$10,000 Raised for PyLadies at PyCon 2013
pycon.blogspot.com
pycon.blogspot.com
I saw so much hate that I was ashamed to be a male and in tech, yet I also saw so much narrow minded reporting and deliberate distortion of events from many so called feminists and feminist activists (not all female btw) that a part of me would be quite happy if I never saw a female in tech again.
We all lost in that affair - male, female, tech, non tech.
A part of me doesn't even want to think about it again for some time until the dust has completely settled. I would rather not even see articles like this.
A bigger part also realizes that there are real issues with sexism and would love to see more women in tech and understands that the only way that is going to happen is by honest and open discussion.
It's also hard to understand why you take Adria's incident as such a severe personal affront to yourself that you not only seem to want PyLadies to bite the dust, but "a part of [you] would be quite happy if [you] never saw a female in tech again." Even a sane and moderate person can see in this post a suggestion that you would like to see women actively driven out of tech - all because you are offended about Adria Richards.
With respect, please consider that your reaction to this may be strongly irrational and that the things you are saying as a result (and the Adria-unrelated places you are choosing to start a fight) may be making matters even worse.
By narrow minded I mean you are deliberately cherry picking individual points out of context and trying to imply something negative or even the opposite of the original post.
For example you say:
> " a part of you would be quite happy if you never saw a female in tech again. Even a sane and moderate person can see in this post a suggestion that you would like to see women actively driven out of tech - all because you are offended about Adria Richards."
Yet you very conveniently skip over the part where I say "a bigger part of me would love to see more women in tech".
You are also putting words in my mouth. Nowhere do I express an opinion about Adria Richards herself.
You say other things as well but I am not going to defend myself any further or hijack this thread more than I already have.
You chose to drag the Adria incident (unnamed) into an unrelated thread, perpetuating the toxic discussion (the one about Adria's incident) that you claim not to want to hear about. But you weren't responding to someone else here. You went there first. And you set the tone.
You chose to open with 'I actually don't quite know what to think about "Women in Tech."'
You chose to say that a part of you doesn't want to see women in tech at all. You didn't, for some reason, choose to reflect on whether this was rational or needed to be said publicly.
You chose to say that you don't want to see articles "like this." Though this article isn't about anything offensive at all.
You chose all of this. Neither your words, nor their inflammatory meaning, were made up by anyone else. Then you chose not to rethink or climb down from any of your inflammatory remarks. And you chose to respond to correction by escalating and getting personal.
That attitude is the real problem that created the Adria mess. You are the same kind of person you are complaining about. And it has nothing necessarily to do with "women in tech."
Please stop the oversensitive, resentful whining about others and take responsibility for your own choices.
You definitely took parts of the previous post out of context and twisted the meaning of what he claimed to feel.
So rather than spring-boarding off the range of emotions that the poster felt and being productive, you made an attempt to destroy him by disingenuously twisting the spirit of his post.
Not cool.
If this pattern of feeling irrational resentments and using them to justify inflammatory public behavior is "just being honest" then Adria Richards was also "just being honest".
Well, there's "shouldn't because someone said so" and "shouldn't because it's counterproductive." So maybe not?
>Suppressing opinions doesn't get rid of them
Refraining from expressing them certainly helps prevent them from spreading; there are a lot of opinions about women, blacks, etc. that I would have never formed on my own if I hadn't heard them all the time from my father while I was growing up. One of the things that helped me to grow out of those opinions was simply to not repeat them, _especially_ if I was around people who might have reinforced the opinions by agreeing with them or "defending my right to have them".
But I agree that we should move on.
So because there was an incident revolving around a woman and varying degrees of of what people consider feminism, you'd rather not see a woman in tech again? So if there is some new incident in the future involving a person of color, you'd rather not see people of color in tech again? Surely you can see that this attitude is really dismissive and while you may not feel so about pycon, in different circumstances this line of thinking is used to dismiss situations in which people suffer harshly, such as sexual assault or domestic violence.
> We all lost in that affair - male, female, tech, non tech.
I can't really say I agree, the people that really lost out the most are the two people who lost their jobs and have had the professional reputations damaged to varying degrees.
I would also like to point out that you feel you'd rather not see women in tech again, but you don't seem to feel that you should be excluded from tech. If that is the case, is it true that you have suffered as a man as much as women have if the pycon incident makes you feel women do not belong?
> A part of me doesn't even want to think about it again for some time until the dust has completely settled. I would rather not even see articles like this.
This is unlikely, because despite how hyperbolic some people have been about Adria Richards, sexism in tech is a real issue that affects people, so there will continue to be articles and dialogue about it.
> A bigger part also realizes that there are real issues with sexism and would love to see more women in tech and understands that the only way that is going to happen is by honest and open discussion.
Saying there are "real issues" with sexism implies that you get to define what sexism is, but that would be problematic to say the least. Also, openness and honesty in the context sexism (not with the pycon incident, mind you) generally may expose people to physical violence and harassment, so dialog isn't the only tool in the kit worth using at times.
My post is a personal opinion and an honest representation of how I feel at the moment. I feel deeply concerned with what happened, how it happened and potential consequences.
It should be understood as a whole and not a series of logical points, taken separately and over analysed to try convey meaning and messages which simply aren't intended or even there.
I could counter every one of your arguments, but not going to go into it on this forum, I have basically had my say. If you have a lot more to argue about, perhaps make a blog post and we can move the discussion there.
Pyladies is an educational group. Don't assume that because it is a group for women it is any more 'feminist' than any other group.
As you note, the previous controversy had no real winners. Well, we all keep losing when that connection is reflexively made. Sure, it's natural to recall personally, but it doesn't need to be strengthened with constant mentions and fresh complaints.
I suggest going with your first impulse, give the thought some time off, and skip such articles if they make you feel bad... rather than the second impulse, picking at the scab.
Sadly, I have to disagree. The hordes of abusive misogynists scored a big victory in their tireless efforts to terrorize and deter women from working in tech or, indeed, speaking publicly at all.
If the former, don't worry. Those people don't represent the tech community, they are kids who hang out on imageboards and spread hate. To everyone. Including men. Do I need to provide some examples of /b/ tarring and feathering male victims on the internet? Or can we all agree that trolls attacking people online is nothing new?
If the latter, then your logic is broken. And I'd argue that anyone who subscribes to said logic doesn't have the mental capacity to work in tech, so we don't have to worry about deterrence; they'd be filtered out anyway.
I agree that those people don't represent the tech community. On the other hand, their behavior has caused legitimate fear among women in tech about speaking up. And it's not like the tech community rose up as one against the hatemongers: there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet support for how things turned out. There was plenty of aggressive examination of what Adria Richards did, with a lot less focus on anybody else, or on anything that led up to what she did.
So I believe that Ryan McGreal is right in saying the misogynists had a victory. A partial one, though; good things have come out of it as well.
Further I don't really see evidence of this having caused more fear among women in tech. In fact one of the more popular blog responses was written by a woman, speaking out against _both_ Adria Richards and the Twitter Idiots. Guess she forgot to retract into her shell for that one.
>There was plenty of aggressive examination of what Adria Richards did
Which is how it should have been. She handled the situation in a shockingly ridiculous way. _Shockingly_. And it turned out she had a history of doing such shockingly antagonistic things to anyone who wasn't black and/or a woman. People must know that being a member of a "protected class" isn't a license to be a complete asshole, and it isn't a license to abuse your professional standing to further your political cause. We need to foster a culture of civility all-around. This is what the "woman fired for calling out sexism" crew is missing.
Maybe those who are still shilling the extremist "OMG SYSTEMIC MISOGYNY" line should head to pyvideo.org. A good number of the talks at the con were given by women. THESE women were the ones "speaking out" -- as part of the community, on merit, rather than as shameless ideologues. Two of the best talks I've seen from this year were given by women: Jessica McKellar's and Julia Grace's. There are plenty of women out there who, for whatever reason, don't feel excluded from tech and who frankly kick ass professionally. I wonder why this is?
Less unsubstantiated political BS, more meritocracy. That is the road to solving the gender "problem" in tech. Not hiring "developer evangelists" who don't code/build/do anything and whose jobs are rife with potential for ideological abuse.
To let women know that they will be supported when speaking out against sexism. To let everybody know we defend our own.
> I don't really see evidence of this having caused more fear among women in tech.
Keep looking, then. I've seen plenty of it.
> And it turned out she had a history of doing such shockingly antagonistic things to anyone who wasn't black and/or a woman.
That claim has been debunked: http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-th...
> She handled the situation in a shockingly ridiculous way.
That's a matter of perspective. I hope that I would have handled it differently. But given the thousand-paper-cuts thing, I can't say that I would have. She didn't fire the one guy who got axed. The guys making the jokes are not being discussed by name. All she did was post a conference pic and a summary of what they said in public. I'm not seeing anything particularly horrible. The one negative outcome for the one guy, firing, could have come just as well if she'd complained to his boss.
> A good number of the talks at the con were given by women.
And you know why? In good portion because of the hard work of the people you anonymously denigrate here. Because of decades of effort to make tech, and everything else, less of an old boys' club. Because however much you scoff as systemic misogyny currently, you don't have to go back far in time to see something that even you will recognize as systemic misogyny. That you don't see it now could mean you are incredibly perceptive. Or it could mean you are just like the guys back then who couldn't see the systemic misogyny that benefited them.
> Less unsubstantiated political BS, more meritocracy.
Well when you get around to understanding why a sexually charged environment keeps women of merit out of tech, drop me a line. Then maybe you'll be ready to do something to further the meritocracy you're seeking.
Unfortunately in this case it was also imperative not to give the impression that one condoned Richards's actions at the conference.
>Keep looking, then. I've seen plenty of it.
Your anecdote vs. my anecdote. Nobody wins this round.
>That claim has been debunked
First off, that blog post doesn't debunk anything. Everything Blum wrote still stands.
Second, that wasn't what I was talking about. Try these:
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/statuses/6039856858
https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313946261055221760
>I'm not seeing anything particularly horrible
People shouldn't have to fear political zealots tarring and feathering them publicly without a chance for defence or private resolution. Foster a culture of civility, not trigger-happy ignorant activism.
>Because of decades of effort to make tech, and everything else, less of an old boys' club
As far as I know the first programming language ever was arguably written by a woman. Women have _always_ been in tech, always will be in tech. The barriers are so much lower than sensationalist ideologues would have us believe. Especially vis-a-vis other industries. Here if you have chops, you're in. The women making things happen at PyCon are evidence of this, are role models for tech-leaning young women to look up to; evil snake oil salespeople whose only real skills are yelling loudly, as we had in this case, have no place in tech and are themselves discouraging women from entering the field.
>understanding why a sexually charged environment keeps women of merit out of tech
Skilled women aren't running away from tech because men could possibly say "penis" within earshot of them. Someone who takes extreme offense at a dongle joke to the degree that it prevents them from working in their preferred industry probably aren't mature enough to live in the real world, much less hold down an actual job. There's nothing sexually charged about penis jokes. Penises are for urinating too.
You apparently aren't talking to women in tech, and you certainly aren't listening to them. If I say X exists and you say you haven't seen it, your approach is to dodge. You're making big, fluffy straw men. You're straining at gnats and swallowing camels. And now, with the last paragraph, you've gotten to saying that there's nothing sexually charged about talking about big sexual organs.
It's not my job to argue anonymous cowards into seeing obvious facts. Have fun.
I find it rather funny to read that. There are no physical barriers for working in tech or learning. It's all based on the individual's motivation to learn and do.
Maybe it's just me but from the most of the "harassment" I see is from socially-awkward individuals that have a difficult time communicating what they're interested in. There's nothing wrong with a geek-guy flirting with a geek-girl, its just how its done. Tech tends to avoid socialization which makes this issue worse. Most guys are more than willing to help someone else in need, especially a woman.
EDIT: Moving the goal posts everytime is what keeps this a "problem." You can't keep claiming that tech is "unfriendly to women" when there have been women ceos, women in the work place, women-only tech organizations, and ridicious "women coding camps."
But hey those are my 2c.
Seriously, it's depressing to read a total dismissal of the actual experiences of half the planet like that. And a willingness to opine on the issues with zero understanding of the history or the lived experience of women in tech. If you're going to call yourself a geek, try learning a little about the topic before you speak.
I never claimed that women were "deserving of the attention." I also never stated that the harassment is ok either. My opinion about where I perceive most of the harassment coming from is misjudged. I'm stating that there is a problem that they don't know how to communicate what they want effectively. It's impossible to learn social skills in a vacuum. It's even worse when the opposite gender expects those skills and they aren't there.
It is ok for a guy to be interested in a girl that he may work with and express this, it is not ok for the guy to refuse to accept and keep persisting. You can't just go from being cold and strangers to knowing each other better without someone making a statement/action.
Motivation is a big deal, I'll agree. But pushing younger girls into coding camps isn't the answer, thats not going to build motivation. If that model worked you'd see professional girlscouts.
The point of girl scouts isn't to make professional girl scouts, so that's another straw man.
If you're going to argue against something, make sure that there's actually somebody on the other side.
You stated: >Yes, the only possible barriers are physical ones.
>Nobody has ever said that colleagues shouldn't date ever, so again, you're beating up a straw man
Overbearing behavior and guys who are desperate+lack the social graces produce the behavior that is typically described as harassment.
> The point of girl scouts isn't to make professional girl scout, so that's another straw man.
In the same sense of the "girl coding camps" it's the equivalent.
There is a modern claim that "tech is unfriendly to women, and we need to encourage women to consider it." Or that "its a guys only thing" I don't think that Mrs. Hopper, LLamar, or Lovelace would agree.
Crazed hysterics are not necessary and accomplish nothing constructive. There are far too many ideologues on both sides of this discussion poisoning the well for the rest of us.
How long do you think that will be (for you)? I agree with your sentiment, and I'm now more skeptical of everyone's motives since PyCon. Are we talking weeks? months? before balance is restored?
shrug This story didn't have to be about her.
And then you have these 3 idiots (and more online idiots) that steal the spotlight and everybody focuses on them. Sigh. Let's focus on the positive stuff!
They are not comparable.
Sure that one particular flurry of dick jokes passed in a few moments. Pervasive juvenile humor is part of a culture and environment that is hostile and alienating to so many. If you don't find that environment hostile and alienating, good for you! Not everyone is going to be exactly like you.
Seriously, if childish little jokes are so damn important, they can wait until the proper context. They'll still be exactly as funny a little bit later in a more appropriate venue.
Seriously, if you think dick jokes are childish consider how much adult money they've made for adult comedians making adults laugh.
Sure, you can censor people - but by the time you succeed in building your dream environment you'll only be surrounded by un-imaginative, un-courageous, do-nothing yes-men and that's exactly what you'll deserve. And no, the dick-jokes themselves are not that important. Freedom to be yourself though? Priceless.
My dream environment is one where everyone is aware enough to know that immature dick jokes might not be a welcome contribution to everyone within earshot. The same way that most people just know that cigarette smoke isn't a welcome contribution to everyone sharing the same air.
Be as edgy and imaginative and courageous as you want, on your own time. Thanks.
I don't think I'm misunderstanding you at all. You said that "juvenile" humor is pervasive. Wouldn't that indicate that the general consensus is that this type of humor is OK?
Let's get it straight - the (very small) minority here want to make the environment more comfortable for themselves.
(Also, nobody has ever explained to me why a joke or even a conversation about this one particular body part qualifies as "juvenile".)
Here you go:
Not all jokes or conversations about one particular body part are juvenile. The one in question was. I don't think any reasonable person would dispute that, even the guy who unfortunately lost his job over it. He's not exactly standing behind his joke as the pinnacle of human creativity and expressiveness.
If your senses of decorum and humor have not yet matured to the point where you can tell juvenile and inappropriate behavior from the sort of thing that is OK in a professional context like an office or a convention hall, I legitimately feel sorry for you. It must be very difficult to go through life like that.
You still haven't answered the question though. And do please refrain from the ad-hominem arguments.
I haven't answered the question because the whole premise is flawed. You're asking why it's never appropriate to discuss some body parts, but that's not true.
Extremely personal real world example: I had a urethral stricture biopsy done years and years ago (I'm OK now). Discussions in that context get clinical and professional very quickly. Nobody is making any snickering jokes in the operating room.
My mistake for being ambiguous.
Call me a prude if you want but it does mean that I will likely never be in the position of the two men who achieved infamy at pycon. I may achieve infamy for other reasons but not that one.
So when I am at an event representing my company I act on my best behaviour. It's called basic professional conduct.
How about just talking about penises? You know, just a normal conversation out loud, in a train full of people...about our penises. Is that really juvenile...or something else?
(Or, you know, just downvote me because you don't like people questioning things that you accept to be true.)
Whether these particulars qualify as such a situation is open to discussion. But it's not some new social phenomenon.
affirmative action is wrong. always. that's the reason racism/sexism/etc exist in the first place.
everyone who feels superior donating to those causes are misguided egoistics.
This is...almost certainly trolling, right?
If I want to make a scholarship for kids interested in history, particularly if such kids are rare and poorly supported, I'm not being bigoted against other kids.
Also, if you want to sound smart, do the work. Excluding usa, most forms of slavery thought history was not based on skin color.
But, yeah, rest of the world, whatever.
Any takers?
I'm the CEO of a startup here in Austin that uses Python. A couple weeks ago, another post here on HN led me to PyLadies, where I sought out the local Austin chapter. Turns out Barbara (mentioned in the article) runs the PyLadies Austin group.
I noticed one of their weekend workshops didn't have a space listed yet. Since I run a coworking space here in Austin (http://opportunityspace.com), I emailed Barbara and asked if she wanted to use our space for a meetup. She emailed back, super excited, and we're now hosting their Intro to Python workshop on April 6. (It's free for women in Austin who want to learn Python; RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/PyLadies-ATX/events/99059532/)
There are many ways you can help and take the initiative. More smart coders benefit us all in this industry. Even if you don't have a whole lot of cash, I urge you to reach out to your local PyLadies chapter and see how you can help. Their website and chapter list is here: http://www.pyladies.com/
I also just watched a massive blow-up and bad press around Adria Richards, PyCon, and this issue in general. I'm naturally wary of my company being connected with or supporting these virulently negative forms of misogyny and feminism of which the entire donglegate episode seemed to spring.
What would $10k would be funding, and the good press that would come of that? Reading http://www.pyladies.com/, they appear to put on study groups and other events, but their "Code of Conduct" is higher billed than an explanation of what PyLadies actually does with funding.
You mean the negative and virulent feminists who were threatening to rape and decapitate someone they didn't like?
Oh, right, no such thing happened.
Please, please do not equate attempts to bring people's attention to inappropriate sexual language during conferences - whether you agree with them or not - to the massive outpouring of hatred, abuse, personal attacks and misogyny that accompanied this incident.
http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-th...
What is clear is that a huge number of people who thought it was totally unacceptable for Richards to identify inappropriate behaviour at a conference in the manner she did (or, according to some people, at all) have been silent or supportive about the massive and sustained outpouring of hatred, rage, vulgar insults and detailed threats of rape, bodily harm and murder that Richards has faced since then.
Indeed, the GP comment actually equated what Richards did with what has since been done to her (the word "equally" has since been edited out), and an earlier posted reply by the same user (reply since deleted) suggested that since no one has actually raped or murdered anyone, there is no harm other than the firing.
I really don't know what to say to someone who doesn't see the harm in a full-spectrum blizzard of abuse, hatred and threats - not only to the direct target but also to any other woman who is unsure how to respond when she sees or experiences something inappropriate.
More perspectives:
Courtney Stanton, A Woman Walks Into A Tech Conference http://www.buzzfeed.com/courtneystanton/a-woman-walks-into-a...
Sarah Milstein, I Have a Few Things to Say About Adria http://www.dogsandshoes.com/2013/03/adria.html
Matt LeMay, On PyCon http://mattlemay.tumblr.com/post/46004653389/on-pycon
This is exactly the sort of virulent emotionally-driven argumentative behavior that I don't want to have become a standard fixture in the technology community. Issues like this should never rise to this level of heated unprofessionalism and immaturity such that we become a target or amusement for the trolls of the internet at large.
The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults. No amount of bad behavior from teeming hoards of anonymous teenage internet commentators justifies the behaviors that preceded the public circus.
I do not agree that public naming and shaming is unrelated to this incident. You have to keep in mind that it is not unreasonable to see the penis jokes as a sexist microaggression [1], esp. if you are a woman of color working in a field where those kinds of jokes and microaggerssions happen a lot. To that end, sexism is reenforced and made more prevalent by those microaggressions. Sexism and misogyny in society does directly translate to outright physical violence and murder of women. So for a woman of color to confront that microaggression and then receive threats on her physical safety and life isn't just some idle trolling, it reflects a reality that this person may very well experience. Keep in mind that 1 in 5 women in the US will be sexually assaulted in their life time and that people of color, esp. black women, face a variety of forms of institutionally backed violence. Public naming and shaming is a valid form of defense against those conditions and kinds of violence.
> The whole thing was and is a ridiculous mess, and it all was avoidable by behaving like responsible adults.
I agree and it should be noted that being a responsible adult means avoiding penis jokes when representing your company at a conference they sponsored, esp. when said conference is working very hard on including women.
Olivia Wilde also received some similarly horrid threats after insulting Justin Bieber on Twitter, but I can only hope and assume that you won't be attempting to tie that event to sexism in technology, and instead recognize that it reflects a real, but very different problem.
> ultimately with the seeming intent of redefining the entire event to absolve one party of their responsibility to act with maturity and responsibility,
I do not seek to absolve anyone of anything. However, Adria Richards despondently appropriately in the pycon situation. She was under no obligation to be nice to the gentlemen making the jokes and being nice could have had the opposite effect and made them more belligerent. Taking it to pycon staff was the right thing to do. Again, while you may think it rude, she is under no obligation to meet a niceness standard when someone is violating conference rules.
> solely in furtherance of a culturally damaging, distracting, and virulent ideology.
I don't know what ideology you are referring to here. If you are referring to feminism based on Adria Richard's own statements on her blog, you are quite mistaken about feminism as damaging, distracting, or virulent. Otherwise, I'd like to know what exactly you mean.
> Olivia Wilde also received some similarly horrid threats after insulting Justin Bieber on Twitter, but I can only hope and assume that you won't be attempting to tie that event to sexism in technology, and instead recognize that it reflects a real, but very different problem.
All sexism is related, there is no need to tie sexism in tech to it because sexism in tech is already a part of the broader sexism of western society. However, I don't really know anything about this twitter exchange nor do I really know anything about Wilde and Bieber (nor do I care to really).
You're using it to create a false equivalence between immature jokes and sexual/racial violence, and having done that, are using racial/sexual violence as an appeal to emotion and morality.
Having done that, you're using that appeal to rationalize Adria's disproportionate response and overstate the severity of the offense, manufacturing a reality in which the conclusion of any rational observer is foregone; Adria is the victim of sexism backed by sexual and racial violence, rather than the reality: she overheard an immature and minimally offensive joke.
In this context, 'microaggression' gives you the rhetorical tool you need to tie together minor offenses into a broader tapestry of systemic violence and oppression from which you can use emotional appeals to justify almost any response, no matter how disproportionate to the original offense.
Adria chose to evoke public mob justice by shaming individuals for behaviors that she herself engaged in, while giving the individuals in question no equivalent platform to defend themselves. This was wrong, and was done in the name of an ideology that uses rhetorical tricks such as your 'microaggressions' to justify such disproportionate behavior.
I've provided some context for why there is a link (not equality) between the two. Why is this a false equivalence or link?
> and having done that, are using racial/sexual violence as an appeal to emotion and morality.
I don't really think I understand this either. Microaggressions and the broader fabric of sexism are linked. Racial and sexual violence are not defensible even from a logical basis in a social context, no appeal to emotion needed. Am I missing something about this?
> Having done that, you're using that appeal to rationalize Adria's disproportionate response and overstate the severity of the offense
I don't believe I have overstated the severity of the offense. I am not advocating anything other than what happened, in that pycon pull the gentlemen aside and that Richards was free to blog about the incident. What makes Adria's response disproportionate?
> manufacturing a reality in which the conclusion of any rational observer is foregone
I believe I am being quite rational.
> Adria is the victim of sexism backed by sexual and racial violence, rather than the reality: she overheard an immature and minimally offensive joke.
These are not mutually exclusive. Even if you feel the pycon incident is minor, Adria lives in a society of sexism and racism that target women and people of color and some of that sexism and racism have surfaced throughout the various stories and reactions about this incident.
> In this context, 'microaggression' gives you the rhetorical tool you need to tie together minor offenses into a broader tapestry of systemic violence and oppression
This is exactly what I am getting at with microaggressions, they are tied to the broader tapestry of systemic violence and oppression. These kinds of aggressions have been studied and do have real effects on people and perpetuate the broader sexism, racism, etc. in society.
> from which you can use emotional appeals to justify almost any response, no matter how disproportionate to the original offense.
This is not true, I do not advocate any response to this incident. I do believe that reporting the incident to the staff and blogging about it are completely within reason for any individual.
> Adria chose to evoke public mob justice by shaming individuals for behaviors that she herself engaged in, while giving the individuals in question no equivalent platform to defend themselves.
Twitter and blogging are totally available to the gentlemen in question. Public shaming is not mob justice.
> This was wrong, and was done in the name of an ideology that uses rhetorical tricks such as your 'microaggressions' to justify such disproportionate behavior.
Again, I have no idea what ideology you are referring to. Microaggressions are not made up, have scientific rigor, and are actively studied (your quotes imply you don't believe it is a real thing). Allowing someone to speak up in a public space like Twitter about someone's poor behavior is not some grand scheme to justify unfair treatment of others.
That wall of text is required because the simple truth is unpalatable to most observers. Instead, you must engage in an exceptional rhetorical dance to draw a parellel (not equate, as you say, despite the fact that you then use rhetoric to draw an equivalence, and use that equavalence to justify behavior) between sophomoric jokes and very serious topics like racial and sexual violence.
From that position, you can then justify almost any of Adria's actions, since she was facing systemic sexual and racial violence due to an overhead 'dongle' joke.
Where does personal responsibility, proportion, professionalism, and consequences factor in to your worldview? After all, there may be systemic "microaggressions" as you state, but would you claim that someone reacting disproportionally to them should be absolved of the professional responsibilities to which they committed themselves?
How far does your logic of transference extend? This appears to be an application of homeopathy to personal responsibility, where some root justification, no matter how diluted by reality, can provide justification for inappropriate reaction to a perceived or actual offense.
To approach some individual points:
> Twitter and blogging are totally available to the gentlemen in question. Public shaming is not mob justice.
I don't expect that they have 10k followers, and even if they did, responding would not be likely to improve the eventual outcome for any involved.
Some things, once said, can not be unsaid or countered. Negative public discourse is a tar baby, and the internet has a permanent memory.
It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate).
However, if you continue to evaluate what Richards did in denial of the abundant reality of insults, abuse, threats, hatred, contempt, ridicule, disdain, disregard that women in tech routinely face - and further, if you continue to ignore the fact that women are routinely punished with huge storms of abuse for speaking up about it - then you will remain oblivious to the fact that there is nothing "rhetorical" or "emotional" about pointing these facts out. You will, in effect, continue to be a part of the problem.
If "women in tech" did suffer so severely on a daily basis, it would not be relevant to Richards. Her job description seems to be "Developer Evangelist". I'm not sure what that specifically means, but I do know it isn't technical, and thus she isn't a "woman in tech".
Even if you do consider her a "woman in tech", the abuse Richards suffered while wrong is not something routinely faced by "women in tech". I understand that genitalia aren't generally supposed to be discussed at professional conferences, but am finding it very hard to see why this is an issue of harassment towards "women in tech" when no women were in the conversation at all. Since Richards felt it was, she was entitled to follow up with the conference leaders, and ask that they handle the situation appropriately, which she did. At this point in time, she could have enjoyed the rest of PyCon and gone home without suffering any abuse at all, happy that she spoke up about the conversation that she took offense to.
Instead she publicly posted the photos of the men who dared discuss genitalia amongst themselves in her presence in order to shame them. This is when she opened her self to (and received) abuse. She had already had the situation handled by the conference organizers, and thus had already spoken up about it without any abuse at all.
It is unfortunate that Richards received the huge storms of abuse that she did. But she chose to handle the situation in a way that invited that abuse, when there were clear ways to "speak up" that would not have resulted in such abuse.
This has everything to do with reacting to situations in a professional manner, and nothing to do with "women in tech" being able to speak up about legitimate sexual harassment.
This reasoning bothers me.
Let's stipulate that Adria's post to Twitter was a mistake. You seem to say that the abuse is her fault, because if she hadn't made that mistake, she wouldn't have received any abuse.
But shouldn't punishments be proportional to crimes? We all seem to agree that it's barbaric to cut off a shoplifter's hand, or to hand out the death penalty for petty crimes (as was once common in England, for instance).
People say this sort of thing all the time — "If you didn't want Y, you shouldn't have done X." I feel like it shuts down the conversation. Yes, X was wrong, but Y was also wrong, and it's ridiculous that something as wrong as Y resulted from X. That's a discussion worth having.
The point is that nobody deserves death threats. It need not feel like a defense of Adria Richards to say that.
It is simply current reality that whenever anyone posts things online, other people are able to respond by anonymously sending death threats. The fact that there are people who choose to do so sucks, and is a problem, but this is a well-known fact. You, right now, could click reply on my comment and send me a death threat. I would have no recourse.
Richards knew that people who didn't like what she posted publicly may respond in that manner, and she decided to take that risk when she posted a photo of other developers to twitter. If she did not want to deal with anonymous death threats, she could (and did) handle the situation in a less public manner. She chose to make the situation public.
The developers she posted a picture of had no way of consenting to that publicity.
I disagree. The shitheads in our community who would stoop to death threats do not threaten everyone equally. The way I know that is that a woman who complained about a joke got a bunch of abuse, yet the company who fired the joke-teller — by all accounts, an overreaction — got nearly none.
Also, it's not just death threats; it's harassment, too. Jesse Noller, who ran PyCon, commits the sin of "having a Code of Conduct and enforcing it," and ends up getting hate mail and harassing phone calls (https://twitter.com/jessenoller/status/314417532842950656).
Internet geeks have weird and sadistic ways of dispensing "justice." That's unfortunate, but even worse is what they decide to point their magnifying glass at.
What do you have that demonstrates that they're even in our community?
> Internet geeks have weird and sadistic ways of dispensing "justice." That's unfortunate, but even worse is what they decide to point their magnifying glass at.
Not "Internet geeks". Anonymous mobs of dubious maturity and intelligence have weird and sadistic ways of dispensing "justice", on and off the internet.
This is not unique to technology, it's not unique to women, it's not unique to issues of sexism, and it's not unique to Twitter.
As I've noted numerous times in this thread, Olivia Wilde, an actress, received similarly hateful and disgusting Twitter messages for daring to insult Justin Beiber, a pop musician whose primary fanbase seems to be pre-teens and teens.
Something tells me that the people that were offended enough to send hate mail and treets were not angry "internet geeks".
I agree. So let's not fire people for saying "dongle".
Not only are you reducing her importance based on her former title/role at SendGrid, but you're saying her behavior warranted ("opened herself to") harassment. No two men or women are the same, but your not sympathizing with her at all confounds me.
EDIT: fixed a typo
There are real legitimate problems with gender disparity in the software development community. People like Richards undermine those wanting to discuss real problems by calling attention to situations that don't deserve it.
The question I've most heard from women considering an undergraduate degree in computer science is whether women are treated as horribly as comments like the one I was responding to describe- "the abundant reality of insults, abuse, threats, hatred, contempt, ridicule, disdain, disregard that women in tech routinely face".
And that simply isn't true. Yes, there are gender problems in a community that is largely male oriented, but there is no need to exaggerate them to such lengths. I am just so tired of "women in tech" groups telling me how discriminated I am. Let me evaluate that for myself, thank you very much.
Not to mention that it is completely unacceptable to post pictures of other people online without their permission. Had those two men been women, would we be having a discussion of the danger of stalking, death threats, and abuse that Richards put them in?
And please excuse me, I wasn't trying to say her behavior warranted harassment- simply that by making the situation public, she took that risk. She could have easily handled this situation in a more discrete manner.
Yes.
There was a code of conduct, a means to report issues, and the issue was addressed appropriately through it. End of story.
The fact that the internet trolls became involved is totally unrelated to the behavior of the offending parties at PyCon, and is the simple consequence of using an editorial platform in ways that can anger anonymous commentators of dubious maturity and judgement: http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/03/14/olivia-wilde-justin-bieb...
> It is theoretically possible to have a civil discussion about whether Richards went about reporting the inappropriate behaviour in the right way (and it is 100% clear that the PyCon organizers agreed the behaviour was inappropriate).
They simply enforced the basic human courtesy of taking reasonable steps to avoid offending the people around you.
Are you sure about that? That sounds a bit of an extreme statement. Most disputes in life are handled privately and quietly. There is very little need to sensationalize everything.
I've looked into the essay and I don't see what Richards has actually done to promote gender equality. What I see is justification of why what Richards was doing is actually good because it promoted right causes - e.g. fighting porn which is evil (note that in 99% of texts, "some" and "many" are first-person pronouns) and opposing jokes that feature women (which implied that women can be dumb, which is verboten). I think it is OK to support people that you ideologically agree with and that support causes that you like. That does not change the fact that Richards was a crusader for these causes and took the slightest opportunity to blow it up into @-ism case. This is not a case of common person being offended. This is a case of a crusader looking for an opportunity to be offended to promote her agenda and finding it.
Consider this - suppose the XKCD comics would feature men and not women. Would somebody say "this implies all men are dumb?" Not likely. Would somebody say "even jokes imply there are no women in tech - everybody assumes even dumb characters still are men, women just do not exist"? Much more likely. That's the distorted lens crusader sees the world through. You can find offense in anything if you look hard enough. Does it really make the world better if you look that hard? I do not think so.
The incident belongs to Adria because she is the one who chose to prematurely go public. And the way she played the incident was no service to feminists or women in tech, as this thread makes quite clear. Actually a lot of people beyond Adria are suffering on account of her lack of restraint.
I really don't care about idiot men who are enraged by Adria except that I have to be associated with them and backstop blowback from their stupid actions.
More women in tech is a win for everyone — including employers. To be swayed from helping a cause like this because of negative social repercussions signifies, to me, a desire to hop on the bandwagon as opposed to a true desire to get women in tech and fight to ensure they are seen as equals.
[1] http://www.roguelynn.com/words/really/
[2] http://www.roguelynn.com/words/a-memorable-europython-for-th...
Tweet from your first link: "Sucked the marrow out of my osso bucco at dinner at #EuroPython. The waiter told me that I "will have very good orgasm." #Pyladies?"
Please explain why it is not offensive for this guy to call upon PyLadies for an orgasm...
I'll do better. I'll explain why being offended that someone mentioned the name of your organization in a context you don't approve of doesn't give you the right to publicly shame that person and get the conference organizers involved even if it was well outside their jurisdiction (he tweeted from a restaurant, after the conference).
We're adults. It's as simple as that. If you get offended by "orgasm" being too close to "ladies" in some string you don't run to the teacher. And you don't spend your next days telling people how much it affected you just reading that string. Or how much you cried. Or indulge in discussions on your blog's comment section about how the environment is "rapey" just to delete all the comments when you don't feel like talking any more.
No. We're adults and we should act like adults. Being offended is no excuse for bullying. No excuse for self-victimization. No excuse for abuse.
How do you get to the sex soliciting part? Not that there's anything wrong with having sexual fantasies reading other people's tweets, but let's try to focus when talking about this, shall we?
I suspect that the guy in question was probably a bit drunk or something, so in the end I think it is silly for anyone to still be offended about this incident.
Nothing is being done to you. Nothing is being done to me. We don't need to be offended. We don't need to be resentful. We don't need to attack PyLadies. If you don't like them, then ignore them.
I remember the event because there was nothing graceful about that man being forced to apologize repeatedly with no place for a rational discussion. It was public humiliation. And the fact that he didn't fought it made it even worse.
Then there were organizers claiming that tweets containing "#europython" were part of the conference but that's another story.
Newsflash: you can't make judgement calls on entire groups because of a single person.
I find this expression inappropriate because "balls". Oh, I kid, we're all adults here. Feel free to use any colorful expression you see fit.
I don't have a problem with honesty for honesty's sake, but it doesn't change the fact that it's hurtful, if not the exact opposite thing to do right now. If we had an equal balance of men and women in this field, we'd have seen this whole thing go down differently.
Recent events have highlighted that there are some people and entities that take an offensive (and I believe counter-productive and negative) approaches to these issues. See also Violet Blue's talk being cancelled due to the efforts by the Ada Initiative (registered nonprofit).
At least someone like Sheryl Sandberg.
Maybe they should expand their reach and hit up the Rolodex? I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen a bigger reaction.
Beyond the important social message that such an act fosters, it's just smart. Good companies want to hire good people. Great female programmers are in (relatively to male) low demand and a smart company would avail themselves of that.
Why do you think that?
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(I'm not saying that great female programmers shouldn't be in demand.)
Men are not being hurt by the existence of PyLadies in any way.
The question is whether or not PyLadies allows men to join as full members. I honestly have no clue. I'm sure it would be easy to see it that way since it is described as a group of women.
Now the question of whether all discrimination is bad is much more fun to ask.
What exactly are you looking for? PyLadies is not a dues-paying organization. There's no screening process or special clubhouse. Local PyLadies groups organize events (like hackathons, workshops, or happy hours) and people show up. Nobody stands at the door and checks your secret decoder ring to see if you're allowed in or not.
This line from pyladies.org has already been mentioned above:
> Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate!
Nevertheless, it's still a fact that if you let people know "hey, there's going to be a hacknight this week, and most if not all of the attendees will be women" -- then many women would admit to feeling more comfortable in that sort of environment, and might subsequently be more likely to show up than they would otherwise.
Even admitted that I don't how they work. Reading their page and seeing them in action are two very different things. I have not had any direct interaction and therefor made no judgement of them. If they are in fact that open then they are not discriminating.
Now suppose we are in London, and there are women who want to learn Python but due to religion or upbringing would not be comfortable in mixed company.
Neither of these cases is "discrimination" against anyone. It's not any kind of aggression at all.
It's also not discrimination when there are women who feel intimidated by the main groups and want a group that is more explicitly friendly to women.
The real question is whether those forms of discrimination are acceptable. I would argue yes for both of those cases. I believe people should be able to choose their environments so that they are comfortable in them.
I take it you also oppose cancer groups then.
Now, if PyLadies was 'no men only,' it would absolutely be discriminatory: they're making a decision based on some kind of attribute. (It would also not be perpetuating 'sexism' since discrimination against men is not societaly re-enforced.)
The real question is 'is this bad?' I don't think that many people have a particular problem with discrimination when it's _for_ women or other minorities, especially when it's not at the _expense_ of everyone who's not within that group. A "women's only" programming group doesn't harm men in any way, yet helps women. I feel like this is the camp you may fall into. It is certainly the one I do.
You can take whatever you want from it. Not sure if you are taking from anything I said though....
It's so easy to see everything as a competitive zero-sum-game. So that anything that helps women must be hurting men, right?
It's wrong, but the idea is out there. Sigh.
Because frankly, I cannot see that going down well at all...
> Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate!
You're making an unfounded assumption that PyLadies is women only.
> We are an international mentorship group with a focus on helping more men become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community.
How do you think that would go down?
Or are you arguing that all organizations that have a focus on expanding the role of a minority in a community that are inclusive to all in that community should be shut down because you believe some people would complain about having one focused on the majority?
That is some twisted and messed up logic there.
http://wearebit.com/ has quite the presence as SXSW. Haven't heard similar complaints about that...
They try to raise women up but often times manage to do so in such a way (special treatment, privilege) which eats away at the respectability of not only the women they're trying to raise up but other women who got there on their own merits.
I think we should do all we can to remove obstacles for women getting into tech', and that includes bad attitudes/sexism, however I think many of these organisations and "positive discrimination" are an obstacles that women unfortunately will need to overcome...
Please consider coming by one of the events!
If your goal is that nobody on earth would bat an eye, that's a pretty high bar to clear. Keep in mind that some people (and a healthy percentage of them represented here on HN) find the existence of Pyladies troublesome. I suspect a similar percentage would find the existence of Pygentlemen troublesome.
> Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate!
>
> http://www.pyladies.com/"PyLadies also aims to provide a friendly support network for women"
"Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate," toward the goals described above. The goals described above are discriminatory in a way with which I do not agree, hence my lack of support.
There seems to be confusion regarding the idea of a program to support female python developers. Why female developers? Why not male ones too? This is what is causing the confusion that there's some sort of discrimination happening. However that's not really the case, and you have to look at the whole picture to really see it.
So, there's a problem of equality in the workplace as a general philosophy. Sexism, Ageism, Racism, you name it. Taking from a Japanese proverb "He who runs after two hares will catch neither". In this case there's more than two hares, there's quite a lot in fact. So we have to break the problem down into manageable components. In this case someone decided to take the women in tech approach to the problem and focus on it. I'd consider it like taking someone with knowledge of databases and let them work on the database specific problems.
Now then, what exactly is the issue with women in the IT field? Up until the hiring chain and through the workplace experience, there are points to where women don't get the chance they should get. One reason is that people may not see engineering as a "female appropriate job", as though women should be working as secretaries or fashion designers. Another problem is fear. There is fear that going into a job a woman might get harassed or otherwise have difficulty fitting into a primarily male dominated environment. Start-ups for example often have laid back environments where the line between professional an personal gets somewhat fuzzy. Someone slips and lets out an inappropriate comment because they're having a conversation with another coworker which resembles a talk at a party, and are unaware that they're still in a professional environment. This becomes difficult.
So you have women who are trying to get their foot in the door, but are not sure how. That's why we need groups like this. First off we need people to show support. We need people to say "hey women in IT is possible, here's some of us that are doing it". We also need men in on this too so they can be educated on what women in IT may have to deal with and know what to avoid. They're also needed to show that not all guys have this thing against women in IT and that things can work out for the better. Finally we also need it so that women can do networking with companies that are more aware of the issues that women deal with in the workplace, and actively work to figure out how to deal with it.
This is why these sort of organizations need to be in place, and why they need to target women specifically. They need to see others like them working towards the same goal so they can achieve their dreams knowing they have support.
Now with that in mind there is point to watch out for, and what I believe is a valid concern. That is that we don't want the women in IT movement to become a "women are better than men" deal, we want it to become a "women should have the same opportunities as men". Equality is our main goal here. However, because of the environment I've mentioned above, we need groups that specifically target women to help the transition towards a more equality friendly environment.
Hope this gives a better sense of what's happening.
A simple Google search could help you resolve these inquiries in the future.
These are facts you may find useful in deciding how to view this event.
If you want to argue that PyLadies is hurting women somehow then you are going to have to provide better evidence.
She could have said that they were talking about rape or molestation and it would have been her word against theirs. They would have been hauled into jail, considered guilty and their lives would have been ruined, even though they are innocent and practicing their natural right to speak to each other.
She overheard a private conversation between 2 consenting adults and nothing was directed towards her or anybody else. She should have kept her mouth shut.
Ms. Richards or anybody with similar capability or visibility, should never be trusted in any community or group. Is the not what any group or community needs, ever.
Her actions were meant to intimidate, cause harm and censor a private conversation.