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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Her post is quite good, and provides a very good argumentation for her actions. For a moment, I almost agreed with her.

Then I realized the problem, the same one that feminists are facing more and more; women want to be equal, but they want to keep certain privileges. They want to be accepted by men in tech as equals, but be spared sex jokes (that, btw, have nothing to do with tech, but have a lot to do with men; in my group of (male) friends, they are completely normal, along with all other jokes). I don't think both are possible.

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Wait - being treated with professional courtesy is a privilege women have? Why did nobody ever tell me?

Sex jokes have no place in the work place. Period. No matter the gender of the narrator or the audience.

I disagree. I like jokes, even sex jokes, even at the workplace.

However, it depends on company culture and policy, which should not be changed simply because one employee feels uncomfortable, even if it's a woman (or maybe the policy dictates that in such case the culture should be changed; nevertheless, gender shouldn't matter).

pyCon clearly set their expectations for their guests during this event. I think if the "community" has such a large issue with it, they can stop attending conferences that don't adhere to their social expectations. (pyCon would not get any smaller though)

You don't sound like much fun. I work with many women and men... We are all make horrible sex jokes throughout the day. Are you the guy sitting by yourself at lunch?

i worked at a place like that once, it was pretty boring and stale. I worked with co-wrokers.

Now i work some place like yours! (with both other women and men) and its great. I work with friends and acquaintances now not co-workers.

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 humor in a very broad way.

> 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...

"I'm not going to debate what is work appropriate."

As pointed out by a previous poster, I would appreciate it you took the time to understand that this was not the crux of what I was saying. Work appropriateness aside, the idea that only juveniles could possibly enjoy such a joke is ... laughable.

No, but I think only pubescent teens enjoy telling those jokes to as wide an audience as possible. They might well be funny, but what's funny to one person can be hurtful to another person. Which is why you keep that kind of humor out of the workplace (and the public).

That's the whole point. Not that jokes like that are told. I find it sad that some of the ones being told are utterly degrading, and I'd hope people would let go of those, but as far as sex jokes in a group of friends go? Sure. Have at it. They have consented.

At work, I have not consented to be subject to those jokes, and there is no reason to tell them. That is what this is about.

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 colleges, esp. if those colleges don't think that racism or sexism is a big deal. In such a situation, the person who feels uncomfortable can say nothing and continue to be a part of the group or they can say something and suddenly find themselves on the outside of the group, which for work has big consequences like losing access to resources needed to do your job, being passed up for promotion, etc.

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.

There is too a solution to this problem: be professional at work and save the blue humor for the social hour. People are trying to get paid here.

Your comment about puberty is pretty offensive.

> being treated with professional courtesy is a privilege Did any of the people involved act with professional courtesy?

Quoting from the post I replied to

> women want to be equal, but they want to keep certain privileges. They want to be accepted by men in tech as equals, but be spared sex jokes

So, according to that, being spared sex jokes is a privilege that women enjoy. It also happens to fall under professional courtesy. Hence my comment.

None of that is directly related to the people involved.

> women want to be equal, but they want to keep certain privileges.

What privilege is this that she wants to keep? Women are already bombarded with sex jokes. The fact it's such an outrage she spoke up is testament to that.

> What privilege is this that she wants to keep? Women are already bombarded with sex jokes. The fact it's such an outrage she spoke up is testament to that.

This times three million.

it's not an outrage she spoke up. she overheard an inappropriate comment and proceeded to publicly drag these guys' reputations through the mud. between the two actions (private, inappropriate comments in a public space, or calling out the pitchforks), her action was clearly worse, and in real terms more damaging.

She didn't drag their reputations through anything, because I don't believe they were named. She only asked the PyCon organizers to do something about them via Twitter.

She did post a picture of them, wearing their companies t-shirt, resulting in one of the individuals to be released from his job.

I'm still not seeing the part where their reputations were publicly dragged through the mud. To do that, you would have to identify them, and the only people who know them are the ones who paid for their trip in order to represent them: their employers.

It's a shame he got fired, but I don't necessarily blame his company. I wouldn't want someone telling dick jokes and making me look bad doing it on my dime.

A name isn't the only form of identification, which is proven by one of the guys getting fired.

I know. That's why I mentioned their employers in my previous comment. That still doesn't mean she publicly dragged them through the mud. She didn't release a pastebin full of their information. She never even mentioned their name.

She didn't mention their names because she didn't have to; she deliberately took the photo to show the names on their badges and specifically (even saying so in her blog post, which actually acts to incriminate her more than it does to justify her actions) because one of them was a sponsor and she wanted to get that fact on file. She set out to humiliate these men in front of her thousands of followers and make a mockery of them and their behavior. Neither of them had the means to even begin to refute her claims before they were burned at the stake, and this guy lost his job before most of us even knew this happened.

That is the very definition of dragging someone's reputation through the mud.

How many Alex's work at PlayHaven? Because both of those things are clearly visible in the photo she posted. According to LinkedIn, it's a company of 11-50 people and it took me one minute to find their profiles.

Apparently he wasn't involved. Did Adria Richards falsely accuse Alex Reid of misconduct and post his personally identifying information online?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404193

There isn't an outrage because she spoke up, there's an outrage because she publicly identified and shamed them over something so minor. It should have gone no further then her contacting the event staff and how they resolved it

So, I'm wondering what world you all live in where posting a photograph of someone with no name or identity attached is "publicly shaming" them.

well i could be a smart ass and say a world with face recognition & the internets.

Or just point out that in the photo https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464/...

you can clearly see both their badges (with names) and their are wearing their companies t-shirt. Also she really should have cropped it because the poor man on the left is going to be mistaken for the one of them now.

"Alex" something? I can't read that.

And I think their company might have more than one bearded guy on staff, so it's hardly obvious.

Yeah, but I can, and I found him in 30 seconds. And that's the guy who was not fired, and who may not have anything to apologize for. As best I can tell it was the person sitting to his left that lost his job.

It's disingenuous to dismiss photos as anonymous when it's so easy to either crowdsource or reverse-engineer someone's identity. If you weren't aware of how easy it is, then I politely suggest you're a little naive.

Not to mention there is a guy in the photo who wasn't involved at all and just happened to be sitting there and allot of people are mistaking him for the guy who was fired. Sucks to be him right now.

Agreed, it's a classic example of two wrongs not making a right.

Perhaps (some of) the women want to be spared sex jokes WHEN IN A VENUE THAT PROHIBITS THEM. Pycon has a code of conduct (https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/) which specifically prohibits sexual jokes as being inappropriate in the context of the conference.

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