Sendgrid, you make us sad :( I doubt that I ever use your services, don't want to support that kind of people.
The PyCon Incident
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: The PyCon Incident
#862So, here in this thread, we see people calling out a woman over the internet for calling out a man over the internet.
That's what we call hypocritical.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised by the "eeew" attached to being a woman in tech. Is there really that much stigma with saying "I am a woman"? I get that we all just want to be technologists and not "female technologists" but it's a red flag that people use this kind of mitigating speech when sharing their views. It's unfair to assume Adria is "sheltered". In fact she has dealt with a great deal more than most of us, from domestic abus…
your twisting our words, its not being women in tech that's eeww, its the phrase "women in tech". it sounds so... i dunno, something that i can't put my finger on. I'm a women. I'm in tech. they are two separate things. i see no need to explicitly point out that i am a "women in tech" except when silly things like this happen and i have to. I wouldn't judge her as sheltered, i know people who have gone through some h…
>your twisting our words, its not being women in tech that's eeww, its the phrase "women in tech". it sounds so... i dunno, something that i can't put my finger on.
It sounds like a constant reminder that you're not really a part of the community because there's tech and then there's 'women in tech' - as if your plumbing has anything to do with being 'in tech'.
At least, that's why I dislike the phrase.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I happen to be the woman who actually enjoys hanging out with her current colleagues - who all strangely managed to grow up past puberty.
I respect women like youself so I will reply in the same way I would reply to any male poster on this forum. What reality do you live in? Do you honestly think it is only prepubescent teens who make jokes involving sex and reproductive organs? Do you further deny that such jokes can actually be funny? I'm not going to debate what is work appropriate. But I think you grossly mischaracterize the nature of people and hu…
> Do you further deny that such jokes can actually be funny?
I know lots of jokes about Jews or homosexuals or mad people that are very funny. I'd never tell those jokes at work, or at a conference, or in the presence of anyone who wasn't a very close friend.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
The office I work in is entirely male, myself included, and just because don how I was raised, these types of jokes make me uncomfortable. However, after I said something about the issue, my coworkers, like most human beings, made an effort to check themselves. However, until you say something, they can't do anything about it. I agree its a decency issue and not a sexism one.
What is indecent is that Adria Richards completely invented the bit about forking being a sexual reference ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681 ), escalated her discomfort to the level of internet drama, got her employer SendGrid to support her, and didn't exactly go out of her way to petition PlayHaven to unfire one of the two guys involved. And she's now sticking to her guns even after profusive apologies…
You write:
> All she had to do was turn around and ask the guys to stop making sex jokes.
But I think one of the important points here is that women should not NEED to turn around and ask the guys to stop making sex jokes. The need to ask (or resign oneself to putting up with the hostile environment) is itself a burden. Would it be acceptable to make "dumb nigger" jokes as long as anytime an African American asks you to stop you stop making the jokes while they're in the room?
I am not arguing that they WERE making sex jokes, or that it rose to the level of a firing offense, just that "she could have asked us to stop" is not a good argument. In fact, they WERE asked to stop (or rather, not to start), by the organizers of PyCon before the conference ever started. That is exactly what PyCon's non-harassment policy is about.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#866Earlier 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.
In a professional setting, you should apply the "would I tell this joke to my mother" rule. It might not be your mother, but someone else, like your grand parent or a situation where lewd jokes are inappropriate, like a job interview or a new client.
> In fact a female friend texted me one about an hour ago.
A friend. Being female has nothing to do with it.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#867This is really absurd. I don't understand this general don't make any jokes about X. It's like religion, soccer clubs, my favorite color, or gender. People should be allowed to freely make jokes about whatever they want to do. Jokes are offensive in nature, maybe disallow joking?
Re: The PyCon Incident
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your link is (was) 404. Anyway, I frankly don't give a damn whether Adria is a good person or not. People are criticizing her for a specific set of actions that don't seem to be in line with what actually happened. It exposes a lot of sloppy, biased thinking that is the real problem here. :(
I think the majority of criticism is that she escalated things so rapidly to publicly shaming people who didn't deserve it costing a man his job over a silly dick joke that that majority of women wouldn't have batted an eye over. If she didn't publicly identify him, no one would have cared. If she had simply notified the conference staff, no one would have cared. She took it to extremes, and now the internet is respo…
Adria did NOT fire this man. As far as I can tell, she never ran a campaign to get him fired. What she did was to report what occurred, including the names of those involved.
If your local newspaper ran an article exposing a scandal, and the participants in the scandal got in trouble because it came to light, would you blame the newspaper?
If this was a minor offense that no one should have cared about, then reporting it is fine -- there's no harm done. If this was a major issue that justifies strong reactions, then reporting it is fine -- justice is served. I fear that the real position is "My employer thinks this is a major issue worth firing over, but I want to keep doing it anyway so you have an obligation to keep this under wraps for me." and I do not think that is a defensible position to take.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#869Not mentioned is the fact that Adria has received a FLOOD of hateful, violent, racist, and misogynistic comments as a result of a _tweet_. Adria DID NOT get someone fired. She tweeted a picture and comments about something that made her uncomfortable at a tech conference. As a result she has now been called a b_tch, c_nt, wh_re, n_gger, and an "affirmative action hire". People are saying things like "someone with her…
Let's get facts straight:
Andria did get someone fired, by posting their picture online with partially false accusations. Check mr-hank's comments. n.
reddit/twitter/hn are anonymous mediums, anonymity causes people to be cruel.
Re: The PyCon Incident
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
The office I work in is entirely male, myself included, and just because don how I was raised, these types of jokes make me uncomfortable. However, after I said something about the issue, my coworkers, like most human beings, made an effort to check themselves. However, until you say something, they can't do anything about it. I agree its a decency issue and not a sexism one.
Anyone can be made uncomfortable by anything, and most people will try and not make people uncomfortable, but until they know your bothered by it they can't do anything.
This was not "just anything", and all conference participants were on notice that this SPECIFIC behavior was prohibited at PyCon.
Read the code of conduct for PyCon: https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/ Not specifically the lines "Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue" and "Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for PyCon."
Because of previous issues, the organizers of the conference went out of their way to make the line between what was and was not allowed quite explicit. They did this in order to avoid having participants claim they didn't know it would make someone uncomfortable.
I am not saying that this was a firing offense, or that everything which was said was intended as a sexual joke, but some of it crossed a CLEARLY marked line which had been communicated BEFORE the conference even began.