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The PyCon Incident

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Re: The PyCon Incident

#961

Post by JohnBooty »

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.

  > Indeed, I am really puzzled as to why these 
  > "jokes" are supposed to be offensive to women.
The difference between the PyCon incident and your female friend texting you a joke is that she is your friend, and you have a rapport, and in your friendly relationship with her you two have a understanding that that kind of joke is okay!

That's a lot different from a person being subjected to sexualized jokes and comments from strangers.

Your friend gets to choose what kind of friendship she has with you; a woman on a train or at a conference does not get to choose what kind of sexualized comments she hears from strangers.

Surely this is something we can all understand. A lot of guys (me included) will say really rank things to their close friends - explicitly letting their friends know when they're getting fat, jokes about sleeping with their friends' wives and mothers, and so forth. That's all totally cool (and often hilarious) but surely you can agree: it would be a completely different story if a stranger or your boss started making remarks about your weight or how many times he's slept with your wife, correct?

That's kind of what it's like for women when they hear unwanted sexualized jokes and comments from strangers, with the added factors of being minorities in their own industries and living in a largely male-dominated world. Did you know that even in America, a woman has roughly a 20% chance of being raped in her lifetime? (source: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SV-DataSheet-a.pdf)

Here's the key thing, though: it's actually not about what you feel. Whether you don't understand, or you do understand and simply think women who feel this way are being dumb, the fact is that a lot of women feel that way. You can respect their wishes and make them feel welcome in our community, or you can choose not to. My personal opinion is that the more of us who choose the former, the better - for us and for our industry.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#962

Post by ryguytilidie »

jessedhillon wrote: post #621
ryguytilidie wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is now "insane" to hold a company responsible for the actions of someone who was specifically representing that company in an evangelist role at an event? I can't believe this point even passed through your head much less ended up being typed out and passed off as a logical statement, where you are actually, get this, attempting to mock someone else. wtf man...

A major factor you have to always consider when reading HN comments on stories like this -- and I'm not even kidding here -- is that a large percentage of the HN population has no idea how to convince women to have sex with them. I mean, among online forums, I would place good money that HN's readership has one of the highest ratios of adult virgins (non-elective, i.e. not by choice) Why do I think this? Because I've…

"for making gross, wildly inappropriate jokes within earshot of other attendees"

lol try being in any other industry and going to conferences. Plus try basing your argument on what actually happened. What you wrote above seems completely disconnected from reality.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#963

Post by jdmichal »

DanBC wrote: post #864
devilshaircut wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like how the only thing you add to the conversation is the exact thing that the person you're replying to said they weren't going to discuss...

Re: The PyCon Incident

#964

Post by psionski »

mistercow wrote: post #915
psionski wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is! Either you're free to say anything or you're not free at all. There's no relativism here.

You are free to say anything, and the people who run the conference are free to ask you to leave.

If you're at my private property, am I free to kill you? It's the same thing, it just falls under another paragraph of the constitution (in most countries; America has exceptions where you are indeed free to do this, but this is another topic). Let's forget the law for a second; by group opinion, do they have the moral right to do this?

Re: The PyCon Incident

#965

Post by jdmichal »

king_jester wrote: post #882
heili wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would treat you professionally and avoid making any references to anything more controversial than toast in your presence. But I also wouldn't invite you to any outside of work social activities either, because you sound like a buzzkill.

> But I also wouldn't invite you to any outside of work social activities either, because you sound like a buzzkill. This is actually one of the problems with folks being able to speak up in an office environment to challenge sexist or racist "jokes". Very often said humor isn't even humor and is used by a privileged group to disparage another. If someone calls that out, they can face social exclusion from their coll…

There is no solution to this problem. It is simply the nature of being social. If I like talking about X, and another person doesn't, then I'm simply not going to talk with them, because they don't like talking about the things I do. Yes, X can be sexual innuendo jokes. But X can also be computers, or board games, or gardening. This is simply how being a social entity with differing world views works.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#966

Post by seivan »

nollidge wrote: post #953
seivan wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT IS NOT HER RIGHT TO GET OFFENDED. Now you're probably wondering why I used all caps. I really don't have a good explanation for that. Because once I read your post, that's the first thing that sprung to my mind.. in Helvetica-Neu, bold 38px.

I am not a person prone to hyperbole, so please understand that when I say this is one of the stupidest things I have ever read on Hacker News, I'm not saying so for the hackneyed dramatic flair. This... is one of the stupidest things I have ever read on Hacker News. You appear to not have given this even one iota of critical thought, or are a complete psychopath, or perhaps you are using a language superficially ide…

I can't have a discussion with you, if you actually believe people have a right to get offended and act on those emotions above other peoples emotions.

No person has a right to get offended. Period.

I don't know what caused you to call me stupid here, but I can understand you felt a need to call me out on something. It's my passionate belief that you have a right to express yourself freely. I am not going to argue with you there.

If Mr.Bean can't explain it to you. Then there is nothing I can do, and I will carry on. And I won't be offended, because I can leave it behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY

Re: The PyCon Incident

#967

Post by seivan »

JPKab wrote: post #952
seivan wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT IS NOT HER RIGHT TO GET OFFENDED. Now you're probably wondering why I used all caps. I really don't have a good explanation for that. Because once I read your post, that's the first thing that sprung to my mind.. in Helvetica-Neu, bold 38px.

Nothing in the Constitution says that people have a right to not be offended. This is why the ACLU defends asshole Nazi/KKK idiots when they put up signs, perform protests, etc. Are standards for not offending people much higher in the worksplace? Of course they are, and for good reasons. We want people to be comfortable. But lets just make this clear: if you have a zero tolerance policy at work for saying "offensive…

Nailed it :-)

Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY

Re: The PyCon Incident

#968

Post by nollidge »

seivan wrote: post #966
nollidge wrote: post #953

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a person prone to hyperbole, so please understand that when I say this is one of the stupidest things I have ever read on Hacker News, I'm not saying so for the hackneyed dramatic flair. This... is one of the stupidest things I have ever read on Hacker News. You appear to not have given this even one iota of critical thought, or are a complete psychopath, or perhaps you are using a language superficially ide…

I can't have a discussion with you, if you actually believe people have a right to get offended and act on those emotions above other peoples emotions. No person has a right to get offended. Period. I don't know what caused you to call me stupid here, but I can understand you felt a need to call me out on something. It's my passionate belief that you have a right to express yourself freely. I am not going to argue wi…

It's very simple: if you don't have the right to be offended, then you don't have freedom of thought, much less freedom of speech.

That you cite Rowan Atkinson's support of free speech as a defense is incredibly ironic. He's not saying you don't have a right to be offended or to express it, it's that you don't have a right to expect the government to act on that offense, and I'm in full agreement.

I think you're treating "I feel offended" as equivalent to "I wish to suppress someone else's speech" or even "someone is required to care that I feel offended", when they don't necessarily follow each other.

Everyone has an inalienable right to get offended. What they don't have a right to is for anyone to give a shit about it.

I hope now you can understand why my mind was boggled.

EDIT: Also, please note that I very intentionally did not call you stupid, I called your comment stupid.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#969

Post by eridius »

fingerprinter wrote: post #914
eridius wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for replying. As I said, I didn't want to take sides. My comment was purely addressing the idea that, because the speaker did not intend the comment to be sexual in nature, that means it was a "fabrication". I do agree with you that the appropriate course of action was to speak to the two men and ask them to cut out the comments. That said, I disagree with your absolutist position. Yes, anything you say cou…

> The point is whether it could reasonably be considered offensive by a reasonable person. See, you didn't say that the first time. You said "the way listener interpreted the language was far more important". No caveats, no stipulations. Simply adding the word "reasonable" changes nearly everything about what you said. Doesn't make it more right, just makes it less wrong ;) > And yes, I'd have to say that saying "I w…

I said it was more important. I didn't say it was the only consideration in the world. You're taking a strangely absolutionist viewpoint that simply wasn't present in my comment.

> By someone, not by most reasonable people at a pycon conference.

Who are you to judge that? If I were sitting in front of those two guys I would have been made uncomfortable by the large dongle jokes, and I'm a straight white male, just like them.

> Is personal offense now the benchmark by which we judge what one can and cannot say?

In a professional setting? Yeah. Don't say things that you believe may offend your listeners. Setting and context matters. If you know the people you're talking to, you can probably judge what is and isn't ok to say. But if you're sitting in the middle of a sea of people, listening to a talk, then you don't know your listeners, and what's more, whatever you say is going to impede the ability of the people around you to listen to the speaker. Absolutely not the right time to start saying potentially offensive stuff.

Re: The PyCon Incident

#970

Post by eridius »

seivan wrote: post #941
mtrimpe wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if that's not an ad-hominem I don't know what is. Adria got pissed at overhearing some inappropriate jokes, snapped a picture and tweeted her indignation. It might not have been the wisest thing to do, but she didn't fire that guy; she just got offended. It's her right to get offended here and it's the other guy's right to (accidentally) offend her. The only dicks here are a) Playhaven unless, like I suspect, the…

IT IS NOT HER RIGHT TO GET OFFENDED. Now you're probably wondering why I used all caps. I really don't have a good explanation for that. Because once I read your post, that's the first thing that sprung to my mind.. in Helvetica-Neu, bold 38px.

What does rights have to do with anything? This isn't a matter of free speech. It's a private event, with a code of conduct (which those two did violate, however unintentionally), in a professional setting.
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