On the other hand, great and naturally flowing writing by the author, really enjoyed swimming through the story!
(I thought her reaction was wrong, pretty much from the first step, but it wasn't something uninvolved people needed to pay much attention to either.)
I think he did: there seems to be no discussion that he violated the conference's code of conduct. If we want to reduce the sexism in tech, I think reporting these instances is perfectly fine, and even commendable.
However.
She could have asked them politely to stop. If she didn't feel safe doing that, she could have talked in private to the conference's organizers. An e-mail would do. But she took it to Twitter instead, so everyone can point at them. I think she was in the wrong in doing that, and they both ended up suffering from it.
If there were a lesson to get from here, I'd say it would be "have you considered talking?". Or perhaps "do you really want to bring the Internet into our discussion?".
Whether they do? Yes. From the CoC[1]:
> Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Excessive swearing and offensive jokes are not appropriate for PyCon.
> If a participant engages in behavior that violates this code of conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference with no refund.
Presumably everyone was there under their own free will, so if they agreed to the CoC and then failed to respect it, well, that's not good.
In this case, there was nothing anti-women or racist that any reasonable person would infer. So where's the line? Perhaps we could create some new Orwellian language for conferences and have everyone in a tape delay so the offensive-content censors would have time to bleep it out. Reminds me of the swearing fines in that movie Demolition Man.
No, that's wrong. There are plenty of legal cases where sexual jokes were found to be creating a hostile work environment.
This conference had rules about conduct because of the problem of men making sexual comments to women.
The comment "Hank" made was not appropriate. Just because the reaction and consequences were clearly awful it doesn't mean he was fine to make those kind of comments.
> So where's the line?
Don't make "jokes" about dongles in a voice that can be overheard by anyone but the intended audience, and make sure you know those people well.
By "privately", you mean, "in a room with 800 other people", right?
Their joke didn't involve women, reference women, reference men being better than women, reference superiority or inferiority of anyone, or as far as I can tell even imply any other jokes that would do those things.
Unless the code of conduct is "don't offend anybody", which of course would be impossible to adhere to.
Did he? It sounds like there was a report he did violate it, they investigated, but upon explanation they weren't reprimanded. I took this to be that someone falsely accused them, and under investigation it was determined that the incident was actually harmless.