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Comment by djcapelis | Hacker News Reader

> Skewering someone in public on the Internet like that is immature and irresponsible. There are a million better ways she could have dealt with this.

I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did.

No matter how a woman chooses to address something like this, there's always someone who wants to talk about how she should have addressed it differently.

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This is not about her being a woman. This is about responsibly dealing with a situation.

"Exactly the manner she did?" No one has ever been asked to disclose a photo with faces on Twitter to 9k followers.

The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

> The right thing to do is either deal with the person directly or escalate above them, whether you're a woman or not. Going straight to the mob is never the right answer.

Isn't this exactly what happened though? She posted on her feed and asked if someone could speak to them and the Pycon officials saw her post and did exactly that. You're treating this as if she posted on her feed something like, "Can the people who employed these guys please fire them? Also, I want each of my followers to retweet this and make sure they get fired."

I think that the PyCon staff would have been a better group to escalate to, not a 9000 person mob (one of whom presumably did the intelligent thing and notified the staff)

I said this in another post and I'm going to repeat myself here. Social media is powerful (look at the recent Steubenville fiasco) and if you are going to put somebody out to hang you better be right. Considering she is part of the pr group for her company (developer evangelist?) I believe she has an understanding of what a twitter account with 9000 followers can do.

>Isn't this exactly what happened though?

Also, don't try to play with words, she did that and more. The sensible response would have been to tell them to stop and then if they didn't, contact one of the staff. A post on twitter saying "Conference etiquette: Sexual innuendos about forking and dongles are not cool" without a picture would have been much MUCH more tasteful.

She had many options. She could have gotten out of her seat and found a staff member to talk to. She could have sent an email. She could have called one of the numbers listed in the pycon code of conduct.

Instead, she posted a photo of some men on the Internet in order to publicly humiliate them. Are you advocating that people act this way whenever they get offended at a conference?

> This is not about her being a woman.

Of course it isn't, but the dynamics at play that happen in these cases are relevant and erasing them as if they don't exist is some kind of "well those don't make my argument stronger so I'm going to ignore them" nonsense.

"I'm pretty sure relating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability shouldn't be something we call irresponsible. In fact, women who do otherwise are often asked to disclose in exactly the manner she did."

That doesn't follow -- you're begging the question. Why is disclosing something public, if well detailed, not irresponsible when it can cause harm (as this situation did)? And why should people being previously asked to disclose such information make it a responsible action? Furthermore, do you have an example of such disclosures -- you speak as though you do?

I don't think it's fair to hold witnesses and reporters responsible for the consequences of telling the truth. The only person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking.

I can't quite understand your last sentence, but if you are looking for people telling women that they are irresponsible for not speaking up, just read the comments on this recent discussion of the Steubenville rape:

http://www.underthegunreview.net/2013/03/18/henry-rollins-co...

There are quite a number of people there telling women that they are morally obligated to speak up when something bad happens.

Of course it's fair to hold "witnesses" and "reporters" responsible for the consequence of what they say.

The person responsible for the speech that was reported are the people speaking; the person responsible for the reportage of the speech is the person who did the reporting. The former resulted in a woman being uncomfortable while the latter lost a father of three his livelihood.

You've got a problem with apposite context and proportionality. A techie at a conference making a dongle joke is not a gay biker in a bar telling anal virginity jokes, is not the frat-boy gang rape of an unconscious teen girl.

True, they are all "bad things happening" - but that is such a large category that to act as if or argue any specific response is justified due to it belonging in that category is likely to lead to damaging over-reactions.

In the context of corporate public relations and harassment lawsuits in the workplace, which became relevant the second the tweet was sent, what she did was an extremely damaging over-reaction - which given the woman's background and role we can conclude was committed with malice aforethought. Your entire argument is based upon wildly inappropriate contextualisation.

I see. So in your view, she should have inquired how many children he had?

Is she also obligated to consider that in reporting the incident to conference staff? Or mentioning it to a friend? After all, either one of those could also conceivably result in the guy losing his job.

For the record, I should say that I agree that dongle jokes are not rape, and have never said otherwise.

i) The children don't come into it because she should have known that her actions were wildly disproportionate even if there were no dependents involved. Do you agree or disagree that her response lacked proportionality?

ii) Again, I'll point out that she did not in fact just report the incident to the conference staff. Any hypothetical scenario in which her response was not to publicise her grievance misses the main reason she deserves the harsh judgement she is receiving.

iii) You're presenting completely irrelevent scenarios as if they're relevant. Is the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of the gang rape of an unconscious teen different from the standard for responsible behaviour in the case of hearing a mildly risque joke by a guy in the row behind you at a tech conference? Is it very different? Is is very very very different? Is is perhaps so very different as to be utterly irrelevant?

Like I said, you have a problem with presenting apposite context and addressing proportionality. Try talking about what actually happened.

> elating and disclosing a situation that happened in a public place fully to the best of her ability

If the _best_ of her ability is to take a picture, put it on a public forum then tag it with an insult "ass clown" I don't know what to say. Maybe she should lose her job a "developers' advocate"

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