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.)