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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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