Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

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I have spoken at a professional conference and had about two dozen drunk fully grown men shout-chant at me to take my shirt off, becoming louder and growing more numerous the longer nobody responded to them. Security did nothing, and I was on my own to de-escalate the situation.

Yeah, I mean, fucking hell. Seriously? I don't really understand how this can happen. It's just not thinkable in any professional context I have ever experienced. It's about as unthinkable as if a black speaker got on stage and some racists started throwing them peanuts - those people would not remain in the room very long. If security did nothing, the rest of the crowd would probably forcefully throw them out.

It seems some women (in tech or in other places) live in a very bizarre, warped world full of complete assholes. I can understand that they're very upset about that - I would be too. I would not tolerate remaining in such an environment, it affronts my basic sense of decency as a human being. But - I have never observed anything like this, ever, whereas this seems to be commonplace in that strange parallel universe where these women are living.

Baffled.

Edit: Interesting that when I was looking at this comment just now it was at -1. Now back at +1. Not quite sure what there is to downvote here. I'm not disagreeing with the OP, just saying that in my career I have never observed the kind of disgusting behaviour she describes. Clearly it must be happening somewhere since so many women report it. I just wonder where.

Even if I was disagreeing with the OP, what is there to downvote? Is disagreement no longer allowed on this site?

Not OP, but did write the article. I think everything you've said makes a lot of sense given the data set you seem to be working with, and that most people in the tech industry are very good.

The incident in question was my talk at DEFCON 19 right before the camera started rolling. I want to reiterate that THEY MADE GOOD ON THIS and I am NOT MAD. I feel like everybody learned a lot and things will be better now.

But yeah, there were over 1000 people in the room for that talk, I'm sure if it comes down to a "did it happen" or "did it not happen" we can pull up enough witnesses. That one is pretty cut and dry.

Here's the point series I tried to make in the article: bad things happen, when they happen nobody knows what to do about them, and we won't make systems which handle these problems properly until enough people give enough fucks so that they are actually properly made.

Thanks for the response and the clarification. Witnesses are not necessary... I was just curious where this sort of stuff happens. I don't go to many conferences myself.

Totally agree with the point of your article btw. I've strived to create these systems in my own company (and I think I've delivered on steps 1 and 2 - step 3 indicates an area for improvement for us, though).

In fact, I'm going to forward this article to a couple of people on my team to discuss if we're doing this well enough. Thanks for writing it.

> The incident in question was my talk at DEFCON 19

That makes much more sense. DEFCON, a hacker convention where each speaker seems obligated to comment on how much they've had to drink - while holding a beer. Also, "hacker" being closer to the juvenile antics of webpage defacement - not the making of blinking sweaters with lilypad kits and hot glue.

It bothers me to think that females have some responsibility for avoiding these sort of situations (blaming the victim, etc), but hell - I'm a 30 year old man in the security industry and I avoid DEFCON.

I attended a relatively large tech conference in the U.S. Midwest where the atmosphere was more informal, alcohol was provided to attendees, and every attendee received complimentary passes to the hotel water park. The same conference changed its open bar policy to "one free drink per day per person" after an incident (which was either indecent exposure or sex in public or sexual assault depending on who was telling me the story, still don't know the real version) some years before I attended. I can see an open bar combined with a con atmosphere that goes out of its way to be informal ending up with some vocal, drunk assholes.

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