Hacker News Reader

Comment by ericabiz | Hacker News Reader

> "Most [all, actually] of the women I've talked to about this are furious with her over how badly this portrays women."

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.

View on HN

I'm sorry, but you just threw up two different straw (wo)men here.

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.

"It's not sexist to make a 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."

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.)

Two things: she made a dick joke on twitter, and she plays cards against humanity which is nothing but "dick jokes with strangers".

You forgot to make a point. You only listed facts.

Point: She singled out two guys at a conference, provided no evidence/proof while burning them at the stake online, and was fired for it.

You seem not to understand words, logic, or evidence.

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.

Did she not single out two male developers at a conference for something that they said without speaking to them whatsoever? Take their picture and put it on twitter in an inflammatory way? And then get fired by SendGrid for the resulting situation?

Don't be a dick.

No. That isn't what happened at all. (Specifically, she didn't 'single two male developers out'). Also, that characterisation does not match up with your previous characterisation without applying rather more charity than one should be expected to ('provided no evidence/proof while burning them at the stake online' is not the same as 'Take their picture and put it on twitter in an inflammatory way', 'was fired for it' is not the same as 'then get fired by SendGrid for the resulting situation').

So, you demonstrate (at the very least) sloppy thinking.

She didn't just make a "dick joke" on twitter, but a joke about creating a hostile working environment for somebody she doesn't like (TSA-agents in this case) by the means of sexual harassment.

And being male is part of being an individual. We're against individualism now?

That could be interpreted to mean women are not individuals, which is probably not what you meant :-)

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.

Depending on the context, I might do the same thing. What I wouldn't do is act as though I was the defender of a righteous cause and that the guy making the dick joke was somehow oppressing my <minority group>. Dick jokes may be in bad taste, but they are not oppression.

> Dick jokes are perceived to be almost exclusively a part of "guy culture".

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.

Do you really want to base your analysis on the assumption that that this was the only dick joke anyone made in a public space at this conference? I sure wouldn't take that bet.

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.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Watch how fast my friends stop making gamer jokes when our sports-fan friend walks up. Is that "jock-ist"? Of course not. It's taking into consideration that the topic being discussed isn't likely of interest to the new member of the conversation, and therefore being considerate enough to change the topic. That's not oppression, it's courtesy.

Maybe I didn't make my point clearly enough. I never meant to suggest that there's anything inherently sexist about the existence of such a thing as "guy culture" (or at least, that's an entirely separate issue). My point was very close to what you've said here, in fact: when guys see that they're part of a mixed group, they tend to be courteous and opt for more inclusive topics.

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.]

Okay, I understand the disconnect now, but I still disagree with you.

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.

Completely agreed with the fact that sex jokes, jokes about forking or dongles aren't inherently sexist. In fact, without knowing exactly what those developers were saying, from the surface it didn't seem sexist at all, just a tad bit crude. Being a man who's very much upset about the amount of sexism I see in my industry, this is an instance of calling out the wrong thing. I'm also a fan of crude humor as long as it's not sexist, homophobic or racist, which in my opinion, these comments were not.

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's not sexist to make jokes about the word "dongle" sounding like "dong".

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."

It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist. For example, if we were to look at sexual repartee in France[1], one would notice sexuality in normal conversation. Among friends, friends of friends and friends and the significant others of friends, between bosses and staff, etc. It's imbued in their culture. [Some] Anglos tend to see this as archaic and sexist, Gallics see it as part of their culture and don't see the puritanical sexist POV.[2] The truth may lie somewhere in between. I.e. A functioning work environment need not be sterile, one which denies human tendencies.

[1] http://www.parisvoice.com/books-on-france/581-la-seduction-h... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/world/europe/01iht-letter0...

> It would appear to be sexual. I'm not certain it needs to be sexist.

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?

What if we polled all conferences for all language that some attending population feel is off the table? Should lawyers plan to vote to ban all lawyer jokes, even if said by insiders? What about bankers' conferences, maybe have them keep attendees from asking pointed questions about bailouts and fraud, etc?

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.

> What if we polled all conferences for all language that some attending population feel is off the table? Should lawyers plan to vote to ban all lawyer jokes, even if said by insiders?

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.

To me it's not so much a slippery slope argument but rather, what makes one population deserving of an exclusion and another not. In other words, how does one qualify that lawyers are less hurt by language that berates them vs language which damages women, on an individual level.

>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.

> 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.

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.

I think we actually agree that there is a problem. Or should I say I agree with you that there is a problem. What I disagree is that one can, in effect, legislate the problem out. It's like making the kkk illegal, or making racial epithets illegal.

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.

I may be misunderstanding you here, but your comments feel to me as if they're based on an assumption that everyone in society faces more or less comparable levels of offensive behavior. For instance, to my eye, your argument about lawyers only holds water if it's based on the assumption that lawyers (as a group) routinely face a level of marginalization and abuse that women (as a group) do.

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.

Death threats and the rage of a thousand misogynists is hardly a "tit for tat kind of situation." She may have misunderstood the forking comment, but that does not constitute abuse. Publicly shaming obnoxious behavior may be an overreaction, but it's nothing like the true, actual sexist and racist abuse that Richards has endured.

> "It's not sexist to make jokes about the word 'dongle' sounding like 'dong'."

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.

I'm not clear that you understand what a straw man 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.

Your experiences sound awful and truly disheartening, and I hope we can move towards a better and more inclusive future for everyone.

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.

You are making a quantifiable assertion.

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.

Anyone doing this needs to have showdead turned on - there was a bunch of stuff posted by new accounts that got downvoted.

I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed. I do agree that there are problematic elements within the tech community, and HN. I acknowledged this in my post:

"Of course, there is some overlap between [extremists] and the tech community..."

"I don't really want to devote more mental energy to this topic than it's already consumed."

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.

The problem is that people talking about it on a geeky news aggregator won't change the tech culture, and that similar incidents are to be expected in the future.

I have it on good authority that many tech news sources draw material from comments on this and other sites like reddit.

"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 :)

>You are making a quantifiable assertion. 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.

I don't see how plotting thread discussions on HN would even vaguely correlate to the Twitter abuse the GP was referring to.

zevyoura was asserting that the behavior seen on twitter is not representative of our community, and that those sentiments are isolated to a set of bad actors.

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)?

I understand what you are trying to quantify, but I think you may be conflating sentiment.

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.

Aren't the names of new users shown in green? So unless they already had accounts waiting around then people new to hackers news would stand out pretty easily.

A lot of people on HN were critical of Adria Richards but I didn't see any of the extreme hate speech that I saw on some other forums towards her.

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.

I usually stay away from twitter, but reading through some reddit threads (Seen nothing hateful on HN at all), only the communities made up mostly of idiots had any hate speech (SRS, SRSucks and MensRight)

You seem to have a super inconsistent burden of proof.

-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?

Er?

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.

"You are making a quantifiable assertion. 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."

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.

>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.

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.

From what I've gleaned, /srs is pretty brutal, but towards the behavior of the MRAs. They are most likely a good mix of men and not attacking MRAs for being men who dare talk out about... the "gynocracy" or something. Your false equivalency is unnecessary and misplaced.

To be fair, she claimed that these people represented the tech community, the responder said that they didn't represent the tech community and you instantly jump in to put the burden of proof on statement 2? Why not statement 1? If we're really calling the tech community sexist because someone got twitter hate after an article was posted on Reddit I'm just blown away at the logic gymnastics one would have to do to arrive at the point you've seemingly just arrived at...

> I agree those comments are absolutely horrifying, and the act of people I would never associate with.

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).

You're absolutely right, to be more accurate I should have said that if I witnessed someone performing those acts I would dissociate myself from them.

Society in general has issues with misogyny, not just western society.

However, I don't think it's fair to attribute them to the 'tech community.'

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.,

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Case in point: There weren't making belitting jokes about women. Making jokes about "dongle" sounding like "dong" or about "forking the repository" of a male speaker? Where is making fun of women in there? Pretending like something else happened because it fits your narrative sounds extreme, not reasonable.

Often sex jokes and sex discussion in some communities only consist of one thing: men do the fing, women are fed. Treating women are sex sex objects, is a way to belittle and exclude women. (these jokes also affect some men too you know. Gay men are sometimes told they aren't real men because they do something only women should do, namely be the receptive sex partner (sometimes)). As a result many tech conferences have simplified things by banning all sex jokes, since it's often just the one type of sex in mind.

In THIS case (the one we are talking about), the sex joke consisted not in that one thing. There was no women being fed involved. There were talking about the repository of a male speaker. Don't you see that this is exactly the kind of "spreading the humor" that transcends the usual stereotype of a women being fed..? If you think that joke (which was supposed to be a sign of admiration for the guys code and I don't think anyone could misunderstand that part) implies him "being a women" (?) then I think you are reading a lot into it. Which is my exact point: you are not reasonable. You make the facts fit your agenda. You are being extremist.

> Okay, time to speak up! Hi, I'm a woman in tech

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.

Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?

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

The difference here is that the jokes/comments were not made to her. She overheard them in the context of a semi-private conversation between two people, and took umbrage at them.

If they had come up and started making penis jokes to her, then it'd be a very different situation.

It's not as obnoxious as if they'd walked up to her and started telling her penis jokes, but on the other hand a person has to assume that the person sitting in front of them at a conference (seriously, they're what - three or four feet away?) can hear what they're saying.

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.

I also wouldn't assume at a conference the person sitting in front of me is intently listening in on my conversation...

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.

> Wow, so if your mother (or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, or daughter) has ever made an off-color joke in her life, that gives any man in the world the right to discuss penises with her in person?

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".

Back up just a second there. 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.

  > 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.

You don't think that context matters at all when it comes to a joke?

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 jumping over the point here. Both the conference and twitter are public venues, and both the jokes are sexual in nature.

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

I'm sorry. Posting something on Twitter is simply not the same as saying something several feet away from a stranger in person. There are two primary reasons.

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.

There's a huge difference between talking to her about penises, and making a penis joke to your friend next to you that she overhears.

Everybody has the right to discuss penises, or anything they like, provided participants in discussion willing to do it. If they do not, the preceding history does not matter.

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.

If she'd walked by their table in a restaurant and overheard them, or eavesdropped on them by putting her ear up to a closed door? Okay, then they might be able to claim they never could have expected to be overheard.

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?

They probably expected that she wouldn't be paying attention to them or just didn't think about her listening in. People talk about all kinds of stuff while on talks or other group situations all the time, and not every time they study the surroundings to see if somebody is listening or not. The point here the talk wasn't directed at her, and while it would be appropriate to point out to the guys that there are in a public space and can be heard, so they should tone it down or maybe go talk outside, 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. Not every time somebody behaves out of place or rudely it means he is $_-ist, $_-ist and $_-ist and probably loves Hitler. Sometimes it's just people not thinking about what they are doing too much and coming out as an oafs. Pointing it out usually quite enough and no escalation is necessary. Sometimes is is

  > 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.

I agree: the response was out of proportion. I think literally every entity directly involved in this situation could have handled it better.

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.

The point is that they did not intend it to be directed at her and probably were not regarding her as part of the conversation. Human perception is very selective, and you can literally look at things and not see them. There's nothing @-ist in this, it's just how the brain works. Should the guys be more aware when in public places? Yes. This can be handled by a gentle reminder, not by a public campaign. Of course, this does not produce a splashy effect of fighting @-isms and being on the forefront of the struggle for all good against all evil, but it is usually better for everyone involved. Which is the main point of it, and hopefully more people realizing it would be at least a little win in this huge heap of fail.

Ah, but they didn't make any comments to her, by her own admission.

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.

I sympathize, but your story seems a bit of a stretch. I thought somehow you were going to lead to how he implied you weren't smart enough to be an entrepreneur or something absurd like that.

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.

It's really easy to judge a situation by itself, but keep in mind most blowups from seemingly tiny incidents are because this happens all the time in all kinds of ways to a lot of women. It's a death by a thousand cuts. I normally don't care about one off dick jokes. It's just that man, it gets really old when you hear it all the time at a conference on top of other women telling you that they also heard dick jokes. Exhausting.

I sympathize with environmental pressure, but strength and fortitude must still be striven for. As a hyperbolic (but real ) example, I would not forgive a soldier who has spent years embedded in Iraq snapping and mowing down a bunch of civilians, but I would understand and sympathize with the situation that would bring him to it (it's a common defense I get thrown at me when debating such things). But yeah, it sucks, for everyone.

> The last time I innocently chatted up a "taken" woman next to her boyfriend, I was later told that 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.

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.

That's the rub these days- don't talk to her and you run the risk of making her feel "excluded", do talk her to and you run the risk of being seen as "flirting".

"do talk her to and you run the risk of being seen as "flirting"."

If this occurs more than once, chances are you are to blame for the perception.

So in a nutshell:

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.

>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.)

Actually in this case she did have enough time to apologize. It wasn't really as immediate as yelling at the boss.

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...".

By the way, this isn't exclusive to tech. Women [unfortunately] face this in every male dominated field. It sucks, I know.

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 also happens to men in female dominated fields and social enviroments.

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.

But men in female dominated fields tend not to get death threats and photos of beheaded corpses, or threats of rape.

The way that women get treated in male dominated fields like tech really has gotten worse.

Eh, I really really don't think it's gotten worse. I'm not saying it's perfect but if the worst thing a female has to complain about in a male dominated field is someone making a crack about their wife and someone mistaking her boyfriend for the entrepreneur, that's not SO bad.

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).

No, but males do get automatically suspected of being pedophiles. Companies / daycare / pre-k - 6 have a strong prejudice against hiring males in education. Insurance companies and some parents play a pretty big role in this situation.

I worked for 5 years looking after disabled children and had some parents absolutely refuse to leave their kids if there weren't any female staff members on for the day. That kind of makes you angry. What REALLY makes you angry though is when the female staff support that decision.

I'll say it again, "if you don't want your infant changed by a male, then you are part of the problem". I think your example is just as telling.

I don't think this is true. If we could somehow compile a list of all the people 4chan has attacked over the years I'd bet we'd see equal opportunity trolling.

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.

Men don't get rape threats from women, I think is the key take-away.

I'm sure you can find an example of it happening but it's not a regular occurrence.

I don't agres with you, but I'll grant it. So let's say that men don't get rape threats. Are rape threats inherently more worthy of our scorn than murder threats?

No, but they are different. And women get murder threats as well.

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 believe in the adage: Don't lead with bad unless you want that to set the tone of your message.

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.

Sure, it happens to men in the much smaller number of much less well paid jobs that are female dominated.

That is neither here nor there in relation to the issue we are discussing.

When I first got into tech, I didn't want to be viewed as different, either. Even when guys would tell me in very blatant racist/sexist ways that I was different and that that difference made me inferior, I tried very hard to be "just like Mike". But now I say that in all the ways that make me successful professionally, I'm like you. But in some ways, I'm different. And that should be OK. And in many ways, outside of what you do professionally, you tech guys are different from each other, too. And it should not matter. Actually, even within the "professional" realm, there are differences between tech guys - educational background, when you started hacking, how long you've been hacking, professional experiences, preferred technologies - even how you define hacking. Some of you hate footall. I love football. I should not have to be exactly like you to be respected by you.

I would never argue that you have to act like a boy to get respect. That would be horrible.

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.

I would not have reacted as she did. I would have tuned it out nothing or spoken to them privately. And I know that a lot of women, including me, would have not have been offended at all. But there have been times when I've told guys (that I know) that even though I wasn't offended by what they just said, some women would be. I don't tell them not to say it; I just give them a heads-up.

Well thank you. I wish that Adria had reacted that way.

>>> 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.

> but I can speak for the other women that I know.

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?

He doesn't know me but i think hes doing a better job of speaking for me then adria did.

@ericabiz: couple of comments.

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.

First off I agree 100% that the trolls that threaten and slur her on the blog/twitter etc. are morons. I would also like to point out that THAT is what trolls do!

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.

It's hard to say, when a blog blows up in traffic it can be really difficult to moderate comments effectively. A lot of times people will turn off comments altogether since the load is too much.

> 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.

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.

"Everybody Loves Raymond" is your evidence here. I'm not interested in arguing the point here, but come on. It's a show by a man, about a man, written by (mostly) men. How is that relevant?

It's relevant because it's an example of pop culture, and pop culture mirrors culture's values (hence, "pop[ular]").

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

"Right now it's been a week and I'm still working out the best course of action."

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.

Please do not mistake the social ineptitude of others in the tech industry, as applying equally to the rest of us.

Likewise, no one should think all women behave like Richards.

I wasn't gender specific in my comment.

>"This went on like this for several minutes. Dude never said a single word to me, and finally wandered off, confused."

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.

> This doesn't portray women as badly as it portrays our entire tech culture badly

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.

Erica, I too am very disheartened by the amount sexism in our industry. As a male feminist who is very passionate about engineering, technology and entrepreneurship, it's hard to see that many of my peers act in such ways. However, sex jokes are not inherently sexist. They are perhaps crude, but don't have to be sexist. From the surface, the comments of these developers seem just sophomoric and crude, but nothing else. I am a fan of crude jokes as long as they aren't sexist, homophobic or racist. I don't think Adria really had a reason to call them out on grounds of sexism, perhaps just on grounds for being annoying. But she certainly shouldn't have done it with their pictures.

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.

> Was Adria's reaction, to this as an isolated event, out of hand? Yes.

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.

They said a inappropriate joke, not something sexist. There was nothing sexist about it. I repeat, she was not discriminated against. It was unprofessional and out of line, but what she did was far far more inappropriate and unprofessional.

Since when did telling a simple techie joke become sexist? And how did one individual telling another individual privately that joke become discrimination?

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.

I think her decision to take this to twitter was the completely wrong decision. She is a developer evangelist at one of the most important developer conferences. She is representing SendGrid on all of her public forums.

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.

>>>> But when this happens to you every single day

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.

> 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.)

Hey, if you can't shoot the messenger, who can you shoot?

Oh wait...

What do you do when you meet a woman at a party who makes an offhand comment about her "worthless son"? Nothing, right? Maybe "That's really rude" and walk away? Certainly no crusade will be mounted. Because: she's simply a bad person[1], and nothing you can say will do anything, you won't change her mind or shame her, and you certainly won't help the son's case, and anyone who knows the woman in question will know she's a jerk already. There's no point. Jerks are jerks. They come in both penis and vagina versions. Many of them are famous.

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(?).

You think women are having hard time in tech ? then you sure dont want to be black like me ,with people refusing to work with "niggers" ...

Discrimination is not a zero-sum game.

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.

A) 2nd wave feminism is a zero-sum ideology. Try talking about the education gap in public education or male rape and see how fast it turns into a victim-hood pissing contest.

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.

Which feminist circles are these?

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.

>How many 2nd wave feminists do you know? The only ones i know of live in all female enclaves in rural areas.

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.

What you say is very true of mainstream white 2nd wave feminism. However, the heyday of the 2nd wave was decades ago and feminist thought and work (academic or not) has gone much beyond the absolutist kind of advocacy 2nd wavers had/have.

2nd wave isn't the leading edge or majority but it's still a huge part of the ecosystem. Third Wave feminist might not commit to any one framework but they are often perfectly happy to take on the language of 2nd wave feminism when it's relevant to do so. When the stars align, these people take on the language of bigotry.

I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. 2nd wave feminism has problems for sure, but they also got a lot right and and 2nd wavers have helped shaped the state of society today. Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.

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.

>Heck, some prominent woman suffarage folks in the late 1800s/early 1900s were eugenics advocates (which is super messed up), but that doesn't negate the positive things woman's suffrage accomplished.

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.

> 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.

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.

>Misandry isn't a real thing men as a whole suffer from.

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.

I don't think anyone here is judging the comparative difficulties of various groups of minorities. It's recognized that most minority groups do face discrimination.

Let's not play Opression Olympics here.

This is one of the interesting things about this pycon story in that Adria Richards is a black woman, experiencing the sexist and racist parts of the tech community. This whole incident highlights the intersection of those things in regards to how the tech community and internet at large reacts to someone who challenges micro-aggressions.

Wow.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com