Here we go again. The Adria Richards story has settled into a couple of common themes, and Ars echoes the conventional wisdom. I’m very disappointed in this lazy editorial.
First, look at this nonsense:
Let’s start by spreading the blame where it’s deserved: on nearly everyone involved. The “Boy’s Club” mentality is thankfully no longer acceptable in tech, but it’s still common—some people have actually described tech to me as “men’s work.”
It’s no longer acceptable, but it’s common? Huh. Somebody didn’t think about what they were writing. We’ll just announce that the problem is nonexistent, while sweeping the reality of the situation aside.
But I’d like to point out something sneakier. Here’s the common message:
“Forking a repo” and “big dongles” must rank somewhere around “0.5: classless brospeak” on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women. While such sexually inappropriate comments are completely unnacceptable in professional settings (to many men as well as women), neither merits firing unless someone had a history of making unwelcome comments.
I think we all agree 100% that no one ought to have been fired over this incident. The major villains here are the two companies that used this event as an excuse to axe a couple of employees.
But notice what else everyone is saying: what the two guys did was trivial and minor, “‘0.5: classless brospeak’ on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women”. Keep that in mind for a moment. That kind of thing has been said a lot.
Yet these two men don’t get all of the blame. One recurring theme on message boards and chat rooms, including our own, is that while Richards had every right to report the behavior of the two men to conference organizers, snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to “Twitter shame” them was a step too far (speaking of a step too far, there are other, more repugnant recurring themes among commenters, too). They’re right; going public was not the only way Richards could get a relatively minor issue addressed. She could have confronted the two men or she could have gone straight to PyCon. Her actions only escalated the situation.
It’s a “relatively minor issue”. OK, let’s go along with that for a moment…let’s say it really was an inconsequential, negligible faux pas by the two guys. But if that’s the case, what is this bullshit?
…snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to “Twitter shame” them was a step too far…
Was it something to be ashamed of, or not? Was it a horrible, embarrassing thing to publicize, or was it a “relatively minor issue”? You don’t get to have it both ways. Either it was too damaging to make public, or it was a slight affront that shouldn’t seriously affect any of the participants — it was a minute impropriety that was perfectly reasonable to mention on a casual, conversational medium like Twitter.
This is what’s really pissing me off right now: the flagrant dishonesty of all these people having the vapors over someone posting a photo on Twitter and saying someone’s behavior was “not cool”. Jesus. Have they ever fucking used Twitter? It’s non-stop chatter — just today I’ve been accused of being a “Nazi” and of being “evil”. Please, Ars Technica, do your tut-tut routine right now over all the naughty people ‘Twitter shaming’ right and left. Please also express your sadness that thousands of tweets are going up right now ‘Twitter shaming’ Adria Richards in far more outrageous terms than “not cool.”
Are people seriously proposing that somehow Twitter should be policed for manners, and we should start wagging our fingers at people who dare to rebuke others via that medium? If so, half my correspondents are going to have to shut up. This is ridiculous. Richards’ comment was minor, was appropriate, and was addressing a real issue in a reasonable way.
And then there’s this:
In a blog post explaining the story in her own words, Richards wrote about how, over the course of the jokes, she moved from “I was going to let it go” to “I realized I had to do something.” The moment of decision came after seeing a picture of a young girl on the main stage who had attended a Young Coders workshop. “She would never have the chance to learn and love programming,” Richards wrote, “because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.”
Clearly, this is hyperbole. These two guys weren’t going to prevent anybody from doing anything. Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers. While denouncing bad behavior certainly has its place, proportion is important—and this approach to these jokes simply makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men’s/women’s issues in the workplace.
It’s only hyperbole if you misinterpret it. No, I doubt Richards thought these two guys were going to run up on the stage and slap awards off the podium and denounce the young girl being recognized. Richards was referring to a culture that considers those kinds of off-color remarks reasonable in a professional setting. Remember, “it’s still common”. That is what inhibits women from participating in these opportunities.
We’re living in a world where those off-color jokes are dismissed as “classless brospeak”, not worth making a fuss over, while someone tweeting a picture of someone engaging in “classless brospeak” is a disproportionate response, and “makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men’s/women’s issues in the workplace”.
But unwanted sexual innuendo doesn’t? Both men and women make jokes about sex, of course, and there’s a tricky line to be drawn between what’s appropriate and what isn’t, but one of the things I’m seeing all over the place is that in the conversation about where to draw the line, women are expected to shut up; that when they do speak up, however mildly, and say “not cool” or “guys, don’t do that”, boom, the guyverse explodes and denounces the damned uppity woman in either the most furious and violent terms possible, or with polite little suggestions that maybe they should be quieter next time.
But you know, the latter is almost as bad as the former. It’s the privilege of the majority to use politeness to maintain the status quo, while it’s a necessity for the minority to assert the right to offend.
This whole story and people’s wild overreaction to Richards’ putative overreaction has become tiresome as fuck in short order. I’m inclined to agree that Richards overreacted, but I recognize that my opinion on that does not matter. The only people who clearly and obviously wildly overreacted with the people that fired a guy that made a stupid crack and a woman that dared call him out on it.
I don’t know a better term for it, but what I think of as “HR culture” is at fault for the outcomes here, not the guys or Richards.
Needless to say (I wish) is that the threats of violence are absolutely awful.
Uh huh. Yeesh, the stench of bullshit is strong here. As I said in the other thread, it’s difficult to come up with a more mild reproof than not cool. Geez, you’d think she’d said Guys, don’t do that or something.
Over reaction to a reasoned and calm reaction. Where have we heard this before? Hmm. Somewhere.
Oh. Right. Rebecca Watson’s “Guys, don’t do that.”
This depresses the hell out of me on multiple levels.
The grim, dishonest determination to strip the original offense from its context reminded me of the way people constantly do that to Rebecca too.
It really is striking, isn’t it? If someone leads with, “I think Adria Richards acted inappropriately, and here’s why”, it opens the door to agreeing or disagreeing with them and then having a conversation that may or may not be productive. If they lead with “[misogynist slur here][violent threat here]”, they’ll immediately be disregarded by anyone that’s not a horrible person. So, what’s the goal? Appealing to some sort of crowd that shares their hatred of women? That’s really all I can see that’s in it for someone that does that.
This isn’t intended to say that polite tone makes all disagreements fine, in case that’s not clear.
Kitterbethe:
The complaints are the same – uppity woman was out of her place! I expect it won’t be long before we get the standard idiots wanting a textbook definition of “sexist” and hear about how the reaction will make her a “more rounded” person.
It’s astonishing how the D00diverse works – by reacting to a minor incident with such wildly over the top, rape-enthusiasm frenzy, they’ve essentially proved Adria Richard’s point for her. And while I don’t think the way she responded is the way I would have responded, I’m sure as hell not going to be on the side of the D00diverse.
Funny that I didn’t particularly like Rebecca Watson much until the D00diverse went into action. It’s like they’re on some sort of clever viral campaign to make people like me support for public figures who have the temerity to speak about feminism even though we were originally not big fans of those public figures…
Another interesting D00diverse mechanism is the fact that they’ll never, fucking, ever understand that that’s what they’ve done. It’s a kind of Inverse Streisand Effect.
I don’t think anyone is saying that everyone must respond in this way — speak out in whatever manner is comfortable for you.
Yup! That is what happens!
It’s just unfortunate that any kind of speaking out is viewed as some matriarchal Feminazi Vagylon Bralek assault on all that is good and Doodly and awesome, to the point where very few people feel comfortable doing it at all.
Not only that, I haven’t seen anyone assert that whether Richards acted optimally is totally off the table for discussion. Reasonably people can disagree on that. Reasonable can not disagree on whether rape threats are acceptable.
Methinks people in a tech culture should have a better grasp of simple arithmetic.
20 per day instances of “0.5: classless brospeak” seems to be 0.5 to the power of 20 to get to an infinitesimal answer. The more it happens the less it matters by this approach.
The correct approach is 0.5 + 0.5 + ……. over and over until you get equivalent to a force 10 “classless brospeak”. The more it happens, the more likely some woman somewhere is going to break under the strain. Force 2.5, or 6 or 8 and a bit ….. each woman’s limit on any given day is going to vary.
But this is the arithmetic you need.
Brandon:
That was already discussed half to death and back in the other thread. As many people pointed out, whether or not you think twitter was the right venue or best way to go about things, decent human beings will shrug to themselves, think “I would have…” and then move on to condemn the reaction.
What was highlighted in the other thread is that those who want to focus on the tweet/photograph and so on, tend to be those who are eager to condemn Richards in an attempt to place all the blame on her for the irrevocable damage she did to those men.
Am I the only one who thinks that Ars Tecnica sounds like a Scandinavian hi-tech toilet manufacturer?
Hankstar
“Bralek” made me laugh. Hard. What would a Bralek look like, anyway?
That way we don’t have to think, we can declare victory from up on the fence, and then go home.
I went to grad school in the 90s in science, not tech. The last meeting that I went to the straw that broke the proverbial camel was a man who asked “what school are you with? I can’t quite read it on your name-tit”. The tag was pinned to my fully covered in a baggy sweater chest. Slip of the tongue? Maybe. But on top of the constant jokes and bonding that I wasn’t welcome in, it was just part and parcel of a world that constantly made me realize that I was “too sensitive” and “needed a thicker skin”. The same sort of thing that I’d heard from male relatives and behind me if I went to school football games all my life. I quit grad school. My skin was too thin, and I couldn’t handle it. But you can’t walk around with a tag that says “I was sexually abused as a child and young adult, please go easy on the bro-speak, it makes me anxious.” So you let it go, and if it is too distressing you leave. You certainly don’t bring up your discomfort with the people making jokes, because it’s either “no big deal”, or you have to explain things they have no business to know. You think, maybe they’re right. Maybe you (not all women, just you) don’t belong. Adria may or may not have been right that the particular girl whose picture motivated her response would be made to feel unwelcome by bro-speak, but she was definitely right that some girls would. And it seems like the comfort of the average male is more important than the comfort of those girls. I appreciate Adria all the more because I couldn’t be her.
When Rebecca Watson said “Guys, don’t do that,” she specifically made no reference to the identity of the guy in question. She didn’t give his name, she didn’t describe what he looked like, nothing that would lead people to know who she was talking about. That’s kind of a long stretch from taking someone’s photo with their face plainly visible and posting it on Twitter to shame them. There was no reason to do that aside from wanting to draw public ire against that particular person or people. RW objected to a practice; AR drew negative attention to individuals. There’s a pretty clear distinction there.
One of the insidious problems with harassment is that most of it isn’t all that bad. Taken in isolation, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when it is put out time and time again, it becomes a very serious problem. In this situation, we are (perhaps unknowingly for some) cherry picking a single episode instead of looking at the larger problem.
This is somewhat similar to what parents have to deal with. Have you ever seen a parent seem to get very upset at a little child for something that didn’t seem to be a big deal? If you aren’t a parent, it seems like the parents are really overreacting. If you are a parent, you know that the reason the other parents are “overreacting” is because this is the 100th time (many times literally) the kid behaved this way, and the parents know that it needs to stop.
midorime:
! That puts a spin on your standard micro-aggressions.
Unbound:
Uh, no. Wrong. Very wrong.
And away we go…
Right, because the men knew about the picture taking and of course, saying not cool is very much like placing them in stocks to be publicly pilloried.
It’s quite interesting how people ignore that the men involved stated that Richards was right.
Caine – did you read the rest of what I said?
Caine:
Yeah, I read the first 150 posts or so of that thread and remained lurking because I hadn’t thought about it enough to think I had anything useful or reasonable to say. I knew my version of “I would have…”, but I was still trying to determine if that actually mattered. Executive summary: it didn’t.
That sounds exactly right. The discussion wasn’t, “what’s the best way to approach this and how might different individuals differ in their approach?”, it was “SHE IS AWFUL”. That makes it pretty hard to have a useful conversation, since the obvious imperative becomes dealing with overreacting shitheads rather than going over minutiae.
Quoted (and emphasized) because it bears repeating.
midorime:
Well, that’s awful. I’m glad you wrote it though, there’s people (like me) reading that process that information and use it to stop and think further about whether they make people uncomfortable with their actions or speech. I’d like to think I don’t do this, but a reminder not to is helpful.
Caine:
To me, this drives home once again that the problem here (in as far as there is one) is on the HR departments. What a weird circumstance where two people act inappropriately, one person calls them out, they admit wrongdoing and explain context a bit – everyone’s fired! What in the actual fuck is the thought process there?
Brandon:
Only one of the men was fired, and his company did a press release stating that he was not fired due to this one incident. Richards was fired because of the DDOS attacks and harassment against her company. They caved and it was a craven thing to do. In that case, I don’t think HR had much to do with it.
Thanks for the additional information, I was misinformed.
Caine, I think you slipped up here and Unbound is right. Ze’s not talking about the rape & murder threats, which of course are not at all minor, but about a single mild sexist joke. That’s the exact idea behind the naming of these daily trivial harrassments as MICRO-aggressions. Tiny things that accumulate.
Single straws, but pile enough of them up and the weight is unbearable. And that’s why we need zero-tolerance.
Caine wrote:
I think Unbound meant that most of the individual actions that makes up the harassment aren’t individually too terrible. Add them together in a long term campaign (like microaggressions), and they can (and often do) destroy a person. i.e. Call a person the wrong name once, and it’s an annoyance. Call them the wrong name nearly every single time you see them, and it becomes something very different.
Alethea beat me to the punch, although I cringe at the use of “zero-tolerance”. That policy in other areas has caused way too much suffering.
Alethea:
I know what they meant. A single instance of harassment can be very bad. If you’re going to talk about micro-aggressions piling up, yeah, I agree on that score.
Yeah, I know I would be horrified if someone took my photo while I was aware of it and posted it with the words “not cool” because of something I said that I admitted I was wrong in saying.
Actually, there’s only one “clear distinction” between the “not cool” and “guys, don’t do that” incidents.
In this case, as I bolded above, the man involved ADMITTED what he did and that it was wrong.
Stop with the bullshit. Stop acting like a photo with “not cool” over something a person admits they did is some wildly inappropriate response.
Tweets are normally ephemeral. The only reason this one hasn’t disappeared like most others is because a shitload of people are outraged at the wrong person for the wrong reasons.
@ck
I think that a lot of people are confused about what “zero-tolerance” means. Zero-tolerance is (in my less-than-ideal own words) about equality of responses, NOT about equality of consequences. Someone who makes a joke with sexual innuendo that bothers someone else still gets a response from the conference organizers, based on a zero-tolerance policy. That doesn’t mean that the person who made that joke gets thrown out of the conference, it means that they are informed that it made someone uncomfortable and asked not to do it again.
Someone who assaults a fellow conference-goer also gets a response from the conference organizers, based on a zero-tolerance policy. This person probably IS going to get thrown out of the conference.
Both situations get a response. Neither of them is something the conference organizers “let slide”. But the consequence is proportionate to the offense.
Does that make sense?
Some people choose to go public; to a large degree exert control over their public perception and have ways to make themselves heard. There is usually plenty of information out there to make even the blandest public person somewhat multi-dimensional. If, however, some other person makes you public, with the first entry very unfavorable, and probably the most known information about you—ever—the situation is very different indeed. It can’t be overstated when people litterally go over corpes for a minor entry into history books. We are at the beginning of personalized history, where we don’t yet know how normal ‘non perfect’ information will be regarded by the generations to follow. The guy could make a seppuku, if everyone was such wrongheaded as PZ Myers. An innuendo isn’t unlawful, violating personality rights is. Using a person as a mere means to achieve some goal, practically sacrificing them, is classically exploiting them. Even playing a Godwin here is not without merits (who controls the information, who uses mass media, who claims to have “reacted” to a situation etc.). Sorry, I interprete it very differently. As you see, these are strong FORMAL objections. I found it odd, but it becomes a recurring theme, that those who pose as the rightous, “against-abuse”, “against-objectification” (consider standard definitions!) are among the biggest offenders. The mixing of form, contents and persons (whether they have a Y-chromosome etc.) all too liberally also doesn’t strike me as very reasonable.
@mythbri
If we could get that particular form of zero-tolerance in place, I’d like it used in just about every chunk of society and social interaction possible.
Yeah, I was using “zero-tolerance” to refer back to the convo with Melissa McEwan. Whether it’s shouting down, mocking bunnification, temp- or perma-banning, expulsion, whatever action – that’s negotiable and context-dependent. Tolerating sexism is the option that I want to take off the table.
Caine, yes, single instances of harassment can indeed be horrifyingly bad, but I don’t think this hur-hur innuendo tech joke is such a case. I’d say what we have here is a pretty classic instance of the micro-aggression kind. Which totally should not be tolerated either.
For anyone who is interested, here is an example of a convention that has a “zero-tolerance” policy in place, and violated the terms of that policy. This is the apology they issued in their efforts to correct the situation:
http://www.readercon.org/publicstatement.htm
Details of the specific harassment can be found simply by Googling “readercon harassment”.
@owlbear
Don’t want to be tagged an asshole? Don’t be one. Not getting their image posted was entirely under their control. All they had to do was be professional at a professional conference. Not exactly a high bar.
Owlglass @ 38
What a steaming pile of barely comprehensible shit.
SHE TOLD THE TRUTH. It is not the responsibility of a victim to manage the PR of their aggressors!
What the actual fuck???
Wait, it was just pointed out to me – do any of these stories name the men involved? Sure, there was a picture tweeted of them, but do they have names? Do any of these stories have their names? Or is it just the woman who reported them who’s had her name plastered everywhere in every story about this, and they’re still anonymous to the world? Hm.
So: two guys do something wrong.
One woman reports them.
And the total fallout:
One man: not fired, still anonymous.
Other man: fired, still anonymous
Woman: fired, name is everywhere, so she’s the one getting all the threats.
Sure, that seems fair.
I’m assuming you meant privacy rights. Because I haven’t a fucking clue what personality rights are.
This event took place in the USA. In this country you do not have an expectation of privacy in a public place such as parks, streets, etc. I may be wrong, but I also believe that means at a large public gathering even when held in a privately-owned convention hall.
Even if it had been a private gathering, they knew she was taking their photo.
So no, it was not, to my understanding, unlawful.
It was also not a violation of PyCon attendance policy, until they made it so retroactively.
So please feel free to comment again when you aren’t pulling bullshit out of your ass. Until then…
You found Owlglass comprehensible at all? You must be a brilliantly perceptive person, because he’s just noise to me.
@Gretchen, unless you’re not expressing yourself terribly well, your post seems to be saying that no-one should ever be allowed to publicly draw attention to individuals exhibiting sexist behaviour in public because it would ‘shame them’. If the individuals concerned are exhibiting behaviour they should be ashamed of, why should they be spared that shame? If they don’t want to be shamed, they have the option of not behaving like that.
There’s a time and place for jokes, and the middle of a conference isn’t it.
There’s a time and place for sexist jokes, and it was in the 1960s in a men’s locker room.
I agree, it’s weird that it’s just the woman who has been thoroughly outed. But look at it this way: if the men’s names were known, certain people would be praising them non-stop as Brave Heroes. So there’s that.
Although I also have to say that while the two guys may have exhibited momentary jerkiness, so have we all at some time or another. And they don’t seem to have contributed at all to the assholes freaking out at Adria Richards — in fact, at least one of them seems to have done the right thing and apologized, and acted like a grownup.
I littterallly never understand what owlglass is on about.
@ Carlie: A minor quibble, but at around comment 1100 in the other thread I made a similar point. However, a number of articles are starting to mention the names of parties beyond Richards. In large part, this seems to be due to a rumor that the fired man was Alex Reid, which prompted PlayHaven to issue a denial and clarification:
Now given that Alex Reid was one of the men in the picture (you can see his name on his convention id in the original tweet) and was not fired, while the other man (identified as mr_hank on various forums) was, it seems only logical to conclude that there really must have been something else going on.
PlayHaven won’t release personnel information here, but they rather go out of the way to point out that there were other facts involved in this decision, even while saying they won’t talk about them.
So while Richards’ tweet might have been a contributing factor (in the sense of an event that took place prior to another event), it obviously wasn’t sufficient by itself to justify firing. There is more to the PlayHaven side of the story than Richards, a tweet, and “HR culture”.
As the fact that Reid is still employed (and valued!) would seem to bear out. Funny how people keep missing this/deliberately ignoring it.
Really hope this thread doesn’t turn into another display of uninformed asshattery. Also, my flying unicorn arrives in the mail tomorrow.
Is an owlglass some thing from some sci-fi or fantasy book that distorts everything when you look through it?
Owlgross is just repeating the mantra, how dare the wimmens shame the heroic menz, in public no less.
Bah.
Owlglass, you’ve failed to read comment 36.
But teh wimenz fergot to zay puleese furst. No mannerz…
I don’t know, I’ve attended quite a few scientific conferences, and there’s plenty of little jokes told, even during presentations. There’s a level of decorum that’s expected, and the guys in this incident fell well short of it. The problem isn’t someone joking to the guy sitting next to him, it’s making people feel uncomfortable with sex jokes. I suppose there’s probably a volume problem too – not disrupting others is a kind of obvious thing to do.
You’re right, and as the person that threw that phrase out, I just want to state that I was plainly wrong in my description of what occurred. I do think there’s a part of businesses that is a reactionary CYA type behavior, but the specific actions of PlayHaven are inconsistent with that narrative and I was mistaken in describing them that way.
@ Brandon: No worries. I actually wasn’t trying to call you out specifically. The phrase was apparently catchy enough that I reused it reflexively. :)
Actually, I do think that “HR Culture” is a really great way to describe reactionary CYA behavior on the part of companies. “HR Culture” seems an apt description of SendText’s reaction. As I understand it, they didn’t fire her for her actions, they fired her for the reactions of others. Later.
Liability! DDoS attacks! PR backlash! Just fire the person involved and get in the bunker!
Well, Adria Richards “outed” herself given that she posted on her own personal twitter account that has her real name attached. “Alex Reid” of Playhaven was also identified by his ID card, but was not fired. The person who was actually fired from Playhaven is the only one completely unidentified (except for a post by a “mr-hank”).
While SendGrid’s decision to fire Richards is spineless (and blaming her for it was even worse), I can’t fault them for acquiescing to the demands of the DDoS goons that attacked them.
Gretchen- yes, let’s compare Rebecca Watson to Adria Richards.
Watson: released no identifying information, used mild language (“guys, don’t do that.”) Result: huge and ongoing campaign of threats and harassment.
Richards: released a photo but no names, used mild language (“not cool.”) Result: huge campaign of threats and harassment (it’s too soon to know how long it will last.)
My conclusion: it does not matter what women do or how nice they play, they still get attacked. Maybe if more men were afraid of being publicly called out, they’d behave a little better.
I sure as hell can. And do.
midorime @18
Definitely this. We can see the impact on so many women who are chased out of male-dominated fields not because they don’t have the aptitude, not because they don’t have the interest, not because they wouldn’t have a ton to offer if given the chance, but because the culture surrounding those dude-dominated fields are so toxic. I knew way too many young women when I was in college who had to abandon things like physics, math, computer science, or engineering because a toxic environment of non-stop sexism from students and teachers just wasn’t worth it to them. It wasn’t worth feeling like shit every day, being triggered, being targeted for all sorts of inappropriate touching or harassment, fighting every day not only to remain sane and calm, but also on top of that continue learning in these subjects they found interesting (it’s worth noting that stress and depression make learning new information even harder than it would be normally).
And this is a tale that keeps happening. I know it keeps happening because my secondary, going to a very liberal prominent university, had to drop her physics/math double major and find a completely different major. Because the intensity of the sexism just didn’t prove worth it anymore.
This is what Adria was driven to speak out for. For a culture where women are only allowed in if they have so many layers of survival mechanisms that they’ve become dead to the non-stop harassment. THIS NEEDED TO STOP.
And maybe by the brunt of the backlash and the call to action inherent in it, maybe we can really start putting a stop to it.
Men in tech fields, programmers, engineers, physicists, mathematicians. If you see your fellow men acting like douches, trading sexist jokes or sexual jokes that treat women like a sex class for their amusement, call them out. Let them now that that shit is messed up and they really should remain professional. Blame it on HR regs if you need to to get over the initial fear, but try and do it.
Because it’s only when YOU care at least as much as the Adria Richards of the world that we can get out of this vicious cycle of toxicity and sexism and cultures where entitled men feel fully justified in harassing and destroying a black woman in all-too-familiar anonymous fashion because “it’s a man club”.
Damn, Cerberus is on FIYAH! Ow oww!
ck
I can. What they did wasn’t only spineless, it was morally wrong – SendGrid essentially delivered Adria to the goons and washed their hands of her. They are on the wrong side of a civil rights issue. Their firing of her is seen as an indirect justification for all the hate-filled toxic shit being spewed out about her and to her. It gives the impression that she was let go for doing something wrong. Seriously, read the “reasoning” behind the firing and you will see what I mean.
Gotta disagree with a piece of that. Her firing, the timing, and the stated reason for it is direct as hell and absolutely signals clear justification for the toxic shit spewing.I hope her wrongful termination suit is successful to send just as direct a signal back at them and the industry that they have fucked up seriously here.
SallyStrange wrote:
Cue the Slymepitters insisting Pharyngula is rife with death threats and citing this as an example…
Allegro:
Agreed. What they did also sends a very clear message to any other woman in a STEM job what will happen if she has the nerve to speak up about harassment. I really wonder, what would they have done if they were under DDOS attacks for some other or unknown reason? Surely they wouldn’t have fired all their employees.
Sorry, perhaps I meant to say post-hoc rather than indirect.
ck
Well, I do fault them.
They have cravenly thrown Richards under a bus.
Their justification
Same victim-blaming nonsense as everywhere else.
Report, but not too loudly. Protect your aggressors from public consequences. Hush.
And this…
yeah sure, her actions divided the community.
The people chilling the climate for women? Deserved to have their
mistakessexism kept private.because penis.
ck @60
I would disagree and I fully blame them for acquiescing to sexist terrorists and especially doing so in a way that transparently violated her rights as a suspect class and sought to blame her specifically for doing the right thing and upholding her company’s decorum in a difficult situation.
Again, this is probably colored by my interactions with my trans-discriminatory employers, but I don’t have any sympathy for continued acts of -ism or -phobia based on fears of outside discrimination hurting their bottom line.
It is entirely reasonable to suspect that my employers are trying to drive me out of a job, make me constantly question what is real, and engage in behaviors designed to make me as miserable as possible (so that I’ll quit) in the context of an obscene percentage of trans* suicides because they are scared that me being out will play poorly with other bigots.
That they might receive fewer paying religious schools or receive less donations from old rich white men they are currently hitting up for money or so on and so forth.
And the only way those assumptions end, that horrible behavior by companies end, is when they realize that the penalties for siding with the -isms are higher than the penalties for not. Right now, they are caving to a cowardly bit of terrorism and embolding misogynists to take even more heads from other cowardly companies.
SendGrid should be in turn boycotted for this cowardice and this embolding of a terrible culture (not to mention their illegal firing of an employee by National Non-Discrimination Laws). Because that’s the only way that companies will learn to stand by the employees that don’t do anything wrong instead of firing the suspect classes for “being a legal hassle” as a matter of course.
And I’m so fucking sick of that being the default decision too many goddamn often times.
Why do I keep reading Ars Technica as Arse Technica?
Cerberus, left a little something for you in Teadome.
Chigau:
Because that’s the correct reading?
I’ve revised my stance on this and, ironically, it’s because of the Ars Technica article. I was in the camp that felt Adria stepped over the line by her Twitter posting*. However after the reading the phrase …
“The “Boy’s Club” mentality is thankfully no longer acceptable in tech, but it’s still common”
I’ve changed my mind. The reason it’s still common is because it keeps getting swept under the rug.
This needed to be made public. Had Adria done the ‘right’ thing by privately asking the guys to stop or by talking to the conference organisers then no-one else learns anything and in all probability she gets written off by everyone else involved as a whiny bitch.
Unfortunately she is still being called a whiny bitch, but at least now people are taking her seriously.
Mike.
* Though my position was always that no-one should have been fired over any of this.
Ugh, I am tired of people saying that Richards’ actions went “too far” or were “disproportionate” or other similar bullshit.
Some women are just sick and tired of asking politely. It doesn’t work, as Richards herself experienced earlier in the conference! She tried the “ask nicely” approach when someone else was making sexist comments, and it wasn’t terribly effective. Women have been “asking nicely” for years, and we can see just how much it doesn’t work. It often just escalates the problem.
So Richards got a little loud for a change, and hey, what do you know, it worked! The two men making these comments were told to stop, and by all accounts they did. One of them lost his job over it. (Considering he had his company logo on his nametag, I can only assume that he was at the conference as a representative of his company; in such a context, his firing seems justifiable.) This sends a message: women who are harassed should stop “asking nicely”, and if they have the spoons for it, get loud, as Richards did. Call men out publicly if they’re making sexist comments, because doing so gets results.
This backlash is because the dudebros of the world have relied on women being quiet and polite in order for them to continue behaving in a sexist manner, and they’ll go to extreme measures to ensure that women don’t use effective means of calling them out, as Richards did. They want to scare and shame women back into using the tools they want women to use to deal with sexism, because they know they’re ineffective.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way Richards handled this, because it fucking worked. I hope more women follow her example in the future, in fact. If tweeting pictures of offenders gets sexism at these conferences to stop, then I hope more women- and men who are likewise interested in getting this shit to stop- do exactly what Richards did.
Fionnabhair:
No, he didn’t. The company issued a press release where they made it clear that he was not fired solely for this incident.
I saw a lawyer do a wrongful termination analysis of both cases, with all the included details.
Their conclusion?
The first case (man being fired for – putatively – sexist or inappropriate comments at a business conference), can not be won under state or federal wrongful termination laws. Yes, you can legitimately be fired for EXACTLY the kind of things those two dimwits said at that conference. Sorry, no case here.
On the other hand, in the second case, the employer fired Richards for something that happened WELL outside of the boundaries of her work, or the conference, and was clearly a case of firing someone simply because of unexpected publicity. Guess what? That’s a legitimate case of wrongful termination, according to this lawyer, and they were eager to see it appear in court, as the nuances of the internet issues give it some interesting spin.
so, for the idiots out there who still don’t get it….
-Richards did NOT ask for anyone to be fired. The employers who did so did it based on their own analysis of the comments made by the employee in question.
-Richards was ILLEGALLY terminated for nothing more than getting a bunch of bad publicity for something SHE WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR.
seriously, if this were a real pub, I would be throwing swings at some of these idiots claiming Richards was in the wrong.
Isolated and minor incidents of harassment are normally handled by retraining. To be fired for one minor incident, he had to have a rap sheet with HR/management. This appears to be the case. Check the Ars Technica thread for details.
not that it matters, but they really didn’t have to say anything. Just the statements alone, juvenile as they were, are still sufficient without any additional reasons.
Good stuff, Ichthyic.
It’s up to Richards if she sues or not (baggage that that would entail), but if she does, I hope she wins.
Would make for a nice headline to read here.
noastronomer wrote:
The lesson about ‘damned if you, damned if you don’t’ got learned early on when Rebecca Watson didn’t name Elevator Guy; she was accused of inventing the whole incident. Later, when other people did name those whose actions could be seen as misogynistic, they were accused of ‘going on witch hunts’.
It’s a good reminder of the rank dishonesty of those we’re up against.
Well, then clearly she deserved every bit of the shitstorm directed at her.
Do you agree?
If not, then why did you write that comment?
Cerberus, Caine, throwaway:
I don’t know. Their core business is e-mail, which means the DDoS would’ve affected their ability to do business. It would’ve been nice if they would’ve stood up for her, but I have trouble supporting the idea that they should be compelled to stand up for her. But perhaps my motivation is more selfish – I don’t want people choosing my fights for me, so I’m not comfortable with the idea that we can choose SendGrid’s fights for them.
Kitterbethe:
Now, this I agree with. They didn’t have to pile on her this way (and I should have said this more clearly). They could’ve easily given the standard boilerplate “pursuing other interests” send off CEOs and executives get (even better if they gave her a nice fat “please go away” bonus that these execs get). Instead they blame her for this shitstorm that she didn’t cause. There simply is no excuse for the victim blaming and vilification of Richards.
The stench of feminism is strong here…
Most rational people see these events for what they are: an over-reaction to a stupid joke (that wasn’t even meant for her).
The facts speak for itself:
1. It was Adria Richards that portrayed herself as a Joan of Arc (minus the visions) of Feminism — the savior of all young 9 year old girls who would never get to be programmers if she did not publicly shame and crush those two developers making dongle jokes. Most rational people find this laughable and humorous.
2. Adria Richards has a long documented history of over-reacting and man-bashing. She is also a documented hypocrite, posting just days earlier a penis joke.
3. In her twitter feed, she further proves herself to be a racist.
No rational person can take her seriously and most people feel she got what she deserved. I find it ridiculous that this blog and a few other feminist blogs try so hard to go out of their way to defend her.
@domah
I smell something here, it’s true…
It wasn’t until you posted, though.
No rational person can think that threats of death and rape are an appropriate response calling someone out on Twitter. And THAT is a completely separate issue from whether or not you think her action was justified.
4Chan did a DOS attack on her company (which affects more than her btw so I guess others got what she deserved because you bromanders are fucking idiots) until she got fired and someone sent her a picture of a decapitated woman with the caption “when I’m through” and an address presumably hers. You think this is a good thing?
It’s fucking attitudes like this and other insane shit in the hacker and techie communities that have made me feel that if SOPA or anything passes it’s still a win because it pisses off these idiots
@ck
Morally no, and also technically no. A DDoS attack might affect them temporarily, but to be a functioning e-mail business, they would need to be able to handle things like that.
man cyber attacks, sending picks of decapitation, death and rape threats; they’re lucky they weren’t a Muslim group or people might get mad at them for that!
As soon as you find one, let us know.
FACT: This person lacks boingaloings, ergo guilty!
@domah:
Is there a script or something you fools are using? Because I swear I’ve heard that same thing at least a dozen times in the last thread. Each time, completely unsupported.
Oh for fuck’s sake domah, did you not get enough in the other thread?
Mindlessly repeating the same points from the other thread doesn’t get you the right to have it all refuted here, too. Your basic objection seems to be that she considers this shit important. You obviously do, too, or you wouldn’t be wandering in here like you’d just found the place and hadn’t already been revealed to be a noxious asshole.
Just fuck off.
@ ck: It’s not even a script. It’s exactly what xe said in the other thread. As if people here hadn’t already seen it.
domah:
Actually, she said she felt like Joan of Arc, minus the visions – and that is a symptom of the underlying problem. All she did was make a public, but mild complaint about sexist jokes being made, but that very minor act was enough to make her run the risk of, figuratively speaking, being burned at the stake – and that is PRECISELY what then happened.
1. Citations please.
2. I’ll give you the same advice I gave to another poster in the other thread – get a fucking dictionary and look up the word ‘context’.
3. Even supposing all of this were true, does this mean sexist jokes are acceptable? Or, to put it another way, are you seriously suggesting two wrongs do, in fact, make a right?
domah
ssPerhaps it wasn’t so much the pioneering but the martyrdom which she was equating with her and Joan.
Gasp! Not a penis joke on her own personal time! Quelle horror! Did she make the penis joke in: mixed company, within earshot of anyone who may be offended, while in the capacity of a representative of her company, or as a guest of a private organization with rules against such behavior? WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY? SHE DIDN’T DO SO?! Then why the FUCK are you calling her a hypocrite?
Totally relevant to the price of tea in China.
Incidentally, you assholes do realize that playing the “DEEEEEEERP I DON’T GET CONTEXT DUUUUUUUUH” card like that is what gives other assholes the ammunition they need to pass ZERO TOLERANCE rules? So yeah keep doing that then come crying when some one has enough of your shit and goes scorched earth
But, you know, I do want to take this one on:
Do you know what was wrong with the “big dongle” and “fork their repo” jokes? It wasn’t exactly the jokes per se, but the fact they were grossly inappropriate for a professional event. There is a time and a place for dirty jokes, and the middle of a professional development conference is neither. If Richards had been making dirty jokes during the conference, her employer would’ve been well within their rights to dismiss her for that, too.
I swear sometimes, but I don’t when I’m within earshot of young children, and I would look disfavorably on others who do not take the effort to do the same in that situation. Does this make me a hypocrite? Under your logic, I am.
@ck
These people understand the context. They are feigning ignorance because they’re trying to rules lawyer. It’s both dishonest and stupid because it escalates any situation into “ok fine zero tolerance no question of context”.
domah thinks death and rape threats are totally appropriate to someone who dares offend dudebros, gotcha. Good thing you’re just some anonymous shit commenter on the internet and don’t have to wear the consequences of your words.
Serious question: If a company finds an employee was involved in the hate operation or the DOSA, do they have grounds to fire them?
Oh, incidentally, Richards is not racist, regardless of whether you think she’s prejudiced against white people or white men. Racism requires prejudice PLUS power. As PZ noted in the other thread, this is a fairly standard definition of racism, at least, according to sociologists, who study racism, which is a phenomenon of social interaction and society, i.e., a phenomenon studied by sociologists.
I don’t expect every Joe Schmoe off the the street to get this definition, but honestly, “skeptics” who comment on these matters have little to no excuse. It’s not like it’s hard to find, nor especially hard to comprehend.
Sociology denialism is a cancer in the skeptical/atheist movement.
@SallyStrange:
I’m not sure it’s denialism as much as it is willful ignorance and apathy. For a group of people who like to be smart-asses, the willful ignorance thing is a bit unforgivable.
Checked the other thread, and domah is a genuine MRA, so things like context are probably beyond the ken.
They need to justify the righteousness of this attack somehow and by digging through her feed for those ‘examples’ of racism, man hating and overreacting they’re lumping her in one same group as scientologists and Westbro.
Yes, it can’t possibly be that or cultures of sexism and business worship have fucked someone over again. No, it just can’t be.
@PatrickG:
I could’ve sworn that there were at least a few others in the other thread using the “joan of arc” thing as ammo there, too.
Sorry Domah, but you seem to have the same understanding of being rational that Bernie Madoff has about honesty.
Its mind boggling how many of you defend her because of her sex. If she were a man and had done the same thing the author of this blog wouldn’t have given it a moments notice.
@Lofty Where did I claim that threats of rape and torture are appropriate? It’s not hard to believe, however, that Adria Richards meant to play the victim to bring a tidal wave of Internet support for her “cause”.. Had things worked in her favor, those two developers would be the ones receiving death threats. Karma..
Most people believe in equality between men & women. It is militant fem-nazi’s like her who tend to create a rift between the sexes. Stop defending her just because of her sex and look at her actions as a human being.
domah, stop looking at her actions and look at the death and rape threats which resulted from her actions.
One of these things is more worthy of rage.
EXACTLY. You know why? Because no one would have given that man a moment’s notice. The story wouldn’t have reached us because there wouldn’t be any rape and death threats.
—
She got what she deserved? Rape and death threats are what she desreves? FUCK YOU.
Fionnabhair @75
THIS, but especially THIS:
You’re absolutely right. The backlash against women in so many fields is so powerful because the old methods of keeping women down and silent have been failing. Sandra Fluke and other women weren’t silenced about speaking about women’s sexual health because “you’re a slut if you’re a girl talking about sex and we wouldn’t want to see you get raped” just wasn’t working anymore. Atheist women have been speaking out about sexism in atheism and the old boy’s network and casual harassment wasn’t enough to reign it in. Anita Sarkeesian wasn’t falling for the bullshit that whatever girls play isn’t real gaming. Geek women weren’t staying away from cons anymore. Adria Richards wasn’t playing by the usual rules in which men go “oh those bitches” and dismiss it when a woman gets the courage to call it out.
Cause, see, these oppressive systems. They are systems and systems reinforce themselves to avoid change and evolution.
And women have stopped trusting the systems that have let them down so many times before. They are not letting themselves be boxed in and hinted away from “uncomfortable topics”. And the terrorist backlash and the endless parade of trolls hand-wringing and concern-trolling across the internet are because said men are completely fucking terrified. They don’t know how to handle women just being women and straight up acting like they are full human beings whose opinions should matter.
So like all oppressor groups, they turn to terrorism and demonization. But I think it’s going to be far less successful, because the same internet that serves as a modern hood for them also allows their victims to see each other and remember that strength and work together and notice together what is going on.
If women keep being humans and keep going outside the rigged game and straight up speak truth to power, then there simply isn’t enough numbers to hold them down and out.
And these frightened misogynists know that.
Adria Richards did right. She knew right. She was successful. Let us know build a world where the Adria Richards of the world can keep doing that continuously and a world where those of cowardly disposition are far more afraid of looking like the soft bigots they are than standing against the hard bigots of the world.
We’re getting there. Step by step. For an example, look to the right-wing backlash to Sandra Fluke. All they could throw at her. Giant names like Rush Limbaugh and all it did was further hurt the anti-sex-brigade and straight up ruin the careers of those who tried to burn her down.
We can make that happen everywhere.
domah @84
The only idiot you’re fooling here is yourself.
ck @97
Exactly. I swear like the woman raised by a New Yorker that I am, but when I’m on the clock, teaching kids, I reign that shit in and act like I was raised by Mr. Fucking Rogers, because that simple little tiny thing is what you fucking do when the situation calls for it.
These fuckers decided to spend a panel in which their company was one of the sponsors a)talking (seriously, anyone who’s ever been to any panel at any convention knows that side conversations occur in whispers in the far back and then only if they aren’t anywhere near people who came to actually see the panel, because it’s fucking rude to talk over a panel other people are interested in. That’s what the fucking hall outside the panel is for), b) being sexists in a specifically woman-focused panel, c) continuing for a fair clip while said panel was going on.
This would be like me swearing and trading my best dead baby jokes inches away from a group of chaperones and then wondering why my boss was taking exception. The only reason they assumed they’d get away with it is the power of societal sexism. A culture that says that guys don’t need to think about others or be respectful to stupid women shit and that women should politely bear douchebaggery because otherwise they’d be “rude”.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously? If she were a man?
Yeah, if she were a man and had done the same thing, then we wouldn’t have heard fuck all, because fuck all would have happened. Adrian Richards would have told the conference, those consequences would have played out the same and then when some whiny shit on the 4chan boards tried to demonize Adrian Richards glasses wearing proud bearer of a man card, there would have been shit all of a call to action.
There might have been a few shitheads here or there trying to get him fired for being a mangina. And his employers would have laughed them off and gotten about their day. No DDoS attacks, few if any death threats, not a single damn rape threat, and certainly no scalps for you MRA fuckers to parade around as examples of “the strength of your movement and how it’s growing in influence”.
Two douchebags would have been called out, one of them would have been fired for being a serial fuckup with enough of a rap sheet and Adrian Richards would still be the proud employee of SendGrid.
We wouldn’t have been defending him here because there wouldn’t be anything to defend him from.
And if he somehow had been treated as poorly as Adria Richards was, he would have had huge swaths of the internet and community behind him, because “how could this have happened”. We can tell because an idiot being fired for something entirely his fucking fault was immediately treated by dudebro nation as such an injustice that Adria Richards’ life needed to be ruined. Not just feminists, but most of the geek community standing behind Adrian Richards.
Fuck, all your thought experiment goes to show is that the Adrian Richards of the world need to fucking stand up and be counted. Men! Call out douchebags where you encounter them, call out toxic culture when it exists, stand up for con policies designed for the protection of women when you see a violation. Follow Adria Richards’ lead and stand up for the women in your community. Because in the immortal words of a cartoon character penned by Randall Munroe:
You know, Domah, the fact that you think she’s being defended “just because” she’s a woman says volumes.
The same version is appearing at Physorg.com. I have added comments with what I have learned here, in an attempt to show the other side of the story.
“Techie fired after Tweeting about men’s comments” http://phys.org/news/2013-03-techie-tweeting-men-comments.html
Domah @108:
1. Some minds are easily boggled.
She is defended her because of her sex due to the fact that she’s being attacked because of her sex.
2. You’re entirely wrong in your supposition; if it ever did happen in this way to a man, the novelty value alone would make it noticeable throughout the blogosphere ;)
—
(Weak-ass trolling is weak-ass)
domah @ 108;
There is such a thing as social and cultural context to consider – if this kind of thing had happened to a man, and he had taken the exact same actions as Richards, it is fantastically unlikely that he would have recieved any rape or death threats, still less the deluge Richards has suffered. It is all but inconceiveable that denial of service attacks would be deployed against his employer, and his employer would almost certainly have shrugged off any attempt to bring pressure to bear to compel them to fire him. The situations are not even remotely comparable; Richards has been treated so harshly specifcally because she is a woman, and that is why she is being defended here.
So – using the official channels to complain about sexist jokes and behaviour, and snapping a photo of activity in a public place and posting it on twitter with the rather mild admonition ‘not cool’, is sufficient to make one a ‘militant fem-nazi’?
Wow – those are some very low entry requirements right there…
So Twitter shouldn’t be policed but other websites, let’s take one almost at random and say “Reddit”, should be policed? Gotcha, PZ.
delecoix @ 119;
This is something of a false equivalency. Policing Twitter for manners is not really the same thing as calling out those elements within Reddit who engage in gross misogynistic bigotry, and saying ‘not cool’ is hardly comprable to the rape and death threats that have been posed on some sub-reddits, and that is before we get to the deeply disturbing ‘jail bait’ sub-reddit.
Sorry Patrick G, I hadn’t seen it – I stayed out of that thread as much as possible.
For all the people saying that she did “too much” – why isn’t it the guy’s boss you’re complaining about? All she did was report an incident to conference organizers, they handled it, everybody was fine, then that guy’s company fired him and that’s what started all of this off. And then, did 4chan target his boss? No, they targeted…hers. Why, exactly? Why is she the one who is the target of all of the vitriol, when it is HIS firing by HIS BOSS that is the supposedly grossly unfair awful thing that happened here*? She never asked for him to be fired. She was content with the result she got at the conference. And yet, somehow she’s the one who keeps being the one to be mad at, almost as if it’s so easy and comfortable to be mad at whatever woman is involved in a situation instead of looking at who is actually responsible for what you’re mad about.
*which they have clearly stated that incident is not the main reason they fired him.
Militant now? You are tacking on adjectives to create a fictional version of Richards that only exists in the mind of haters. is it because without lieing, most people are disgusted by treatment she received?
Oh wait, I know exactly what this technique of blaming her instead of the guy who did the firing.
“If you didn’t make him so mad in the first place, he wouldn’t have had to hit you.”
domah:
It’s mind boggling how you utterly fail to understand that there is a power differential between men and women in modern American society, and that sometimes that has ramifications.
Oh, no, wait – seeing it’s you, it’s not mind boggling, just par-for-the-course depressing.
But do keep hoggling on…
“No rational person can take her seriously and most people feel she got what she deserved”
That was in one of your posts.
Look as though you’ve been hacked, since you would never, never, never ever, EVER suggest that what happened was deserved. Since what happened was, yanno, threats of death and torture.
(Bolded for question.)
Can you describe how ‘things going in her favor’ would have looked to you?
Assumes facts not in evidence. Citation please.
(And, no, a poll in which people say “Oh, yes, I think women are just as good as men!” is not evidence of what people actually believe. How women are treated in the real world is evidence. Pay, promotions, employment, rights restrictions, elections, etc – that’s how to gauge what people actually believe.)
You know who doesn’t actually get taken seriously in discussions of feminism?
People who use terms equating feminists with Nazis.
Just as soon as you can show me the feminist death camps, you get to say that. If you can’t, you need to stop being ignorant about real horrors in public.
It is not acceptable, but it is common. Therefore, it is common for people in tech to behave in a socially unacceptable manner. What exactly DO people expect women to do about this? As has been brought up many times, Rebecca Watson was polite and did not identify the man she was talking about. She is STILL GETTING HARASSED, over a year later. It obviously doesn’t matter how the complaints are made, they will all be answered with a deluge of hatred and harassment.
And yet here we are still arguing about what Richards did wrong, and it is still common for people in tech to behave in a socially unacceptable manner.
Carlie @ 123:
indeed. look what you made me do….
.
domah: fuck off douchebro.
.
the seemingly never-ending repetition of this fucking appalling behaviour is hard to fathom. the douchebros are no better than the assholes who made/make the threats, and doubly so for the insidious “True Vulcan” oppressors.
.
its wrong on pretty much every level, but i cant help thinking:
1. next time, perhaps the harassed woman should take out a concealed-carry weapon and just shoot the fuckwit(s) in the face. after all, the MRAs are going to ruin her life anyway, and blame her for ruining theirs. If you have to do the time, might as well do the crime….
2. if this is what “True Vulcans” are really like, the response to First Contact should be Xenocide.
[/rant]
.
it just makes me so fucking angry. but instead of indulging peurile, man-child fantasies, i resolve to do more to stand up to this shit, both online and in meatspace. especially in meatspace.
domah:
Do you work? Do you go to school? If so, are you familiar with your business’s/school’s harassment policy? I don’t think you are. If you were, you would understand why what you have written is bullshit. Not only that, it is legally bullshit.
Well, to be fair, if she were a man and this happened she would not have been fired, her company would not have been subjected to a DDoS attack, 4chan would never have gotten involved, there would have been no rape or death threats, and no one would have noticed because it is perfectly acceptable for a man to speak up.
If she were a man and had done the same thing, the author of this blog would not be talking about it because THE RAPE AND DEATH THREATS WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. His company would not have been crippled by a DDOS attack. He would not be receiving photos of decapitated men with his physical address on them.
Seriously, how do you keep fucking missing this central point?
FYI, men do publicly shame women, all the fucking time. They pass around upskirt photos of complete strangers. They video women in public restrooms and post the video on the internet. They troll photo sharing sites and snag photos of 13 year old girls and share them as masturbation material.
And dudebros like you defend all of that shit under “freedom of speech,” yet still try to maintain that what Richards was way over the top. Maybe she should’ve just photographed their crotches instead.
@Domah #84
*sniffs* Mmmm, smells like progress. Your post, on the other hand, reeks of reactionary bullshit.
@Asher Kay #87
Exactly, if all it takes is a little DDoS to get SendGrid to do 4chan’s bidding then they’re fucked. In fact the business smart thing would have been to shrug it off and demonstrate how robust their infrastructure is. Then standing up for Adria is a nice PR side benefit*.
Mike.
* That’s sarcasm.
This is going to be one of those things where there’s two versions of reality, and the one promoted by the MRA male supremacist faction is going to be blatantly false, and it’s going to pop up EVERYWHERE, and every SINGLE time there’s a conversation, we’re going to have to stomp out the lies, isn’t it?
@Sally Strange:
You mean it’s going to be business as usual, right?
It never changes. Until they all wake the heck up or die the hell out.
Goddamnme. I hate these MRAs. If they really cared about Men’s Rights they’d be doing something to advance the dismantling of the patriarchy. It’s not about Men’s Rights, though. It’s about hating women. That’s all they care about.
SallyStrange:
7,478,655,233,009,109th verse, same as the first!
Domah wrote:
Now, I know you’re not reading anything posted, which means it’s probably futile arguing with you. However, I had posted something earlier that is probably relevant:
Even if the comments weren’t sexist, they would still be grossly inappropriate for a professional conference where you’re representing your company. Even the person who told the jokes and lost their job because of it has said that and apologized for it.
Please. It’s assholes like you that defend the indefensible that create rifts between the sexes. And consider not following Rush Limbaugh. He’ll make you a shitty human being.
@Sally Strange #131
Having been back on the original Adria Richards thread and found an entire crop of sniny new arseholes all espousing the same bullshit as the original crop of arseholes, I am fast coming to the depressing conclusion that you are spot on.
I am a manager of technical people.
If I need to terminate someone (I have had to do so three times) I have to go through a lot of (virtual) paperwork. I don’t enjoy it but I think this is right.
Typically, a person who eventually gets fired was first put “on a program.” This means we state very clearly in writing and go over in a meeting what behaviors the person has to adopt and what results we have to see in order for the person to keep their job. These behaviors and goals are specific so that there’s no question whether the person was in compliance, and there’s no question failing the program means they are no longer employed by us.
A typical program in my company lasts 3 months. You review progress with the person on a regular schedule, and also “by exception” — if there is something the person does that’s counter to the program, you let them know immediately, so they get lots of feedback on what does and does not constitute compliance.
If the person does well, that three months can go by before the final evaluation, and they can conceivably “straighten up and fly right.”
But if someone does something that means by definition they have now failed the program, they can be terminated that day, before the three months. Example: someone who’s supposed to show up on time every day, a late day can mean that’s it, they are fired, because they can’t be un-late. Someone who was caught stealing but promises not to do so again, if you catch them stealing again, that is it, they are gone.
So. If one of the goals is “show respect to others in professional settings” and the person were to show disrespect in a professional setting, the person can be considered to have failed the program.
Also, if the person has already done poorly with the given goals, one more incident can be enough to fail the person in the program before time is up. Behavior has to be evaluated in context.
Conversely, if a person can’t fulfill all the requirements but the employer believes it’s uncharacteristic of the person, or because of circumstances beyond the person’s control, the person could get a pass or the program may be extended so that the person does complete the goals, just in an extended time period.
My point here is that complaining about HR culture and zero tolerance isn’t always justified. If someone can’t act professionally after being apprised of the employer’s expectations, they deserve to be fired.
I have no way of knowing if that’s what happened to mr_hank, but his employer’s comments make it sound like this is very likely.
I’ll also say that the three people I had to fire were a genuine pain in the ass the entire time I worked with them. I could have saved myself a huge amount of time and energy that could have been spent with my other team members and in other activities if I had fired them the first day I got them as employees. They usually make it very plain from day one that they don’t want to do the job they are hired to do by refusing to be managed. They believe they dictate the terms of employment.
And typically whatever causes the person to be put on a program is a deeper problem than the program can solve. You cannot solve years of bad work habits in a short time. But we must give the person a fair chance.
And it is important to have the plan and measurements, because otherwise it’s too easy to fire someone for no good reason. Making the manager enumerate the behaviors and results required sometimes halts an unfair firing. Though of course managers can be devious shits, too.
Many managers hate this process and therefore crappy employees don’t get winnowed out. You are basically declaring war on the person’s behaviors, which is usually interpreted as war on the person, because their current way of doing things is a big part of their self-image. At the end of the process you will probably have one less employee, and the person might be hard to replace because of special knowledge or experience (hence their attitude “I can do what I want because they can’t replace me”).
Sometimes it just seems easier to let old Carl/a just be an asshole because they always know how to fix system X. But that’s shortsighted. When old Carl/a retires or dies or quits you will still have to replace them. Usually old Carl/a isn’t really Einstein and really we can live without them.
I feel it’s my duty to remove bad employees because they damage morale for the good ones (this is so often overlooked!) and sap my energy that, again, could be used for more constructive purposes. If we can’t survive without the person we are already jackpot prone and need to fix that, not pander to an employee who needs to go.
Re. ^ It’s like all the bullshit has provided fertiliser.
kate_waters wrote:
Exactly. They’re not advocates for men’s rights, they’re anti-feminists. I once wandered into one of their dens and wondered why they felt they could not work with feminists on certain things and their responses where illuminating. I’ve seen atheist groups cooperate with religious ones to tackle social problems, but these people said that there was absolutely no way the MRAs could ever work with feminists to tackle (what should be) their shared concerns. Very illuminating, indeed.
A little bit louder, a little bit worse.
*sigh*
domah:
Wow. You really are that dumb? THAT’S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT!!!! If a man had done this, yes, the author of this blog wouldn’t have given it a moment’s notice, as it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t have known about it, because, even to the misogynistic fuckers of the ‘MRA’ movement, NOTHING OF NOTE WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. If the reports that the person fired at PlayHaven (and it is interesting to note that we don’t even know his name, yet everyone knows the name of Adria Richards, despite what is claimed as her ‘inappropriate and excessive public shaming’ of him) was fired because of other shit as well are correct, then it is possible he would still have been fired. Adrian Richards would not have been fired, and it stupendously unlikely there would have been any sort of threats against him at all, far less very explicit rape and death threats. However, simply because it is Adria Richards, a woman, we’re talking about here, not some hypothetical male alter-ego, she DID get fired and DID receive explicit rape and death threats.
The fact you can come into a blog post and comment thread that makes this explicitly clear again and again and again and again and again and simply not get this shows that you really should start posting as ‘dumbass’, as that’s precisely what you are.
Really? You really are asking that question after posting, and I quote, ‘No rational person can take her seriously and most people feel she got what she deserved’? Again, you demonstrate your dumbassery, and nothing more.
Let me ask you a simple question – have you actually read the tweets that started this whole thing? I ask, because, judging from this comment, the answer is ‘no’. Here is the sequence, with one irrelevant tweet missed out:
So, you see, as far as she was concerned, once the PyCon staff had stepped in and had a word, that was it, incident over. No-one needed firing, no-one needed death and/or rape threats levelled against them – the men in question were simply made aware that what they did was unacceptable – and, according to the person chairing the conference, they were made aware of this and apologised for making those comments. Thus, your charge against Adria Richards is pure, premium grade bullshit of the highest order.
So what is wrong with a ‘human being’ making a public, but very mild complaint about sexist jokes? I’ve asked this question many times now, of several different people who all seem to think this is somehow Adria Richards’ fault. I’ve yet to hear a cogent and coherent answer. Will you be the first?
Somewhat different circumstances, but I wonder if Ariane Friedrich will get the same reaction…
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/london-calling-2012/201204/lewd-dude-messes-wrong-olympian
I should correct myself — I didn’t find all three people a pain in the ass the entire time. Two were. One was particularly exasperating because the person was fine to work with until I became their boss.
One wasn’t a pain in the ass but it was clear from day one with me that they didn’t want to be in the job they were in and they were trying to turn it into what they wanted instead of what it was. So it was evident from the beginning that it was unlikely that the plan would work. It did require more energy from me to try to keep the person “on the course” and it didn’t really work out, but the person was not a jerk as implied above.
PZ, this was a very good article, and I thank you for continuing to address it.
I’d like to put out there that there is a lot wrapped up in who in a given culture is required to be perfectly polite, and who is given a pass for poor behavior. It’s utterly sad and predictable that a black woman at a tech conference is harangued for her “extreme overreaction” (which was neither extreme nor an overreaction) while all the men involved are given a pass as having done very minor things that should be overlooked.
So, I have a bunch of friends in tech (because I’m a coder and I know a lot of folks who work in the same industry). Many of them are female. Not one of them has defended Adria Richards. In fact, all of them like to make some off colour jokes. Every single one of them. Most of them are terrified of people like Adria Richards (and PZ Myers) getting their way, because they finally found a world where they fit in, and you people are trying to kill that for them. Please stop. Not every industry has to cater to every kind of person, and the IT industry isn’t so much sexist as socially maladapted, and most of the people in it went into it because it was the easiest place to find that allowed people like them to thrive. Stop trying to make it a place that isn’t safe for the weirdos.
So all your woman techie friends agree with you that Richards should have been fired and be receiving death threats?
Fired: absolutely. She was a developer evangelist, basically a PR person for developers. No chance in hell she can perform that job anymore, she’s too polarizing at this point. Death threats? Really? You have to ask? Maybe this is part of the issue… no, I don’t think she should get death threats, and neither do any of the people I have actually talked to about it. It’s asinine. She made herself completely incapable of doing her job, but that doesn’t mean anybody should threaten to kill her. Having said that, it’s the internet. I don’t think I’ve gone a week online without getting at least a couple of death threats… I guess it’s worse if you are more in the public sphere, but internet death threats are not something that should be given a high level of credence (maybe I think that way because the first time someone threatened to kill me they were pointing an actual rifle at my actual head).
@traversedavies
FIFY
@traversedavies
I’m a software engineer. A “socially maladapted” one. But you know what else I am? A grown-up. I don’t make inappropriate sexual jokes at inappropriate times, and if I did, I’d expect to be called out for it. And when people speak out about the toxic environment for women in tech, I don’t make excuses for it. And I don’t deligitimize and attempt to silence criticisms of tech culture by calling it “polarizing” or constructing anecdotal support from the women I work with.
How is she polarizing? The only people who would be uncomfortable around her are assholes who think it’s OK to randomly sexualize technical conversations just because a woman is somehow involved. Anyone who would find not-doing-that to be a problem are PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Death threats: yes, I have to ask. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING. She is receiving DEATH THREATS. If you can’t bring yourself to support someone who is receiving DEATH THREATS, simply because she called out a couple of guys for acting like jerks – then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
I know many women and after showing them the treatment one woman got for annoying the ubbernerds they a’ll expressed agreement with me!
Aka everyone I’ve asked approves of Dear Leaders happiness gulag!
Oh please don’t spew anymore BS about patriarchy. More women are accepted and attend college. More degrees are awarded to women than men. Women outlive men. More men commit suicide. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violence, including murder. If you consider sexual assaults in prisons, twice as many men are raped as women (you and the rest of society thinks prison rape is funny). The streets are littered with homeless men. Statically, women are happier than men. The myth that girls are being cheated by are educational system is belied by the fact that schools are bastions of femininity, mostly run by and taught by women. Girls outperform boys in school. It is the boys in school getting fucked over, and prescribed ritalin for being boys. Real wages for men are falling, while real wages for women are rising. Just because someone says something enough times, doesn’t make it true.
You are right that there is a power differential between men and women. Women have been given the power to ruin a man’s life by mere accusations. In this case, with Adria Richards, it back fired. This is the reason that no one feels sorry for her other than the feminists.
Thanks ever so much for being yet another oblivious asshole who is deliberately blind to misogyny and every day sexism. Your “point” isn’t a point. Women do not grow up in a vacuum, we’re subjected to the same cultural misogyny and every day, systemic sexism. Women internalize that sexism and often times buy into it. We’re taught that to have autonomy and be a worthwhile human, you should be a man. It takes time and work to weed all that toxic shit out of your brain. Just because you work with women who are still that deeply immersed in sexism doesn’t prove a thing. Except that you’re a willfully ignorant ass.
Yes, but it’s kind of a failure, not only of morals, but of economics, to not cater to half of the population.
So, stunted man-children demanding welfare. You paint such a flattering portrait. Maybe they should all just become monks instead, that way they’ll never have to come into contact with the women that clearly frighten them so much.
Stop trying to make it unsafe for women. There are a lot more of them than “weirdos”.
domah: Don’t make me forcibly confiscate your ctrl and c buttons.
@traversdavies
Mate, making sex jokes directly to a woman’s face isn’t being a wierdo. You act like it’s just someone being a bit quirky in a harmless way. It isn’t, it’s just rude, and it demonstrably creates an atmosphere which many women find hostile and uncomfortable. Why does their “right” to make off-colour jokes trump those women’s right to feel comfortable in a professional environment? There’s nothing wrong with rude jokes, but there’s a time and a place, amongst people you know will not be offended. Not in a crowded, public place where you don’t know how people around you will take it. It’s not much to ask that people monitor their own behaviour when around other people.
@traversedavies:
I’m kind of getting some contradictory signals from you. One minute, you’re talking about how the ‘women coders you know’ are ‘terrified at people like Adria Richards getting in their way because they too make off-colour jokes’. You want to know what, sans what any sane and rational person would agree was an overreaction, the fallout was of Adria Richards complaint? Someone coming along and pulling these two men aside and saying something along the lines of , “we’ve had some complaints about your ‘jokes’. Please watch what you’re saying around others, as some of what you’re saying is offensive to them.” And then them apologising.
The next minute, you’re saying that, ‘internet death threats are not something that should be given a high level of credence’. Well, if the ‘women coders’ you know would be terrified by running the risk of someone pulling them aside and having a quiet word in their ear about receiving complaints about their ‘off-colour jokes’, how terrified would they be of people sending them pictures of a decapitated woman with a threat that this will happen to them?
Yes, yes, just like a certain guy in an elevator was socially awkward, amirite?
Traversedavis,
No.
Where ya gonna run? Where ya gonna hide?
(or if you prefer)
We’re coming to get you, Bahbarah.
There is no special place that belongs to just “maladjusted” privileged doods. The behavior you are defending is not “weird” it is sexist. Stop acting like the people who create toxic environments are entitled to do so and being victimized by the people who refused to be their victims. There is nothing special, rare or delicate about misogyny. It is the norm. It is destructive to real people in their real lives and stopping it does not harm you in any way. So get this straight now; The territory you are defending was never rightfully yours. The tactics used to exclude women are the same filthy bigoted bullshit that has always been. So suck it up, buttercup. You are losing ground and that’s not going to stop. My advice to you is to getting fucking adjusted and start being decent people. You can get therapy for your enlarged sense of entitlement and pathetic social skills. No one should give up their basic human dignity to make you feel more comfortable and the fact that you think they should ought to be enough of a clue to you that you are the one who needs to change.
Domah,
Be careful not to spill any of that Kool-aid on the keyboard.
You’ve memorized propaganda, but are you remotely capable of learning actual facts? I doubt it.
So, is domah doing the poe thing, or is he actually as painfully testercial, irrational and hilariously incompetent as his comments come off?
Illuminata,
I see what you did there. LOL. I giggle every time.
@domah
You forgot that men are expected to stay on sinking ships while women take the lifeboats. Otherwise, your MFA manifesto is pretty complete.
Ha. *MRA*.
Now I’m imagining a bunch of short stories in the Iowa Review about how shitty men’s lives are.
@domah #151
If qou did, actually, read this blog, you would know, that this is bullshit. Rape jokes are NOT considered to be funny around here. If you read this blog and still write this, then that makes you a liar. If you do not read this blog, you are not entitled to talk about what commenters here find funny or not, and if you do, then you are projecting.
I asume you do not read this blog therefore => Stop projecting your asholery on the rest of humankind.
I think all us geeks need to write an open letter of apology to all the times we looked down on jocks and inform the jocks that if this behavior is standard for the social awkward misfits they are 100% justified in stuffing every geek they see into a locker. Please continue the swirlies and book dumping and pantsing it’s clearly retroactive karma
Asher,
He also forgot to mention the mastodon.
Of course, as easily flustered as MRAssholess get, I’m not surprised some talking points slipped his mind.
traversedavies:
Y’know, if the poor terrified dudebros were simply cowering somewhere, and NOT turning their fears into horrendous rape and death threats and trying to hatred up the entire Internet, maybe you’d have a point. If making YOUR WORKPLACE hostile to minorities so YOU can fit in weren’t specifically AGAINST THE LAW you might have a point. The terrified dudebros could just behave politely while they’re at work (like most people) and go be douchebags on their own time in little private clubs, like the KKK mostly does nowadays.
But you, Gentleone, have completely failed to notice that someone already IS trying to find a world where they fit in, and they thought that world was programming (or physics, or science, or atheism, or philosophy, or politics, or being lawyers, or the military, or damn near everywhere ever) and THEIR dreams are crushed when the constant bigotry of people like your friends up there drives them away. They’ve been enduring it for generation upon generation, and in programming since programming existed. (See: Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper who basically made it possible for you and your friends to work in code rather than machine language.)
Adria Richards spoke up for THEM, the girls who will be coders in the future, and not your friends who are already living in their hate-shielded little dreamworld. GIRLS HAVE DREAMS TOO. Even weirdo girls. And that’s why Richards decided to speak out, because she felt a duty to girls like the one PyCon showed while talking about the success of its women’s and children’s initiatives.
Listen to some of the fellow programmers your friends and techies like them are driving away.
Why I stand by Adria Richards
How Adria Richards spoke for me
and which title rather speaks for itself: To the anonymous Mozilla member making threats on my blog
@domah
Considering you seem to be utterly ignoring my posts, and continuing to make the same accusations I’ve actually proven to be incorrect, I think it’s time I started ignoring yours.
Feel free to leave any time.
@zmidponk Its really a waste of time to try to convince you to think rationally. Your extreme feminist ideals victim mentality prevent this from occurring.
I will, however, point out that the majority of the internet disagrees with your assessment of the situation and believes Adria Richards had it coming and got what she deserved. I’m not condoning threats of violence, but that is what happens when the whole of the Internet is against you. Assuming she worked with technology for as long as she claims, she would have to know that bringing a wave of public opinion against someone would likely bring out the trolls and the inevitable threats that come with it. Publicly shaming the two developers for a stupid joke that most rational people would have ignored was her failed attempt to promote her extremist viewpoints and bring a tidal wave of public opinion against those two developers. Had she succeeded, they would now be the ones on the receiving end of threats of violence. Her extremist views on feminism are just not compatible with what the majority of rational folk believe and they saw through her “victim” farce. This is the reason that public opinion is against her.
@domah
I said I was going to ignore you, but you just tempt me too much – you do realise your entire post is just one, big, long-winded bit of argumentum ad populum with a dash of argument from adverse consequences, whilst ignoring that the whole point is those adverse consequences shouldn’t have happened, right?
Oh, and with a bit of victim blaming thrown in for good measure.
Lots of typos today.
TEH LURKERS SUPORT ME IN EMAL
Yes, you are.
Oh my… the secret it out. All male software developers are rapists and murderers who belong to the “Order of the douchebag”.
While somehow making the argument that the d00ds in question could ever conceivably be in danger of death threats. It makes sense in his copypaste bizarro world of male oppression.
Actually, that’s a point – what do you call it when someone tries to make an argumentum ad populum argument without there being any definitive evidence that the ‘populum’ is actually on their side? Apart from ‘utter bullshit’, that is.
asstroturfing
Congratulations, you broke the code! Here’s a cookie, now toddle off please.
@domah #151
Biology = Femi-nazi
Possibly because our culture puts more pressure on men than on women? Treating women equally shares the load. Feminism is men’s friend too.
Clearly misandry in action. Dunno why I didn’t see it before. Definitely nothing to do with culturally-entrenched “Chivalry” leading to the idea that being violent towards a woman is worse than being violent towards a man.
Considering women make up less than 10% of the prison population in the US, this is hardly suprising.
Fuck you, anyone who finds that funny is an arsehole.
See my point re. suicide.
See above.
Femininity =/= Feminism. If anything the ideas are opposed since Femininity is the classic ideal of the meek oranament in a dress which a woman should be, as defined by patriarchal values. And the reason there are more women teachers is gender roles and the idea that some professions are “Women’s professions” and others are “Men’s professions”. See nursing and engineering… and, shockingly, IT for other examples.
Why? Because the only way this is evidence of Misandry is if they recieve preferential treatment from teachers. So you’re going to need to back that one up with some evidence and a logical argument. I await with baited breath.
What? You think psychologists see a penis and think “Well, that’s clear evidence of ADHD”? Or is your contention that boys are just naturally hyperactive with a low attention span?
And when they are equal for similar positions, we will be happy. And if men start getting paid less for similar positions than women, we will moan about that too. The fact that we are beginning to get closer to wage equality is not evidence of misandry; the mere fact that we have to try for wage equality is evidence of misogyny.
Correct, so provide some actual evidence (citations may help) and a logical argument that a five year old with an internet connection couldn’t debunk, or STFU.
Bitchez be lyin’!!!!!!1111eleventy111!!!!!
Anyone else getting tired of having to wade through the same bullshit?
I’m socially maladapted and I’m mostly not sexist. Stop pulling us socially awkward folks into your filthy excuses for sexism.
@zmidponk As pointed out earlier, I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I am only speaking to those who can think rationally without trying to turn this into some gender crusade.
Personally, I believe she should have just told those two guys to STFU. But instead of doing what a rational adult would have done, she launched a laughable feminist crusade and tried to use her power as a female and as a popular Internet figure to crush two developers and simultaneously promote her extremist viewpoints.
Does anyone deserve what happened to them? probably not. I suppose the lesson learned is, next time you see a creepy feminist running around with a camera, run in the opposite direction.
Beatrice:
I was thinking the same thing. I’m not remotely social, and I’m not (consciously) sexist. I do my best, every day, to increase my awareness and the awareness of others.
domah being an idiot:
Since NO ONE has said anything of the sort, you are yet again arguing against an argument no one made.
Congratulations, you are a giant idiot.
Why isn’t anyone responding to the incident that happened? I don’t get it. I mean, sure, if these guys were saying stuff to, or even about a woman, maybe that would be different. What they did was say that they would fork a guys repo (they might have included a bit of “if you know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink”) and made a stupid comment about big dongles. They did these things to each other within hearing of a woman… why are people making it sound like they said horrible degrading stuff to a woman about a woman. Hell, they didn’t even reference a women in general. Their jokes were sophomoric and kind of lame… but hardly what they are being made out to be by half the people on here. They are guilty of the crime of being slightly too nerdy for public consumption while in public and being overheard by a woman. That should not be a crime, and none of the people commenting here seem to be capable of getting outside of this stupid “MRA’s are creating trouble” mindset (to be fair, none of the MRA’s commenting seem to be any more on topic).
@thumper1990:
I dunno – the fact that they’re constantly spouting exactly the same shit could mean they’ve run out of ways to try to justify themselves. In a way, that’s a positive sign. Or maybe I’m being too much of an optimist.
What these men did can only be called asshole behaviour if you completely ignore what they actually did. To be honest I don’t agree with those who claim it should have been handled discreetly. It should not have been handled at all. They weren’t talking to or about a woman in any way. They made some comments that were kind of stupid and sophomoric, but if made in a movie would not have cost that movie a “G” rating.
Hey, look what I just found..
Of, for fuck’s sake, are we going to go down the Aspberger’s road again? This time for an entire industry? Fuck that shit.
======
domah:
Are you familiar with the harassment policy at your work place?
zmidponk:
The canned shit “domah” is spreading all over the floor and walls is straight out of AVfM. It’s all “I’m a believeeeeeeer, and you will be too, if I just keep repeating the same shit over and over and over and over and over, *la la la la la la la la la*”.
Men have had the power to ruin a woman’s life by mere accusations for thousands of years. And still do.
Nerdiness does not necessarily include sexism. Nerdiness can include women, though.
Am I blowing your mind with these extraordinary ideas yet?
domah #169
Am I the only one who suspects that’s what he really wanted to say?
No. What these men did is called childish. It’s not assholish, nor was it even directed toward Adria Richards. What Adria Richards did can only be called asshole behavior and bullying. She is the bully here and while the rest of the Internet sees it, many of those here are completely oblivious to the fact and will defend her to the end because of her sex.
You are clearly not a grown up, you are acting like an infant in fact. You see, you think that people have the right not to be offended. Look, I have quit jobs over sexist behaviour from my managers. I gave up a high paying job because my boss said “look at the tits on that thing” about a female employee while she was in the room. I made no bones about why I quit, and had to move along way to get work as a result (small town, the guy was very well connected). This wasn’t that, not at all. These guys were making kind of stupid jokes that would pass in a children’s movie for f*&k’s sake.
traversedavies:
Do you have a job? If so, please familiarize yourself with the harassment policy of your workplace. I can almost guarantee that creating a hostile work environment is a part of that policy. Additionally, have you actually read the harassment policy for the convention? Yet you insist that the men, making inappropriate remarks at a professional conference, did nothing wrong?
Too nerdy even for you?
Misogynistic Scum:
It’s just fucking awful, ennit, woman getting their greedy hands on autonomy? Tsk.
Amphiox:
Yes, and the weight of belief still comes down on the man’s side. After all, he has an actual life to ruin, not like those silly wimmin.
She is polarizing because… wait, why am I answering this question? If you can’t figure out in light of the extreme anger and polarization going on across the internet how this was polarizing I don’t think anything I say is going to educate you. Either you are willfully ignorant, or incredibly dense.
She received death threats. I completely support her right not to get death threats… however that does not mean I support her actions either. I support her getting fired, I do not support the DDOS attacks. This is a false dichotomy, and you should be ashamed.
@traversdavies #184
No, they made the comments to her. There was a link floating around with proof of this, But I’m afraid I don’t have it.
(If anyone does, please feel free…)
Then you are denser than uranium.
Dude, stop insulting nerds already.
while in public and being overheard by a woman.
Right, “woman” is a category exclusive from “nerds”.
Jeez, I’m going to have to throw away my Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books and X-Files DVDs if they’re going to mean I’m somehow associated with your shitty brand.
Gee, traversedavies, all Richards did was snap a little picture of the guys and post it on Twitter with a note saying “not cool”.
DEATH SENTENCE for those two, from the way you’re acting. Why are you getting so emotional over it?
Traversedavies: they are, and you’re the one responding to the incident in your head. Read the OP, the previous thread, the account Richards gave, and stop buying the teeny-little-isolated-joke spin. That was the point of the post you’re commenting on, you realize.
As I posted here:
What Is Sexual Harassment (bolds mine)
http://www2.ucsc.edu/title9-sh/whatissh.htm
If that’s still not clear to you, feel free to take a copy to your HR department or equivalent and politely ask them to explain.
Why aren’t you responding to the fact that the men in question stated that Richards was right, and they were talking inappropriately? Why aren’t you focused on the death and rape threats and unfair firing of Richards? Why are you happy to be a non-thinking sexist asshole?
There is not empirical data on this issue. I know women who are offended as fuck by Adria Richards, I suspect that if I asked my friends who are women’s studies majors I would get a different reaction (and the one woman I haven’t talked to who actually has done women’s studies and is now doing IT). The point is, Adria Richards was one woman who was offended by these two men, and I have talked to many women who are offended by Adria Richards, to act as if she speaks for all women is bullshit.
Dude, the “extreme anger and polarization going on across the internet” is because of the dudebros who go ballistic any and every time a woman dares to ask them to act like human beings.
You really need to get a clue.
Rey Fox,
X Files aren’t nerdy. I mean, I love them and I’m a woman.
@zmidponk #185
Had to happen eventually, that list was never very long in the first place. However, we both know that the fact they have to repeat themselves is not going to stop them. *sigh*
Again, traversedavies:
One of the guys has faced no repercussions, was anonymous until very recently in the coverage, and his identity still isn’t 100% certain.
One of the guys got fired because this was just the latest in a pile of reasons his company was building up to fire him (if it hadn’t been this it would have been something else), and he’s still anonymous.
She has had her name plastered everywhere, has gotten a stream of rape and death threats, and was fired from her job because 4chan decided to go after her.
So whose life has been “ruined” by this incident, again?
@traversedavies:
Actually, people are. The actual incident itself was relatively minor, albeit being one more straw on the camel’s back, and actually handled correctly by all involved, bar the men not exercising proper manners and self-restraint by not making those ‘jokes’ in the first place (however, even they handled it correctly after that by admitting Richards was right and apologising). But the main problem is not the incident itself – it’s the extreme overreaction to the incident by people who weren’t even involved.
You must be reading a completely different comment thread. I have seen a couple of comments with minor inaccuracies (such as claiming the jokes were made to Richards, rather than simply in her hearing), but I have not seen any claims they were anything other than what they were – a couple of sexist jokes made in poor taste in public by supposed ‘professionals’ that was called out by Richards, via a Tweet to the PyCon staff, and dealt with there and then. There have been a few comments that the fact some people see this as normal and acceptable is a sign of the misogynistic culture that exists within the tech industry, and, from what I can see, that is also actually accurate.
And the punishment for that ‘crime’ should have been a quiet word in the ear – which is what they got.
The MRA’s are creating trouble, unless you call a DDoS attack against Richards’ employer, causing them to cave in and fire her, and multiple very explicit rape and death threats against Richards ‘a quiet evening in’.
@PZ “I agree, it’s weird that it’s just the woman who has been thoroughly outed”
What is weird about how twitter works exactly? She outted herself if you want to call it that.
The guys have their picture on the internet as well, so I assume that plenty of people know who they are.
If you want to out the number of immature kids who make this sort of comments you will need a huge database and what would be the point?
They made a dongle joke, and some fork comment (like I haven’t heard this a thousand times before) and none were directed at her in the first place.
Obviously there was no way she could tell them to keep it down directly… for some reason, or just complain to the managers of the event. She went to twitter as a first resort, a terribly poor decision and got herself fired along with one of the immature losers. Off course she did everything right, there is no way anything she did could have been done differently to ensure a better outcome. There is nothing to learn from this at all basically, so why keep talking about it?
Sure the guys were asshats who made a few dumb remarks, that’s not being disputed. There are people like that virtually in all public places, if they get on your nerves enough you tell them to shut up and if they don’t you go to the next step.
traversedavies:
There is shitloads of case law regarding what is, and is not, sexual harassment. And, legally, this was sexual harassment.
Not only that, the harassers AGREED that it was harassment.
C’mon guys, traversedavies knows some chicks who said this Adria Richards bitch deserved it, so that’s what all women think and Adria Richards is wrong to say she speaks for all women when clearly these few chicks that traversedavies knows actually do.
Why was it a terribly poor decision?
thumper: according to Richards’s own account, the guys started making innuendos immediately after she spoke with them and kept it going for several comments.
http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/
I don’t get why people are arguing hat this behavior is just standard awkward nerdism and then acting mad that people treat such nerdism with disdain. You’re the one saying you’re awful people. Shit you’re literally making the old “nerds are creepy untrustworthy loner freaks” argument I see nerds whining about.
Taking you at your word: yes you are fucking freaks. Stay the fuck away from everyone. Don’t even talk to women, you’ll just fuck it up and then throw an epic net tantrum
There happy?
Oh goody, it’s jacklewis. Hey Jack! Are you ever going to answer whether or not you’re elevator guy?
Thanks for adding your voice, jacklewis, but we already know which is the stupid asshole side of this discussion.
The parallels to the reaction to Richards’ benign little tweet and the reaction to Rebecca Watson’s “guys don’t do that” is striking and telling.
Future anthropologists will have a field day analyzing these records, should they survive.
After they’ve finished vomiting, that is.
Ing:
QFT. Can’t say I’m happy about these assholes attempting to tar me with that brush, either.
These two men didn’t say anything about women, or to women. Also, saying that a woman is brainwashed because she likes dirty jokes (note: nothing here was about women or degrading to women) is the height of ridiculous. Do you think that women don’t like dirty jokes or that the few (most that I’ve met… but your mileage may vary) that do are simply brainwashed puppets of the patriarchy? If that’s not what you meant, if you meant that you should never do stuff that offends while in public, have you ever done something that was offensive to a minority group while in public? Do you cover your hair and wear a veil? If not, you have actually done something that millions of people find offensive many times, as that if offensive to a number of Islamic groups (I dismiss that out of hand by the way, I don’t feel their point of view has merit… you aren’t doing something to them). If they had said something directly to Adria or to another woman (who might have been uncomfortable but didn’t feel she could speak up), or about Adria, or about another woman, maybe there would be a case there, but this was two guys with a questionable (not morally, merely aesthetically) sense of humour joking between themselves.
Illuminata:
Damn it! I keep forgetting, bitchez be monolith, man.
Oh thank heaven.
Oh yeah, got herself fired by that force of nature, the Invisible Hand, peace be upon it.
Lesson learned; geeks and nerds are psycholtic man children with no social skills empathy or sense of responsibility or professionalism. Avoid these men at all costs.
jacklewis:
Do you have a job? If so, read your company’s sexual harassment policy. You will find out that what they did is sexual harassment. And here is shitloads of case law regarding what is, and is not, sexual harassment. And, legally, this was sexual harassment.
Not only that, but the harassers AGREED that it was harassment.
No. There are women who are just as uncomfortable with Ms. Richards as many of the men replying to this. Again, because this isn’t something that was said to or about a woman. There was nothing anti-woman in their comments. There was some questionable humour, but not morally questionable humour. This is a classic case of political correctness getting out of hand. Yes, she should not have received death threats, but getting fired was completely justified, and she should not have brought it up anywhere, with anyone. At most a bit of a look for talking too damn loud, the content of the conversation simply should not have been offensive to an adult.
And now he’s equating dirty jokes and sexist jokes.
*shakes head sadly*
They didn’t make sex jokes to a woman’s face. They made them to each other, in the hearing range of a woman. Not anti-woman jokes, not sex jokes about a woman, no mention of a woman was made, no disparagement of a woman was made, nothing was said that would not be okay during prime time television or in a g rated movie. Respond to the incident that happened not some imagined incident where two guys were acting like they were in an episode of mad men.
So what? That is literally a sentence that means nothing of any value.
*headdesk*
Traversedavies, get a clue. If ALL your tech friends including ALL the women are busy slamming on Richards, what do you think is going to happen to any one of your friends who might need to say one of your jokes has gone too far?
Keep repeating your obvious bullshit lies, traverse. I’m sure you’ll convince yourself how right you and how hysterical bitches ruin the lives of innocent sexists because they’re meanies just looking for things to be offended about, if you only repeat your bullshit lies enough.
Which, every place I have ever worked, is sexual harassment. Please stop lying, traversedavies. It makes you look really sad.
@traversedavies Give up. The level of irrationality and extremists views here make sensible arguments null and void. Trying to bring rational discussion here only results in personal attacks, some of the very things these folk are claiming Adria Richards doesn’t deserve (most likely because she is female).
Little picture? This creepy lady publicly posted a photo of some guys implying they were sexual perverts or deviants in an attempt to publicly shame them and bring down the Internet hate machine. How you can claim what she did was good is beyond reason. Even assuming she was justified to do so, it was entirely stupid. Defending stupidity only hurts your cause.
I don’t support anyone making death threats… it’s a bullshit thing to do. There is no mixed signal here, there is a perception of one. I don’t take internet death threats all that seriously because I have received many, many, many of them. I don’t think that there is any excuse for them however, and I fully support the idea that those who made them should face consequences for them. It’s just that I see SHE GETS DEATH THREATS used as a way to silence people who don’t agree with the original point. Yeah, it’s wrong, more wrong than Adria Richards was. If anyone (anyone at all who would get seen) was defending them I would be arguing against them, but nobody with any credibility seems to be saying that death threats are appropriate.
This is a lie, traversedavies. You are now repeating a lie. Why are you lying? Do you lie about things at work? Did you like about all those girlbros at work who, like, totally support you and are afraid of Richards?
See what happens when you tell lies? People think EVERYTHING you say is a lie.
So you should stop doing that.
@Pteryxx #214
That’s the one I meant! Thanks :)
Shorter domah: WOMEN, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!
Traversedavies, do not post any more comments until you have read this excerpt from Richards’ blog post on the subject:
Didn’t take you long to out yourself, did it, misogynist.
Clearly, if a woman is getting death threats for doing absolutely nothing wrong, it’s a “bad” thing, but not so bad as telling idiotic, clueless mansplainers that they aren’t experts on ever subject under the sun. THAT’s really bad!
bitches should just shut up and let you and domah talk to each other about how stupid bitches are.
You’re wrong about that too.
As I said to many others… this incident isn’t what you make it out to be. There was no misogyny here, it just isn’t the case in this case. There were some stupid jokes made between two friends that were overheard by a woman. Making a sexual innuendo about large dongles and saying you would fork a male speakers repo simply is not being misogynist, and if anything that has any even vaguely sexual overtone is misogyny, then I guess a lot of the sexist assholes were right, and women are too delicate for the workforce. For the record: anti women comments, misogyny. Sexual comments about women: misogyny. Sexual comments intended for women to hear: possibly misogyny. Vague sexual innuendo’s that are a bit of a stretch: crap grade school humour.
Which, even if it were accurate, may constitute sexual harassment. That is why the legal definition of sexual harassment references creating a hostile environment. Such as innuendoes, jokes, or pictures present in the affected person’s work environment. Seriously, read up on this stuff and talk to your HR department or equivalent because you’re just factually wrong here.
Why again did the two guys admit they were making inappropriate comments?
Did feminazis hide behind them in invisible pink cloaks and hold guns to their heads?
Which is, by case law, by the harassment policy in place at the convention, by the harassment policy at every place I have ever worked, and by agreement of the two men involved, sexual harassment. Stop lying.
traversedavies, nobody thinks that these guys jumped on a black lady and violated her. They were being minor douchebags in a setting that called for professionalism, and she responded by a basic “hey can someone tell these guys to knock it off?”, which is totally appropriate for dealing with minor douchebags. Then, of course, All the Men of Assholedom came out to put the bitch in her place, for saying “hey guys don’t do that.” I mean, you understand that, right? I think that, considering the sheer ugliness and hugeness of the response she got should tell you right away how unlikely it was that she was going to get a positive reaction by quietly letting the guys know that they should stop making sexist jokes. Any woman who has every asked politely just to have the behavior escalate (which is so, so many of us), knows this almost instinctively after living long enough to be an adult woman.
Let’s look at the tweets.
And
You are a liar. She didn’t name them. She got the Con to address them, which they did.
You are an asshole.
Beatrice:
It was The Invisible Pixel Force Team™. Gotta watch yourself, we’re everywhere.
glodson,
Nerd oppression! Everyone, look, nerd oppression!
@traversedavies
Let’s add another to your list: Sexual harrassment towards women: misogyny. This was sexual harrassment as defined by pretty much every code of conduct, ever, including all those linked to in this very thread. Therefore it is misogyny. Yes?
Shorter traversedavies: “None of my “arguments” are working! Must shift goalposts! *pant, wheeze* oh god, look – you bitches are ruining my life! Waaah. Ooops, I better recite more lies!”
Beatrice, it is okay. I am a nerd, I’m allowed to make nerdist comments.
Intellectual terrorist:
Not sure which side of this you’re arguing. It is the feminists here that are arguing that men in tech can do better than this, that they can and should act like adults, and that there’s no reason to think it’s a terrible, impossible thing that they should be capable of professionalism in a professional setting. It’s the MRA crew here that is talking about sexist jokes (and, evidently, blowback so ugly as to require death threats and rape threats and racist bullshit) being some sort of vestigal part of the “social maladroits”and “weirdos” that make up the tech world. I think that men are perfectly capable of acting like adults. I’d suggest that you ask the assholes why they think all tech men are so stupid and socially awkward that they just can’t help being sexist shitheads.
Who died and made you King Shit of Fuck Mountain and Duly Appointed Arbiter of Sexism?
You are a liar.
Am I in bizzarro world? Did everyone just have a complete mental breakdown? Did you read what the jokes were? Did you read what I wrote? I didn’t defend men’s right to demean women, I defended slightly weird people right to be kind of slightly dirty in their jokes in a way that isn’t aimed at either gender.
Ada Lovelace is a personal hero of mine. I approve of girls getting into tech, and of women working in tech. I don’t approve of a sanitized version of the industry where anything that has any vaguely sexual overtone is considered out of line by default. I like a bit of rough edges in my workplace, and I believe that you will never have a perfect environment for everyone, so lets try to keep things that demean women out of the workplace, but accept that sometimes there will be jokes that have a bit of a sexual element to them (either that or point out how the two developers were in some way being demeaning towards women… nobody has done that yet).
*eyes glodson suspiciously*
Did a… woman put you up to this?
Not being sexist. The dev’s in question weren’t being sexist. Adria Richards was being sexist.
Roro:
Ing is a longtime regular and they were being sarcastic. And exasperated.
On the contrary, had she acted as an rational adult instead of a cyber-bully trying to promote her extremist viewpoints (ala. comparing herself to Joan of Arc). She would have received a positive response from the two developers behind her and there would have been no issue.
Instead, she over-reacted, played the victim card when in fact she was the bully, tried to promote her radical agenda and attempted to bring down the Internet hate machine on two developers for overhearing a joke that apparently was distasteful to her when she publicly made similar penile jokes just days before. The hypocritical nature of her actions runs high. Nonetheless, no one expects most people on this blog to think rationally or logically about any of this. This blogs purpose is to espouse similar radical ideas that were being promoted by Adria Richards. Its not hard to understand why you blindly support her actions.
As soon as someone shows me evidence of sexism from the two dev’s in question I will gladly admit that some action was warranted. Since I haven’t seen any yet, no such luck.
Yes. The Women World Conspiracy got to me.
Yes, they were. They admitted to being sexist.
You are sexist. You’re making excuses for every other sexist asshole on the planet. Stop doing that. Also, stop lying.
I bet you would even let her use your bathroom, you big hero, you.
THANK YOU! Oh my dear god, thank you! I was despairing over my life choices, but you shined a light on my sad existence. I will go to work happy tomorrow, knowing that some jackass approves.
Another nerdy, socially awkward male software person speaking up to say: I do not need women or anyone else to give me special treatment because of my social awkwardness, shyness, etc. I am an adult and can deal with my own problems.
On another note, learning as much as I have about feminism, particularly here at Pharyngula, has made me considerably less socially awkward and more confident. Believe it or not it’s actually easier to talk to women when you think of them as full and equal human beings instead of strange and fabulous chimaera.
traversedavies@240:
While neither the jokes nor the men were themselves misogynist, the fact that they feel free to tell such jokes regardless of context contributes to an overall atmosphere of misogyny — especially when they’re not challenged in doing so.
Your “you must agree with me or the misogynists win” bullshit is destroying your credibility.
traversedavies@258:
The fact that they felt free telling such jokes in a professional context with people of both sexes in attendance is that very evidence.
Wake me when traversedavies finally says something intelligent. It starts off with I’m sorry, I’ve been a sexist pig who doesn’t understand what harassment policies realy mean…
And here’s where I will praise these guys. They fucked up, they got called on it, and then they owned up and admitted it. They were in the wrong.
That is where it should have ended. Lesson learned, everyone moves on. But then idiots heard, and the rape a death threats rolled in.
Of course, not directed at the men who fucked up in the first place.
do we really have to concurrent threads with the same fuckwittery?
@roro80
I think ING: Intellectual Terrorist wa being satirical.
So, is it girls or women, Cupcake? Careful, that’s a trick question.
You approve? *snort* Right, I’m sure waves of grateful women will fall to their knees in gratitude for that.
So, it’s kinda okay for girlwomen to get into tech, and it’s kinda okay for girlwomen to work in tech, but it’s only okay if they act like men and go along with the nerdyboysmen club and never, ever say one fucking word about inappropriate behaviour which might be bothering them, but they can’t say anything because they’re surrounded by sexist assholes like yourself who think the view up their own rectum is a dandy one. Yeah, pull the other one, douchecake.
She has a right to complain and/or voice her opinions, but publicly attempting to shame two developers is crossing the line, she also shouldn’t couch her opinions in sexism.
Forking/Fucking is not degrading to women.
Dongles/Penises are not degrading to women.
If anyone thinks that sex is inherently degrading to women, or that penises are inherently degrading to women, they should seek counselling.
So, you approve of women getting into the field, but don’t want to do anything to create a safer environment for women while ignoring what could be making the women uncomfortable and uneasy in the field?
Wow.
FIFM…
I will agree that creating a hostile work environment is wrong… I just don’t believe that what they did could be called that. As to whether or not their remarks ran afoul of the conventions policy: that reflects strong issues with the conventions policies. I mean, I support a reasonable limit on things… but it’s like saying you can’t say the word red at a convention because some cultures consider red to be a sign of ill fortune (had that said to me once). Also kind of like saying women have to wear a hijab because muslims might find it offensive. If what these two men had said was derogatory to women, was said about a woman, was said to a woman, etc. then maybe… as is, it was a slightly stupid joke between two friends after what was reportedly a somewhat boring speaker while talking about a male speaker they wanted to hear. I can guarantee you that there were worse things being said between female attendees that day, but they weren’t being said between men while in the hearing range of a bully who was also a high profile feminist blogger. Stop making this about a hostile work environment.
I work in a terrible basement of a large industrial building at the end of a series of long concrete corridors. Most of the other professionals at my work are upstairs, but I require some specialized equipment for my job, and it is in the basement. I work around mostly blue collar people. Most of the women where I work would tell you to shut the f up and get off your high horse. They tend to have very little patience for this sort of thing. They are tough, and they work hard. The would probably come up with several insults that would not pass the filters on this site. I work in IT, but grew up doing things like offloading ships and cleaning buildings… spent time homeless. Sorry if I just don’t find this whole line of reasoning that compelling.
Tony, PZ did say to use these threads to rage at the asshats…
This word, I do not think it means what you think it means. This isn’t sexism. It really isn’t.
Ah, I see.
She shouldn’t talk about how such jokes because they aren’t really sexist in a vacuum. Like ignoring the culture in which the jokes exist, the social dynamics involved, and how some women(And even men) don’t want to hear about such jokes in a professional arena, and ignoring why sexual harassment policies exist in the first place.
And keep ignoring that the men in question agreed that they were in the wrong. They realized they were wrong. Keep digging. We can see what kind of idiot you are.
An 8 year girl just gave up on becoming a programmer, because of you..
Women here are telling you to shut THE FUCK up and get off your high horse.
If that’s true, I will retract what I said… they claimed otherwise, and nothing she said in the first couple of days even hinted that this was true, but if it is… if they did mean it for her ears, yeah, that’s scumbag behaviour.
One: I can see how you took it that way, but that wasn’t the way it was meant. Women are nerds too, and make very nerdy comments. Poor phrasing on my part.
Two: What I did mean was that from what I have seen (and I am still waiting on someone to provide something I hadn’t seen that if it exists would change my mind) they were being nerdy… sophomoric humour is actually a long standing part of being a nerd (what you are talking about is more commonly geek culture) and they were overheard by a woman… and that fact has been declared a crime. Never mind that most women would not have been offended, and that many nerdy women would have laughed at “fork his repo”. That’s why I said it should not be a crime at all.
Fuck you, you sexist jackass. That is what harassment policies are fucking about. Just because you know a few women that allegedly are cool with this doesn’t mean you speak for the majority of women.
You want to justify your shitty attitude. These policies exist because many women aren’t comfortable with this type of behavior. And minorities, like women, in a field often have to deal with this mess and are forced to put on a brave face for the sake of the career and social standing. It is a good think that women are challenging this as it forces people to clean it up.
You are part of the problem.
domah@269:
I actually agree that tweeting was crossing the line but I don’t think that tweet or the concept of “public shaming” are nearly so egregious as you seem to think. How can she “voice her opinions” without in some sense “shaming” the men?
How can anything change if bad behavior isn’t called out and addressed?
Of course, I never claimed they were.
I claimed that the fact that these gentleman feel so free to throw around sexual innuendos in a professional context with people of both sexes and many different religions and with many different beliefs towards sex and sexuality contributes to an atmosphere of sexism.
I didn’t say anything about “degrading to women” anywhere.
Please understand that I am very sex positive and would love to live in a world so free of sexual shame that people could tell sexualized jokes without making other people uncomfortable. Unfortunately we do not live in that world and need to look out for what we say. There are many reasons why someone might be upset by people telling sexual jokes in a professional environment — that’s why there’s laws against it.
Don’t believe the propaganda. There is no evidence they meant it for her ears. In fact, all evidence shows these two “dorks” were joking amongst themselves. Adria Richards overheard what they said, turned around, smiled, and snapped a photo and uploaded it to twitter. That is very creepy behavior.
@domah
Nope, that’s bullshit. I certainly wouldn’t have done what she did, but here’s the thing arsehole: I’m not her. And shockingly, neither are you. There may be any number of reasons that she didn’t feel comfortable confronting them that we just don’t know about. And regardless of whether or not her response was reasonable, still nothing would have happened if the bosses involved hadn’t gone a cowardly knee-jerk firing spree, and even the fact they did doesn’t justify her getting rape and death threats! Jesus fuck, how hard is this?
How do you know that? Know these two personally, do you? Or do you have some magic insight that allows you to confidently predict the behaviour of complete strangers?
No she fucking didn’t you abhorrent liar.
Fuck off, domah, you fucking obstinate pile of steaming misogynistic shite. All the cattle in Ireland produce less bullshit than you do.
traversedavies@272:
They contributed to a hostile working environment. They didn’t create it.
Adria Richards, is that you? Lots of fem-rage here…
domah@282:
Actually, she participated in the conversation pre-dongle jokes. Why are you spreading falsehoods?
Domah # 282
And now I need a new Irony Meter. Mine just asploded.
@daniellavine Once her participation in the conversation was over, it became a private conversation between the two developers. She admits she did not participate in the “dongle joke” portion of the conversation as do the developers who claim the jokes were between themselves.
Because reality is not kind to the MRA dudebrats. It shows them to be on the wrong end of reality, while clinging futilely to their alleged manhood.
These threads, boiled down:
Fuckwit: “It’s not sexist.”
Horde: “Actually, it is and here are good reasons why.”
Fuckwit: “It’s not sexist.”
Horde: “As we just explained in great detail, it is.”
Fuckwit: “It’s not sexist.”
Horde: facepalm
Fuck you, you smug arsehole.
(a) no, it’s actually not like that at all.
(b) if you are working in a country where a very high percentage of a population (say, I dunno, 50%?) will be deeply offended or highly uncomfortable if you say the word “red”, if you give 3 shits about maintaining heir business or their respect or their participation in what you are doing, you don’t say the word red. Anyone who has worked in any area other than the one where they themselves grew up would know that. Tech people should understand pretty well that if they go to a foreign country and spit up all over their local ettiquete protocol, they will not invited back, they will lose business, they will be avoided. So if it helps you to think of “women” as being part of some foreign weird culture you don’t understand, I suggest you start by just memorizing the rules of professional interaction with us. One of those rules, as laid out by most company policies on professional interaction is to avoid making stupid sex jokes in a professional setting.
Oxymoron from an unintelligent dudebrat. The conversation wasn’t private. You may wish to futilely attempt to warp reality on that point. but they were in public, showing prima facie evidence you lie. What a shallow thinker *snicker* you are…
Had her tweet not gotten the attention it did I would not support her being fired, but it is no longer possible for her to be a decent evangelist for her company, so she needed to lose her job. It’s actually an unfortunate reality to me. Had she taken it up with pycon I still would have disagreed with her choice, from what I know of the situation, but would not have supported her losing her job. Had her tweet not blown up the way it did I would not have supported her getting fired despite strongly disagreeing with her choice, as someone who ran a business, I would not keep her in a developer evangelist position. If she is earning an amount of money that would be justified by being a developer, and her dev work was good enough, I would have moved her to a job like that… but most people who do that kind of work earn far, far more than dev’s… which would have meant for me offering her a huge pay cut, or getting rid of her. I would probably choose getting rid of her. Don’t worry though, she’s famous… she’ll do fine.
Quoted for Motherfuckin’ Truth! Yes roro80!
Are you completely unaware of the concept of context?
Astonishing that the Solutionists around here just don’t get it, but I guess that’s the case with all religious zealots. Maybe the Solutionist Zealots can understand this tweet:
“Disappointing, the @adriarichards firing, but with ever-increasing #openness, I can’t imagine sexism lasting much beyond 2020.”
Will the Solutionist Zealots now understand this episode? No, of course not. Back to their bible, aka the internet.
No, but to be fair, I’m getting the aura of stupidity off of you. It is nice to see you post enough evidence of your idiocy. And you are a liar. Being a lying idiot is no way to go through life.
Thank god we have you to tell us what is and isn’t sexism. I mean, shit, half of us have only been living with it all our lives, many of us studying it’s manifestations and effects for many years, but shit man, you just told us all straight. I see the light! I’ll make sure to come to you next time I’m all confused in my lady-brain about what really is sexism. Who else votes that traversedavies is now the Global Arbiter of What Is Sexism? *Raises hand*
Because if you, or her, had even the slightest concept of social norms/dynamics, you would know that if someone is bothering you, you ask them to stop. This resolves the problem most of the time.
You ma’am are the liar: https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425
Stay off the meat please, too much fem-rage coming from you.
I do envy her the rape and death threats. No one has every gone to the trouble of sending me a photo of a decapitated woman. *jealous*
@Nerd
I think even “shallow thinker” is giving Domah too much credit. My objection lies mainly with the latter part of the phrase…
They agreed that the dongle thing was wrong (I don’t agree with them, I think that’s a case of PC going too far) but they disputed the fork his repo part.
I don’t think SoftGrid had a choice about firing Adria Richards… they are probably going to lose a wrongful dismissal suite, but there is no question that she can’t be an effective developer evangelist anymore. Her profile is too large, and too negative now. It actually doesn’t matter if it’s justified.
As to the death threats… show me a place with any profile at all that is defending her getting death threats and I will challenge them. I haven’t seen any personally, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Ugh.
One of the defining characteristics of nerds, in my experience, is a desire to learn new things, sometimes to an almost obsessive degree. And yet when someone says “hey, here’s a chance for you to learn things about sexism and appropriate behavior,” suddenly the argument becomes “no, nerds are inherently socially awkward and incapable of learning to be otherwise! By expecting us to learn how to overcome our awkwardness, you are being hostile to nerds!” I generally feel that someone who is given the chance to learn and change refuses it, they have moved from socially awkward to asshole.
I like making crude and sexual jokes. I have even made them at work. Behind closed doors, in earshot of only those friends of mine I knew would enjoy such comments. I also got an award for being the nerdiest person in my office. Funny how that works.
traversedavies:
No, you’re in the real world. Why not take a minute and read your company’s code of conduct regarding workplace harassment, as Ogvorbis suggests. Then try to consider the possibility that others might see things differently than you do.
While its very unfortunate that the Internet trolls have to make death/rape threats, I’m sure Adria Richards will be just fine. A bunch of 12yr old 4chan trolls aren’t a very credible threat… now lets talk about that 8 yr old girl who decided to not become a programmer because of that dongle joke! =)
@Domah #300
I realise it is incomprehensible to you that anyone would want to advance the rights of anyone other than themselves, but I’m a bloke, arsehole.
This is why you don’t make presumptions of gender when talking to/about pseudonymonous commenters on the internet. You often come out of it looking silly. Or in your case, even sillier.
Read my comment #237 and stop lying.
Right, working in an environment where the opposite sex openly jokes about your value being tied up in your fuckability isn’t sexist at all. Having your convention incident make your company the target of a bunch of internet hackers isn’t sexist at all. La la la, I can’t hear sexism!
I don’t know what that “have to” is doing in there.
I can show you laws from around the world that are horrifying. I can show you convention policies that are horrifying, I can show you a million and one different ethically terrible bits of policy, or as I see in this case, far too ambiguous policies… that doesn’t make them right. It makes them bad policies. Just point out a policy doesn’t make it okay.
Let me put this another way: Say you get a job and there is a devout muslim there. He is from one of the groups that believes very strongly that it is immoral for a woman to walk around with her head uncovered (not even her face, just her hair). It is now a hostile work environment for him, on the basis of his religious beliefs. Is it now reasonable to expect all the women to walk around with their heads covered? If your answer is not yes, then why is it okay to penalize two men for making a joke that was not derogatory to women and not aimed at women…
Unevidenced assertion *floosh* dismissed as self-serving fuckwittery from an MRA apologist. Nothing cogent there. Nothing cogent said to date. Nothing but blather to cover up they have nothing to say, other than WAAAHHHHHHH.
traversedavies@292:
Your opinion is worth pretty much nothing here. It is a crime to tell sexual jokes in a professional setting.
As far as whether “sophomoric humour is actually a long standing part of being a nerd (what you are talking about is more commonly geek culture)”…we could spend all day parsing “nerd” vs. “geek” culture. They are essentially the same culture. In fact, I would describe “nerd culture” as a subset of “geek culture” (geeks have obsessions, nerds have academic obsessions). But that’s besides the point.
The point is that no one is preventing these gentlemen from engaging in sophomoric humor. It is requested that they refrain from making sexual jokes in a professional context. These gentlemen themselves seem to acknowledge the sensibility of this request as they have already apologized for their behavior and admitted fault. Are you saying they were wrong to do so?
domah@288:
That’s not how conversations work, nincompoop.
Yes, let’s talk about that little girl growing in the mess, dealing with people who reduce her based on her sex, who ignore her concerns about this talk, that minimize the damage done by thoughtless people who infantilize women, and make excuses for this behavior, who trivialize the death and rape threats.
As I have said repeatedly, I have seen nothing to support that statement, nothing they said was sexist… it was merely sophomoric. When one of the women who works near me comments about enjoying riding the floor cleaner because of the vibration between her legs, should I try to get her fired or take it up with management? See, right now things are pretty good where I work, people mostly speak their mind. Upstairs people are way more unhappy, both genders. She didn’t say anything about anyone else, just about herself, and yeah, it was pretty ribald, but that’s just life sometimes.
@traversedavies
On an Atheist blog, you are asking us if we would put the rights of a woman above another’s right to force those around him to obey the laws laid down by an imaginary deity in a millenia-old book?
You’re really asking that? And worse, as if you’ve come up with some sort of “Gotcha” question?
traversedavies@310:
What do you mean by “penalize”? Everyone here has said that the guy should not have lost his job and said so unequivocally. So what was the “penalty” that you thought was so bad? A reminder from the PyCon staff to watch their language?
Because you’ve stumbled upon an oasis of radical feminism here. A place where women can do no wrong and all men are evil sex-hungry rapists and murderers and the concept of “equality” is twisted.
Those two poor guys must have been threatened with horrible things, to confess to saying something inappropriate despite their innocence.
traversedavies@315:
It has been explained multiple times now why even though the jokes weren’t inherently sexist in and of themselves they could contribute to an atmosphere of sexism.
Please acknowledge this and address that argument instead of pretending that no one has addressed this already.
harvardmba:
Right – the internet is not an appropriate place to confront sexism.
oy…
Well, I would argue that any show that was the number one rated show for several years isn’t all that nerdy, it’s pretty mainstream. Having said that, I know many, many women who are huge nerds… it’s not a boys club… however if you are talking nerdy not geeky then it is also a non-social club. Nerds are the kids who got picked on in school, got beat up a lot for not being normal, etc. For the most part they are introverted and not good with people. They also make up a huge, huge portion of IT (less by far than they used to since soft skills started getting more focus).
You are surprisingly stupid. That is a false analogy. Unless making dick jokes are apart of a religion, that analogy doesn’t fucking work.
These laws apply to all people. If people were making jokes about a Muslim, they would have to be disciplined, or the company would face penalties. If the hypothetical Muslim decried the women as unclean and screamed at them, he would have to be disciplined, or the company would face penalties.
Gee, who really gives a shit about what you think, when you give prima facie evidence you can’t think, don’t know squat about sexual harassment (hint, your OPINION is nowhere to be seen, and actual sexism doesn’t need to proved, but the opinon of the harassee is extremely important), and won’t shut the fuck up since you really have nothing to say.
This! This is the point all the MRA types seem to be missing. We merely contend that Adria’s reaction was OK. The reaction of everyone else, we agree entirely that it is out of order. Whereas you all seem to think we’re all OK with people being fired for this. We’re not.
Beatrice:
Oh, it’s a compulsion. Absolutely necessary to hunt down any instance of a woman showing any type of autonomy and fire up the death and rape threat machine. It’s a geekynerdy thing, ya see. Really, really necessary, because us uppity bitches really need to be put back into our proper place and learn that you don’t dare expect men to behave like decent human beings, let alone professionals. Oh no. All those rape and death threats were just a way to make sure that Ms. Richards (and other women) are shaped into more mature, responsible people, who will never, ever question a man again.
Did I miss any of the various explanations so far?
OY, traversedavies!!!!!
Do try to address your comments to people or at least quote them. It’s painful enough to wade through your shit without having to guess whom you are responding to.
Okay, this shit has gone unchallenged for way too long. When someone talks about a female speaker, and how interesting some of what she said was (like Richards quoted in #237), and then his buddy makes a crude sexual joke about her, it damn well is derogatory. It is reducing her value as a human being and making her a sex object. Which, in a non-sexual setting, is inappropriate, and is part of a parade of unwanted sexual attention that women face all the time. And of course it was aimed at women. Do you think this douchebag would have talked about “forking” the speaker if she was a man?
By PC, do you mean “Polite and Considerate”? Dunno how one could go too far with that.
Did I say their lives were ruined? No. However, her getting fired was necessary, and as I have said many times… getting death threats is wrong, absolutely. The people who did that should suffer consequences, but it’s the internet so they probably won’t ever be tracked down… and it comes with being even slightly famous on the Internet (my biggest number of death threats came after I did a pro-feminist guest post on Glenn Sacks blog many years ago, and I’m almost completely unknown). She will however get a job somewhere high profile, and unfortunately win a wrongful dismissal suit and make a crapload of money from that. I say it’s unfortunate because there was no way for SendGrid to keep her in the role of developer evangelist when more than half the developers on the internet consider her to be a terrible human being.
I disagree on your notion that minor issues that is made public is just the same. Think about taking a piss in a park. Now if police sees you take a piss he might fine you 60 dollars or something about it. Then compare it to the situation where some takes picture of you pissing in the park and puts it on twitter and you are clearly recognizable on the picture. Do you really think that there is no difference? Furthermore there is the issue of people being in picture that had nothing to do with the dongle joke but are still recognizable. What is that about?
First of all, I’d like to say I don’t think that Ms. Richards did anything (capital W) wrong per se. Do I “stand with” her. Eh. It seems a little DEFCON 1’ish for me. It was definitely Wrong for the employers to fire anyone.
I have to keep on reminding myself that this is what happens in the US which always surprises me on how few women are in EE. I often tell my friends when I get back from working there what a weird place it is. I’m used to a more equitable proportion between the sexes. I understand why women in the US have their backs up about even small things not without merit.
What I find hilarious about this is that it appears that the guys didn’t say any of the canonical swear words, they just strung together perfectly normal words in such a way as to imply sexual context in one instance and used it normally in the second. The sexual context was added by Ms. Richards in the second. Added to the fact that they didn’t say it TO her, just NEAR her, adds to the hilarity of the situation. What this tells me is that it isn’t so much what you say as how it is perceived.
When I think of all the things that I’ve said at work that could have been misinterpreted by a third party it makes my head spin. The other day I saw a guy carrying a one of the largest power bars I had ever seen. I completed him on his impressive power bar. I think she would have had a stroke if he had carried it horizontally. Thank FSM that Adria wasn’t there or we would have been fired by now.
Add to the fact that she made a “dick” joke a couple of days previous, in a public forum, makes me think that the pearl clutching is a little too much.
I don’t think you get the right to not be offended. Some people are offended by 2 men marrying. Some people are offended by the consumption of animal flesh. My sister loses it over the word “douchebag”. Hers is a lonely fight but at least has more merit as it is more sexualized than dongle. Which, come to think of it, some people in Ireland would have some thoughts about.
Ugh. Home time.
Traverse, Domah, fuck you. Everyone else, good night.
ReyFox@238:
Actually, the speaker was a man. They were specifically talking about “forking his repository”. The dongle guy insists that the “forking” joke was non-sexual and just a reference to an idea he had that “forking someone’s repo is a high form of praise”.
Hey, you know what? I am a nerd, I am socially awkward, I am male… yet I totally understand that sex jokes in the workplace are out of line, and Adria Richards was totally right in calling them out. Why can’t you get it too?
@traversedavies
If those comments make you uncomfortable (and you would be well within your rights to be made uncomfortable by them), then yes, you should report them to management for sexual harassment. I don’t think you should try to get the woman in question fired, unless it’s a pattern of behavior that she has not stopped despite being warned that it is inappropriate, but then again Adria Richards didn’t try to get anyone fired either.
First: a number of people said it was to Richards.
Second: I’m unclear on what made those jokes sexist. Sexual, yes. Clearly, but not explicitly. It would not have caused an issue in a g-rated movie except possibly with the extreme christian right, unless there was a third joke I don’t know about.
traversedavies@329:
First of all, address your posts to the comment that you’re replying to.
Why was her getting fired necessary? Make the case from beginning to end. Bear in mind that I disagree with her decision to tweet the picture but I still do not see why this should be a firing offense. Make that case for me.
You know, you really need to change your nym, Cupcake. It just doesn’t reflect your continued descent into stupid assholery. “Solutionist Zealots”? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Well, at least we aren’t part of the problem and proud of it, like you happen to be.
Rey Fox,
it’s hard to understand, since fuckwit is incapable of quoting or addressing people, but I think he says X-Files aren’t nerdy because they’re mainstream. I’m kinda disappointed. I thought I’ve sucked all the nerdiness out of the series merely by watching it while female, and now that accomplishment has been taken away from me. :(
Um…did someone plug a random word generator in at comment #297? Please don’t do that.
traversedavies@336:
I have already explained this to you twice.
The jokes themselves are not inhrently sexist. Men feeling like they can freely make sexual jokes in a professional environment without paying attention to who might overhear contributes to a sexist environment.
So suddenly the anonymous threats make her behavior okay? Those threats are an unfortunate fact of the Internet hate machine. The same hate machine that Adria Richards tried to unleash on those two developers. It says nothing about the fact that most rational people believe her behavior was inappropriate and that she was being the bully.
We all agree those threats are inappropriate. The difference is, you irrationally focus on the anonymous threats and backwards rationalize her behavior based upon those threats. What most people agree upon is that got what she deserved (ie. lost her job over her cyber-bullying). I fully expect another 100 posts on how she doesn’t deserve the death and rape threats (I agree), and how men all around the world are rallying to send her those threats (I disagree).
Also. are there just an endless supply of assholes out there ready to pop in here, not read a word any of us have said, then proceed to raise the same “objections” we’ve already covered ad nauseum?
This is remarkable.
Everyone directly involved in this incident, up to and including the very men who made the jokes themselves have agreed that Aria Richards was right, and the men were wrong. Yet we still have arseholes here trying to argue that it was Aria Richards in the wrong. And some of them are even saying it is us who are not rational.
Let me re-phrase that for you..
domah@342:
Actually, I’m pretty sure any rational person would agree that the rape and death threats are a much more serious problem than the initial impetus for them. It’s irrational to focus on the mildly bad behavior of Richards when the response was so much more extreme than warranted.
The threats do not make her behavior OK but the badness of the threats by far overshadow the badness of any behavior on her part.
domah:
As I told you in the other thread, take your Men’s Rights bullshit and shove it. Patriarchy is a well documented concept. What are you so afraid of? You lose no rights if women gain full equality.
You spout off all these cherry picked factoids and try to present them as reality. You’ve confirmed your own biases if you’ve even researched any of this information on your own (which I doubt; you’ve given 101 level MRA talking points that can be found at any random MRA site). If you actually dug in and looked for information without trying to confirm you preexisting biases, you would see your fuckwittery and bullshit was refuted long ago.
Seriously, traversedavies, do you have a job? Are you over the age of 16? It is not appropriate to make dick jokes or sex jokes at work. It is not appropriate in a professional setting. If you are out with your buddies drinking beer at a non-work function — make dick jokes all you want! Make dirty nerd puns! Go for it. (Understand that most women, if you have any who are friends you’d like to drink beer with, might not like it, but it’s certainly not against the rules.) You cannot do this shit at work. It creates a hostile work environment for many people, and for women in particular. It doesn’t matter who the joke is aimed at. This is known, which is why it’s not acceptable in almost any professional setting. Don’t make dick jokes at work. Understanding this requires the same level of maturity as “don’t pick your nose and eat it during a video conference”, or “don’t play grab-ass with your direct reports”. Both sometimes happen. Whether it will make people uncomfortable is not up for debate.
domah@345:
Fair enough.
traversedavies, can you consider the possibility that others might see things differently than you do?
Uh…hmm.
What? I completely missed that.
I am outta here.
Zmidponk:
No, no it isn’t. Standard behaviour on the part of the assholes. This thread is only in the 340s. The other thread is at 1,494 and the assholes incapable of reading, let alone comprehenison are still showing up to make the same “arguments”. Not the best and brightest.
The one guy apologized, not for harassment, for being a bit offensive. Thing is, I don’t think he should have apologized, but it’s a pretty natural reaction. I would not have, but most of my more introverted friends would have. I also would not have made the jokes, because that’s just not really my sense of humour (I prefer my dick jokes more highbrow thanks). Many of my more introverted friends would have made those jokes, and I can see a guy who is pretty much my best friend getting in huge amounts of trouble (he talks loudly and has a very crude sense of humour, although it is completely non-sexist).
If those jokes crossed the line to harassment, then we are doing things wrong. It’s that simple. Yes, if he had said this stuff to Adria Richards, about Adria Richards, to another woman, about another woman, if any of the content had been sexual material about a woman, or was derogatory to a woman, or referenced a woman in any way shape or form I might be willing to cede some points… at the moment it’s two guys making a couple of poorly veiled sophomoric innuendos. This is the kind of joke that guys in junior high would make because it would be easy for them to claim that they didn’t mean it that way, which would be part of the joke… and since the only way it involved a woman at all was that one was close by when they did it there really should be no harm at all.
@domah
I feel like I’m repeating something that anyone with the least bit of intellectual honesty already knows, but Adria Richards never tried to unleash the “internet hate machine” on anyone. She never called for the men in question to be fired. She never asked anyone to harass them on the internet. She never even identified them by name (though presumably she knows their names or could very easily find them out). All she did was ask that their inappropriate behavior stop. How that qualifies as an attempt to harm them is completely beyond me.
Rey Fox@351:
Yeah, I’d agree with “hmm” but his statement to that effect preceded his apology for the dongle joke and admission that he should not have made it so I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
traversedavies
It’s sweet of you to stand up for the poor, innocent fellows, but we don’t know exactly what the content of the jokes was. They themselves have acknowledged that whatever they were saying was inappropriate. And Adria Richards was happy with that. Incidentally, it’s nice of you to decide what a woman is allowed to find offensive. So cute.
How can you fail to notice that what has blown up *afterwards* is the outrageous part?
Then you go on to agree that she is ‘polarizing’. Hah. What happened? One of the jokers was fired, pretty clearly for reasons mostly unrelated to what happened at PyCon. The enraged manboy defenders of the internet blamed the woman, attacked *her* company—which had nothing whatever to do with the joker being fired—and the company promptly lay down in surrender and kicked her out. And the dudebros are still attacking her, with the pompous support of people like you.
Actually, Caine said this at #203, but you seem a bit slow on the uptake.
And, ‘filters on this site’?! Ahahahaha!
traversedavies@353:
No one accused the gentlemen of “harassment.” They are accused of “sexual harassment” because their behavior in fact fits the legal definition of the term “sexual harassment”. If you disagree you should give us the legal definition of “sexual harassment” and explain why their comments did not qualify.
“Harassment” and “sexual harassment” are different things.
@traversedavies:
Can’t help but notice you’ve been ignoring a lot of arguments against your position instead of directly addressing them. It makes me think you’re having trouble justifying your position and that your solution is just to spout logorrhea instead.
And now it’s introverts who go around making inappropriate jokes at people.
Ha!
hah
Oh man, you’re just… stupid.
Way to strawman. Look, a lot of people are making it look like all women are on Adria Richards’ side (or are brainwashed puppets of the patriarchy). There are blogs that are less… just less PZ Myer’s-ish that have a very different point of view, and some of those blogs are actually even feminist blogs. There are a lot of feminists who don’t think Adria Richards was in the right, and who actually support her being fired. There are also a lot of women who kind like working in an industry where you can still be a bit non-politically correct. Personally I have experienced more of them, and until someone does a comprehensive study, my personal experience is what I have. I am not claiming that all women think alike, in fact I am very, very specifically refuting that all women think alike… or that any one of us knows what most women think. Ironically, I’m being a lot less sexist than most of you folks… I’m saying that neither you nor I have the answer, and because of that while there is merit in finding the answer, stop trying to make the world conform to a point of view that you don’t know reflects reality. If you want to start claiming academic papers, I will start throwing out ones that support the idea that when women are given a choice they tend to choose not to go into STEM fields, and it’s just as comprehensive as anything you can throw at me (neither viewpoint is definitive… I personally don’t know that they ever will be).
And case law in the United States says you are full of bullshit. The harassment policies in every place I have ever worked say you are full of bullshit. And the harassment policy at the conference says you are full of bullshit. And, since the harassers agreed that it was harassment, I think they would also say you are full of bullshit. So go fertilize some tomatoes.
If the idea of a hostile work environment is tossed out, there is no basis for sexual harassment policies.
Does not matter. And the case law for sexual harassment backs this up.
Does not matter. And the case law for sexual harassment backs this up.
traversedavies, I don’t think you understand how this works. Adria Richards is the victim here. You are spending a great deal of time and energy looking for ways to blame her for everything that happened. You are telling me, and everyone else reading your words, that whatever happened afterwards, it was all her fault.
First off, who made you the judge about what Adria Richards may consider threatening? Second, they were able to coerce the company into firing her. If I could get you fired by doing X, would you consider that a threat?
Because if men agree that she was right, then men will have to alter their behaviour in professional environments because of women. Which is, of course, unacceptable to the True Man.
traversedavies:
Actually, according to Jesse Noller, who chaired PyCon, ‘We pulled all the individuals aside. We got all sides of the story. They said she was right, and they were very apologetic.’ That is a direct quote. So, unless you can provide some fairly strong evidence that disputes this, I think I’ll accept the version of events of the guy who was actually chairing the conference in question, rather than that of some random person on the internet.
OY, TRAVERSEDAVIES!
QUOTE PEOPLE OR WRITE THEIR NAMES AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR COMMENTS. DON’T MAKE US GUESS WHO YOU ARE RESPONDING TO.
Show some common courtesy!
Beatrice:
Yeah, I don’t think so. Of course, what would I know, I’m just a not-at-all-social introvert.
I agree with this assessment.
@traversedavies:
I have specifically asked you the following:
1) What “penalty” did these men face for having made a dirty joke? Bear in mind that no one here supports Dongle Dude’s firing. Do you really think a brief talking-to by PyCon organizers is a hugely egregious penalty totally out of proportion to the guy having made some off-color remarks in contravention to PyCon’s policies?
2) Why should Adria Richards be fired for having made that tweet? While I agree that she shouldn’t I fail to see why doing so should be a firing offense. You have asserted this but not supported your assertion.
3) Please make the case that the gentlemen’s actions did not constitute sexual harassment based on the actual legal definition of sexual harassment.
If you can’t engage with the arguments already on the table then it seems to me you’re just wasting everybody’s time.
traversedavies
Dude, who is strawmanning? What is the strawman. You keep on making the same argument, over and over, without addressing the arguments made against your position. You are not arguing good faith. Many issues have been brought up, and you have ignored them. This is not convincing anyone. If you see a strawman argument, please quote it, and address it. If people explain to you over and over again why the statements were sexist and do contribute to a hostile environment, you can’t just pretend those comments don’t exist and wonder allowed, over and over, how in the world they are sexist. It’s not in good faith to do so. You will convince nobody.
Sorry, you are being an apolgist for sexist and harassing behavior. By your actions, your are sexist. Otherwise, you would shut the fuck up, as you keep proving you have no idea of what you talk about. But you keep talking anyway. Makes you look like a sexist pig. If you don’t like that, shut up.
Hey, you know how you can know someone’s an asshole? When they non-ironically use the words “politically correct.”
Beatrice:
Butbutbut he’s just a nerdygeekyboymantechsociallymaladjustedbutnotoneofthosestupidjokemakingintroverttypes.
Courtesy? Clarity? Conciseness? You ask too much. Too much. :shakes head:
domah@361:
I don’t think people have been focusing on the initial jokes at all except in response to those who focus on Richards’ behavior and insist that the men’s behavior was in no way problematic whatsoever.
If someone tries to tell me the men’s behavior wasn’t a problem at all I will explain to them why I disagree. If someone tries to tell me why it’s all Richards’ fault I will focus on her behavior long enough to explain why I don’t think that’s true. That does not mean that I believe that’s where the focus should be which I still maintain should be the death and rape threats.
No… because that’s not what people are saying. What I am saying (and seeing echoed a fair bit) is that these guys didn’t say anything degrading to women, and made two specific jokes to each other that were slightly off colour, but overall fairly low on the implicit sex factor. If that is so horrible that it merits those two men being called sexist and claims that they are holding back the next generation of women in tech, well, that’s kind of messed up.
@traversedavies:
I should also point out that your argument is rather incoherent. You’re saying that they only apologised because they were that ‘introverted’ that they were basically intimidated into apologising despite doing nothing worth apologising for by someone pulling them aside and having a quiet word to find out what went on. If they were that introverted, they wouldn’t have been making jokes like that in the situation these two actually did – in the middle of a public conference in a professional setting.
Beatrice #364
Now, in fairness, we are talking about someone who is so stupid and lacks such common understanding of behavior that he’s argued, over and over and over, about why making dick jokes and sex jokes in a professional environment can’t possibly be sexist. Common courtesy is not exactly his strong point. :)
What? What is not what people are saying? Seriously dude, use some fucking quotes here man.
The fact that traversedavies’ women friends are unhappy with Adria Richards is another manifestation of sexism. They’re not unhappy with HER, per se, but unhappy that she raised the issue of sexism in the workplace, which is going to draw attention to them and the fact that they are women, and men are going to be like, “OOooohhh, LADIES, are we ALLOWED to make sexy jokes around you, or are you gonna be all SENSITIVE like that bitch Adria Richards???”
That’s why they’re unhappy. And yes, that is sexism.
I’m sorry, I’m trying to find the sexist jokes here. The equation was made by Adria’s defenders and by Adria.
traversedavies@372:
I have already explained this to you three times now. Acknowledge this or STFU.
What it means is that women, even feminists, are hardly united in this matter.
traversedavies@379:
Yes, even women are capable of being wrong and of being sexist. To assert otherwise would be sexist.
@traversedavies:
Fine. I’ll pose you the same question I asked in another thread. Let’s pretend for a moment that these jokes are, as you insist, not sexist. What, precisely, is wrong with Adria Richards making a public, but very mild complaint about inappropriate jokes?
Caine and roro80,
Sorry. I get it now. Nerds can’t do common courtesy. I’ll be sure to slam the door into someone’s face tomorrow. Even though I can’t be a nerd, since I’m a girl, I can at least aspire to it!
Huh, I had never thought of that… wait, yes, I had. Look, sometimes jokes go too far. When they do you follow appropriate channels to resolve them. She took a joke that many, many people would not feel was problematic at all, and took it to an extremely inappropriate channel. This isn’t even related to the idea that people will get punished for resolving legit grievances (had she taken it to the correct channels I still would think it was an over reaction, but not a big deal).
Could you please point out where I said or implied this? Stop attacking strawmen and attack me instead. I’m here, and there has to be some legit channel of attack, doesn’t there?
#377 — it’s been explained to you numerous times now, by me, by daniellavine, by thumper1990, by others. Stop being purposefully dense. You are wrong by every definition of the word — wrong morally, wrong by law, wrong by what many many women are saying they experience — and you are acting like a stupid 12 year old about it.
traversedavies@384:
No one knows who or what you’re talking about because you never say who you’re replying to or which comment number. Said or implied what?
Just put the number of the comment to which you’re replying at the beginning of your comments. It’s not hard and it’s common courtesy.
If you’re too stupid to do that what makes you think you’re smart enough to make a coherent argument?
WHERE YOU SAID OR IMPLIED WHAT?????
I didn’t lie. I said that if those fairly low key, fairly innocuous jokes cross the threshold then we have messed up somewhere… I didn’t say that they don’t cross the threshold. Look, there are all kinds of ribald comments. I suspect that there are departments where I work that those jokes could get me in trouble… but I don’t work in those departments, and I don’t work for those managers. Where I work the humour is a lot more earthy, and I prefer it that way. The women aren’t harassed, the men aren’t harassed, and if it ever crossed that line, it would be addressed, but those two jokes wouldn’t even be a blip on the screen and I hear worse every day, from both men and women.
Domah, I’m thread skipping so sorry if this is redundant but you are aware that the same behaviors in boys that are considered normal are considered extreme in girls, right? I taught briefly at a school for kids with ADD/dyslexia. Both of which run in my family. A girl with the same behaviors as her male counterparts is considered “hyper” for no reason other than social convention.
You are really making such an ass of yourself and being so vitriolic and bigoted whilst trying desperately to don your “poor victimized menz” cloak that I actually stopped wanting to mock you and just feel sorry for you.
Also the men being raped in prison? Yeah, they’re raped by other men. Those men being murdered? Yeah, they are most often murdered by other men. The men commiting suicide more often, maybe they can’t go for help because needing help is considered weak and feminine and their own internalized misogyny tells them they are better off dead than remotely feminine? Maybe they feel useless in a recession because responsibilities like care giving and other unpaid labor is “woman’s work” and doing that, renders them unmanly and thus as worthless as a woman. Men are often defined by their financial success and not allowed to have soft fuzzy feelings, because their masculinity in our culture is defined by being “not a woman”. Violence is a way of feeling “macho”and anger is the only “manly” emotion. Something that destructive is going to fuck up even those that system makes privileged.
Your enemy in each case is the patriarchy. The answer is feminism. You can say that patriarchy isn’t real all you want. But your denial will not help you. In fact, it hurts you almost as much as it hurts others.
Keeping the bitchez down has been how things have been done for ages. Looks like it didn’t do anything worthwhile for anyone. So, stop trying to perpetrate it, OK?
BTW, traversedavies, why are you saying such terrible things about nerds and introverts? As a nerd and an introvert I feel you are directly insulting me. Despite these facts about myself I am fully capable of understanding what sort of language is appropriate in particular contexts and modifying my behavior accordingly. Why do you have such a low opinion of the intelligence and capability of nerds and introverts?
traversedavies
Fucking quote the goddamn comment you are replying to, you tiresome fucking troll. It is easy, the fucking tag for the blockquote is below the comment box.
traversedavies,
Who are you talking to?
How is that a lie? Because Richards said something happened one way, and the dev said it happened another? Sorry, but the guy who apologized for being offensive with one thing he said (the dongle comment) and explained the other as being something that was commonly said between the two of them has less credibility than the woman who originally claimed she hadn’t been talking to them and then claimed she had been?
Oh so because you’re okay with it, everybody should be. Good to know. Now tell me how I should feel about multiculturalism.
traversedavies:
The appropriate channels here being informing the PyCon staff. Which she did – via Twitter. Which she was then thanked for by the PyCon staff.
Does this mean that any time someone has a problem with something someone has said or done, they should carry out a quick survey to see if everyone else agrees before they complain about it? Unless you are seriously proposing this, your statement here is utterly irrelevant.
Inappropriate in what way? If it’s because Twitter is a public place, guess what? SO’S THAT CONFERENCE ROOM. If the guys in question didn’t want that kind of behaviour to be made public, they shouldn’t have done it in public.
Read it. It contradicts things she said earlier and the one dev who commented. If it was just him it would be a he said/she said issue, where I would be inclined to believe him because he also said that the other thing he said was offensive and apologized for it. Since she originally said it was stuff she overheard, not stuff that was said to her, any implication that it was said to her is suspect.
traversedavies,
You talking to me?
You talking to me?
Seriously, use blockquotes and/or people’s names. It’s not difficult. Nerds do it all the time. Even introverts.
I motion that no one engage with anything traversedavies says until he’s willing to abide by the minimal rules of polite discourse and address the person/comment to which he is responding.
Nope. Sorry. Because someone who has no connection to me is doing something to someone I should now support the actions of the person who is getting the death threats? Intellectually bankrupt doesn’t begin to cover that. It’s a with us or against us mentality. My actual response is that if the people who were making death threats had a soap box on the scale of free thought blogs (or with any credibility) I would be decrying them… but they don’t, and there is nobody who is supporting them… they are not credible people in any way, and since nobody is arguing in their favour there is simply nobody to refute… they are assholes, and they should STFU, but I have no power to make that happen, and no where to say that that will have the slightest impact. I don’t agree with what Adria did, and the fact that I disagree with the people threatening her is in no way influenced by that fact. No, she doesn’t deserve death threats. I suggest you take a basic reading comprehension course, and maybe learn a tiny bit about logical fallacies (hint: focus heavily on false dichotomy).
traversedavies@399:
I have stated unequivocally several times now that I do not think Richards did the right thing to tweet that picture. No one is demanding you support that action.
People are suggesting that maybe that action pales in comparison to rape and death threats and that’s where the focus of our criticism should be.
Any problem with that?
And address the comments you’re replying to dipshit. So many people have told you to do this. Why are you ignoring them all?
Really? So, how would you suggest SendGrid move forward with Adria? Should they keep sending her to developer conferences? I mean, more than half the developers consider her a bully, many have now sent her death threats, there’s a pretty strong shot that she would be ineffective in her role now (you can see from many of my comments that this wasn’t even a moral judgement on my part, I just don’t see any way to get around it – she can’t function in that role anymore).
Maybe you should learn a little about logical fallacies and false dichotomies yourself, bro.
traversedavies:
Say your company assigns a new person to your department, and she or he finds the “politically-incorrect” atmosphere to be juvenile and offensive. What is that person supposed to do? Get used to it? Leave? Would adopting a more professional demeanor be a hardship for you?
OY! traversedavies! You know, for such a nerdygeekyboymantech type, what in the fuck is your problem with identifying who the fuck you’re responding to? Do you know how to copy & paste, Cupcake?
USE THIS: <blockquote>PLACE TEXT HERE</blockquote>
So damn simple even an idiot can use it. That’s a hint.
Just a suggestion, but…. it might be a good idea to investigate which of the developers sent death threats. I kinda wouldn’t want to work with people who do that kind of thing, or have them working for me.
@401: (see? it’s really not that hard)
Tell her it’s not appropriate behavior for a professional conference and yes, maybe not send her to the next one.
What’s your case that she should be fired? You haven’t made one yet.
There is a reason most HR departments spell this stuff out a great deal more strictly. I have been using an islamic example here, but that may be too subtle for many folks on here… so here’s a different approach. To a Jehova’s Witness Christmas is blasphemy. Does a Christmas party create a hostile work environment for one of them? Actually, yes it does. Very, very clearly. Should Christmas parties be banned due to this? Hell no. Just because something might offend someone doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. It means you have to take it on a case by case basis.
Fine, they weren’t sexist. They were inappropriate for a workplace environment and made Adria feel uncomfortable.
What is so wrong with her expressing that via a Twitter pic and alerting PyCon?
Your “argument” is undermined severely by the fact that both the dudebros and PyCon officials agreed with Adria that the men were out of line.
All of that is conceding that they weren’t being sexist. Which I don’t believe. You don’t believe it because you have a limited understanding of sexism, and no desire to educate yourself to know more.
You and domah are sad pathetic, nitwits.
I’m giving up. Traversedavies comments are fairly nonsensical and self-contradictory anyway. The fact they seem to be unable or unwilling to actually address those comments to the person they’re replying to makes them impossible to parse at all.
I would say that the one guy who said it could see the point of view that the dongle jokes were a bit much… doesn’t mean they were, but he could see that point of view. Since he could, he apologized.
Worst method possible for doing this… and the reason it blew up was because she tweeted a photo, and one of them got fired. I actually don’t advocate her talking to them, I actually advocated no reaction at all… but mentioning it directly to the conference organizers instead of using a public channel would have been acceptable. As I also said, were she still able to be a developer evangelist she should have not been fired, but given that this is essentially impossible I don’t think SendGrid had much of a choice, not counting the DDOS and the like. She poisoned her own job.
Tony! The Lonely Queer Shoop:
As far as I can make out, according to traversedavies, that’s because these guys who decided to make jokes about forking and big dongles in the middle of a large conference hall in a convention were that ‘introverted’, they were intimidated into apologising by the big, scary PyCon staff threatening to ask them not to do it.
She posted a photo… that’s how it was naming them.
Traversedavies?
I’m gonna bet I was getting bullying for have my nose in a book, using words the little rednecks didn’t understand and liking STOS and Dr.Who before you knew what a nerd was. (As well as getting bullied for being a girl who did those things AND would talk back.)
The stereotype that all nerds are bicycle seat sniffing creepers who no one in their right mind would want the displeasure of speaking to….I fucking hate that stereotype.
You are spreading it here as a defense for sexism. That makes you twice the shit for brains.
“Feminists are the real sexists!” seems to be team whatabouttehmenz??11!! rallying cry. You are no different from the white doods who want to know why there is no White History Month. There is no reverse racism. Feminism is not sexism and you are the one here smearing everyone who shares your interests, gender and skill set with shit. You need a lesson about the rules involving holes and the people who dig them.
You wouldn’t know sexism if it bit you in the ass. But oh my, are you soaking in it.
Oh, still too early to pull the champagne out?
I am eagerly awaiting the moment traversedavies pulls his head out of his ass for long enough to notice what’s going on in the thread beyond whatever comment he’s on now.
Oh cut him some slack, Caine. He’s a geekanerd. He doesn’t have social skills. Why, it’s a wonder that he can even order coffee for his similarly afflicted co-workers in the nerdcave.
Well, it’s all the great and ineffable will of the Employers for the good of the Company, peace be upon them.
No.
Sexual harassment and misogyny are not the same thing… they can be the same thing, but not all sexual harassment is misogyny. Also, the fact that something can technically be said to fall within a far too loosely defined term doesn’t mean it should fall in that term.
traversedavies@411:
Funny. This is exactly my position. Why are you acting like it isn’t?
To review, I have argued:
1. The men’s jokes were inappropriate but not wildly so.
2. Richards was within her rights to complain to the PyCon organizers but it was inappropriate to tweet the picture.
3. It was much more inappropriate for either company to fire their employees over this.
4. It is even more inappropriate to send rape and death threats ever.
Can you please be clear and specific about what’s unreasonable with this position?
My life is great actually, and I haven’t lied once or moved a single goal post. If you don’t realize that, you are a fool.
Maybe traversedavies actually believes his comments are threading right under those he is responding to.
traversedavies@419:
You’re either lying right now or deluding yourself. I’ve pointed out numerous arguments that you’ve completely ignored. You’ve switched what point you’re arguing several times now.
And you still can’t muster the common courtesy to state which comment to which you are replying. Why is that?
This is kinda funny.
I think it’s the part where you don’t make it clear that it’s all the woman’s fault, and that she and only she should be put under a microscope.
First: I personally have never defended sexism, racism, or threats of violence of any sort. I haven’t actually seen anyone else defend them either, but there are a lot of comments. However, if you think defending some relatively low key comments as not being sexist is the same as defending all of the comments leveled at Adria, or that saying she’s not capable of doing her job anymore because she is now such a controversial figure and her job is essentially to be well liked by developers is the same as saying that people threatening her with violence is ok… well, that’s more than a little hyperbolic, and very much a strawman fallacy.
What’s their names?
traversedavies@424:
Since people have repeatedly said that the comments themselves were not sexist and have explained multiple times why they nonetheless contribute to an atmosphere of sexism this is a dictionary-perfect example of “moving the goalposts”.
And since I am the center of the universe, decider of all things, you bitches are wrong and mean for disagreeing with my macho manly correctness! I decide what sexism is! ME ME ME ME!!!
You and domah make good misogyny buddies, traverse. Bet that makes ya proud, huh? The out and proud lying bigot supports you. If that’s not clear enough proof that you’re on the wrong side . . ..
Beatrice:
I flat out refuse to contemplate the level of stupidity that would take.
Tangent: Between “forking a repo” apparently being a thing that someone can say, and “developer evangelist” being a thing that exists, I’m becoming glad I didn’t go into the tech business. It sounds like it’s absolutely brimming with bullshit.
I’ll come back in two hundred comments when davies responds to this without naming me.
He’s Traverse Davies! He drives a Dodge Stratus!
Caine,
Ah, so you’ve got the optimism hat today!
traversedavis-
So you’ve been circling on and on with two arguments. The first one being some pathetic never happened about how women who hang out with the sort of terrorist sexist who would side against Adria Richards aren’t willing to say to his face that they disagree which is… yeah, even if it was true, it so would prove fuck all and just serves as a weak argumentum ad populum rationalization to the sexist in question. For that, I’d recommend what said people say about their sexist, racist douchebag coworkers outside of those forced “play nice” spaces. Hint, we tend to rant about you and how much we wish that we could smack you over the head with the cluebat without getting into trouble for it.
And the second one, that “sexual jokes” are not about minimizing and diminishing women. Yeah… A) you don’t really believe that, B) Of course they are because women are constantly treated like the sex class, hence why your former boss felt perfectly justified in referring to a subordinate as a pair of tits, C) It’s the true face of your “allies”.
In ze other thread, when the weak ass trolls were feeling boxed in and like they needed to put me in my place, this was their coward’s retreat:
So let’s see here, let’s unpack this a bit. There’s the assumptions that sex diminishes women who touch it. That sex is an attribute possessed by men that they then inflict upon women. There’s the creepy diminishment and minimalization of deaging the intended target. There’s the use of sexual “joke” to begin with. Why, when this particular asshole thought he needed to harm me, did he turn to this “joke”? Why is this the retreat position of other men? Why did your former boss feel the need to reduce an employee to her body parts in front of others? Why was that crucial to his feelings of superiority? How might that have affected to sexist douchebags existing in a female-dominated space where they were expected to serve as ambassadors for their company? Why did they need to dominate that space with these sexual jokes in order to feel “comfortable?
Cause that’s the meat of the issue. I mean, on whether she did “something wrong” or “was seeing things”, well that’s well been settled.
No, of course not.
The con agreed it was inappropriate behavior on the douchebags’ part. The douchebags’ employers agreed it was inappropriate behavior on the douchebags’ part. The douchebags themselves agreed it was inappropriate behavior on the douchebags’ part.
Only sexist abusers invested in the destruction of a woman who proved “uppity” are trying to argue otherwise. And the reason for that is so painfully obviously a post hoc rationalization of their own guilt that it’s not worth dwelling on. Largely because it’s not about the reality of the situation, it’s about YOUR emotions, about how well you handle the creeping knowledge of what behaviors you are standing up for and the logic puzzles you need to twist your mind into in order to justify the hatred you already were feeling towards her for “spoiling some dudes’ fun”.
And it’s why your arguments are so strongly revealing that even if you are convinced they aren’t. Face it bub, you’ve been pretty much saying “uppity bitches deserve a smack down, everyone says so” for quite a number of comments.
Deal with that and learn from it. It’s your choice to make on who you want to be going forward.
Rey Fox@423:
That would be my guess as well. traversedavies seems to be very focused on ascribing as much blame as possible to Richards without making allowances that anyone else may have acted inappropriately here.
And of course he has nothing to say about the rape and death threats except disclaimers about how much he disapproves of them. Oh, well what a brave stand you’re making there!
Really? From the same guy who, right after denying sexism, says that he totally doesn’t defend sexism?
Rey Fox
Heh.
The courts disagree with you. The harassment policies at every place I have ever worked disagree with you.
Beatrice:
Hey, it’s blocking the mind-reading rays and…
never mind.
traversedavies
So, you’ve made it clear that you refuse to listen to anything anyone else says, but perhaps, as someone who claims not to be a raging misogynist, you might think for a second about how the standard you express here makes it impossible for anyone to challenge institutionalized sexism (or racism, or homophobia, etc., etc.). Say you work in a field that has severe issues with under-representation of women, a strongly misogynist culture (as in, substantially worse even than the general toxic misogyny of American culture at large), and that constantly sexualizes and objectifies women. (Note, this isn’t really a hypothetical so much as a description of reality in the tech industry, but if you insist on denying reality, at least follow the hypothetical to see how screwed up your argument is).
Now, in general, employees are expected not to massively alienate their colleagues, because it’s necessary for them to be able to collaborate with coworkers. But imagine that someone doesn’t find the rampant misogyny of this *hypothetical* workplace acceptable and decides to challenge it. What do you think the reaction of her (or his) coworkers will be? Do you think her coworkers will be happy with her? Do you think it might impair their willingness to work with her? In your world, this means she can be legitimately fired. After all, like Adria Richards, her ability to do her job effectively has been impaired because the sexist assholes she works with don’t like that she challenged their right to be sexist assholes. So, effectively, any attempt to challenge a rampantly misogynist workplace, according to the standards you’ve laid out, is grounds to fire the person doing the challenging. See why that might be a problem?
This standard that you’ve created that being “controversial” is grounds for being fired is nothing more than an endorsement of a sexist status quo and a threat of termination to anyone who challenges it. It is incompatible with any pretense of opposing a hostile work environment. Incidentally, this attitude (and the fact that lots of your male colleagues likely share it) may explain why many of your female colleagues claim to oppose Adria Richards and accept the rampant sexual harassment that you describe as the ideal tech work environment for “nerds” and “introverts”. You all have made it clear what the consequences are for “controversial” women who decide not to put up with it.
traversedavies @424
Bzzt. Wrong. Sorry, but you’ve spent a couple hundred comments on this very thread demonstrating how full of shit this assertion is.
So let’s put the focus on you (hooray for your fragile little ego) for a little bit. Why do you try and distance yourself from that reality? Why do you want to set aside some acts of the sexist terrorist backlash as “not getting on you”, while being part and parcel of the main thrust? Is it because, like many of the other sexists, including the ones delivering the rape and murder threats, you realize that sexism is wrong? That women are people and should be treated as such rather than members of the sex class?
And there we get the reason why you and the rest of the douchebags will have to evolve and deal with a world in which women are allowed full participation and there won’t be anymore “safe man spaces” where everyone gives you infinite free passes because everyone has their survival mechanisms to deal with the day-in day-out assault.
Because you know that your participation in these little Klan gatherings is wrong. Because even the ones perpetuating the culture realize that the culture is bad and needs to end. All you’re scared of is going first and being treated like an honorary woman over it. Well, believe me, seeing the stress you’ve been placing on your cognitive dissonance in this very thread, you’d be best served just going out there and living true to your real ideals.
This shit is wrong. This shit is minimizing. And this shit needs to stop.
We can stop it. Together.
Or we can have a few rounds of martyr creation and intense bad blood first and you can remain with the assholes, alone, scared, and feeling like “your america” left you behind*. Your choice.
*Seriously, I’ve seen enough of those confused sexists and racists bemoaning the automatic privileges and social support they once got to know that you most certainly don’t fucking want their lives.
traversedavies:
Your continued denial of any sexism, despite how easy it is to see the sexism in their comments (good ole boys on their turf, thinking it is ok to make sexually suggestive comments to women) suggests that you *do* defend sexism. At the very least, you are defending the systems in place that perpetuate sexism. Your words have the effect of supporting the status quo.
Here, let me help you:
See the second definition?
That would be the dudebros at PyCon.
Sorry cupcake. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Since you aren’t the solution, are are the problem, as you are defending what you see delusionally as the status quo. Which isn’t where you think it is. So, you are defending sexism, etc.
Shorter traverseddavies:
“I don’t support sexism! I just think women shouldn’t ever talk about it or complain when they see it!”
davidporter @438
Thank you for linking something together in why this argument is so very unbelievably fucked up beyond the usual.
It’s this idea that “uppity” minorities are being “controversial” when they call people on things and that this controversy is in and of itself worth firing is something that pervades a lot of fucked up corporate cultures.
In fact, it’s the exact thing that’s driving my employers to discriminate against me for being trans*
Because, see, by my existence, by visibly presenting myself as a female, I am “controversial”. I am “disruptive”. And I need to be eliminated because of it. Because my very existence makes people have to think about their assumptions on men and women, about transgender rights, about worries about bigotry hurting the bottom line. By existing in my space, I’m a question mark and one that is causing my institution a lot of distress.
Note that I’m not saying my bitching about transphobia is the problem, no it is my existence which is controversial and frankly, for many years in a lot of industries, the existence of women just on its own would have been a “controversy” that many employers would have sought firing over. It’s why we have “non-discrimination laws” in the first place.
Because there is a lot of culture that agrees with the latest sexist participant in the harassment campaign, that “controversial things” need to be eliminated for “disturbing the quiet peace” of a bigoted culture and bringing up “uncomfortable questions” on what needs to change for the space to truly be welcoming to all people not just those who are most willing to suffer through bigotry for a paycheck.
My employers are looking for a way, any way they can shit-can me because of my existence that isn’t “officially” illegal, because of that agreement, but it’s still illegal and wrong.
I know privileged groups aren’t used to having to change or grow, but sorry fellows, youse gots to.
We can’t keep suffering and dying and bleeding so you can pretend that your white male lily world is the be-all, end-all of how the universe actually works.
Sorry.
You are all free to complain about whatever it is that ails you. But like the boy who cried Wolf, don’t be surprised when no one comes running to your aid after you’ve established a pattern of offenses as Ms. Richards did.
Trav,
They behaved that way in public. Twitter is public.
It would not be shaming, except that they did a shameful thing, a shameful thing women are sick of being objected to constantly.
They admitted to being in the wrong.
SHE GOT FIRED AND DEATH/RAPE THREATS.
If you think your concern that she did not behave as picture perfect as possible or that the sexist dimwits deserved more respect (while they certainly weren’t giving any) is not sexist, you are asleep. You are utterly unconscious of the misogyny around you and your participation in it. Please stop.
This seriously happens every time a woman dares to stand up for herself. Every goram time. No you don’t see more women standing up in solidarity against this shit. Does that shock you considering your response? She’s unemployed and getting death and rape threats and you want to worry about the poor, poor men who were behaving like they were in a middle school locker room instead of in a professional setting.
So some women in tech agree with you…
Yes, women internalize misogyny too. I did it. It is Orwellian how easy it is to make someone hate something about themselves so much that they want to distance themselves from it in any way they can. Women begin to police other women. I got beat up for not being girly enough. I got called a dyke alot. I was never going to be one of the girls. After all, I liked that weird nerdy stuff like B movies and horror/sci-fi comics. So, some women begin to agree. “Those women must be as hysterical, weak and awful as I’m told they are…but not me. I’m special. See? I can be “one of the boys.” Put yourself in those shoes for just a second. You want to be special because you want to believe that you will be valued. You won’t be raped or molested (again) because only “those kind of girls” get raped. You can keep yourself safe. You’ve been told so a million times. You have worth. Girls are icky, but you are a credit to your gender. You can take it and taking it makes you special.
*spit* It makes you a self-hating doormat. It makes you a tool of your oppressor, just like the girls and women who policed you. Plus, the boys never really accept you anyway. They keep you around to tell them they’re special and that the girls who don’t like them are indeed, icky. That and ya know…tits.
You don’t even know you’re doing it. I’m sure other minorities internalize worse. It doesn’t help that horror, comics, fantasy and sci-fi are rife with sexist tropes. But, I was a kid and all I knew is that I loved those genres. I loved the stories from Lovecraft and Bradbury and didn’t love myself enough to wonder why I could not find anyone like me in them. I saw monsters and mutants and I felt something in me stir. I saw the underdog standing up, the valiant winning against the wicked (sometimes) and I forgave anything to feel a part of that. But eventually I grew up. I wised up. I found out that I can take exception with the things I like. That’s how things get better. The more you love something, the more you want it to get better.
So, stop saying nerds and weirdos are fine with sexism. We aren’t. We’re supposed to be the people who prefer function over form. We’re supposed to not be shallow, tribeish assholes who bully other people for being different. We are supposed to rebel against the status quo. We’re supposed to love learning to the point that we don’t care how unhip that is. We’d rather be knowledgeable than comfortable. I know that’s romantic BS and we’re really just people who like things. But if wearing the badge of nerdom comes with accepting the stereotype of being a catpiss smelling, sexist trog, then you can have mine. I don’t need that to define myself anymore.
Neither do you. So stop hiding behind it. Sexism isn’t nerdy, it’s repugnant and it is so mainstream.
This insidious perpetuation of the “victim mentality” is probably the most damaging thing feminists can do to young girls.
@domah:
Funny…there seem to be a lot of people out there who agree with my position on this. And none of them are making rape and death threats.
Does that make you wonder even a little bit if you might be arguing the wrong side?
What makes you think you speak for young girls?
Its already been discussed to death, but those ‘jokes’ were not addressed to Ms. Richards. Her fem-rage; however, was squarely aimed at those two developers. Unfortunately for her, it back-fired.
ShorterAccurate domah @444Waah! Waah! Stop being aware of sexism and the rape culture! If you don’t! We’ll threaten you with rape and murder and you’ll deserve it! Waah!
Hey, psst, lemme let you in on a little secret here, buddy, since you seem to be a little IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION to have noticed. You have spent decades threatening and threatening women with rape and death for speaking out, even fulfilling that shit. We’ve slogged through it all for years and years and we’re tired of it all ready. It happens no matter what we do, no matter how kind or logical we strive to be.
So now, since we know we’re fucked anyways by virtue of being born women?
We’re going to just be ourselves and call it all out and deconstruct it, because once you’re guaranteed to lose, there’s no incentive to keep playing by the rules and trying to be “safe”. You’ve created the situation in the Chinese story where the general is faced with a situation where his army being late is given death and his army rebelling is given death so since he’s late, he might as well rebel. And now you’re shocked that the uppity bitches are rebelling.
Yeah, not really. We’re fucked anyways, so we might as well go down swinging and make the next generation not have to swim through quite as much bullshit.
How many times will you use that as a rationalization for Ms. Richards behavior. For the 1000th time, we are all in agreement that type of behavior is inappropriate. It does not, however, change the fact that Ms. Richards was way out of line.
ShorterAccurate Cereberus @449Waah! Waah! We are all victims. All male software developers are rapists/murderers who can’t control their hormones.
Just ridiculous…
Fem-rage?
The tweets that asked the convention people to put a stop to it, to enforce the rules of the convention itself, was fem-rage?
Domah, Fuck off, Sugerbooger. We don’t need your help. Men’s Rape Apologists aren’t good for action, other than promoting child rape and the occasional shooting. Why don’t you help yourself to the door if you think you can find it.
Besides, I thought we were the wolves in your fairytale?
You seem to be the boy doing the crying.
domah@446:
Actually, this is a fascinating (and disgusting) window into how your mind works.
Do you think women are inherently worse at math than are men? I don’t. I think women are underrepresented in STEM fields because in our culture women are discouraged from entering those fields.
Do you really think it’s “damaging” to a young girl to try to let her know she can be every bit as good at engineering and mathematics as her male classmates? Or do you think it’s more damaging to tell her otherwise?
Because when we talk about overcoming privilege that’s what we’re talking about. True equality of opportunity. Is that really something you want to argue against?
Your unevidenced OPINION is drivel, unrelated to reality, and nothing but slogans and talking points of toxic MRA fuckwittery. Nothing anybody wants to hear, much less those who know what sexual harassment really is, and how to stop it.
Seems the rules of the convention also dictate that “harassing photography or recording” is also not allowed. However, since Ms. Richards is a woman, we’ll let that one slide, right?
domah@450:
I’m not using it as a “rationalization” you fucking liar. I’ve already stated my position on that and you acknowledged that it makes sense. (Backpedaling now?)
I’m pointing out that on the side of people defending Richards we have no one making rape or death threats while on the side that’s pointing out how wrong and terrible she is we do have people making rape or death threats.
Now you get to decide which side you’re on. Do you want to keep screaming about how terrible Richards is? Or do you want to join us in decrying the businesses that fired these people over a few relatively minor problems and the chorus of shitweasels making those threats?
Misogyny apologists please note:
1. This wasn’t even the first sexist innuendo Adria had dealt with that day. She tried suggesting to the first offender that his innuendo was not professional in mixed company when he was representing his employers and he simply disagreed with her and apparently ignored her suggestion that he ask them. So using her own authority to point out violations of code of conduct didn’t work.
2. Calling out someone who feels empowered as part of a crowd is harder (point made in her blog post). Also, they were in an audience whom she didn’t want to disturb. I suspect that since she tweeted to the PyCon staff to come and speak to the offenders, she attached their photograph (along with her location in the audience) so that the staff could simply beckon them out to talk.
3. Not every person, especially if he or she has been traumatized by abuse earlier in life, can bring themselves to confront someone making sexist or bullying remarks. You can’t demand that everyone do what you would do.
4. People who have no problem hating their daily commute to work can’t seem to understand how someone can hate being put down every day. There is something to the concept of “it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.” One mosquito is a nuisance: ten thousand mosquitoes are a potentially fatal threat. She saw a way to apply a mosquito swatter before another victim came into their range. What she did was for others more than for herself, others who might not be as strong in resisting years of the usual sexism.
5. If what the dudebros were doing was so trivial, why should she be vilified for pointing it out? That must be at least as trivial. If what they did was no offence, then people knowing they did it is no harm. If it was wrong, then she was right to point it out. If you don’t want to be outed as a sexist jerk, don’t be a sexist jerk.
6. Traversedavies, what makes you think that the women you talk to at work are doing anything but agreeing with the distorted version of the story you’ve told them or agreeing because they don’t want trouble from you?
Such hyperbole is the last refuge of the fully refuted male ego, who can’t acknowledge it is wrong. To bad, you didn’t learn that rational men can acknowledge when they are wrong and change. Which leaves your irrational.
domah@456:
Stop lying. Plenty of us have acknowledged that that was out of line as well…and should have been met with the same severity as the “dongle” jokes — a talking to by PyCon organizers.
Look, we can’t help what the voices in your head are saying.
LOL domah doesn’t understand what “harrassing photography” means, but he’s sure that bitch did something wrong, so GRASP AT THOSE STRAWS, diddums.
And stop thinking about little girls, misogynist. That’s just down right CREEPY and GROSS.
Gee liar and bullshitter, try upskirt, down blouse, close ups of crotches, buttocks, breasts, etc., as harassing. No harassment occured with these pictures except in your MRA diseased mind. Anybody who understands such policies (you obviously have no idea of context) knows what a liar and bullshitter you are. Which makes your OPINIONS *floosh* excrement to be disposed of.
How is taking a photo to identify the men harassing?
If she didn’t, and just said it was those guys without the photo, you would still be in her crying about this. Instead, you would just claim she got the wrong guys.
Ding, ding, ding!
nah, they agreed with him because he is the source of all knowledge about sexism on earth and they rightly bowed before his manliness.
It’s all you keeerrrazzzy bitches who don’t immediately agree with him in order to make him go away that are wrong!
domah@448:
The explanation given for why telling those jokes is sexist does not depend on them being addressed to Ms. Richards. It depends only on the fact that such jokes may be audible to people who might be made uncomfortable or otherwise offended by them.
Domah wrote
Maybe she was being ironic. The Internet has already defined making a joke as “not possibly able to offend anyone ever because it’s just humor.” Therefore, it can’t possibly offend you if she said she felt a little bit like Joan of Arc.
Domah, in what way is speaking up and refusing to let nasty little creeps like you shout us down with outright lies being a victim?
It isn’t and that just eats your cookies.
Guess what? It won’t ever stop. Beat your fists against your keyboard and spout all the MRA propaganda you can recall and have a nice little tantrum, but we won’t ever stop.
What you are writing here is not true. It is sexist and it is stupid.
You are not the protector of little girls anywhere. You’re just one more clueless self important liar who is terrified of women who won’t keep your dirty little secrets for you anymore.
That’s what Richards did that pisses you off, right? She told. She told everyone. She confronted them and she she drew attention to their awful behavior. She didn’t meekly take it or keep the men’s behavior quiet. She outed them as sexist, unprofessional lackwits. If they can be told on, then so can you or the men who do so while you smirk and look on. You really want to get away with it. It really floats your boat. You’re hysterical, irrational beliefs make your misogyny feel justified and you like that.
Too bad. You will get away with it less and less.
Doom, doom, doom, doom…now go!
Since I’m new to this particular comment system I’m going to apologize for the lack of blockquote and mentioning who I was responding to. I am used to threaded comments, once you try them it’s hard to go back.
No, being an introverted personality type and talking too loudly to a friend while in public are often things that happen together. There is no contradiction here, just a misunderstanding of how intoverts act.
Joan of Arc was burned alive for hearing voices in her head. Adria Richards was threatened with rape and death for tweeting a photo.
The comparison along that axis isn’t actually that far off. These action/reaction pairs seem pretty equivalent in terms of inappropriateness of reaction.
traversedavies@269:
As an introverted personality type I deny that this happens any more frequently with introverts than with extroverts. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
No. But since you interpreted what I said incorrectly, let me re-iterate: it’s most certainly damaging to a young girl to continually enforce upon her how much of a “victim” she is.
Again, you throw your own spin on my comments. I believe in equality of opportunity. Imagine if one were to continually tell a young boy how depressing and difficult life will be for him because 1/2 the population were out to get him and how he will always be a victim. This is equivalent to what the feminists do to young girls by perpetuating this victim mentality.
OMGlessness, she took a picture!
..and if she hadn’t she’d be getting accused of making the entire thing up.
No. What she did that pisses people off (and much of the Internet is pissed off about it) is act like a complete ass and bully. Of course you’d never be able to see that, being that she is female.
I am shocked, shocked to see an MRA asshole misogynist with an axe to grind about harassment policies in geek cons trying to lie about what harassment policies are about in order to argue for their elimination. It is so shocking that my face is permanently stuck in shock mode. See how shocked I am.
As we go on and on, they might not have gotten any more disingenuous or harassing, but they certainly have gotten more and more obvious about their tactics. It’s almost like sexists and assholes aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are or something.
Joan of Arc was burned alive for hearing voices in her head. Adria Richards was threatened with rape and death for tweeting a photo.
The comparisons of Ms. Richards to Joan of Arc are amusing. I suppose feminists will rally around her and her extremist views as if she were their Joan of Arc; however, honestly, the rest of us see her as more of a howdy-do-dee.
So, how is it sexist? Is it still sexist if it’s two women making ribald jokes to each other? Is it that ribald humour should be banned from the public sphere? I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to live in that world… it’s pretty clear from where I sit that there are things that are wrong (making a joke about women that is derogatory or objectifying) and things that are just stupid (large dongle jokes… look, they are crap jokes, but they are not demeaning to women, they are just stupid).
This really is a case where if your base axiom is that any sexual innuendo, even an undirected on, should not be made in the public sphere, I straight up believe that you are wrong. There is not argument that will convince me otherwise, and I will always believe that someone who says so is being overly politically correct. If you then say that objectification of women (even in speech) is wrong, I will agree with you.
Genius still not getting that sexist jokes and jokes about sex aren’t the same thing.
Gee.. publicly posting a photo of someone and implying to thousands of twitter followers that those pictured are sexual deviants is not harassing? What world do you live in? Oh wait, please don’t answer.
I finally had to look up the “MRA” acronym, because I had never heard of that one before.
Define how she was a
for tweeting a picture of the men who were making sexually suggestive comments that even they admit were sexist and that do indeed fit the definition of sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace.
She scared you. Admit it. You see her as a bully because she scares you. She scares you because she is a woman who made a man’s bad behavior public. Shakes you right down to your toes, don’t it?
Hon, your projection is just adorable. I swear, you are just as frightened a little bigoted whiner as I have ever seen. Bullies always claim they were the wronged party if anyone fights back. Even if they don’t get hit back but they get caught, they always manage to find a snivel and to explain how they were really the wronged party once the authorities come around. I think what really terrifies apologists like you is that this tactic isn’t working as well anymore. In fact, soon it may not work at all.
@roro80 My apologies for not using quotes, used to threaded discussion, not this format, and I’m replying via my e-mail, which give me not only some context by doesn’t give me reply numbers, so I didn’t realize how out of context stuff was appearing… since I literally have hundreds of replies and am trying to respond to all but the very small number that support me.
I said that’s not what people are saying, and what I meant was that the death threats and the like are okay… I don’t believe that they are, I just don’t think that makes Adria Richard’s reaction okay either, and her blog post actually made things so much worse than her twitter post did.
Bullfuckingshit.
Damn, but you are allergic to the truth.
*snicker* and I have a bridge over the East River for sale…
Jackie @468
Thus would be the real issue at the meat of it, wouldn’t it.
These men want to be “daring outlaws” “ducking PC culture” and “resisting the hypnotic mind-control of the feminazi overlords” because the reality does not do any favors to the toxic masculinity persona they are trying to project.
And that is they are frightened little cowards, scared that they’re going to get caught doing something they already know is wrong. That they’ll get called out.
This is why they always try and scold people who recognize things as “nannies” or “mother figures” trying to get some little boys who didn’t know any better into trouble. Some fun-time buzzkills who aren’t in on the joke.
Because they know that this cheap harassment, this little passive aggressive dance of telling minority groups to stay away, is just that. An act of cowardice and pathetic refusal to grow the fuck up and deal with reality as is.
Sorry, fellas, but we can’t keep suffering and dying and bleeding because you want a time out on having to do a fraction of the work that minority groups have to deal with EVERY FUCKING DAY.
You act like a douchebag and minimize a group of people because you’re scared of having to deal with their existence as people and are hoping this gambit will retain the wall of bigotry a little longer? Oh deary me, tough. We deal with people minimizing who we ARE. Treating us like objects. Letting us know in these pathetic little passive-aggressive digs that we aren’t wanted. In constant cowardly ways.
You can fucking deal with being called out on what you damn well already know is wrong. And you can finally grow the fuck up and face your intense cowardice of a world that has fully participating minorities in it.
Travs,
Because sexism and harassment aren’t the problem, talking about them are the problem?
She brought this on herself.
She should have been nicer.
She’s the real sexist!
But they might have just been socially awkward.
Really, you came here 2 yrs too late to drop those turds.
SSDD. Seriously, what is it going to take to change this record?
Okay. I admit it. She scares me. If I saw a creepy fem-nazi running around at a convention with a twitter-cam, I’d run in the opposite direction.
She’s the type of person that not only scares me and others, but she scares companies, hiring managers and people in charge because she is a ticking time-bomb! Her un-canny ability to misinterpret just about anything as sexual innuendo is well documented. So yes, I am scared of her, as should any man be, because shes the type of person that could easily ruin ones life just to further her ‘crusade’.
More non-sequiturs fromt the MRA apologists. Can’t stick to the topic. Which is they are wrong since they can’t/won’t evidence themselves right. Evidence from harassment law, etc, not their OPINIONS. Their OPINIONS aren’t and can’t be evidence.
Unevidenced assertion *floosh* dismissed as irrelevant and stupid.
Um… no. Perhaps in a couple of cases, but in most cases… well, a lot of the women I know have dirtier mouths and senses of humour than most of they guys I know. It’s not that they are okay with sexism, it’s that they don’t want to be fired for making comments.
domah@472:
Please. After all your distortions you are in no position to complain about “spin”.
Especially when you’re in the process of grossly distorting what feminists have to say to young girls. This ain’t it.
You can talk to any number of feminists who will tell you straight out: feminism isn’t about being a victim. It’s about not being a victim any more.
domah@476:
I specified the sense in which the comparison makes sense. You apparently have nothing to say about that.
Shakespeare has Romeo compare Juliet to a summer’s day. Does that mean Juliet is a climactic event?
Of course not. Anyone of normal intelligence can recognize that comparisons are never meant to be absolute but rather to highlight the ways in which two different phenomenon are nonetheless similar.
Domah,
So that’s what the world looks like through Misogynist colored glasses? Hmm..
Well then, be afraid. Be very afraid. Because…we’re coming for your ability to sexually harass women in the workplace in anonymity and we won’t give it back!
Muhahahahahahaha!
Where’s my cat? I need to stroke a cat while I do my maniacal laugh.
Lies, lies, more lies, and oh yes, more lies.
If our trolls don’t even bother with the effort of being good faith bigots, why the fuck should we bother bringing in our A game in response?
Hint to our trolls, we’re not actually as stupid as you. We can tell when someone is being a disingenuous harassing asshole with their white little sheet and their anonymous culture of demonization of certain minority group members and specified targeting of them for harassment because you feel they “crossed the line” and were a little too “out of their place”.
What you are doing is modern day cross-burning. The same fucking point as that shit, to intimidate and silence and to let in no certain terms that those seen by a bunch of anonymous cowards as “uppity” will be smacked down.
Those of you aligning with these fuckers, because you want to claim you have “small but important issues you feel the need to bring up”, notice this. Notice what you are defending and participating in. Notice what that makes you. Notice how popular and proud they felt 100 years ago. Notice how pathetic they are seen today.
The same will be true of you. Period.
Dirty mouth? I have a dirty fucking mouth, and yet I am mostly not sexist. Again, things you try to equate are not the same. Just like sexism isn’t a “nerd thing” or an “introvert thing”.
traversedavies:
You are such a fucking bullshitter.
No one said “public sphere.” Everyone has specified “professional environment.”
That’s better. *pet’s kitty*
Muhahahahahahaha!
I have to admit.. this comment made me laugh! Thank you! =)
Let’s try this again:
Dirty mouth? I have a dirty fucking mouth, and yet I am mostly not sexist. Again, things you try to equate are not the same. Just like sexism isn’t a “nerd thing” or an “introvert thing”.
@daniellavine 491
Which is why my analogy of Ms. Richards to Howdy-Do-Dee remain relevant. She certainly is providing the Internet with much entertainment (unfortunately at her expense).
Have you considered seeing a psychiatrist?