Adria Richards: ‘I’m staying safe’
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
And they didn't kick the guy out, or anything like that - it was basically a verbal warning, but done formally so that it was on record in case there was another incident. That's it. Not so bad.
I understand all of that and still think her reaction was out-of-scale.
It's the "megaphone" part that I think is out-of-scale. If we're going to be a civilized community, then gentle, discreet correction should be the societal norm.
Even discussing the event in public is fine, (although I'm not convinced that the level of discourse on Twitter is appropriate for something as nuanced as Microaggression), but including the picture feels like an out-of-scale response to what the guys did.
I've been trying to remember this word all week
How is publishing photographs of the individual offenders in a specific indicdent and a description of that specific incident not both looking at, and encouraging others to look at, an individual incident, instead of some broader problem that incident might be part of?
It's clearly not your point. But I think its an important point.
> The point is we shouldn't brush off these individual incidents as insignificant because they are part of a whole.
If the significance is because they are part of a whole, then they need to be addressed in that context.
> The problem is not going to get solved if you don't show that you do not tolerate this sort of behaviour, on an individual scale.
You can not-tolerate it by making a private report to conference staff; you can not tolerate it by making a public discussion of the general problem with the specific incident as one of the illustrations; you can not tolerate it in many ways. The argument that something shouldn't be tolerated, even when accepted, doesn't automatically justify every possible response.
How are you ever going to get any accountability if you don't address them individually. People need to be taught what a microaggression is and why it's important, and then punished if they continue to make them. Repeated sexual jokes are already considered a form of sexual harassment.
>The argument that something shouldn't be tolerated, even when accepted, doesn't automatically justify every possible response.
This is true, and we seem to disagree what a justified response is in this scenario. I don't think it was that big of a deal actually. The internet made it into a big deal, but that's not adrias fault. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this one, because I don't know where to go from this.
How does this episode not serve as a pretty glaring counterexample to that principle?
although conflict resolution probably wasn't what was really being attempted. I'm not sure what was being attempted, but I'd venture to guess that "let the internet settle this" didn't have the intended result.
As I understand it, the particular use of a public channel (particularly, the use of a photograph in it) was itself a direct violation of the Code of Conduct of the conference, and an unnecessary escalation. The only arguably excuse for such public shaming, independently of whether or not it was a violation of the Code of Conduct, would be if the act were more something significantly more serious on its own than she described (though a public complaint about the organizers would be in line if the act, as described, was privately reported and the organizers failed to deal with it in such a way that that failure was itself a hostile.)
That's not what several of the accounts I've seen has said, but as I noted in my post I don't consider that particularly important in the final analysis one way or the other.
> So you don't think it was a serious thing.
I didn't say that; quite the opposite, I said that there was a legitimate grounds to expect that conference organizers would treat an appropriate, private report seriously and that it would be legitimately to publicly complain if they failed to do so.
Theft of even a small value is serious. Murder is serious. Most people who agree with both these propositions would still readily agree that the appropriate response to the former and that to the latter are not the same.
most of the time, the person asking that sort of question
Nice misrepresentation of what I said, by the way. It's not about the joke, it's about what's behind it. Women are frequently objectified in jokes, and the Technology industry hasn't exactly been the most welcoming to women. When you make a sexual joke in front of a woman in this context, she might feel inclined to think about what's behind that joke. And you will feel that no matter the intention, the tech industry is not one that has proven itself to be mature enough to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Women are often sexualized and/or objectified, specifically by men. When a man makes a sexual joke, even if he is not directly sexualizing a woman, that can make some women uncomfortable, because of the societal context behind it.
Tech conferences already have kind of a bad reputation towards building an inviting atmosphere for women. Now imagine you are in a place where you might feel a little bit vulnerable, and you hear something like that. It's easy to take it the wrong way, regardless of the intent behind the joke. All this is completely ignoring that in a professional settings, these kinds of jokes are inappropriate anyway.
My brain cannot even comprehend how you can believe such bullshit. I feel like am living in some kind of satirical novel when these incidents happen and people defend it with these type of statements.
We cannot treat everyone as if they are the same if the playing field is not level.
In a vacuum, there should be no difference. But we do not live in a vacuum.
This is part of the reason why so called "male privilege" is actually bullshit. There are so many double standards and exceptions negatively effecting males that they are actually at a disadvantage in a rapidly increasing number of areas.
I suppose you are against affirmative action too.
Now imagine you're a man in the same situation, and two women arrive. They start making sexual jokes. Can you see the difference?
Just like you can tell your boss a joke where someone's getting fired, but you could feel uncomfortable if he was the one telling the joke. Asymmetry of power -- in the gender case, of physical power -- means that context matters.
No, I can't because every man is not a rapist. Your scenario assumes that the men are malevolent and the women benevolent. If you remove this prejudice, you will see the scene as I do. The same thing.
>Just like you can tell your boss a joke where someone's getting fired, but you could feel uncomfortable if he was the one telling the joke.
The comparison is flawed in three ways. Firstly, every boss can potentially fire an employee but every man is not a rapist. If two known rapists came and sat next to me at a bus stop and started making sexual jokes, I would feel scared even as a man.
Secondly, sexual jokes describe any joke that is related to something sexual. A joke where someone is getting fired is very specific and has a victim. You cannot compare the two (unless you are imagining a small subset of sexual jokes that have a victim but this is not what we are talking about).
Thirdly, In your bus stop scene the two men are engaged in private conversation. In your office scene, the boss is telling the joke directly to the employee.
Maybe they make Adria uncomfortable. Maybe they make you uncomfortable. They don't make all women uncomfortable, and you should stop pretending you speak on behalf of women everywhere. Arguing that some humor should be saved for when women aren't around seems like the antithesis of equality. If anything it explains why a "boy club" would ever exist. To speak freely without fear of persecution.
If it was "micro", a proportional response would have also have been micro. Public shaming seems out of proportion.
And "aggression" implies directed hostility or malicious intent, neither of which seems to be the case here.
> Jokes like that foster the uncomfortable boys club environment that is so inherent to tech.
I have to simply disagree here. There are other things that may foster such an environment, but focusing on dumb, non-hostile jokes like this are a distraction.
So I think her MO was not "I feel vulnerable because some guys are making me uncomfortable, this is wrong, I'll do something about it". It was rather "I have a bully pulpit from which I can demonize some schmoes and raise my status at the same time, so I'll do it". Therefore the discussion of her over or under-reacting is moot - this was a publicity stunt that ended up backfiring on her.
While I regret people being fired, I can't help but feel that her ultimate downfall is deserved.
besides the point. It's not about the sexual innuendo, it's about the context of the sexual innuendo. Clearly she is not a prude and against sexual jokes in general. But in that specific environment, they were inappropriate. Twitter is a different environment.
This whole situation sickens me--the threats against Adria especially--but the only thing truly surprising at this point is that Adria did not envision her attempt to summon pitchforks would backfire, with pitchforks being turned on herself. This is the kind of naivety that you would expect from someone unfamiliar with the internet; not someone who works with programmers for a living.
Yes, the backlash is distasteful and disproportionate, but if you're the one gleefully lighting the fire you are not just the victim if you get burned yourself.
From what I've read, petty much epitomizes everything I couldn't stand about dating in San Francisco. Too many self-absorbed, uptight, ultra-feminist, unattractive weirdo girls with a chip on their shoulders...
>Some guys made some guy jokes about guy stuff
>A woman got offended and did something that was probably an over-reaction
>Some conference organizers over-reacted
>A company (PlayHaven) over-reacted
>The internet (all of us, but especially Anonymous) over-reacted
>Another company (SendGrid) over-reacted
>I’ve been cursed and pilloried and told to go kill myself by people on both sides of the issue, just for writing about these events. People from both sides see what they want to see and, like trained attack dogs, go in for the kill with little consideration, no mercy, no nuance, no shades of grey. They are so blinded by their self-righteousness that they’re perfectly OK with perpetrating more metaphorical violence in the service of their almighty god-blessed cause.
Amazing how things escalate.
At this rate I half expect to see this end in years of trench warfare and mustard gas.
That's not to say I don't think there were overreactions all around: I do. But it's been my experience that people really don't like to hear that they're overreacting, especially while they're in the middle of overreacting. They dislike it so much that entire schools of thought are now dedicated quite strongly to the proposition that there is no such thing as overreaction.
The author of this article may well have singlehandedly touched off another round of overreaction from all parties involved. And the hell of it is, I agree with his point; I just don't think it was a useful point to bring up.
>The author of this article may well have singlehandedly touched off another round of overreaction from all parties involved.
Interesting. I can see that. What sort of schools of thought are you thinking about here that talk about this sort of thing?
How should you tell someone that they're overreacting?
This is what I found: http://www.pediatricneurology.com/practica.htm
and the most fascinating paragraph from them there was:
'There Is No Such Thing as Over-Reacting
A psychologist I recently met taught me the following: People do not over-react. They react, by definition, appropriately to the meaning a situation has for them. People have "over-meanings," not "over-reactions." When our child blows up over what seems like a trivial issue to us, it may help us to understand that to our child’s mind, this issue must have a tremendous amount of meaning. We could benefit from saying, "Wow, if that’s how it feels to him, we better calmly discuss this," rather than "Wow, he’s overreacting." For example, imagine an ADD child’s tearful screaming over the process of getting dressed. He’s not over-reacting. He is living a tough morning. Maybe that would change our reaction to his behavior. Children’s "over-reactions" are a window into their minds.'
If a remark is directed at someone in a threatening way, that is different. But saying this is just 'guy stuff' is ignorant of reality.
But SendGrid had another option. Its leaders could have taken a leadership role.
Maybe create a forum to talk about this issue.
#2 - The joke was completely childish and innocuous at best. No, that isn't subjective, it was!. You can't proclaim yourself a geek and tell me you've never heard a dongle joke. Amy Poller made a similar joke during a recent superbowl commercial. I'd be hard-pressed to see her outting her as offensive to all women.
#3 - No, she didn't "save programming" from anything. Programming was never under any threat whatsoever. This were two fellow developers making a silly joke that she completely blew out of proportion. This is nothing but a self righteous individual with illusions of grandeur. What she did was get people fired.
#4 - This was never about anything else but herself. And in the end, we are all feeding a troll
Software engineering exists beyond silicon valley. It's true.
In other words attributing all of the threats, DDOS etc to the sort of people who go to pycon.
So that means there are two possibilities.
1) It is common for the sort of people who attend pycon and write relatively sensible posts on HN also engage in this sort of behaviour. I hope this is not true, and mostly doubt it but if it is then this is something deeply disturbing.
2) We are letting the sort of people who frequent 4chan and "men's rights" blogs act as representatives of the software community.
Lest we forget, she has NOT apologized. She has not shown a single iota of regret. For all we know, SendGrid would have let her keep her job if she had been willing to apologize.
Until we hear some mea-culpa from her, she is not the victim. She is the perpetrator.
We already have been for a long time. This is not a problem with nerd culture but with legal and HR culture. She basically branded "hostile environment lawsuit risk" across his forehead, and he's instantly so untouchable that PlayHaven couldn't safely retain him. I could understand him maybe wanting revenge once it sinks in just how fucked he is within the US, I just don't get the ridiculous threats from people who weren't involved.
I'm depressed now =\
It's because she's a notable figure on the internet.
I challenge the reader to find any notable figure online who has held a controversial position and not been the target of death threats.
That is an Internet anonymity problem, not a gender problem!
Women are not the only targets of anonymous death threats online!
(Not to excuse the appalling behavior of anonymous cowards who point their threats at almost every notable news target. Seriously, go read the forums on a major partisan site. Vile, disgusting, hurtful and violent language aren't the exception, they're the norm).
By playing into the gender context we're playing once against into these stupid gender arguments where they don't belong.
"But they're using anti-women language"
Of course they are! If it were a crippled man being insulted, why not imagine the language they'd use. If it was a black man being insulted and threatened, guess the language they'd use.
They pick their language to troll their target. They pick it after picking their target -- the language isn't the reason!
And yet again, a non gender issue will be filed under sexism.
Nailed it.
The posters point is that if a man had been the forefront of a lot of news then death threats would have been thrown at him too.
The fact that this is a "Women in Tech" issue is what generated so much publicity, and the publicity is what draws the trolls. If two posters on 4chan's /b/ board had some exchange where one named-and-shamed the other over a penis joke, and he ended up losing his job? I don't think it's hard to imagine Anonymous coming down hard in the perpetrator, whether male or female.
I bet if you compared their campaign of "going nuclear" on white supremacists it would register but a blip compared to what's going on here.
And it IS because she is a woman... and also because she's black. Those two probably each increase the measure of the e-mob response exponentially.
| I bet if you compared their campaign of
| "going nuclear" on white supremacists it
| would register but a blip compared to what's
| going on here.
>...probably...
>And it IS...
Believe it or not, your opinion isn't fact.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/31/the-sort-of-crap-i-don...
> Then the internet erupted, as male developers saw one of their own attacked for something that just about every man can envision himself doing.
There were plenty of female developers that also expressed outrage, that also admitted to making similar jokes. The root cause of this entire debacle is that everything keeps being framed as a battle between all male developers vs a lone female developer.
uh... racist language?
So wait, if I get riled up about something for non-racist reasons, but then use racist language... I'm not racist? I get a pass?
Don't confuse your argument. You're saying that her gender is not SUFFICIENT for why she's getting those threats. Fine. But don't make the case that her actions were sufficient alone; that her gender (or race) has nothing to do with it. That just defends anyone who wants to use racist or sexist language any time they get bent out of shape about something.
A person choosing the most obvious, vicious, and personal way to insult and hurt someone is still guilty of acting prejudiced. Just because they would have used a different way to attack a different person does not get them off the hook for what they actually did.
Maybe I'm a fool to try to figure out the motivation of anonymous jackasses on the internet, but: It sure feels like the passion and energy being put into some of the attacks is due to her gender.
This abuse is generated by the "long crazy tail" of the Internet populace. In general, this crazy tail is mostly male (testosterone/societal/genetic influences). Therefore, the crazies are more likely to sympathetic to people like them and less likely to be able to relate to those far outside their own identities (among this set, women), and so the abuse level will be higher.
Tech? I would have thought better of arguably among the most "rational" humans. Yet another lesson in how close to the surface very primitive emotions lie.
And tech remains a cesspool of mysogyny.
Not admitting that many important decisions have an emotional component is part of the problem.
They can be 'rational' when it comes to doing numerical things, but when it comes to an emotional issue like picking emacs or vi, they are no better than your average touchy-feely New Age believer at being rational.
Every time something like this happens people act surprised. Hello, have you ever been on the internet before? I'm not defending it, just saying that it should be treated for what it is - background noise.
You can't use these kinds of situations to gauge reaction because the vocal minority yells louder than ever.
If that's irrational, venomous, and cowardly I'll wear those labels proudly.
She said, "Black people CANNOT be racist. Racism is a position of the oppressor who has power."
The same premise that would lead to that position, would require someone to think the same thing about sexism and gender issues.
This context sheds some light on things beyond the faux pas aspect of publicly shaming someone on Twitter, via an unauthorized picture, which already is unacceptable for someone who is a professional communicator.
Now, if you want to say that this is "irrational venom" and "utter cowardice" and not "rational" and based on "very primitive emotions" and "mysogynistic", fine, but that itself is just an emotional spew that doesn't look at the facts of the case that I have pointed out.
Of course, there _are_ lots of trolls, but not everyone who thinks her behavior was disgusting should be lumped in with them.
So let's not over react with these claims of over reactions? And I don't agree PyCon over reacted either.
Adria made a bad decision and PlayHaven was the only party to over react, IMHO.
And the internet is just being the internet. Same as it ever was for the past years.
Stop trying to make this about sexism - it's not going to happen.