SendGrid Fires Company Evangelist After Twitter Fracas
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It's too bad that sendgrid had to fire her, I would never wish that somebody had their livlihood taken from them like that, but her job was to be a developer evangelist, which is a job she isn't realistically capable of performing anymore.
I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as this person. What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
And honestly, she can't even function as a sort of "women's tech evangelist" anymore. Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women.
It sucks...but this is on par with firing a dev who can't program.
What, exactly, has she to apologize for?
The people in question were speaking like they were in a frat house in direct contravention of a code of conduct they'd agreed to. They had the right to speak.
And Adria had the right to tweet. If they didn't like being publicly outed for saying this stuff, guess what? All they had to do was shut their mouths.
> What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
Really? How does that work? You trip over a garbage can and a lewd joke reflexively pops out? How does accidental immature behavior work?
If anything, the overreaction by everyone involved merely proves that the issue of gender in the industry is still significant.
The actions that resulted from that were the employers' fault. If she claimed they molested her (which is illegal and can result in jail time) when they didn't, then you have a point. But the comment they made was uncontested and the employer decided, for a multitude of reasons including the recent matter, to let the guy go.
What if the employer was ready to fire him already, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back? Is it her fault that he was on thin ice to begin with?
There can, and usually is, more than 100% blame to go around.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5399047
I think that's the most we can expect from her regarding the guy getting fired. She didn't fire him, and she clearly expressed that she didn't think he should have been fired over this.
But that post has no apology for the public shaming.
"@skwashd you should put something in your pants next time...like a bunch of socks inside one...large...sock. TSA agent faint"
Joking about sexual humiliation is less offensive than whispering 'dongle' in a crowded theater?
Adria as an individual, yes. Adria as a developer evangelist? No. Her role is to speak for the company, and no company should resort to public shaming and cyber bullying.
Side note: She also tweeted "SendGrid supports me", which is a direct claim that her behavior is in line with company policy.
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
And the company she was envangelising for on that twitter feed thinks that a visual joke about photocopying your genitals is not inappropriate for their jobs pages:
http://i.imgur.com/uWc8P39.png
I understand that speaker and context make all the difference, but she made a joke about sexual humiliation, and then, at the same conference, got offended by a joke comparing dongles to genitals.
But yes, you do point out something strange about her tweets. Unfortunately, many people approach this issue with a double standard
If she was not comfortable with this, she should have maintained a greater separation between her professional and personal online behaviour.
If this is what you think a frat house sounds like, you are very mistaken. That this is considered a faux pas is more politically correct than any office I've ever heard of.
I can assure you I know substantially more on this than you do.
People have a right to attend a conference without sexual jokes leaking into their ears while they attend a talk. It's as simple as that.
Should the guy have been fired? No. Should he have been talking like that? No.
Well then do enlighten the class.
I do.
And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context. I'm reminded of when McCoy wanted to discuss death with Spock:
"It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame of reference." ... "You mean I have to die in order to discuss your insights on death?"
For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github, for example. I don't think there's anything constructive to be said to that.
For the third time in this thread:
What was said?
>And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context.
No, it's an argument from authority. You have the context, yet are not willing to share exactly what was said. The ad hominem came with the "If you had the empathy...".
It would be as if I responded to you by saying 'You're wrong. I'm an expert in these matters.'
And it's not ad hominem to say there's no point to the conversation based on missing context.
Just because a person disagrees with you does not mean they lack empathy or are incapable of getting the context. On the contrary, I think that person has been at pains to explore the idea in an even-handed fashion, even if s/he has not come to the same conclusions as you. I don't fully agree with that person's viewpoint either, but I don't think it justifies launching personal attacks upon them.
For reasons I won't speculate upon, OP seems to believe it's impossible Adria knows anything about github
I am at a loss as to how you arrived at that interpretation. Clearly we are not going to agree about this.
And he agreed and apologized when the pycon staff discussed it with him and his colleague.
As far as anyone has commented everything he said was well within the acceptable rights people lazily call "freedom of speech" (I hesitate to even use the phrase in such contexts for fear of cheapening it). Possibly he was talking while a speaker was talking, which is rude but again does not infringe anyones rights and while that might result in an apology to the speaker or some staff that is pretty much as far as it should ever have gone, had people been mature.
Your understanding of rights appears naive at best I'm afraid.
Hmm wonder if they have a right to attend without a fear of having their lives ruined by a an idiot with a smart phone camera and a twitter account.
Good grief. Can't we all just grow up a little? Without exception, everyone involved (and that includes you, and probably half this thread) needs to apologize to everyone else.
I feel sad.
Exactly! The employer may have been itching for a reason to fire the guy, and this proved convenient.
Whether it's fashionistas, dock-workers, or politicos, people will be people.
In short: childish, immature, vindictive, and petty.
There was plenty to go around here.
I respect the handling by PyCon staff/volunteers (who didn't kick anyone out, but supported keeping PyCon a welcoming, comfortable environment), but beyond that, I feel like this whole incident has just shown us how bad people can act.
Inappropriate yes, sexist no (a "dongle" private joke can hardly be construed as sexist, seriously).
> one employer who (apparently, there is STILL no evidence for this fact beyond the anonymous pastebin!) fired one of the first guys on questionable evidence
Apparently? A blog post from their CEO not evidence enough: http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/? Also fired developer commented quite extensively on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mr-hank
> and another employer who fired the evangelist based on said freakout.
Probably less over the freakout and more over the DDOS they've been under since some of the "uncounted hordes" have decided the best response to mob justice was mob justice, SendGrid'd been unavailable for hours.
"we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways."
I still suspect this was a firing for many reasons, not just this incident.
I've read it several times, just in case the text changed between my visits
> I still suspect this was a firing for many reasons, not just this incident.
And yet the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not come close to hinting that this was not the reason, you'd think. There may have been other reasons, but the timing is odd, why wait until he gets involved in something at PyCon? And even if it happened to be the straw breaking the camel's back it's not like they had to fire him on the spot.
Unless they wanted to milk some views, after all some say no publicity is bad publicity.
I've seen that happen before, so I apologize for my insinuation if the quote was added between your reading and mine.
"the post provides no information whatsoever and crucially does not at any point indicate this was not the reason"
You can't assume that the firing was 100% due to the issue at hand, and I'm saying that I don't think it was 100%. Other people seem to be acting as if that's the only reason he was let go.
Of course not (especially as his colleague was not fired) but in a blog post purporting to "provide some clarity" on "a number of inaccuracies being reported", considering the basic assumption that he was fired for it, you'd think that would be part of the clarity.
Instead the post weasels around with no specifics whatsoever, declaring "a thorough investigation" (of a few hours) but that not "all the factors" would be commented on (none whatsoever were commented on). They've also refused to publish (let alone respond) to a single comment so far.
Making a sexual joke is not the same thing as making a sexist joke.
from <http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/>:
> PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.
"let's check out this pitch and then grab a beer" at a startup VC pitch event
sensitive woman in front of you hears:
"let's check out of this bitch and grab a beer"
turns around, pics, tweets, gets you fired on the spot.
HOW IS THIS OKAY? public shaming is NOT the right response. IT'S JUST NOT.
what a stunning lack of imagination.
These guys were actually making sexual jokes. This wasn't a single mis-heard phrase.
What she didn't understand (since she's not a developer, and probably isn't exposed to these things) is that "fork" is a reference to "git fork".
And if you were to read the follow ups from the guys who were shamed over their oh-so-offensive discussion of dongles and code management, you would see that "fork" was an in joke between them. "Fork" in this context meaning a form of flattery.
For instance "Danilo is a good developer; I'd for his repo".
There is NOTHING sexual about this, but you might not know that if you're not a person who uses git.
Which is exactly what happened.
I think I'm beginning to understand more about the underlying assumptions that form your worldview.
Now (b) noting that the word dongle sounds like dong is not a sexual joke. it is a joke, many would say in poor taste, but it isn't sexual in anyway unless your understanding of sexuality didn't evolve beyond age 12 and you still laugh every time the guy at the hot dog stand says wiener.
neither of them should have lost their jobs and this issue has evolved into something else completely. However, there is no denying that what she did was a gross abuse of whatever influence she had and was little more than playground pettiness on her part. They said something that was not in her taste and rather than be an adult and point out to them or to pycon that she was uncomfortable, she decided to publicly shame him. that's just the truth of the matter.
How does accidental immature behavior work?
THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, which you are conflating ex post facto to rationalize a shitty argument you originally made in the heat of the moment.
i'm fairly certain you would just chalk up my (easily) imagined scenario as unfortunate collateral damage to whatever cause you are so zealously defending, so i guess it doesn't really matter anyway
> How does accidental immature behavior work?
Something like that, I suppose.
Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm willing to bet that going forward more male developers will in fact be "shutting their mouths" when there's a female around.
It kind of comes down to what is a reasonable response, and it seems that's what 50% of the Internet disagrees with. If someone makes an offensive joke near you, we hopefully agree that you can't turn around and shoot that person in the face. We hopefully agree that you can't turn around and punch that person in the face. Calling the conference organizers and reporting them and having them kicked out doesn't seem unreasonable, but going out of your way to shame them on Twitter and a blog does. That just seems like overkill to me. That overkill, at least as I see it, is the thing that perhaps she might apologize for.
It is really sad that you don't see why that might create a hostile and unwelcome environment. Notice, not as many condemn her for _PRIVATELY_ notifying organizers. That is event #1, event #2 was that she publicly posted her tweet. That is not OK and it is sad to see you condone and defend that.
PSF has also been hiding in the weeds with event #2. They issued a neutral statement about #1 and then a surreptitious Github update to their policy to include some of what happened.
If this was a groping incident and all they did was made a Github commit, there would be a shitstorm 10x this one. But public face picture posting with insulting tags, for friends, kids, employers, to see, essentially forever is OK.
I've said it before and will repeat myself again, unless PyCon organizers issue a condemning statement I will not be coming to PyCon. It is a hostile environment and I don't feel safe.
Here's my hangup. I will under no circumstances claim that privilege is not a very real thing and it needs to be considered; my posting history here will bear out that I'm usually saying it does and needs to be. And I'm not even against public shaming as a concept - sometimes, it's the only tool left in the box. But I don't think that's the case here, and I read the backlash to this situation as people getting pissed because somebody with a lot of social influence decided to use it like a magnifying glass to burn some ants. She has (had) power and she has (had) standing that they didn't. She was able to--and, I don't think it's unfair to say, did--point at them to many, many people, and attack them in a way that they can't even respond to effectively, let alone defend themselves if she happened to be wrong (and there's sufficient churn among the stories going back and forth that that's a possibility that needs to be considered).
That, I do think, deserves an apology. And a real one.
I'm not agreeing with anything Adria did, but the issue of being labeled as the "tattletale" probably plays a big part in most women's reluctance to report real harassment.
This isn't just in tech. Some females testified before congress that the same problem was happening in the military, and there the senior officer is given precedence due to his position
But there is a big difference between mentioning something to someone or someone's boss in private, and posting about it on Twitter with a picture attached.
Now I remember why I don't have TV.
Then they'll all congratulate themselves for raising the journalistic bar one cheap SEO trick and even cheaper "I can't believe it's not plagiarism" rewording at a time.
A published false statement that damages someone's reputation? That's libel. Whatever harm is done as a result of the malicious tweet would be repaid to you as damages in court.
You're basically fucked.
Even if the issue goes to court, your public image is basically done for regardless of the outcome so the damages would need to be very substantial.
But that is NOT what happened here. She even said in her blog post that she didn't find the fact that "dongle" and "dong" sound similar offensive.
She decided to try and humiliate these guys over some desire to protect the possible future of some kid whose picture was being shown on stage at the time.
For someone in a marginalized group, they hear constant micro-aggression from a large amount of people daily. Each one of those comments and encounters builds that feeling of not belonging and resentment. That is the context in which folks have to deal with this kind of thing, so they are typically dealing with more than just that one incident you hear about.
Not only that there 3 people in the photo, she doesn't even identify who it was and i feel for that poor guy on the left who had nothing at all to do with it.
She had no regard for the damage her actions could and did cause others and that makes her far worse then the man who made a stupid joke. he was a unprofessional and immature. She was a bully.
To grossly abuse your power and demonize two individuals who do not have a forum in which to rebut your accusations -- not okay.
They even amended their code of conduct to prevent what Adria did from happening in the future.
And the CoC is pretty obviously directed at presenters, not people having a pseudo-private conversation with one another.
It was absolutely inappropriate, even if not expressly specified so in the (since amended) CoC. It's easy to know that it was not appropriate to the event: mob justice never is an appropriate first-order response.
And no, it was no more appropriate a response to Adria's behavior. The whole clusterfuck is a direct result of recursive mobbing.
> Adria notified the goons [or whatever pycon calls them]
"Staff". Because that's what they are: https://us.pycon.org/2013/about/code-of-conduct/harassment-i...
Also, as I understand how things happened Adria first tweeted the picture (and comment), then notified staff. Your comment seems to imply it happened the other way around and she was essentially forced to tweet due to PyCon staff inaction.
> they came by, talked to everybody, and then nothing happened.
Eh? The guys who had made the inappropriate joke were temporarily removed to a private space, discussions happened, they agreed it was "in poor taste" and apologized, then were sent on their merry way: http://pycon.blogspot.be/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropr... Seems enough happening for an inappropriate but rather tame joke in an overhear-able private conversation.
> And the CoC is pretty obviously directed at presenters
You're high as a kite. Here's the third paragraph of the CoC:
> To make clear what is expected, all delegates/attendees, speakers, exhibitors, organizers and volunteers at any PyCon event are required to conform to the following Code of Conduct
emphasis mine. Note that "speakers" are a separate category from "delegates" (company presence) and "attendees" (private individuals). And the text repeatedly notes all attendees are expected to follow the CoC and may be removed upon breach.
Maybe I'm insensitive or ignorant. I'll admit it if that's the case and learn. Right now, though, I just don't get it. I just don't see how a dongle joke is sexist. It's anatomical. It might have some mild sexual undertone, but there's a huge difference between sexism and a sexual undertone--they aren't the same thing at all.
Maybe if I heard the exact joke it would help. But I've heard just as many penis jokes from women as I have men.
If there's one thing women don't like, it's being lumped together and generalised... :P
If so (I am basing this on her account, so definitely an if here), then the sexual overtone is not that mild, and (rightly or wrongly) she appears to have felt personally targeted. Though in a way that is plausibly deniable.
Does that help you understand why she might have had a strong emotional reaction?
Of course the actual actions she took were the wrong ones to take, and caused the whole thing to go nuclear. But the way our brains are wired causes us, when feeling strong emotion, to skip all of our normal logic and self-control and just react. So what she did was highly unfortunate - definitely not what you want to see from your company's public face - but understandable.
Let me draw from a past experience of mine involving a female colleague who was sexually harassed. She related the situation to me and I had absolutely no doubt that what was said to her was inappropriate and needed to be reported to HR. I in fact encouraged her to bring the issue to HR. She told me she was highly reluctant to say anything because she was afraid it would affect the perception of her in the office.
This is a real and legitimate concern for women in the workplace today.
But the fact is, the person she, and women like her, do not want to be seen as is Ms. Richards. My female colleague had experienced a real threat in her workplace that was truly hostile. Ms. Richards demeans very real threats to gender equality in the workplace by using a penis joke told in a private conversation to deal real, public damage senselessly. I am greatly concerned for my female colleagues who are lumped into the same "team" as Ms. Richards, particularly in the inevitable case that they do experience truly awful sexual harassment or threat.
By calling out a non-thing as a wolf, she has effectively raised the bar on real harassment being reported. Likewise, otherwise well intentioned men will be looking over their shoulder when making even harmless comments, promoting a gender division in the workplace.
I reposted this story on my Facebook and literally the only people who commented on it were my female friends/colleagues in the technology industry. Needless to say their reaction was a collective groan.
It is so unfortunate because - as we agree - sexism is such a huge problem that we are certainly not exempt from. And situations like this dilute the real struggles women face in a male-dominated industry.
It's a fact that people's sensitivities and thresholds of offense vary significantly, and even an impersonal, non-specific utterance like 'ah, shit' could cause offense in the wrong context. Sometimes the smart and decent thing to do is excuse yourself and tone down your personality a bit for the sake of social harmony. Nobody should ever feel afraid to challenge or report what seems like obnoxious behavior, no matter what the basis of offense. There may be no guarantee of a remedy, but there should be no penalty for expressing one's dislike of what others are saying.
The difference in this episode is doing it a) via an audience of thousands of Twitter followers, b) with pictures identifying specific people, c) some of whom were not involved, but whose names are now inextricably connected to this whole fracas, and whose images will continue to appear in related internet searches for some indefinite future period.
"I'm sorry to hear your employer deciding to not to work with you on this and I hope they reconsider, bring you back on and dealing with it constructively"
Context does matter.
"First of all I'd like to say I'm sorry. I really did not mean to offend anyone and I really do regret the comment and how it made Adria feel. She had every right to report me to staff, and I defend her position"
Or maybe I'm the weird one. Who knows? =)
(EDIT: I'd also like to note that that is a pretty well-written apology. It's also, you know, an apology. Which Ms. Richards's is not; hers is more of a "non-apology apology", an "I'm sorry that you X" which we really, really need to stamp out as a "thing".
Good on him.)
She didn't fire the guy. The most she could say is that she doesn't think he should have been fired over this, and I read that part of the quote (repeated above) as reflection of my point.
N.B.: She can do (or not do) what she wants, and it doesn't bother me, but please don't confuse what she said as an apology.
I'm frankly saddened that the discussion about the employment circles her and not the employer. Few are asking why, if the joke were so trivial (I also happen to think the joke was rather silly and personally didn't take offense), the employer decided to fire him.
This definitely shows that PlayHaven does not have their employees backs, but for me at least:
1. PlayHaven is in a tough spot. If they defended their employee, it might look as if they're not being tough on sexism, which the industry is heavily focusing on right now. Perhaps they figured it would be safer to be heavy-handed. Perhaps some form of light punishment (suspension? demotion?) would've been the best approach, but too late for that now.
2. I don't know about others, but I don't expect employers to have my back. The upside of this is that I owe them no loyalty either. In a way, this is already the case. Most employees will leave when a better job comes along. It's certainly to some employers' credit that they protect their own, but it's not expected. (At least not in America. In Japan, this use to be the case, but even so, it's becoming less and less so).
I think the negativity has focused on Adria because she turned a minor complaint into a witch hunt.
Which translates as "we have a political campaign, sorry, little guy, you have to go under the bus, because it is politically expedient to us, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, you know?". Sounds pretty despicable to me. Then again, no reason to expect them to be an island of virtue in the world, they are no worse and no better than many others.
Now she has lost her job at Sendgrid and is almost certainly not going to be able to be a 'evangelist' that anyone takes seriously.
Next to what? Adria didn't fire anyone...
I find the concern of being in the same room as her incredibly stupid.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but what's being discussed here isn't the ability to perform an action but the willingness to do so on a whim.
I think that goes for most people. I would be concerned and i'm female. What if i disagree with her? Its not stupid, its cautious.
You should be more afraid at the veritable brigade of angry internet-goers who were stirred up to the point of DDoS'ing her ex-employer and harassing her. But no, focus on the woman who posted a single photograph on her twitter feed. I'm sure she's more dangerous.
Being slandered on Twitter is far from non-trivial. I too would walk on eggshells in the company of someone with a track record of over-reacting like this.
Because Adria didn't call them sexist, certainly not in the twitter or blog posts I've read. She just said it made her uncomfortable.
She accused them of being sexist, referring to the action as harassment and calling the individuals involved "assclowns".
I don't really see how the joke is sexist either, but that's not really the issue here.
Next to be told I'm sexist and I'm the reason women don't enter the technology field.
Next to have my public shaming celebrated over a private remark I thought was tame.
Next to be involved in an asymmetrical Twitter smear campaign I can't respond to because I don't command thousands of followers.
... I suppose I should defend the "sexist loons" label. It would be one thing if people were attacking PlayHaven. They're the ones who made the decision to overreact to Adria's post and fire the guy - a decision she apparently disagreed with. That people got mad at Adria, rather than the folks with hiring & firing power, is, well, weird at best. And if you read the comment threads (like the one on SendGrid's Facebook post), it becomes clear that the explanation for a lot of the weirdness that a bunch of men have deep-seated grievances against "feminists". For people who are saying she deserved to be fired because she linked John Scalzi's post - http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-th... - this is clearly not about free speech or privacy. And the rage level against Adria would be way lower without those people.
While representing her employer at a conference, she unnecessarily publicly shamed two developers. Like I've said before, none of this should have ever left Pycon.
Then (and what I think was the nail in the coffin) she made her "my employer supports me" tweet. SendGrid had made no comment about the incident, and now she has directly connected them to it.
So now, claiming she has SendGrid's support, in her capacity as a developer evangelist, she has publicly shamed two people in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with.
That is what I think proved she is not a good evangelist anymore.
Beyond that, I'm torn between two responses. On the one hand, her post may have been an overreaction, but I don't think its indefensible. If you say something offensive in public, it's not a huge escalation for somebody to post on social media, "hey this guy said something offensive". It's the firing that's the big escalation, and that's all on PlayHaven - it's not like Adria even called for it, let alone had the power to enact it.
On the other hand, I think that's almost irrelevant, because it's naive to believe that SendGrid's firing decision was made on the merits of her actions, absent the context of all the Internet outrage. If they think she can't do her job anymore, it's because a bunch of people "in the demographic her position requires her to build relations with" get really bizarrely enraged when a woman asks them to change their behavior, and SendGrid was feeling the heat. It's not because she demonstrated such bad judgment that a reasonable person couldn't trust her decision-making ever again.
Needs references.
Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
As a woman in tech, I deal with sexism all the time. And it's usually not blatant, "blah blah a woman's place is in the home get out of my office" type of stuff. That's egregious and I would shut that down. It's usually less obvious. Like the guy at a conference I went to recently (with my fiance, Brian) who asked me my name, asked Brian his name, and then proceeded to spend 10 minutes talking to Brian and trying to figure out why he (who is a front-end developer at a startup) was at an entrepreneurial conference.
My fiance: I'm here because of Erica. (points at me)
Guy: Oh. But I don't get it. Why are you here?
Brian: She comes here because she's a successful entrepreneur and likes to hang out with other entrepreneurs. I'm tagging along with her.
Guy: Oh. But you're not an entrepreneur...so why are you here?
This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused.
Or a more recent scenario at SXSW where I was talking to a huge, well-known tech big-wig (founder of a multi-billion-dollar tech company) who proceeded to make a flippant, condescending remark about his wife--and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction. Borderline sexist, but definitely unprofessional. What do I do? Do I call him out by name? Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action. I'm horribly disappointed because this is someone I looked up to and hoped to have as a mentor.
These are just recent examples. I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened. Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.
Was Adria's reaction, to this as an isolated event, out of hand? Yes. But when this happens to you every single day--and in her case, multiple times a day!--sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap. I get where she's coming from, even if I wouldn't have done the same thing in her situation.
This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly. It's as frustrating to me as it is to anyone else. The blatant sexism is mostly gone, but the undertones remain. And that makes it harder than ever to gauge what the "right" reaction is as a woman when one of these events happens around you.
My girlfriend works in a traditionally male dominated field, and she has to deal with this sort of thing constantly.
But that interaction where the person assumed you weren't a dev[1] is only made worse by things like what has happened here. The signal to the dev community from Adria's reaction to this joke about dongles is that "women are different".
Obviously I can't speak for you, but I can speak for the other women that I know. They HATE that. They don't want to be looked at as different.
[1]: I see this interaction ALL the freaking time, and we usually just make a point of embarrassing the guy that does it. I should clarify, I mean "embarrassing" as in: making a point of demonstrating how wrong the guy who assumed the girl wasn't an engineer is, not trying to publicly shame them on twitter.
It's not inherently sexist - humans use stereotypes to categorize everything and everyone, and we haven't, as a society, codified how we should navigate these kind of conflicts without butthurt.
The way that women get treated in male dominated fields like tech really has gotten worse.
Try going into a car dealership with your father if you're younger than 25. See who gets talked to.
Try being anywhere and not hearing people bitch about their significant other.
I wish people would stop attributing human nature to sexism/racism. I could go to a beautician convention with my beautiful girlfriend and pretend to be offended when they focus on her, despite there being a decent number of men who are into that. When humans are faced with repeated patterns they get lazy and make assumptions. It's part of what makes us have our intelligence. It's not a malicious disrespect or intentional exclusion (in most cases).
What was that incident a while back, where the "security expert" offered a reward for breaking into his site? 4chan took up the offer, succeeded, and trolled the guy relentlessly. Death threats, photoshops, you name it. And he was a _male_ in a male-dominated field.
The fact is the Internet just isn't a nice place a lot of the time.
I'm sure you can find an example of it happening but it's not a regular occurrence.
Additionally most things posted on the internet by a man is simply a post on the internet. Anything posted on the internet is a post by a woman on the internet.
I'm not very good at practicing it always. ;-) But hopefully this is a fairly non-offensive summary of my thoughts:
I believe Adria being fired was a sad turn of events. I unfortunately have to agree that I don't see a way for her to succeed in her former role at SendGrid though. If she had other talent to lend in less public areas of the company, then it's a shame SendGrid didn't explore that first. I don't imply that she should be sidelined; it would obviously have to be something that she was excited to pursue, and had a genuine path forward on. Failing that, it's conceivable that SendGrid didn't have such an opportunity available though, and letting people go when there's no job they can perform is sometimes reality at most places.
I believe the dev being fired was unjust. I get the impression that "it was just an excuse", but that's really not fair of me. If it were as cut and dry as "bad joke, you're fired", then that's really inexcusable.
I do think culpability is an important standard, and that it's possible for the conversation to be both sexist and inappropriate, as well as innocent, without harm, and simply innocent. Intent should matter if we're all being decent.
Adria taking a photo and posting to a large list of followers would probably otherwise probably be labelled "creepy" in almost any other context, and I do think that was the greater sin of the two since the intent to harm was clearly present. She's not responsible for firing anyone, and can sleep at night knowing that truth (IMO), but that doesn't make her actions noble.
Adria's (apparently? I think?) made the claim that she wasn't personally offended, but after consideration decided to take a stand for future generations. I saw another comment that said something like: "Attempting to take offense on someone else's behalf is a bankrupt position." That feels true in my gut.
So that's my long-winded intro to:
I tend to dismiss the comments that call out "feminists" (using that word) as having a greater agenda I'm just not interested in. I think most reasonable people filter the obviously bigoted insults.
One thing (as a man) that bothers me is the apparently high level of tolerance for insults in the other direction. "man-boy", "14 year old teen boy". Even inappropriate usage of "misogynist". Many of these comments I've seen by otherwise reasonable, level-headed people that garner a large number of upvotes.
It's very divisive and unhelpful. It's certainly both belittling and sexist in the exact same way that calling someone "a little girl" is.
It makes me wonder if even writing this is a good idea. "Fearful" is certainly a good adjective. How will future employers see this? Or people I respect in communities I belong to? I get bigots. I'm not afraid of them. A popular mob trying to "do the right thing". That scares me a bit to be honest.
2c.
And I agree that people are different. I was, I'm sure, [partially due to my chromosomes and reproductive organs] raised in a different context than you.
This doesn't make one of us better than the other, it just makes us different from one another.
But what Adria has done here, and why I think it is so damaging to what I consider important is that she cast this as a "women in tech" issue, not a "me in tech" issue.
SHE was [actually, according to her blog not] offended, but she framed it in such a way that implied that the comments were offensive to women not to her -- as if "women" is one cohesive group that is inherently different than men, who dominate the tech field.
This. It's kind of weird to hear people who complain about stereotyping engaging in stereotyping in the very comment they do the complaint, by claiming something is true for all men or women and if it's true for them, it must be true for other people sharing some defined identity aspect with them. I think it would be an improvement if one could say "it was offensive to me" without turning it into a political case that all world must polarize around.
Are you certain of that? Really think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of these women you know. Would they really want you speaking for them?
Just because people are talking about the way women are treated doesn't mean that people don't care about or are ignoring how black people are treated.
Your experience does not negate the offenses directed at women, nor does their experience negate yours.
It's unacceptable to treat people like this full stop, whether you're in tech or not.
B) 2nd wave feminists see gender as the most fundamental form of discrimination with economical and ethnocentric discrimination being derivative and secondary. I can see why an African-American individual would be offended by middle class white women portraying their victim-hood as equal in severity to his.
Not that the OP is guilty of either offense but it's cliche behavior in feminist circles.
How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.
I kind of regret the knee jerk posting, because i think camus intent wasn't to convey what i was accusing him of conveying. I think it was just a poor choice of words.
But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color. But that doesn't negate the legitimacy of the offenses that folks have to bear.
But solidarity in the face of discrimination is like one of the most important things for actual equality. If those who believe in equality don't support each other, then we're all really up shit creek.
I live next to a women's college and my ex-gf comes from a family of 2nd wave feminists.
>But I do think that equal attention isn't necessarily paid to issues of discrimination against white women vs women (or anybody) of color.
That's an understatement. Look at the aftermath of raising rape awareness in America. Majority of the resources have gone to college campuses and middle class white areas. Even though these are the groups of women least likely to be the victims of abuse. Feminists have monopolized these resources to women of their own class and ethnicity.
If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.
This is still true today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly#Views_on_men
>If you want to talk about the specific things you think that 3rd wavers are getting wrong about 2nd wave feminism, you'll have to be more specific because bigotry isn't limited to radfems who subscribe to 2nd waver philosophy.
First and foremost is the double standard afforded to 2nd wave bigotry. The smallest sexist offense incites a twittersphere rabble. Where is the rabble against transphobia taught by 2nd wave professors? Where is the rabble against the blatant misandry? Where is the rabble against anglo-centrism? All I've ever seen is a token effort. If these 2 men deserve to be kicked out of the convention, fired, and shamed then that more than equally applies to the bigots harbored by gender studies institutions. There's no good reason for such double standards.
3rd wave feminists will defend the inclusion of such bigotry through the lense of postmodern relativity but again such inclusion is not afforded to "outsiders" and the distinction between in-group and out-group is arbitrary.
Misandry isn't a real thing men as a whole suffer from. Works about anglo-centrism have been around for a while, although it was not a prominent part of the white mainstream feminist movement decades ago. If all you've seen is a token effort, it seems like you, like many folks, haven't had a chance to access to various material about those issues. As for gender studies, I don't know what you are even saying since I'm pretty sure bigots exist in every studied discipline and gender studies is not a bigoted discipline.
> 3rd wave feminists will defend the inclusion of such bigotry through the lense of postmodern relativity but again such inclusion is not afforded to "outsiders" and the distinction between in-group and out-group is arbitrary.
In what I have seen and read there is been a big increase in the criticism leveled at the big name feminist academics and writers for their moments and instances of bigotry. Exclusion of outsiders is still a problem and there is a way to go before feminism is actually inclusive or accessible for various communities.
Within the halls of gender studies it certainly is...
>As for gender studies, I don't know what you are even saying since I'm pretty sure bigots exist in every studied discipline and gender studies is not a bigoted discipline.
No other academic institution accepts bigot ideologies as an orthodoxy. There's something fundamentally wrong here.
>In what I have seen and read there is been a big increase in the criticism leveled at the big name feminist academics and writers for their moments and instances of bigotry.
I've yet to see any twitterstorm over the horrific transphobia being taught by countless 2nd wave professors. No threats of boycott, no petitions, nothing. Yet, when someone like Joe Rogan mentions transgendered people feminists are out for blood. I'm sorry but the criticism you speak of is a drop in the bucket.
A couple of my black friends said they were more sensitive of their race when they would visit their home, and that they felt more at ease in their work and silicon valley social groups than with their relatives and childhood friends. One of them spent her holidays alone, rather than go home, or visit with other people's families because it was too distressing.
IMHO, it was really a class issue masquerading as race but regardless, it sucked. People need to grow the fuck up.
However, I do feel compelled to make one point about this part:
>Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech. And this upset me, but not for the reasons you think. I agree that Adria went too far in publicly Tweeting and "name and shaming" these guys. But the vitriol and hate that has spewed forth online to her is what takes my breath away. Comments calling her a "cunt" and saying she should be raped (this I found on her blog, presumably before she had a chance to delete it.)
I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with. However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.' This incident was linked to by extremists on both sides of gender issues, and I believe it's largely that community that was responsible for the worst behavior (many of the most egregious twitter accounts featured imagery that was taken from some of these extremist communities). These extremists on both sides have pre-existing ideological war that's been going on for decades and has intensified over the internet, especially recently, as they isolate themselves in echo chambers like private subreddits and tumblr cliques. Of course, there is some overlap between that and the tech community, but if this topic was only being discussed by people who had previously heard of PyCon, I imagine the tone would be far, far different.
If you'd really like to back up the claim, go grab some of the threads on this subject, and spider the account pages of the people posting to the threads.
Plot them by amount of karma and # of days since the account was opened.
As much as i do think /r/mensrights are assholes who are making this situation worse, i would assert that there is a preexisting strain of this behavior on Hacker News, and this behavior is not an incident isolated just to this debacle.
"Of course, there is some overlap between [extremists] and the tech community..."
The problem is, unless more mental energy is expended on this topic, it will be repeated. Better to have the full conversation now than to continually punt the issue.
As much as I support discussion on these topics, it's the internet. Any message board will continue to bring up these issues in waves, as new events occur, as new posters join up, there is not going to be one article where everyone achieves some sort of understanding, now or ever. Set your expectations realistically :)
I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.
My assertion is that there is a substantial number of people who share that same ill will here on hacker news. Most of the threads that have been posted to HN have been dog piles of hating on Adria Richards. So the question is are those people new and in fact not representative of HN? Or are they people who have been around for a while, and have made substantive contributions to the community (using karma as a proxy measure)?
zevyoura was responding directly to the GP's comment which made reference to use of the word "cunt" as well as threats / wishes of rape (and worse). The assertion being that the tech community was not responsible for some of the most hateful vitriol, none of which (AFAIK) was mirrored on HN.
Assuming that in fact all thread contributions were in opposition, it seems uncharitable to infer that simply because a HN contributor disagrees with Adria's actions that they are also somehow equivalent to the worst offenders on Twitter, FB and the like.
As zevyoura mentioned, there may be overlap - but IMHO this isn't as quantifiable an assertion as you make it out to be.
I'm sure it would be naive to believe that there was 0 overlap, but HN (and most programming sites) are not bastions of hate speech.
-Poster above who says hacker news posters are typically sexist. No problem whatsoever, no burden of proof needed. -Person responds and says they disagree that this represents HN posts. You respond and demand that they produce quantifiable proof. -You then go on to assert that hacker news posters are like this, based on 0 quantifiable evidence, but just your hunch.
How do you make a point like that and not realize how unfair/unrealistic you're being?
No? I said if he wanted to quantify his claim, he could do so, and recommended a course of action. He said he didn't have the time/effort to do so.
All i was asserting was that my hunch was contrary to his. That's the perfect place for an experiment. Given that we don't have any evidence in front of us, we just have his hunch and my hunch. I'm not asserting anything beyond that.
My problem is simply that you demanded this of guy who disagreed with you, but you did not demand it from anyone who agreed with you. Its about the most biased/unfair way of making an argument possible.
Having recently discovered the /r/shitredditsays brigades, I'm not sure I'm comfortable seeing /r/mensrights called out without a mention of /r/srs, they are both equally egregious and antagonistic toward each other. And the pre-existing ideological warriors from either side have attached themselves to these communities just as swiftly as they rushed to the respective defense of each side of this story.
There is no way you could know this. People you associate with may be misogynistic or engage in trolling on the internet but they don't tell you or you aren't around to experience it. Bottom line is that the tech community does have issues with misogyny along with the rest of western society, although you are right in that there was a flood of attention from unusual sources for HN (/r/mensrights I'm looking at you).
Really? People seem quite willing to ascribe to "feminists" all the negative attributes they can find. Is that OK? Why it OK to lump all feminists into one group but unfair to do it to "tech".
Also, despite what mad conspiracy theory people say, there aren't really many "extremists" on the "pro-equality" side of the gender issue. There are people complaining that they can't make belitting jokes about women at tech conferences. The other side think we should act professionally. One side is extreme, the other is reasonable.,
It was sexist and offensive but her reaction was unprofessional.
As you wrote, "you just snap."
Unfortunately, just snapping is a firing offense. If I have a bad day, and I yell at my boss, I suffer the consequences.
The shame of this situation is that the problems of the industry's sexism will be ignored because of her (perhaps momentary) lack of professionalism.
If it's ignored, it's because people look very hard for reasons to ignore it.
It's not even necessarily conscious; by deciding that there's no problem, you don't have to to feel guilty about not doing anything about it. Our brains are really good at finding reasons to opt for inaction. :)
(The idea/meme that somehow each and every woman has to be a saint to move gender relations forward is pretty pathetic, btw.)
She issued a general "I hope your employers would have worked with you on this" kind of non-apology-but-I-in-PR-and-had-to-say-something statement response on HN. After a while she did have the opportunity to just say "I was super tired, I made a bad decision, I am sorry about the public post, I will take it down, blah blah...".
As a footnote: Adria moderates ALL comments on her blog, and allowing these trolls a forum seems a little counter productive as she must have chose to let these comments appear.
The last time I innocently chatted up a "taken" woman next to her boyfriend, I was later told by a number of individuals that it seemed like I was hitting on her and it was inappropriate. The allegations totally blew me away because that couldn't have been further from the truth. I was not flirting, I was not touching, I simply asked a lot about her work. I guess old school "bro code" says you shouldn't be too friendly with taken women. Personally, I think it's dumb. Maybe your "perp" thought likewise. And I too would be a little curious why a front-end non-entrepreneur would be at an entrepreneur's conference. Maybe he has some hot new app idea, maybe not.
As for your other examples, though, sorry to hear you had to go through that. With the big-wig, personally, it would come down to how witty of a retort I could come up with, because really, f him. Otherwise, I'd just hold my tongue, which is the safest route, sexist or non-sexist insult alike.
This is actually a common sexist micro-aggression for men, that there interest in a woman is solely due to a desire for sex. It should be noted though that some men do engage in that kind of thing and masculinity through sexual conquest is a big social message for men. That said, that in no way invalidates the parent poster's story and that story and yours go hand-in-hand in describing sexist, heteronormative attitudes society has in general.
If this occurs more than once, chances are you are to blame for the perception.
Thank you for speaking up. I imagine this is not the easiest time to do so.
> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.
With such a large audience there will always be extreme responses on either side. There will (and have been) DDoS attacks, personal phone calls etc. I don't think those represent the community as much as it represents the general population. Take large crowds of people people. Out of 10000 there will be a number of unstable, vile, and malicious ones to spew hate. It doesn't matter what the issue is. It could have been about vegetables or voltmeters.
I believe most others here are just as upset about those comments and actions as you are. I know I am.
> Oh, wait, I can...the coworking conference I recently attended, where nearly 50% of the attendees were women.
I can think of less hostile and more welcome environments too, a smaller conference usually is. I went to a small 100-150 people tech conference recently and it did feel much more friendly, open, and welcoming than something as large as PyCon. I don't think those people were just selected for kindness and sensitivity I think, statistically those few nasty ones just didn't happen to be there.
> I am hard-pressed to name a conference I've attended where one of these "borderline" sexist issues hasn't happened.
And that is why I like how PyCon recently has started to address the issue and encouraged reporting of such incidents. I think you should report such incidents and you shouldn't have to deal with it. It is unprofessional and creates a hostile environment. I want to personally apologize (for whatever an anonymous apology from a no-name on the internet is worth) for their actions insensitivity. I wouldn't want my wife, daughter, mom or sister to have to face this kind of hostility and will go out of my way to speak up and help when I can.
However, what the issue at hand is not the reporting but using twitter, her social an PR status, her job title, to do it. She did that first before she did the private message. She claims jokes were offending, she then posts racists and penis jokes on her twitter account. Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of maliciousness. She weighed her odds according to her blog and decided this might play out well -- and it seems like it would have 0 to 100 in just one day. What more could a PR person involved with speaking engagements could ask for.
> sometimes you can't take it anymore and you just snap.
I can understand that. Adria confessed has has traveled constantly for day before that. She was exhausted. I can see that. We all make mistakes, we are humans. So what is the right thing to do later? Apologize, that is the right thing.
Now let's revisit what happened. There are 2 distinct things she did 1) she reported it privately 2) she slandered someone publicly. There are distinct. I think 1) was what she should have done. And I think 2) is completely un-acceptable. Talk about a hostile environment.
> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly.
I wouldn't want to consider those vile comments and tweets as part of the community. They are just sad examples of humanity. Let's ignore them if we can. But I want to highlight one good thing about the tech community -- it doesn't tolerate injustice. Just like you say you experience sexism and borderline sexual harassment often, many in the tech community were "nerds" and have also experience harassment, psychological and physical abuse in schools. Bullying is not and should not be tolerated. Neither should backstabbing. Or taking credit and advantage of others at their expense. I think that what the community has riled up against.
PSF (PyCon) has gone to hide in the weeds on issue 2) save for a quick Github commit. Yes we noticed that. And it is still not cool.
Just like you feel unwelcome because of veiled and open harassment at conferences. I don't think I will feel safe at PyCon until I know they officially condemn public slandering of attendees (Gold Sponsors, none the less).
> She claims jokes were offending, she then posts
> racists and penis jokes on her twitter account.
> Not only does it smell of hypocrisy it smells of
> maliciousness.
I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.
Twitter has elements of both a public and private space. It's public, obviously, but people read your Tweets voluntarily.
It's not at all comparable to making unwanted sexual comments to a woman you don't know on a bus, or in an alleyway, or in a convenience store, or at a conference. It's not comparable to subjecting It's
If they had come up and started making penis jokes to her, then it'd be a very different situation.
Also, her site is down at the moment, so I can't verify, but didn't she actually converse with them? I might be wrong about that. I wish I could verify it.
She exchanged a sentence or two, then a couple min later after she had turned away after they continued the semi-private conversation the guy made the penis joke.
No but if they make those jokes and then turn around saying anyone making penis jokes is worth of public flogging I would also be the one pointing out the hypocrisy.
> I mean, wow. That's what you're getting at.
Yes. I am getting at hypocrisy. There was an element about her being so outraged at such anatomical jokes. Her credibility is slightly weakened because of her comments on Tweeter. Her credibility is even more weakened based on (what used to be) her job and community position. It more and more starts to point to her taking a calculated advantage of a situation, and also throwing someone under the bus in the process.
She also can't claim ignorance at how publicly broadcasting something like that would turn out for that person. That is what she does for a living supposedly. I think at this point, it would take a very strong argument to convince me this was a quick overreaction and an "oops".
> As far as I can tell, posting jokes like that to
> twitter and hearing jokes like that at a conference
> are entirely comparable in every way. They're exactly
> the same thing - both are jokes of a sexual/race based
> background.
Do you just speak the exact same way everywhere, whether you're talking to clients, joking with your friends during an alcohol-fueled gaming session, in a locker room, or to your parents?
Or do you maybe think that some subjects are appropriate for some situations but not others?
Personally, I say a lot of extremely off-color things to my (male and female) friends that I wouldn't dream of saying to strangers. Even if I had some evidence that stranger had made an off-color joke at some point in their lives.
You seem to be arguing here that a joke at a public conference is a different situation to a joke posted publicly to twitter - I do not see the difference. Her twitter account is now irrevocably linked to Sendspace's image as she has claimed that Sendspace backs her views, which in turn claims that Sendspace is backing her sexual joke in a public space while also calling out a sexual joke at a conference. This is obviously paradoxical, and is also why I'm asking you to rethink your posts.
> You seem to be arguing here that a joke at
> a public conference is a different situation
> to a joke posted publicly to twitter
One, anybody reading Adria's Twitter account is doing so on a voluntary basis. Adria, on the other hand, did not volunteer to listen to a bunch of sexual jokes from these men she doesn't know.
Two, there's the issue of physical proximity. The overwhelming odds are, of course, that the men at this conference were not a physical threat to Adria. Nobody was arguing they were anything worse than some guys who made a joke at a sub-optimal time. However, please understand that sexual violence is depressingly common in America (http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1214_sexual_violence...) and that it's one more reason why we don't subject strangers to unwanted sexual banter, even if that stranger said something off-color at some point in their lives.
Again, I have to ask: given that every woman you know has probably said something off-color at some point in their lives, perhaps publicly, does that give me the right to speak to them in whatever off-color way I wish?
I'd say that no, it doesn't. You say I do?
Or, let's try another tack. Forget Twitter. Let's compare apples to apples.
Do you think you have the right to go up to any female comedienne who's ever made an off-color joke, and tell her off-color jokes? You don't, because she is not volunteering to listen to your jokes in the same way that you did when you listened to her routine. And honestly, I think you probably do know that, and would probably not walk up to Ellen Degeneres and discuss lesbian sex with her even though she has publicly identified as a lesbian on national television.
However, in this case as far as I understand (please correct if I'm wrong) the person took offense not for something that was directed at her, but by something that is merely said in her presence, without her being the intended recipient or part of the discussion. Of course, it could still be unpleasant, but for one to expect they'd never overhear anything that they would not discuss personally would be an unwarranted imposition on others. It's one thing saying "don't talk that way to me", and quite another saying "never talk that way at all if I have even remotest chance of overhearing it".
> but for one to expect they'd never overhear anything that
> they would not discuss personally would be an unwarranted
> imposition on others.
But they were sitting directly behind her. Literally a few feet away. In chairs that were facing toward her. How could they not expect that their words would be audible to her?
> blowing it into an incident of systemic misogyny and
> rampant sexism that is worth losing a job over seems to
> me way out of proportion.
However, just because the response was out of proportion doesn't mean anybody needs to defend the men who were sitting behind her, or strain their credibility by pondering how - how? - these men could have possibly known that the person sitting directly in front of them, several feet away, could have heard their sexual jokes.
Her story goes like this: She was sitting a row in front of them and they were having a private conversation with "dongle" and "forking" jokes.
It could have been me, making those jokes. Luckily nobody could fire me if somebody went nuts and posted my photo on the internet and tried to publicly shame me instead of asking me to stop doing it in her earshot. But perhaps more importantly, she probably wouldn't have said a thing, because I'm a woman. Who's been laughing over the word "dongle" since 1997.
No. Someone said something sexist in public. She put it out on Twitter. If you don't like that. You better watch what you say in public.
We should back up people who stand against discrimination and support them. SendGrid firing her basically says she shouldn't have stood up for herself. Which is pitiful.
Eavesdrop much and then drop a nuke on the people your eavesdropping on? She got what she deserved. She tried to flex her e-peen to see how much clout she had online and that ended up biting her in the ass.
You said it was a flippant comment that was borderline sexist...How about just move on with your life? As a guy, if someone makes a comment that identifies themselves as a jerk I just think, "Hey, that person is a jerk & I prefer not to deal with them."
Harassment is another story but that's not what this is. Also, I wouldn't assume that the psychos making all of these threats represent the tech community. The story has spilled into a lot of media and the most extreme disturbed people don't represent "the community" just like a woman getting offended by a silly pun doesn't represent women in tech.
It's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong". They sound pretty similar. It's not very funny unless you're bored stiff or in grade five, but nevertheless it's pretty harmless joke material, and it isn't sexism. The examples you gave are sexism. If the two guys at PyCon had directed the jokes at Adria while also excluding her, then it would be sexism, but that isn't what happened. She just overheard their inane conversation.
Adria abused her power by escalating this issue to Twitter, and she got abuse thrown back at her. I don't believe she deserves it because nobody deserves abuse, but it's quite clear that it's a tit for tat kind of situation that she initiated. A clear example of her being abusive was that she fabricated the bit about forking repositories being a sex joke - and yes, jumping to conclusions and using the conclusions to humiliate someone is abuse.
As has been pointed out to you, "just snapping" is not an appropriate response to such a minor incident in a professional context. Give a talk or something. From what I've read, Adria is someone who is looking to be the centre of attention in a big drama and she got exactly what she was looking for. Losing her job will only fuel the Joan of Arc fantasies she has explicitly talked about.
In the end, I feel more sorry for Adria than the unknown guy from PlayHaven making dick jokes simply because it's clear she has far more issues to work through, and because this is hardly the end of her suffering. If she wants to blame it on a sexist tech industry she can, but I think she'd do better to look a little closer to home.
I really have to disagree. Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture". Want proof? Watch how fast a group of guys making those jokes suddenly clams up and changes the topic the moment an unfamiliar woman walks up. (And when a woman joins in and shows that she's comfortable making those jokes, too, watch how glad everyone is that she can be "just one of the guys".)
So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space. It's not a conscious thing, but it's a real thing, and it would be good for it to change. I don't know that the public shaming in this case was the right way to go about that, but I'm not sure that I have a better alternative to offer, either. (Women are all too aware that quietly saying "Please don't act that way" tends to have no impact at all, apart from the guys thinking she's a humorless busybody.)
edit: That is, what you are saying does not accurately characterise what happened at all, and is also not really a point that follows from your previous post. Like, at least have premises, the application of logical laws, and then a conclusion.
Don't be a dick.
So, you demonstrate (at the very least) sloppy thinking.
Fortunately, individuality is not like fire - it won't flicker out and die just because you turn it down a bit sometimes. I'm a guy too, and I find dick jokes annoying sometimes. Depending on the context, I might ask someone to settle down or indicate that I was finding such humor tedious.
And? Guys partaking in guy culture, somebody stop the presses.
> So when guys at a conference routinely make dick jokes in public, that contributes to a sense that the conference is a male space.
So it's like a turd in a punchbowl then? Two dudes make a dick joke and now the whole conference is a male space? I would agree with you if it was a conference organizer partaking, or someone giving a talk made the joke, because it would imply some kind of conference dick-joke-sponsorship.
The reason this sort of thing is an issue is that there are countless little signals like this in the tech community all the time, and for a lot of women they add up to a significant feeling of "You're an outsider here." It doesn't need to be officially sponsored by the conference organizers to be very real.
So (and here's the step where I evidently lost you before) what does it mean when guys at tech conferences routinely make dick jokes in public? The clear implication is that they feel like they're in a "guy space" where they don't need to stick to more inclusive topics. And that message gets heard loud and clear by everyone around them: men feel a little more comfortable making "guy jokes" themselves, and women feel a little more like outsiders.
[I was tempted to build a whole analogy based on the question, "Sure, and don't you think your sports-fan friend would feel uncomfortably out of place at PAX?" But while that makes the point, it falls short of the mark, because sports fans haven't been systematically discriminated against by gamers for most of known history.]
First off, you've consistently used the word routinely without establishing that that word applies. This event does not count as a routine. I'm sure that other people have made dick jokes at tech conferences, but 'routinely' strikes me as an overstatement.
Second, 'in public' doesn't really work either. Two friends were sitting next to each other and one made a joke to the other. That's not private, but it's not exactly public either. It wasn't broadcast to the whole room. Adria happened to be sitting close and paying attention to their conversation, but from the best information I've been able to piece together she was not a part of it and it wasn't said with the intention of anyone hearing it other than the guy's friend. That's not making the tech conference a guy space, it's making their semi-private conversation a guy space. That is not a problem.
Third, I shouldn't have engaged your argumentation with a comparison, because I disagree with a fundamental premise that my comparison lent credence to. Sexual humor is not gender-specific. Girls make dick jokes too. That's why I fundamentally find the cries of sexism and misogyny to be ridiculous. Many of my female friends make me look like a Puritan when it comes to the jokes they tell. This should never have become a gender issue, it should have been an issue of appropriate behavior at professional events. Adria made it a gender issue, and here we are.
I think the reaction online to her twitter posting from our community online is also disgusting and a representation of the gross sexism existing in our industry, however. I definitely agree that the vitriol is definitely unwarranted, far more than her anger over the developer's comments were unwarranted.
It is sexist to create a sexualized environment at a tech conference, because the consequences of that environment hurt women much more than they hurt men; it's a failure to show consideration to women. mr-hank has admitted that he made a sexual joke about big dongles and apologized for it. Making sexual jokes about big dongles is creating a sexualized environment.
More evidence that a sexualized environment existed at PyCon (though I think the organizers were doing an awesome job and it was probably much better than other large tech conferences!):
http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/pycon-2013-and-codes-of-conduct....
"First, I came to PyCon with two women colleagues, one of whom was harassed nearly constantly by men, albeit on a low level. Both of them are friendly people who are willing to engage at both a personal and a technical level with others, and apparently that signals to some that they can now feel free to comment on "hotness", proposition them, and otherwise act like 14 year old guys."
[1] http://www.parisvoice.com/books-on-france/581-la-seduction-h... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/europe/01iht-letter0...
This all seems like a waste of time. Here's how I think it should work: we ask women what they want ("hey, how about sexualized jokes at tech conferences?") and they tell us ("actually, we really hate it when you do that, probably much more than you realize") and then we stop, because we respect them and it turns out that making sex jokes wasn't actually an integral part of being at a technical conference anyway.
Deal?
I don't think people should be jocular and act like college fraternity members all their lives, but at the same time, I think, some times people become overprotective and over reactionary.
I think the minds of people who speak up are in the right place (want civility) but are somewhat in denial about what living in a society is (it does not mean we get to proscribe other's behaviors in minutiae).
What I mean is, I prefer most conversations to be free of vulgarity and expletives; however, on occasion, I think those same offenses can be a relief --it shows me, "You know what, society is still organic and it has its blemishes." It's not all purified and true.
The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they have a simple solution of stopping the slope, or at least considering each new idea separately: don't make sex jokes, but do (or not, whatever) make lawyer jokes.
I can think of at least four reasons that making sex jokes at tech conferences might be significantly more problematic than making lawyer jokes, such that we should think much worse of people who do the former. Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't think of these.
* Women are ~51% of the population and lawyers are ~0.3% of the population, so we might pay a little more attention to the common actions we perform that hurt women.
* We already have a problem with women feeling excluded and unwelcome from our tech communities, due to past and current sexism.
* Making sex jokes around women when they're surrounded by a large group of mostly-guys means they have to start worrying more about whether someone might assault or sexually harass them soon.
* Making sex jokes at a tech conference can encourage the objectifying idea that women are there for their sex appeal, and not their technical skill. This is a cultural idea that already exists, so it's easy to contribute to and requires significant effort to combat.
> in denial about what living in a society is (it does not mean we get to proscribe other's behaviors in minutiae).
Following a code of conduct that you'd previously agreed to follow seems exactly like what living in a society is to me.
>about whether someone might assault or sexually harass them soon.
I think that's a big leap. This line of argument could be used to sweep up the loiters and homeless people who act like they might attack someone due to their language and behavior.
> We already have a problem with women feeling excluded and unwelcome
I think the best way to approach that is to start young. In school, drive students of either sex to the possibilities in technology. This will make the eventual males in tech familiar and receptive to eventual women in tech. they should both feel they're both a natural fit, given their disposition.
>Making sex jokes at a tech conference can encourage the objectifying idea that women are there for their sex appeal
I don't agree. The jokes are not the objectifiers. It's the people, both the doers and the receivers. They both have to agree that jokes in question are a manner of objectification for that to have effect.
If you told a lawyer joke in an audience of drug dealers, there is little effect. If it's told by someone who hates lawyers, it takes significance, in American law. A lawyer joke among an audience of Chinese lawyers might fall flat.
>Following a code of conduct that you'd previously agreed to follow seems exactly like what living in a society is to me.
I agree there are basic parameters, but I feel that some people will always be more crude than others and I'm not comfortable saying crudeness is categorically unacceptable.
Really disappointed in you for writing this -- as if my argument is that swearing, fun and R-rated movies should all be removed from society. I like those things sometimes too; I am not a prude.
What I don't like is telling someone that they can come to our technical conference and we will talk about technical things with them and not make sex jokes, and then doing it anyway. Going back on that promise (in PyCon's code of conduct) is not "being organic", it's being an asshole.
It's not going to get rid of racism and the associated problems. When I was young I used to think 'why not make all these words illegal, that should make half the problem go away?' I now realize I was unbelievably naive. It's not so easy as that. These problems are things which take decades if not centuries to nullify. And I believe the best way is through a kind of indoctrination which starts with early education and pervades through higher ed. Sure, a few people will rebel, but that should be in the very small minority.
In point of fact there's no urgency about banning lawyer jokes, because lawyers are one of the most respected professions in our society (as measured by various surveys about social status, etc.). Through some combination of talent, hard work, and good fortune they have wound up in a group that suffers very little discrimination. When people do make jokes about them they may find it unpleasant, but at the end of the day they're still more or less on the top of the heap.
Women, on the other hand, face a thoroughly entrenched social structure that treats them as less capable and less important than men. There's a recognized problem that many women feel uncomfortable in technical circles, and offensive jokes are a real part of that problem. So every offensive joke about women needs to be understood against that background: it's not a one-time irritation, but part of an ongoing pattern. So attempts to discourage those jokes aren't just "nobody should feel offended, ever", they're one small step that we can take to fix the much larger problem.
Is it sexist, or isn't it? You can find interesting arguments both ways. Your opinion is that it's not sexist. My opinion is that it depends on context. From what I can tell, in this context, it was probably not meant to be sexist.
> "The examples you gave are sexism."
Are they? I think they are, which is why I brought them up here. You agree. But there are others who replied to my comment who don't agree that either of those are sexist.
We all have different views on what constitutes "sexism." One person's "not sexist" is another person's "sexist." You can see that even in the comments here. That's why it's so difficult to say what the "right" thing to do is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
People are saying that what the two guys did was not sexist and that Adria's response was inappropriate. So, debate that, rather than introduce other examples. Whether or not your other examples are sexist has nothing to do with whether or not the dongle jokes were sexist, but they were straw men in the context of your original comment. In particular, Adria's response does not somehow become appropriate because you experienced or heard about some other bad things, or because people were vicious to her in the aftermath (they were). All that this does is muddy the water and polarize people.
If you want to have a general wide-open debate on sexism at technology conferences, I guess that's what you'll have, but it will never be as effective as addressing specific issues.
Yep. Even after the tweeted photo it seems like this could of ended with an apology going both ways. An apology that did actually occur at PyCon from what I've read.
The guys employer knee-jerked with a firing which should have been unnecessary and the ripples of that action have just gone way out of proportion.
I don't think she needed to be fired, and she definitely doesn't need or deserve to be called some of the things that have been said. The people doing so are actively harming any real discussion that is taking place.
I feel for both sides here.
How does the public alienation of these two guys go towards building critical mass of support for SendGrid? Even if this was sexual harassment what would she have gained for herself or SendGrid by bringing this to a public forum. She has to know that a large number of potential SendGrid users are men who have similar senses of humor.
If she was deeply offended by the comments these guys made she should have spoken to them directly or privately mentioned it to the staff.
Seems like a lot of energy spent on a flippant remark. Those aren't restricted to men saying them about wives/women, either. I don't want to get into some kind of /r/mensrights foolishness here, but have you sat at a coffeeshop and listened to the kinds of remarks women make about their husbands/men generally? It's all over pop culture, go Netflix an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond if you don't believe me.
What do you do? Cross him off your people-I-want-to-mentor-me list and move on with your life.
> The blatant sexism is mostly gone, but the undertones remain. And that makes it harder than ever to gauge what the "right" reaction is as a woman when one of these events happens around you.
If I'm reading this right, you're saying the dongle joke was an undertone of sexism? That doesn't make sense to me. Anatomy != sexism. Unprofessionalism, yes; sexism, no.
There are a thousand shows on TV with a thousand examples, not to mention advertising. It's a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BumblingDad
First, it was a wise move not to react at your 'hoped for' mentor's remark about his wife.
I will address this to everyone, and not just you: it's not your place to "openly react" to another person's comments about their familial relationships (spousal, parent/child, significant other), unless you are related or are a very close and personal friend over decades.
Family and intimate relationship dynamics are very complex, and frankly no one else's business. Even if it seems one is being invited to "react" through comments made by someone in the relationship, you're not (see exception for relation or very close and personal friend).
Second, sexism can be bad in tech. But it is NOTHING like it is in other business sectors. Sales. Medicine. High finance. Agriculture. Construction. Trades. Had the wisecrack occurred in one of those sectors, I doubt even an eyebrow would have been raised.
Hey, if you can't shoot the messenger, who can you shoot?
Oh wait...
You consider this "borderline sexism"? Interesting. As is your use of the word "dude" to describe the guy. Does that mean you don't mind when people refer to you as a "chick"?
>"and then stared at me, the only woman nearby, to gauge my reaction...[r]ight now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action."
How about not associating with the person anymore? Done. He made a joke you didn't like, about a person you don't even know, and might possibly be an asshole. There are lots of those out there. Move on; you'll be a better person for it.
>"and in her case, multiple times a day"
Sorry, but I'm skeptical.
On the other hand, the community's reaction to her has been disgusting. It shows exactly the kind of pervasive sexism that exists in the tech industry. We definitely need to call that out and let them know that it's not okay. It's unacceptable to allow this kind of sexism to happen, much like it's unacceptable for the well-known tech big-wig to be so blatantly sexist in front of you to provoke you. You need to call him out, and so do the others who are with him.
As for the guy who wouldn't talk to you, here's what you do:
"Excuse me. I'm over here. I run the business." Then smile.
I once did this to a guy who was trying to sell my boyfriend a car… when I was the one shopping. ("Excuse me, I'm the one with the money.") It solves the problem immediately. It causes temporary embarrassment for the lunkhead, he'll stop, and believe me he'll "get it" because he will stop trying to get the handy local man to explain why you/he are there, and you can all move on instead of silently steaming for ages.
It also works when somebody is at a dinner and saying "Women do this" -- you can simply say "I don't." And if that person is a prominent woman tech blogger, and you are me, then she'll shun you for the rest of the event, which works out just fine!
Like I said -- jerks come in all genital varieties.
[1] or maybe this angry mother isn't a jerk, maybe she's "just having a bad day," and "made a mistake," and makes a comment to a bunch of people at a party instead of photographing her son asleep during a test and using her position of power on Twitter to get him kicked out of his university… luckily for her, she's a woman, so she has the option of making a mistake in airing out family dirty laundry and being forgiven(?).
But what happens every day? Some people being stupid? That happens every day to many people. There are infinitely many ways of being stupid, and people are being stupid all the time, some frequently, some rarely. Is it really an excuse to "snap"? If I beat up some guy that made a joke I didn't like and then explain that I'm tired of rudeness and stupidity and "sometimes you just snap" - would that be a valid excuse? I don't think so.
People say the same things all the time in companies where women complain about inappropriate sexuality. "What if I say something that offends her?"
Most of us are good, inoffensive people. We are saddled with growing up in a world that is changing. It used to be acceptable to have a topless woman on a calendar in your locker at the factory. Not any more. Men used to take each other to strip clubs for business entertaining. Not outside of Oracle.
We all deal with the fact that we're in the middle of change, and it isn't always comfortable. Just as it wasn't comfortable for people dealing with the acceptance of homosexuals: I think everyone accepts that the word "faggot" is no longer appropriate.
It would be far, far easier for everyone if they just, well, shut up. But these things are hard, and it's up to our generation to carve out new social norms so that our children will reflexively and automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone.
I feel for you, there's absolutely zero wrong with you having and expressing these concerns. My message to you is that we men can come together and support each other and be a generation that others look back on with respect, just as we look back on the generations that broke the colour barriers with respect.
BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.
> automatically act in ways that don't offend anyone.
Impossible. Everything is capable of offending someone. And everyone is offended by something. I would rather strive for a future generation that was not so easily offended.
It demonstrates a total ignorance of what it means to be a discriminated against demographic.
I don't think Adria represents women in the industry, or anyone other than herself. I feel sorry for SendGrid, PlayHaven, the developer who lost his job, and the fact that this is distracting from the real issues of sexism in technology.
I don't feel sorry for Adria. She represented her company in a grossly unprofessional manner by publicly naming, picturing, and shaming (including the use of "ass clowns" to describe them) two developers. You don't have to be sexist to be unprofessional. I just hope SendGrid has their lawyers ready to deal with the potential fallout of firing her.
Basically, "I treat everyone the same--I don't see color" (or gender, or sexual orientation, etc.) is a luxury that only exists for some. For people discriminated against, they /have/ to see color, gender, etc., because it's a limiting condition of their social situation.
The point is that women in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that men do not. Black people in our society live their entire lives under a constant barrage of related offensive behaviors that white people do not. (Black women get hit by both barrages.) In each case, some of the offensive acts are overt and nasty, but most take the form of countless tiny slights that seem harmless on their own but add up to an intensely oppressive environment.
So yes, everyone is allowed to be offended. But it's really, really unwise to "question the validity of others who are offended" if you aren't subjected to the same continually hostile environment that they are.
I used to think about this sort of issue in much the same way that you seem to (or at least, I made similar comments at times). I was doing my best to be fair and sensible. But over the past year or two, I've read a lot and learned a lot, and I've realized that I was wrong. This stuff is complicated, and if you haven't spent as much time studying it as you'd spend on a couple of college courses, you probably don't understand it as fully as you think. (I certainly didn't.)
hahaha I like that
>> BOOM.. fired! See what happened there? You said it. I overreacted. You were fired. It actually is a real fear that something you say will unknowingly offend someone and get you in trouble. This has less to do with gender and sexism and more to do with just too many people being incapable of getting along.
Something similar actually happened on Twitter, Steve Marx said something about a lynch mob and she turned it into racism[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313946261055221760
The idea that women have a hot branding iron with them where ever they go that they can use to permanently stamp the word 'sexist' onto whomever they like at the slightest offense is utterly silly - doubly so when it reverses the actual power dynamic that women deal with when in a room full of men.
Nope. That is not it. Men and women joke together freely with innuendo throughout society and most of the time it is not considered a problem. She did that exact thing on Twitter. To somehow say that a physical conference space is sacrosanct in a way that Twitter is not is ridiculous.
I think that if you look carefully, what you see is that what we term political correctness today is in actuality a new label on the old idea of chivalry. It aims toward a norm of social behavior where women are seen to require special protection in a way that men are assumed not to. They can toss away that protection and engage in banter, but men can not. This has been the norm in polite society for at least 500 years. Today, it just has different ideological window dressing.
When I am with my close friends at a conference we speak however we like. It isn't church and it shouldn't be. But I'm sure now that I'll never go to PyCon. It's drowning in the crazy.
My sense is that this is largely generational and geographic. There's a strain of political correctness in the California area that is rampant among people in their 20s. I don't see it elsewhere in the US although I have seen it in Canada. PyCon is definitely a California conference.
I'm sure the educational system has something to do with it. It's a trend that rode the general trend in education in the 90s toward making people believe that feeling good was more important than anything and that their sensitivities were positive demands on other people's behavior. That's subsided since then in elementary education so I think this drama may be a blip.
When you are with your close friends in public do you 'speak however you like' in such a way that it disturbs those around you? If yes, you are an asshole. The public spaces in conferences are much the same - and in the true Pythonic way (explicit is better than implicit) they even spelled out what the social norms were for the 'public spaces' at PyCon. If you call that crazy, you don't understand Pythonicity.
As for 'profession' - yes, programming is a skilled activity, and being paid to program usually involves being in a workplace with norms of behaviour - hence, a profession. You can say "I still don't consider it a profession", to which my reply is "that's nice; it still is one though".
edit: Urgh, I didn't see your edit when I posted. Your edit actually makes your post more stupid. Oh well.
> I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same
> room as this person. What if I accidentally say
> something that she finds offensive? Am I next?
I have quite an off-color sense of humor myself. I joke a lot and a lot of those jokes involve sex, bodily functions, and imagery many might find disturbing.
And yet I have no problem restricting this kind of humor to friendships and relationships where we've established the fact that both parties find that kind of humor funny.
It just honestly doesn't seem difficult to me, and I'm not a genius.
They literally wrote it down.
> ...and someone overhears, takes a picture of you
> and then publicly crucifies you online?
I'd still be in the wrong for subjecting a stranger to an unwanted series of sexual jokes, whether they handled it poorly or they handled it in a really outstanding way.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. It's okay to say whatever you want if the other person responds poorly?
Where does the line get drawn?
That's some line you drew.
Seriously, you should get to know somebody a little bit before you discuss that stuff. Or simply wait for some kind of indication they actually want to talk about it with you.
Sure, it's true that literally anything you might offend somebody and that you can never totally avoid that. I'm sure there's a person somewhere in the world who has a panic attack every time they see somebody wearing a green sweater. Should we have to somehow anticipate this and avoid wearing green sweaters? No.
Sexual jokes from strange men aren't like that, though. That's not some fringe thing; that's something that actually makes a significant amount of women uncomfortable.
You can respect their wishes or not respect their wishes. Personally, I'm immature enough to enjoy penis jokes, but mature enough to respect that not every woman wants to hear one from men she doesn't know.
I'm not saying its ok to go upto people on the bus and tell them dick jokes or talk about goes existence/non-existence, that just kinda rude.
I mean your having a conversation with your friend and for someone nearby who wasn't participating or involved to be offended and outraged about it, take a photo and post it online like adira did. This is not discussing it with the person, this is discussing it with your friend in earshot of the person.
I too can keep from saying sexually inappropriate things to women however that is not what happened in this case.
Personally, I don't have a hard time controlling myself and not saying things. However, I don't want to control myself; I prefer to just say what I feel like saying, and I allow people to disassociate from me if they don't like it. I'm terribly annoyed by people that put words before actions and judge other by what they say. Having said that, if an employer fired me because they would find me unlikable, I wouldn't blame them.
News flash, it's not that hard to not offend people, and men aren't suddenly forerunners of liberal thought because we don't make sexist or racist jokes. I mean, Jesus. Pretend you're speaking to your mother if it's really that hard.
Should you have lost your job?
> I'm pretty sure at some point in your life you've
> made a very mildly off-color joke to a friend and
> someone else overheard.
> Should you have lost your job?
I agree that it's awfully harsh to lose one's job over a single penis joke. I'm not saying that this guy should have lost his job. It's possible that this was a kneejerk overreaction on his employer's part, and it's also possible that this guy had other issues that already had him on thin ice when this incident happened.
Nor am I necessarily agreeing with how Adria handled this incident. Whether we think she should have handled it differently or not, though, it doesn't change the fact that it's not cool to subject a stranger to unwanted sexual conversation.
It is extremely easy to offend this woman. Just look at her twitter posts https[0], she plays every card in the book in this occasion she plays the racism card while arguing that she can't be a racist herself[1].
[0] https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313946261055221760
In this context, saying that something/someone is sexist or racist says nothing about intention, only the effect of the behavior or social structure. Further, if a behavior does not align with an existing power imbalance in society, it would not be considered x-ism; a black woman who discriminates against white men is not expressing and reinforcing an existing type of oppression, so that behavior would not be considered racist or sexist. (Remember, it's not about intentions, and it doesn't mean that the behavior is ok.)
If you think this sounds weird, please do still try to take some time to understand why this terminology arose.
That i can understand, Its racism. no argument there. So your changing the context of the word so the intent does not matter but the effect does? that's outrageous. Racism is all about the outcome AND intent.
why do all these mental gymnastics just so you can say X cannot be racist towards Y? Why even say something like that? I can't see if having any positive outcome. Its a blanket statement that while maybe true in some situations with your special definition of the word is not true in others. You can find areas of the world where almost any given race has the power/upper hand and are "racist" towards them.
My point is you cannot simply say X cannot be racist towards Y because it can, has and will happen and all levels. Sure you can limit your definition of the word racist and redefine it but really whats the point?
Either at an individual level, a social group level (X friends won't be friends with Ys) or a social/society level anyone race CAN be racist towards another. They may not be in a given situation/area/whatever crazy limitations you wanna make, but there is nothing inherently special about any race making them immune from being racist, we are all human regardless of race and we have to work together to stamp it out and statements such as hers do not exactly help at all. I'm not sure what point she was trying to make, or even you honestly, but it would be better to phrase it in a way that does not use the term racist and redefine it so people can say such inflammatory things. Notice how pretty much no one gets it, most disagree with it and it flames hate? That's not a way to fix racism.
Agreed, but individual's acts of racism don't exist in a vacuum. The aggregate effect those racist actions and attitudes creates systemic power imbalances. This wiki has starting material about the institutional and systemic effects of racism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism.
> why do all these mental gymnastics just so you can say X cannot be racist towards Y? Why even say something like that? I can't see if having any positive outcome.
You have to remember that for someone who is black, the institutional racism in the US effects them daily and that such institutional racism is orchestrated by the white patriarchy that is US society. For such a person, what does it mean when a white person tries to call them racist while ignoring the racism that said white person benefits from every day? Often I will see a white or white passing person call a person of color racist when the situation they are talking about is actually caused by the systemic racism that they benefit from.
> You can find areas of the world where almost any given race has the power/upper hand and are "racist" towards them.
That is true, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the context of this discussion. Racism in different societies are not interchangeable in most discussions of racism.
> My point is you cannot simply say X cannot be racist towards Y because it can, has and will happen and all levels
This is not true. Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism against white people in US society. Black people will never be able to create an environment where white people are imprisoned more than any other group by proportion, denied access to jobs, denied access to self determination, target white people with racist law enforcement, have over-representation in government, etc.
> Either at an individual level, a social group level (X friends won't be friends with Ys) or a social/society level anyone race CAN be racist towards another.
Racism at a society level different compared to individual acts of racism. Net social aggregate effects are what racism at a society level look like. Black folks in the US are incarcerated and killed disproportionately in the US, they as a group simply cannot apply that same socially and institutionally backed violence to white people.
If the actions are racist, it doesn't matter what caused them, they are racist. To say otherwise invites a double standard.
> This is not true. Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism against white people in US society.
Yes it is true. your assuming racist == systemic/institutional. That is not the commonly held or actual definition. It is true that overall in the US Black people will never be able to exercise systemic racism. But that's not all racism is, nor is the US the only place on the planet. And systemic/institutional can range from a company to a state to a country.
> Racism at a society level different compared to individual acts of racism.
Yes, but its not the only form of racism, your trying to redefine a word and i can't see what good it does. Prefix it with systemic/institutional, limit its scope and then maybe you can make such statements (as you did your entire post) but alone by its self you just can't.
How do you know what women you do not know find sexually inappropriate??
Once you get to know people, you'll get to know their sense of humor pretty quickly, and generally sexual jokes are completely okay between friends!
This doesn't represent the views of all women in tech. What happened to Adria could happen to any of us outspoken women. She didn't handle the situation perfectly, but there's no way she could have known this would unfold in this way. She said she didn't want the guy to get fired and apologized to him. I'm horrified by what happened to her and now afraid the same could happen to me.
None of us should have to be afraid that a tweet like that could get someone fired, provoke threats, or warrant attacks on our companies.
The nature of the attacks against Adria are EXTREMELY misogynistic (rape threats, death threats, people calling her a c_nt, b_tch, wh_re, etc) and many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality. They've also pulled into question her professional credibility and called her an affirmative action hire. They are saying this kind of behavior should be expected from someone with the domain "butyouragirl".
There is a simply an undue level of hatred for Adria which is correlated to her gender, I think in large part because she is an outspoken feminist.
I'm trying to be more outspoken about gender bias I encounter in the workplace, but incidents like this are a terrifying reminder of why that can be dangerous.
I'm not mad at Adria. The larger and more striking problem is how much hatred for women exists in this community and how threatening that feels.
If anything good came of this, it's that these biases are now coming to a head, right out in the open for all to see.
> She said she didn't want the guy to get fired and apologized to him.
She may have expressed sympathy, but she did not apologize. An apology may have gone a long way at stemming this disaster, but that's speculation at this point.
> I'm horrified by what happened to her and now afraid the same could happen to me.
Likewise, I'm horrified what happened to the men involved could happen to me. From everything I've read (which is not all-inclusive), their comments occurred in a 1-1 conversation during a loud presentation.
Moreover, frankly, it was innocuous if vaguely inappropriate. The dongle joke was not beyond the pale. It was not a firing offense, and it certainly did not deserve anyone's face being blasted all over Twitter along with harassment allegations.
Rest assured, we're all quite paranoid as a result of this.
>The nature of the attacks against Adria are EXTREMELY misogynistic (rape threats, death threats, people calling her a c_nt, b_tch, wh_re, etc) and many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality. They've also pulled into question her professional credibility and called her an affirmative action hire. They are saying this kind of behavior should be expected from someone with the domain "butyouragirl".
While I haven't spent much time on Twitter, I don't think it's really fair to draw a line between some of the extreme views voiced there and the tech community. This transcended tech very quickly, and never recovered. My sense is that many of the most vocal contributors to the discussion arrived at it second hand.
> I'm not mad at Adria. The larger and more striking problem is how much hatred for women exists in this community and how threatening that feels.
I may be blind to this as I'm not a woman, but I honestly don't perceive hatred towards women in the tech community.
The Twitter & internet mob response should not be taken to represent this community. It [tech] may be flawed, there may even be overlap, but they are not one and the same.
Only if by "outspoken" you mean "inept witch hunter with a messiah complex".
> ... many people have taken up a "burn her at the stake" mentality.
The chief occupational hazard of the witch hunter is being caught out by one's followers. The disciples possess only the paranoia and lack of mercy drilled into them.
Here's a hint: Don't make dick jokes. Don't belittle and exclude women and other minorities. Be a decent human. You'll be fine.
> What if I Accidentally say something she finds offensive
Accidentally offensive? Like calling someone a nigger? Or a faggot? And at the same time you make it sound their fault for making you "next".
If you say something. Own up it. Anyone could qoute you. If you're uncomfortable with that you better watch what you say in public.
Female here. I'm a newbie in this field coming from science -- another male-dominated arena. My takeaway is that while I would not have a problem interacting with Adria I don't think I'd want to work at a place where top male talent is being repulsed by her actions or reputation. As a junior dev, I want to work with and learn from the best team that'll have me. That makes her a liability.
I do wish she'd handled everything differently. Women shouldn't freak when men say man things to other men, and even if you are offended you should just speak up for yourself and say so. This gives everyone a chance to behave properly without escalation. Most guys actually aren't jerks, they just lack self-awareness.
Women in tech should not behave as damsels in distress who cry out for help (to twitter) and need shining knights (pycon organizers) to intervene in minor situations like this. Take back the locus of control and own the situation.
And I'm furious with how badly the comments here and elsewhere portray men. The worst are the threats of violence that I've heard that she's gotten, of course. I know that's a minority behavior, but we can't kid ourselves: the people making those threats are only comfortable doing so because they see the rest of the community as being "on their side".
Women (and men!) need to speak up when they see manifestations of the culture that continues to drive women away from tech. Would I have made the same judgement in this case? Maybe not. But we need to find some way of changing the "bro" culture on display here, and I can't really blame her for trying.
"What if I accidentally say something that she finds offensive? Am I next?"
If 1) you choose to say something 2) in a public place that 3) your employer considers grounds for termination, I think you should probably be worried no matter who's in the room. I personally don't think that public shaming is the best way to respond to low-level offenses as in this case (but then, I really wouldn't fire someone over it: that seems like 100x as much of an overreaction). Nevertheless, it's unreasonable to expect in this day and age that transgressions in public will always go unnoticed. If you knowingly say something that you deserve to be fired for, it's not the photographer's fault when it happens.
I worked with a bright, lovely young woman who had taken two terms of Java, with an eye toward a CS degree. One of her professors told her in office hours that she smelled really good. So she was doing marketing. Little creep-outs can have a huge impact, and you will unfortunately find so many of them in nearly every tech setting that if you hang in there, you just get accustomed to saying nothing. But saying nothing is not the ideal course of action, because based on the numbers, lots of women don't hang in there. Adria is right that the little girl on the slide might never make it to PyCon (in a dev role...) if things stay the same.
Imagine if roles were reversed, and lucrative, enjoyable, interesting jobs were mostly held by straight women, and every time you went to a professional conference, you had to endure non sequitur pictures of men in bikinis, and uninformed, under-dressed plastic booth bros, and people assuming you're an uninformed booth bro no matter how you look, and the after-party at a male strip club, and countless unattractive old women chatting you up when you'd rather write code and all manner of little, alienating crap. In this bizarro world, you would likely not believe the sense of relief when another man spoke up about all this stuff that had gone unquestioned.
Your comment about feeling uncomfortable around Adria is ironic, given that feeling uncomfortable is exactly what Adria was trying, however imperfectly, to fix. Unfortunately, the comfort of straight white men has again ruled the day, and SendGrid fired a black woman to preserve it. I hope she finds a truly wonderful lawyer.
Think of the backlash against her that happened. Think what she and other women might feel being in a room full of Hacker News & Reddit tech guys, _some_ of whom having made threats.
"I would feel really uncomfortable if I was in the same room as $UsernameWhoWasThreateningAdria. What if I do something that upsets him? Is he going to rape or kill me next?"
Your legitimate concern over getting reprimanded is not on the same scale at all to the concerns others might have because of the culture being perpetuated here.
Where's the understanding and tolerance for questionable conduct that was offered to the two guys making jokes now?
This would have placated the people who think that she went too far without her having to give up her position.
That's on her. What's on us is all of the comments saying things like "you'd be crazy to ever hire her." "SHE'LL never work in this industry again."
Great. Really tolerant.
(And don't get me wrong, i'm one of the folks pissed at the way she conducted herself, but i'm way more pissed off at the mob that's whipped up this incident into something it never should have been)
And as such, these come off very much as if they're putting nails into her coffin. There are people who do deserve to be run out of their industries, Stephen Glass, or Jonah Lehrer come to mind immediately. That is not a proportionate or reasonable response to what has happened here, but then, nothing about these circumstances have been proportionate or reasonable.
Just for the record, I feel like Jonah Lehrer's transgression was much less objectionable than Adria's.
That's basically the journalistic death penalty. I don't trust anything he writes, and neither should you.
Adria's behavior was dumb, and egregious in a way, but i doubt she anticipated that it would lead to anybody's firing (let alone her own). She was not acting out of malice (so far as anyone can determine) or in direct contravention to the core tenets of her profession. It was also a single incident.
Is it fair? Not really. Does that change the fact she's potentially damaged her ability to get another job like the one she was just let go from permanently? No it doesn't. Mistakes have consequences whether it is fair or not, and it will likely take a LOT of work to undo what one stupid tweet just did to her life.
Some of that probably is due to the fact that the dude who got fired did make a public apology, and Adria didn't. But again, that's on her. That's not about what's ethical about the way we treat others. The way we behave as 3rd parties to all of this i don't think is contingent on whether or not Adria apologizes for something.
If you're in a position where your social influence and reputation play a key role, you should willingly know that your behavior directly affects your ability to do your job. Typically in that situation you want to make safe decisions regarding the statements you make.
- America is a geographically enormous country, so it's pretty easy to get away from reality and cling to your views (the rural vs. urban divide).
- A rapidly changing ethnic composition in a country with a history of slavery. Civil rights abuses are in many ways still active and ongoing (see all the gerrymandering).
- Several generations of people were inundated with Cold War propaganda.
Certainly if someone working in public relations posted sexist jokes to their twitter feed I'd expect them to be fired.
Its childish, its in bad taste, and not very funny. Its also against pycon rules so they got their wrists slapped like naughty children which is all fine.
However the idea it was anything more serious is kinda confusing to me.
I think that there is a different cultural thing in the Valley that you don't find elsewhere due to the gigantic number of people working in just one, male-dominated, industry. I would guess that there is a fixed X% of men and women who are jerks. In a male-dominated industry, the absolute value of that X% is pretty high, so everyone is going to get a dose of them at one time or another.
Everyone in this industry has to rise above those unfortunate encounters, but gender puts a nastier spin on things; what might have been a trollish rebuttal to a male gets gender thrown in as well. And there are women who are not happy about that situation, and the Internet gives them a venue to disseminate their upset, which is all fine. Getting things out in the open gets us to discuss it and try and move things forward.
I don't think that what the guys did was sexual harassment, just silly. But when taken with context of a history of meeting jerks, you can kinda see why Ms Richards may have been sensitive towards it. No-one has the right to not be offended, but PyCon is also not a pub. There's a certain expected level of decency.
I think PyCon pulling them in and saying "hey guys, make the jokes in the bar afterwards" and letting them on their way was a proportional response. I don't think that broadcasting photos on the Internet of people who you don't like is at all proportional. That's vilification, and I think Ms Richards is also very much in the wrong. No-one should have lost their job, everyone should be able to get along better.
In fairness you don't hear many dongle/large feet type jokes but I think that's because they are crude, not really funny, and not really suitable for a professional environment.
Having said that I don't think I've ever heard anyone linking them directly to sexism.
I didn't find their joke offensive. But thats irrelevant. She had a right to complain. But not by posting their picture on twitter.
Posting that picture was a really rotten thing to do. Its an act of bullying. I can take a picture of anyone and they would have said whatever I put on the caption. And its up to them to prove to the internet that they didn't do it.
Those two guys could easily be and my partner making silly phallus jokes because we fucking like to.
You have no right to be offended. Which is why KKK and Westboro has freedom of speech.
What she did was beyond that, it was publicly hang two guys who did not even speak to her, or about her. For her own amusement and branding. Good riddance. People like that are scum.
I think you mean that the mere fact they are offended does not entitle them to some redress regarding whatever it was that offended them.
If you actually mean that people have no right to take displeasure in your actions, good luck with that.
"Being offended" is weak. It means nothing to others. You can't expect the world to stop because someone gets offended.
Sure, you can make jokes about wangs as much as you want. Do so in a public setting and yes you can and will offend people. And yes, they have a RIGHT to be offended by it.
It's inappropriate behavior in a public setting ESPECIALLY when you're representing your employer at a conference.
However, frankly, the resulting firing's on both sides of the table demonstrate the immaturity of each sides employers - and that is what people should be raging about.
_That is what happened_
How does she know those two guys aren't on protected identity, or have issues with being online on social media? I don't have Facebook because I don't want to be tagged on anything.
She had no fucking right to do so. And it's incredibly offensive. Some asshole turns around and takes a photo of you and uploads it, even though you had _NOTHING_ to do with that asshole.
There was no bi-directional communication between them. No argument. In fact, there wasn't even a path of communication between them. She heard words that triggered her and decided to act on it.
Not to mention.... it was not an insult towards her or about her. It was an immature joke. I personally _LIKE_ immature jokes, so does my partner. I don't say them about other people. I have a penis, and I reserve the right to make penis jokes.
You can move to a different chair. Or you can tell him to stop for a moment.
She fucked up, not a little, but big time. She's the fucking "villian" here.
I am OK with her getting fired, but not the other guy. He seriously did nothing wrong and got hatched for something as trivial as a fucking joke.
I can't post this enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciegyiLYtY
You have no fucking right to upload a photo of two people that LITERALLY did nothing to you.
However, you are failing to see the import here.
"because they said something you generally don't like. _This is what happened_"
No, this is not what happened. The developer said an offensive joke, as a representative of his employer, at a conference full of his peers. He behaved in a disrespectful and unprofessional manner and deserves all the shame heaped on him (aside from being fired).
Dick jokes are not something that people "generally don't like". They are inappropriate in this setting. Joke around with your buddies at the bar all you want, but on company time and when you're in a professional setting, SHUT UP.
And I really dislike the Python Goons for kicking those guys out.
It would be one thing if they said something about gender or racial stuff that actually targets people.
I can fork both genders, especially if one of them has a big dongle, so forking as a joke, is gender-free.
But this was just fucked up. I am glad she got fired. People like that are jaded and will be difficult to be around. I would not want to be around someone I need to tip toe around.
Dongles für alle!
No arguments here, but this sounds like typical Internet comments. The tech community is pretty big, a percentage of them are going to be assholes (and given the gender imbalance, most of them are going to be men). Point being: these comments are no more representative of the average tech worker than YouTube comments are representative of the general populace.
Two guys were making some silly, completely non-sexist jokes between themselves that mixed 'dongles' and 'forking' with a bit of innuendo. Despite the fact that they weren't directed at her -- or anyone, for that matter -- she took personal offense and decided the best course of action was to publicly shame them (picture and all).
Her reaction was far more immature than the humor that triggered it. If you're 30-something years old and still can't handle overhearing a bit of lighthearted middle school humor, it's probably time to move into a cave and cancel your internet service.
I'm guessing that SendGrid will loose some other customers now, as a result of this last action. Suspending her would be more reasonable.
"Tell the DDoS clowns that she's no longer employed there, they move on, after the Internet recovers from its non-linear response to this whole situation, reinstate her with a profuse apology to everyone."
I'm not sure that's better than just muscling through the DDoS, but when you can't deliver service to your customers, some folks get creative.
And I can neither fully agree nor disagree: there are people specialized in handling and diverting DDOS, but they cost money and they take time, during which customers relying on SendGrid get no service and get frustrated.
They got attacked by errant children expressing sad rage at something that while bad, was not deserving of retaliation against the company. So the result: the company ditches one of their employees for very dubious reasons.
Basically they caved to internet bullying and validated every sexist moron on the internet. Well done Sendgrid. Well done.
It seems that she involved them in a battle not of their choosing, one that they apparently don't want to fight, and she has since suffered the consequences.
She made a big stink about what she overheard in a private conversation between two friends, and posted it on Twitter. Probably would not have been a big deal except that one of them, a father of three, was fired as a result. Not her direct doing, but seemingly a consequence of her actions.
She then was found to be a bit of a hypocrite, based on her own tweets: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425 (she makes her own dick joke)
Some more digging found that she's made some strangely bizarre comments about racism, saying "Black people can't be racist". https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858
She then says that her company stands behind her, bringing them into the mix. https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/314452708549603328
That was her undoing.
She made a big deal out of something that shouldn't have been, handled it in a totally unprofessional manner, brought a bunch of unwanted attention to her and her employer, and made her association to her employer a problem for her employer.
She was the author of her demise, nobody else.
EDIT: Edited to better reflect the timeline, which I totally mis-tense-ified initially.
Actually, that was not "then", that was 4 years ago. Doesn't make it any less wrong or racist, just saying that it's not connected to this scandal.
Seems that she got the attention she sought, but it quickly became a case of "be careful what you wish for". A little bit of digging into her tweet history brought some real gems to the forefront which didn't help her current situation.
Clearly, her tweets did not bring about the positive effect for SendGrid PR that she might have expected. Even worse, no matter what happens now there is a smoking crater where all the positive feels about SendGrid used to be, whether they retain her or not, and she's the one who knocked the meteor out of orbit.
The whole situation is bad but I don't see how she'd ever be able to continue in the PR role for SendGrid... so what do they do with her otherwise? And why didn't they convince her to (or allow her to) resign?
Yeah, SendGrid was definitely between a rock and a hard place on this one, they could either resist blackmail and potentially lose a lot of business due to not being able to service their users at all (at least in the short term, bringing in DDOS specialists is not an instant proposition), or they could just fold and look weak but have their service back up.
Both alternatives were shitty for most people involved.
This should be scary. What if a mob or someone with access to a botnet contacts your employer and demands you be fired?
This whole thing is very sad. People did wrong things but are getting punishment way out of whack for the "crime."
I'm the guy in green in the center of the photo (completely oblivious to this whole situation).
If she had posted the pic but with all identity blurred out, I think she would have achieved 99% of what she wanted to accomplish, and everyone would still be employed.
Granted, I probably wouldn't have written a long blog post about it, but I've certainly talked to event organizers in the past about obnoxious people before and had them ejected.
After this whole debacle, I've given up hope for both the self-proclaimed "hacker" community and the tech industry at large. The response to a woman posting a photograph of two people and reporting them to convention staff should not be "send her death and rape threats," "dig up every bad thing she's ever done in an attempt to discredit her," and "DDoS her employer."
It's disgusting, and I'm not going to cop-out and say, "Well both sides were at fault!" No, the side that stirred this non-story into a full-on witch hunt resulting in her harassment and termination is the side at fault.
Let's say a presenter put up a slide where Florida was pink and and somebody said to their buddy, "Ok, now it really looks like a penis."
Are large numbers of us really taking the side that this joke would be incredibly offensive, abusive and oppressive to women and should result in the pair being ejected from the conference.
Because that seems to be the stance many are taking. And I'm bewildered. To be clear, it's juvenile. I'd personally say "Are you guys 12? Cut it out."
Can we reserve our moral outrage for the people saying "That's so gay." or "She wants the 'D'" or "At least it's not black" in the same situation? You know, things that are actually offensive and problematic.
It seems that knee jerk reactions from everyone has done little to foster workable environments for anyone. I will say this though, it's out of control.
Firing employees on either side just screams of "we don't know how to deal with this..." All of this has descended from a fucking private dongle joke amongst peers.
Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.
When I saw some other post she'd made on Twitter where she joked about telling a guy to stuff a sock in his pants for TSA searches I really felt like she was the bad actor here... it made her seem more than a little hypocritical.
(Unfortunately, many people on learning an exciting new definition of a word forget it has a more general meaning; confusion and stupid internet arguments ensue.)
I don't know what this means. But please elaborate what's wrong with that statement. Please understand that a word's definition is not necessarily it's meaning.
The group in power can be black, as, for example, more or less is the case in the current South Africa, and may be the case in some subcultures (rappers? Basketball players? Some prisons?)
For example, if an organized group of American Asians began touting their superiority over other races and advocated and lobbied for more Asians in positions of power because they're superior, wouldn't you still consider their actions to be immoral?
People can use whichever definition they like, but they need to be open about it, and they need to realize by using another definition they're not also redefining or constraining the connotation -- that's begging the question.
So, black people cannot be sociologically-racist-therefore-immoral against white people, but they can be common-usage-racist-therefore-immoral against white people.
(I should also note that labeling something with a word that connotes a negative or positive affect isn't much of an argument for the applicability of that connotation to that something. It's a heuristic more than it is an argument.)
Also, your definition of what racism connotes is severely lacking as well. Simplifying racism to "something that connotes immorality" is a gross oversimplification.
And not only that, but words have denotations and connotations. "Ugly", in common usage, denotes and points to a set of subjective physical characteristics. "Ugly" also connotes and points to a negative affect that isn't explicit in its denotation.
I'm not simply saying that racism is "something that connotes immorality", but that is what we're connotating when we use that word in its various denotations (although, it's not necessarily the case). Racism's denotation can be literally anything. I can say, for example, that it's racist to call Canadians effusive pushovers even though "Canadian" is a nationality rather than a race.
And people do exactly that. In the U.K., for example, it's common for people to call people that insult the French "racist."
Language is fluid.
So, I think you can see why people are affronted when someone says "black people cannot be racist" without putting it within a certain context. The implication is that it's not immoral for black people to act denotatively common-usage-racist.
I guess "some" is the keyword here.
The commonly used definition of racism is hatred against people because of their race.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/racism
>hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
A couple of black kids beating a white kid to death because he's white, for example, would be defined as racist under this definition.
Once the wheels of motion are turning there is nothing anyone can do, even the way Hacker News behaved with it's mob mentality was absurd – two people got fired, SendGrid was brought offline, some poor lady received death threats, everyone was humiliated in some capacity, and by the looks of the comment thread on the SendGrid facebook page, equality in tech has been notched back a few decades.
Talk about blowing something out of proportion: some guy made a dongle joke to a friend of his at a conference. It's kind of terrifying if you think how easily you could have been one of the characters in this. You see so many times when some poor person has his personal details spread over the internet based on a rumour. What do you even do when this happens?
Mountain. Mole hill.
Now there is no kind of resolution, but two people are unemployed and two companies are damaged. Nice going.
I came to believe that its better to bring things to resolution very fast, for both the employer and employee.
YMMV.
Getting rid of a dysfunctional employee can be an nightmare for everyone involved. We usually try to buy their resignation, it's expensive and a bit dirty, but relatively painless.
There's tons of laws and certain types of jobs are very difficult to fire people (unionized industries and govt. jobs). And there are laws and lawsuits for wrongful termination.
Private companies still have labor laws they have to obey. Except for certain types of issues employees can be fired. Depending in the size of the company things may be more or less formal.
If we're terminating someone for performance reasons we have to have a documented history of attempting to improve their behavior and objective measures which indicate that they were unable to improve. Otherwise we're likely to be sued for wrongful termination, which is one of the only circumstances where the burden of proof is on the accused and not the accuser (because, according to precedent as I understand it, the employer is at an informational advantage over the employee.)
If we're terminating someone for behavioral issues like sexual harassment or any other type of misconduct, there has to be robust documentation and evidence supporting that too should it ever come to a lawsuit.
In other words, I can't just do whatever the fuck I want. And I'm fine with that - employees and employers should both enjoy equal protection under the law.
It's factually true (in fact, it's not even that hard in most countries), but the way it is legislated is so vastly different that the labor laws the US has are almost insignificant. (The power of certain unions is a different matter, but that doesn't apply here.)
I'm just saying to anybody who perceives that the US is some sort of Wild West in regards to labor laws - you are not really going off of the facts. The US has a lot if laws that are complex beyond my understanding of them, and I actually am a business owner with employees!
One thing not mentioned - when you do terminate an employee your company often has to pay their unemployment (basically a short-term salary paid to them by the government), and your costs go up if you have many unemployment claims. So it is certainly not a desirable thing for either party to fire employees.
For anyone who's curious, the texts I'm working off of are http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm and http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/facts-retal.cfm. It seems pretty clear that Adria is a covered individual and that an adverse action has been taken. SendGrid is almost certainly a covered entity. The remaining question is whether Adria has engaged in a protected activity and if that is what she was fired for.
The protected activity I think most closely matches what she did is, "Complaining to anyone about alleged discrimination against oneself or others." Now, in the case of this document, what they mean by alleged discrimination is any harassing behavior. But, I believe it is also typically only such behaviors by someone working at the covered entity. So the open question in my mind is whether the law covers adverse actions for complaints about harassment by third parties. I guess we'd have to ask a lawyer.
To the question of whether that is what she was fired for. If it isn't, it's quite a coincidence. I think it would be hard for SendGrid to convince a judge that she was fired for something other than her complaint.
"because they filed a charge of discrimination, because they complained to their employer or other covered entity about discrimination on the job, or because they participated in an employment discrimination proceeding"
I don't think this holds water.
Well, considering that whenever the actions of an employer are questioned people on the internet are quick to assert that privacy in the work place does not exist and that employment is at-will.
I can see where our foreign friends get the impression.
Why?! The developer in question is essentially unemployable in Europe, because of the superficial appearance that there might be something wrong with him. Hiring in Europe is a high-stakes decision, so companies weed out applicants that have even the smallest warning signs. Whereas in America he will have a new job in short order.
Even worse, in Europe his former colleagues would be trapped in contracts with an employer that has revealed themselves as a total asshat. Whereas in America, there is a good chance that the asshat company will soon be without an engineering staff or the ability to hire a new one as it should be.
Say or do something wrong and your company will not even remotely try to get your back. You will be dumped as soon as feasibly possible.
Both companies involved here are disgusting.
The notion of company loyalty flew out the window 10+ years ago.
I've personally said "Just fork her" many times at work in front of my female co-workers without an afterthought. While I will continue to do so, if a new female employee starts after today I may just wait for her to make a penis joke before I feel comfortable enough to suggest copying someone's repository to their personal one for the sake of code contribution and/or modification.
Sweet cake-frosting-Christ - this all could have been avoided with a head turn and a "Hey, do you guys mind not speaking like that here? It's making me uncomfortable".
Whatever this woman's original motive was got immediately lost in the shallow exchanges which follow, but the commentary becomes important because it is now personal.
I feel more contempt for the real name trolls now gloating over her firing too. None of whom I assume were present at the original event. The internet is full of bile, but I'm happier with anonymous bile.
I'm usually the guy seeing opportunity in every "doomsday" prediction but, I really see no upside for most people in being recorded all the time.
This is going to compound cyber-bullying effects by orders of magnitude.
I find the focus on her gender irrelevant. Is the story any different if it is a man vilifying and excoriating women he overhears? No. She is/was basically incompetent. A tech evangelist is basically a salesperson, her job is to create goodwill. You don't report your customers as offensive even when you think they are. And you especially NEVER bring bad will on your company brand. You deal with it and move on.
We should be allowed to express ourselves and to make mistakes in the process. More tolerance please. I don't want to live in a world where we can be threatened by a virtual mob for 140 characters that we wrote.
People mess up, and in this situation either Adria messed up or whoever hired her did. That's not to say either party is stupid or a "bad person" or any such thing... it's to say that Adria did something that most of us consider clearly wrong/unprofessional, and if there was a clear indication that she'd do such a thing, the hiring manager should not have brought her on. I'm inclined to think there was no such indication and this is just her personally doing something irresponsible, but then we don't know.
Immediately making that a reflection on her employer is invalid and makes things worse than they already are.
Do you have evidence for this? If it were me, I'd fire her because she caused a huge wave of negativity toward the company. I don't know what an "evangelist" does, but I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of it.
I'm not saying they weren't right in doing so, but it looks like they cave to blackmail.
I'm sorry, but there is zero reason to believe this over other plausible explanations given in this thread.
I'd have fired her, too.
Shame on her for not apologizing immediately when the firestorm broke out. I suspect this would have preserved two jobs.
So sad...
media will make this a womens rights false argument and she will get a book deal plus her 15mins.
glad my 3 contractors i hired are remote, degenerate neckbeards who dont use anything besides degenerate filled IRC channels. media doesnt give a shit about IRC
The legal system isn't protecting Sendgrid from having the awesome day they're enjoying right now.
Sorry to say, but forking and dongles are just bad jokes. Not sexual or inappropriate ones. If Richards wished to take action against sexism in the technology field, she could have spoken out against it with proper evidence, because getting fussy over harmless fun is not the way to deal with it.
I understand her predicament. Sometimes you have just had enough to deal with, and you can't stand it. You have to release. But reason triumphs over emotion. You can't just go completely nuts over the wrong problem. Calculate your objective and create a plan; if you can't do that, honestly you don't deserve to be in the software field.
Wow, just wow. Five wrongs don't make a right.
1. Two men make crude jokes to one another at conference.
2. Adria shames them.
3. PlayHaven fires one of them.
4. Internet goes berserk and threatens her.
5. SendGrid fires Adria.
Sad. This is a net negative.
Not a lot of detail there, but it's better than nothing.
Acceptable case: Adria turns around to the guys in question and politely lets them know that she is not cool with middle-school humor at a professional event. They are embarrassed, and think twice about it next time.
Best case: The guys around them do this first.
What actually happend: A chain-reaction of explosive over-reactions.
Take this story, for example. While I'm not taking anyone's side, I think that if Adria had been able to provide context for what happened (i.e. saying more about the nature of the employee's comments and why it offended her), this discussion would have been more meaningful from the get-go. Maybe it wouldn't devolve so quickly into speculation.
"Yesterday the future of programming was on the line..."
In the end, everyone lost here, but she did start the fire.
She was not wrong to mention inappropriate jokes. Anyone that has done sexual harassment training will know that ANYTHING that can be taken the wrong way in not acceptable. Because of the nature of sexism and sexual harassment you have to have a zero tolerance policy.
Going out with pitchforks regarding this incident is sending an absolutely terrible message to current and future generations of women in tech.
I would absolutely HATE to see this become a drawn out legal battle comedy. And I would hate it even more to see Adria end up playing the victim and become some sort of 'women's advocate' showing up in some morning show couch crying and blaming 'the male tech industry'.
Then again, no high hopes on it being over.
My impression is that inappropriate jokes were specifically targeted at a woman seated nearby. In an all male company (of 13-year old youths) it just does not happen.
The people that did this deserved to be reminded that it was not acceptable (although not by firing).
Now, firing Adria Richards is entirely beyond my understanding. Seriously, WTF? Well, this whole story is sad. Blame the messenger now?
Can someone please fire whoever is responsible for that? I am offended.