This paragraph really gave me chills... A lot of insight about her thought process, and a bit terrifying in my opinion.
> “Danger,” she said. “Clearly my body was telling me, ‘You are unsafe.’”
> “Have you ever heard that thing, men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them?” she said.
Remind me when someone was last killed at a tech conference like she says? Very rarely, if ever.
Did she feel bad about him being fired? Nope.
> “He’s a white male. I’m a black Jewish female. He was saying things that could be inferred as offensive to me
Read that last sentence again. In poker terms, that's a "tell". She doesn't say "I was offended".
I've known people like this in real life. They are to be avoided. The "tells" above are:
* claiming people do nefarious things to get ahead (he seeded the hate groups)
* claiming they're always the victim
* lack of empathy for people who get hurt
* claimed desperate fear in every day situations
She's saying she's in fear of her life. That the guy making the joke is evil and powerful. That she's small and helpless. And thus she thinks that anything she does to protect herself is by definition OK.
Very, very, scary.
And yes, before the downvoters come in, the torrent of abuse she got was wrong. Very wrong. Those people should be punished. But make no mistake here, Adria Richards is not Hanks victim.
> I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?
> “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”
I'm starting to believe that you can't really please everybody's sense of what is fair and equality in cases like this.
It was visible in case of the wave of antisemitism in Europe. People weren't hating Jews because the Jews went around demanding equality and talking about "misoabrachamism". They were hating Jews because overarching narrative was that they're the cause of evil, they're out there to get you economically, to take over the world, etc. etd. Being afrad breeds hate.
I don't know of any killings, but there have been a number of (high profile) sexual assaults at tech conferences - see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
My friends say it's a regular (and sometimes terrifying) occurrence at some conferences. And I believe them.
And reading that page, I see most of the items are of this severity:
> An offensive tweet was made against the PyLadies group
Really? That's inappropriate, but it's not sexual assault.
In fact, there are 14 instances of the word "assault". Which by my count is no more than 10% of the items.
Over-exaggerating the problem is fear-mongering.
This looks a lot like flailing around, trying to find reasons for being upset.
It doesn't happen.
"Crap, I'm afraid of sexually assaulted, it happens a lot, here's proof!"
That actually disproves your assertion.
<crickets>
The fact the list contains that says everything I need to know about the list.
Eh, why can't people be nice....
Have no doubt - I feel sorry for her. This shows how important is to have this happy careless childhood - investment that cashes back for the rest of our lives (I humbly think I am one of those, for which I am eternally thankful to my parents). Just as everybody else suggests - keep your distance from such people, or it might bite back.
People like this deserve no platforms of power whatsoever.