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> it’s about finding female speakers who have enough of a thick skin to want to stand up infront of an audience of twitter-trigger-happy males and public speak

Was this awful incident a one off or is attacking female speakers at tech conferences a thing? I've not noticed it until now. I don't get it, why would you? To what end?

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It's a thing. It makes front page on HN once a month or so which implies that it happens more than that.

The motives behind it seem to span a spectrum from straight sexism through to weird stalkerness.

As someone else wrote, sunlight is probably the best way to try and reduce the problem.

Unfortunately, it's a thing: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

One of the more famous incidents was the twitter backchannel for dana boyd's Web2.0 talk http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectac... (admittedly, she did have a talk that bombed, but that's still no excuse for the angle that the twitter talk took.

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