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Comment by colabug | Hacker News Reader

It's not about her being offended by a particular comment, nor is it required that said comment be directed at her. The issue is the environment that is created when such things are quietly tolerated.

Sure staff could have been involved, but then it's not a teachable moment, just another moment suffered in silence while the "authorities" handle the situation for her.

It may seem like a small event to you, but I'd suggest reading about what I like to call "death by a thousand papercuts" (via @skud). There are TONS of "little" things that happen everyday that can be dismissed as insignificant, but they add up to an unwelcoming environment.

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Staff were involved after the fact. The Code of Conduct, which these attendees agreed to, makes it clear that this behavior is not allowed.

Very often with bad behavior, the offender is anonymous and intentional, and the subtext is: "what are you going to do about it?"

Was this so bad? Should she have called out these people in this case? That question misses a larger point.

So many such incidents (and much worse) go unchallenged that I'm happy Adria felt comfortable calling it out and asking the community to stand for the ideals it claims to hold.

There's work left to be done, but we're heading in the right direction.

Agreed. It would be very bad if this went unchallenged. Its fantastic that women feel comfortable enough to speak out when they are made uncomfortable.

But I still respectfully disagree that posting their picture BEFORE confronting them with staff was a good idea.

I read that article when it came out. This is not a "lighten up honey situation". Adria has every right to be offended and absolutely every right to call out their bad behavior.

I just feel in hindsight it would have been better if she gave the PyCon staff a chance to address the matter before posting pictures of people on twitter. It was her right to take a picture of those guys, its the posting before doing anything else that I humbly disagree with.

> This is not a "lighten up honey situation". Adria has every right to be offended and absolutely every right to call out their bad behavior.

Ah, so the only two choices are 1) condescending, sexist down-talk to a woman, or 2) a woman being rightfully offended.

What about 3)a woman being non-rightfully offended?

Well actually I believe it is against the CoC to take pictures during the conference, so it wasn't her right at all. Yet that's ok because?

I agree. She was totally within her rights to complain about the joke. That ended however, when she took it public, on Twitter, instead of PyCon officials. In my opinion, her actions were far worse than the joke itself. And it doesn't matter if it was the most vile, disgusting sexist joke ever said. Her actions were wrong. And the PSF and PyCon have become so politically correct, they fail to see who the real victim is.

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