Either way, I hope this changes soon. There's no reason for acting like that.
>Are scenarios like this really common?
Very common.
>have not heard of them dealing with such harassment
Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Opening up about harassment opens you up to more problems than it solves sometimes. You get labeled as a trouble maker or people don't believe you or say you made it up or whatever.
I have a few female programmer friends, and they only ever spoke about "well, you know, not too many women in the field" in careful, guarded tones.
Until the Adria Richards thing happened, and I said something like "I don't really think either of them should have been fired, but I also think it's shitty how common those stupid sexual jokes are. I wish we could get past that stuff."
And it was like they realized they could actually trust me, and started opening up to me about actual specific stuff--like a constant barrage of junior high sexual jokes, being talked over or ignored constantly (which never happens to me, a tall white dude), being hit on, being not quite hit on but followed around and lots of awkward eye contact and vaguely nice gestures that ends up adding to something as inappropriate as being hit on, and on and on and on.
You know how they want to be treated? As people. But that's not really good enough--they want to be treated as people, and they want their coworkers to show maturity beyond what junior high school boys show.
Is this all male programmers? Of course not, not at all.
Enough that they have stories that could fill an afternoon?
Oh yes.
As opposed to this case, where some sickos clearly send very troubling messages DIRECTLY ADDRESSED to Jessie. She should call the cops immediately.
e.g. I'm not going to tell them they're wrong, I'm not going to try and reinterpret their stories...I'm just going to listen.
I love how you extrapolate this as a general maxim.
But ultimately, I find the parallels to junior high school to be thoroughly unconvincing. Yes, schools can be hellholes, but for completely different reasons than the one you imply, as has been written in detail by the likes of Ivan Illich, John Holt and John Taylor Gatto.
One need only look here, where many of the responses could be retitled "Talking points from gamergate" or "redpill leakage".
The women coders, designers and testers I've worked with and known well personally have never mentioned experiencing any online abuse either. But they have all been private nine to fivers* who don't have any visibility or online presence beyond their immediate family, friends and colleagues.
It would probably be a completely different story if any of them felt like sticking their heads up above the parapet and identifiably participating in online tech 'culture'. Especially if they dared to state an opinion on anything.
I think there's a difference in exposure between being a tech worker and being a public geek/hacker etc. Colleagues or bosses are more accountable for their actions than semi anonymous bullies on the net.
* No disrespect intended by that label at all (for men or women). Just that they weren't geeky hobbyists and didn't indulge in tech stuff outside work. In fact I kinda envy that these days, but I still can't let it go.
Just one data point.
FWIW, I know someone who takes a very public stand online with a few feminist issues and she cops brutal reactions on the net. I think many people simply cannot contain their natural reaction to beat down someone (especially a woman) who they perceive as being successful, or not deserving success by some metric (beauty, body, etc) unrelated to the point.