Hopefully you are still reading the comments here as I'm just catching up on all of this and watching how it is continuing to unfold.
Please don't apologize.
As other women before me already have, I want to apologize for this incident; honestly I probably would have been giggling myself if I was in an earshot of you. With respect to Adria's past and her sensitivity to the triggers she refers to, a comment like this is not demeaning to women and her reaction has nothing to do with supporting the future of this industry and the women who partake in it. In fact I'd say just the opposite. Just a few weeks ago we had a similar conversation when Torvalds replied to a woman with the term circlejerk (in regards to the argument they were having) and a few people raised their pitchforks thinking it was offensive in the context of her gender. It has nothing to do with gender.
Taking the photo and posting it for her global audience was just too much. The appropriate course of action would have been to show the picture privately to staff and have them talk to the parties involved individually and maybe bring everyone together to talk about it after-the-fact. I can't even fathom losing my job over something that I know I have made jokes about in the past, jokes that may have a juvenile slant, but that I thought would be acceptable because I was in the company of people who could - if not appreciate them - at least understand what I meant by them, and especially understand that it wasn't sexual.
Some jokes are not okay in the presence of certain people or during certain times. This was not one of them, and again I'm so sorry for what you're dealing with because of it. Best wishes to you.
Totally with you there. I am a huge fan of Amanda Blum's post on the matter, she really got down to the nitty-gritty of it: don't be a dick, you're ruining it for everyone. I also had the privilege of meeting and speaking to Blum a few times at RailsGirls PDX (which she also helped put together) and she was an absolute pleasure; really cared about the even from beginning to end and set a fantastic mood for the day (and a half) with her enthusiasm. If she said this woman was hard to work with, I believe her.
Adria did a disservice to other women in IT. Also the whole "Joan of Arc" thing and "I'm fighting for the future of female developers" stuff were hilarious. I don't get how this benefits anybody. How can "I'd fork that guy's repo" be sexist? In which context? "I'd fork that guy/girl" can be, in a way (if you're Adria perhaps), termed sexist/misogynic/misoandric (yeah, lol) but IRL... Only "evangelists", PR and lawyers would do such a thing.
I'd said to my GF (yeah, she's a dev too) that I wanna fork her multiple times and I didn't get one slap or my face plastered over the internet... Behaving like a total enabler she laughed and ... She should have reported me, I'd let her know when she wakes up. Or better yet, post my pic on #sexist or something, because that's what sane people do.
Now being serious. Using offensive jokes is not appropriate. Using offensive jokes in my crowd is kind of expected. Using them outside my crowd. Big no no. I don't deem sex jokes fall in inappropriate. Sexist/racist/N-ist jokes however do. If someone got offended, I'll apologise. Promptly. Like a SANE PERSON. I don't plaster his/her face over the public 'net.
All this was a cold and calculated move that backfired (this time). It has surely done more harm than good. If any good at all. The state in the industry is now much better than it was 10-15 years ago and we should continue driving that forward. Only trust, cooperation and the direct approach in conflicts, not us-versus-them mentality, will drive that change.
I am glad to see I'm not the only woman with this opinion.
Frankly, I think mr-hank should file criminal charges, under VAWA section 2261A on stalking, which states that an individual is guilty of stalking if, with intent to harass or intimidate another person, uses the mail, any interactive computer service or electronic communication service or electronic communication system of interstate commerce, or any other facility of interstate or foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to that person.
I think it can be reasonably stated that public shaming is intended to cause emotional distress, and mr-hank suffered damages (job loss) as a result, affecting not just himself but the welfare of his family.
With the addition of the much-touted nondiscrimination clause, the law should apply equally to his situation as it would to a woman under similar circumstances.
I find this whole situation very frustrating so much so I wrote a blog post about it. It's people like Adria who discourage women to join or take part in our industry.
Hi I am not from India but the US. I feel the need to pint out that your example of perspective would be ill advised in most parts of the us. Ill manners are ill manners. You would be better off to move than to confront. You see you do not know who you are dealing with. There could be consequences, painful consequences. The idea is to live and let live.
I am totally with you on this. I would have chuckled along with you. I also would have made my own comments too. I worked in the male-dominated worlds of turbine enginrs for 5 years and trucking industry for 7. In those 12 years so many inappropriate things were heard and said but not one was ever directed at anyone specific. I was one to partake in makung those comments and also egged on my co*workers. It was fun and funny.
This woman has totally blown an innocent comment way out of proportion.
^ Agree. I just wanted to also add that recently I was speaking with a friend of mine, he is in the process of hiring and he was saying that it's hard because he would like to bring a woman onto the team, but is weary because of past experiences of working with women like Adria. But I really don't feel like this situation is gender related, although it's things like this that make it hard for women to fit into a work environment that is male dominant. I happen to be in the military and have been in a few situations where I'm more or less ignored for safety's sake.
It really is unfortunate that Adria didn't just reach out to you. I think we can all agree with that. At this point, it's clear to most of us that we all just need to be a bit more human with each other when running around at tech events. It's about intentions, you didn't intend harm; alas, it seems she did (no doubt to a much lesser degree than what actually happened).
It's classy to apologize when you think you've upset someone. And if that's how you're going to sleep at night, apologize.
What's awful at this point is the amount of hatred going around in regards to this situation. Here we have a sane response to an immature situation. Sine then, there is an army of commenters attacking Adria with hate on your behalf (something I know isn't your fault). People are sending Adria pictures of chopped up bodies with threats that she's next. They're asking for her to be raped, or threatening to do it themselves. She's been called every word in the book, with the worst intentions ever.
Seems Adria got her feminist conversation, but not in the way she had intended. There are some really really horrible people out there in internet land.
You're right on with this. It's hilarious to see all the posts replying to you and saying that you're an adria apologist. Not sure how anyone would conclude that from what you wrote. Thank you for being a reasonable and rational human being who doesn't publicly shame and harm the lives of people over something so small. Hypersensitivity at it's worst.
Its simple: When you are in public learn to think before you speak. Its really not that difficult. I have enough sense not just blurt out things that could offend others when I am in public so I don't have these problems.
People with this mindset have never been to a conference this size before or they're forgetting what the environment is like. You are going to come across opinions and jokes that may not be in your taste, and it is up to you to either choose to ignore them because you were not a part of that conversation, or to discretely alert someone to the presence of this humor because you think it is actually harmful to people and the event itself.
She took a comment that had nothing, nada to do with the sexualization of women and tried to spin it into some sort of anti-women/"This is what we're talking about!" ridiculousness (p.s. this isn't actually at all what we're talking about when we bring up inequality, which is why women like me are furious about this).
We know from her blog post (and her previous tweets about stuffing socks into pants to impress TSA agents and her playing Cards Against Humanity at the same event - where she held up "Eating all the cookies before the AIDS bake sale.") that she wasn't actually offended; she saw the guy was a sponsor and determined that she was going to use him and his total non-issue of a statement to humiliate him because that little girl on the screen was going to grow up so fragile that she couldn't possibly handle two guys in public making an audible joke. Less people congregate at a random public place than at this event, does that stop you from hearing filth there? Can you handle it? Are you going to make a mockery of them over your public and professional Twitter account with thousands of followers?
Worse, she'd already had a dialogue with the men in which she butted into their conversation to add to it just a few minutes prior. So here we have someone admitting they're eavesdropping into conversations, which in itself isn't a crime, but you can't just listen in on what people are saying when you're not a part of the conversation and pull out a penalty flag when you hear something that "offends" you. A flag so big that the dude got fired over a joke that less people overheard than people saw her tweets on stuffing pants and eating AIDs cookies.
Do you have a comprehensive list? Is it calibrated to what country or audience you are in, or do you just avoid saying anything that could offend anyone anywhere. I made a joke about corruption once that hit too close to home for the people I was with, if I would have thought harder about where I was I should have kept my mouth shut.
There's no comprehensive list, and it would be impossible to make one. Anything we do might potentially offend somebody, somewhere, and nobody can understand every little nuance of every culture and every individual's life experiences.
Like, what if you're wearing a green sweater, and somebody was once assaulted by a person wearing a green sweater and your sweater really upsets somebody? There's no way we possibly could have known.
It's really complicated sometimes.
Here's the thing though: it's not always complicated!
Sexual comments around women we don't know? Totally an easy one. We should avoid those comments. Some women don't care, some find them hilarious, but a significant portion of women really don't want to hear that kind of talk from men they don't know.
We don't have to be mind readers, or even particularly sensitive to understand this. (In fact, we don't even have to understand it. Just memorize it.)
Yes, my common sense tells what is appropriate and what isn't in public. You have to keep in mind that every single person has something that they are sensitive about and they usually have a legitimate reason for that. Thew problem is a lot of people don't have a filter between their brain and their mouth. They just say whatever is on their mind without thinking. And this is what can happen when you do that. I basically don't say anything in public that could be offensive to people in general but yes I also take the crowd i'm with into consideration as well, like with your situation.
And of course, before anyone says it.... Its not about being "PC" its about not being a douchebag.
Of course its being PC since this is exactly how PC is defined. You don't get to wish away the label simply because you don't like it, especially when you've just repeated the definition.
I can always tell when I'm talking to someone with a strong filter and it always makes me feel uncomfortable. They don't seem genuine, they don't seem honest, they don't seem real. I wonder how they are really like when relaxed with their filters down. What if they really are a douchebag? I've met plenty of people who filter heavily but are still basically sociopaths.
I've heard there is now corporate training on how to have a strong filter without letting other people know that you have one, by intentionally and strategically letting out noticeable but forgivable gaffes at certain points to make it appear as if you are genuine.
You can never make a joke that isn't offensive to at least one person somewhere one way or another, unless you give up joking altogether. You said it yourself "every single person has something that they are sensitive about". It could be as legitimately rightful as sexist jokes.. or as unrightful as joking about anything else entirely, maybe my mother was run over by a bus driver.. does that mean that you cannot joke about bus drivers next to me?.. Well actually yes, but only "if" you knew of my particular situation and in this case he did not.
The general rules of decency dictate that you steer away from the generally offensive jokes in your respective crowd and the joke he made was not such, it was if anything something that fits that crowd perfectly.
I for one had no idea what it was supposed to mean outside the tech lingo but unlike her I was not in a PyCon conference.
Thank you for being a voice of reason here. I think AR went too far by posting a pic and hunting people down, but her objection has merit. When you're at a conference in an official capacity, don't general workplace rules apply? And don't most workplace sexual harassment rules include something about not using sexual language and not making the workplace uncomfortable for others? Richards could've said something to the men directly, or to staff at the conference. It didn't have to get so out of hand, and two people didn't have to lose their jobs.
You must work at a very sedate, serious, mature workplace.
Where I work, every time someone says "fsck" or "fork" or "Poller" (it's an elderly in-house system) someone snickers. Usually a woman.
The rest of us have a little fun at work, there's the occasional double entendre, and the work gets done.
Once I was in a meeting during a very high frustration time in a project and as we went around giving status everyone said "fuck" at some point. Including the very genteel female BA who said "I might as well too" right before she dropped her f-bomb. It was a good laugh and a good stress relief.
AR unquestionably went too far - she over-reacted, she broadcast what she should have uni-cast, and she appeared to have questionable motivations.
Right, I was confused why he thought I would be offended by that when my point was that the joke was a non-issue. That sketch is fantastic and isn't new to me. What I find so silly about this whole thing - which is exactly what the skit helps imply - is that you can hardly even say the word dongle without laughing; you don't even need to know what it really is to see the low-hanging humor in it (no pun intended). It's just one of those words. She'd have an entire magazine spread if she went to some of the gaming-related events I've been to.
We were all in 5th grade once, I think a conference for adults can handle that same behavior.
Although I commented on the wrong part of the thread, my point was that if we are able to accept a sketch on tv mentioning a dongle in good humour, why is it a sackable offence within earshot of someone?
Granted it's toilet humour but who doesn't like that every now and again. Being a programmer, I'd love to have more women in my industry and indeed within my workplace. The problem has been exacerbated by Adria and her knee-jerk reaction to something that should have just been a quick snigger between the two involved and then move on.
If I felt I had to tip-toe around any female colleague for fear of being fired for something so innocuous, I think I would change career or work alone. I don't need that kind of attitude.
I accept every colleague as an equal and certainly I temper the things I say around some people but I never go out of my way to offend, it's simply not worth it or called for.
I guess I hope we all forget about this incident and try to move on and rebuild the damage this has caused. Bring on more women in tech.
"if we are able to accept a sketch on tv mentioning a
dongle in good humour, why is it a sackable offence
within earshot of someone?"
I don't have an opinion on whether or not it should be sackable/firable, but there's a big difference between something on television and something in real life.
Would you really see no difference between your mother hearing a penis joke on television and a stranger telling her one on a train?
If you hear a joke you don't like on television, you change the channel and maybe don't watch that show again. Somebody's making sexualized conversation you don't want to hear in public, it's not always fair/convenient/possible for you to leave. In the case of the PyCon thing, perhaps Adria could have handled it better, but why should she have to give up her seat and leave the presentation (or even go to a worse seat) because she doesn't want to hear the guys behind her making sexual jokes?
Pretty sure all they read was "Don't apologize" and "women" and then made a stupid assumption. Surely no one could read that and come to think you were defending her
Please don't apologize.
As other women before me already have, I want to apologize for this incident; honestly I probably would have been giggling myself if I was in an earshot of you. With respect to Adria's past and her sensitivity to the triggers she refers to, a comment like this is not demeaning to women and her reaction has nothing to do with supporting the future of this industry and the women who partake in it. In fact I'd say just the opposite. Just a few weeks ago we had a similar conversation when Torvalds replied to a woman with the term circlejerk (in regards to the argument they were having) and a few people raised their pitchforks thinking it was offensive in the context of her gender. It has nothing to do with gender.
Taking the photo and posting it for her global audience was just too much. The appropriate course of action would have been to show the picture privately to staff and have them talk to the parties involved individually and maybe bring everyone together to talk about it after-the-fact. I can't even fathom losing my job over something that I know I have made jokes about in the past, jokes that may have a juvenile slant, but that I thought would be acceptable because I was in the company of people who could - if not appreciate them - at least understand what I meant by them, and especially understand that it wasn't sexual.
Some jokes are not okay in the presence of certain people or during certain times. This was not one of them, and again I'm so sorry for what you're dealing with because of it. Best wishes to you.