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Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

> Public shaming was not the right way to handle the situation.

I find it odd then that the mob went after Adria, doing exactly what they are calling her out for doing, and publicly shaming her.

Saying that she started it, or that two wrongs make a right, or any like that is only highlighting the hypocrisy.

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There's a fundamental difference between publicly shaming someone who made a semi-private comment (I'm assuming the guy in question did not stand up and yell the joke to the entire conference) vs. publicly criticising someone for comments they themselves made in a way that was extremely public.

If she wants to take something like this public, she should expect the responses to be public.

In other words, it's OK if men do it, but not if a woman does it.

That's not even remotely close to what vidarh said. Try reading it again.

This is a textbook example of the type of response that causes some men to go completely off the rails in these type of discussions.

Your insinuation is extremely sexist and insulting in it's implications.

That's the first time someone has made that distinction, so while that might be your belief, that's the general public in outrage over what she did does not follow in this belief. The comments speak for themselves: publicly outing someones mistakes is not the way to resolve these situations.

You, obviously, feel differently.

I have a hard time parsing your first sentence. As for your second sentence, I agree, and so does most of the friends and co-workers of mine that reacted to Adria's tweet with utter outrage.

Many in public because far more than me felt that a public response is a perfectly acceptable reaction to her public harassment of someone else.

The only way I can interpret your comment given the "You, obviously, feel differently" is that you are talking about "publicly outing" her mistake.

But she did that herself, and the moment she did, public criticism became fair game.

(The threats and insults against her, and DOS against SendGrid, on the other hand, are disgusting and shocking and reveal that certainly she would have plenty of valid gender and discrimination issues to comment on - just not by publicly shaming someone who did not harass her even if the joke might have been totally inappropriate for the setting).

One distinction is that the comments made by the developer were directed at his colleague, while her tweet was directed to the public, or at the very least to those that followed her on Twitter at the time of her tweet.

That's the distinction. The joker made a private comment, which was made public by a third party. Adria made a public statement. There's no hypocrisy here; Adria wanted attention to her comment.

It was not a private comment. People keep saying it. Speaking to someone does not make it private.

Was there a large audience to the comment? Was it directed at a general group of people? No. It was directed at a single other person, and she happened to overhear it. So it was private. That it was made in public and within earshot of others does not make it a public statement.

You're assuming that the people who are against public shaming are the ones doing it to her. "The mob" you speak of is not a thing.

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