatever Adria just tripped on is not one of them. How do you know they aren't related? What if women are being excluded from tech events due to the sexual objectification, and what if that's harming their carrer?

That may be true, however what really hurts Adria's argument is a tweet she made earlier: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425

Now, if women are being excluded due to sexual jokes (and I'll note that the joke she responded to was specifically about comparing technology to a part of the male anatomy, not the female anatomy, so it's not objectification of women that's the issue here), then Adria's tweet here is causing the exact same problem she's crusading against.